Chief Stone Horse
About
Chief Stone Horse, 62, has led the Penateka Comanche band for over twenty years — through the worst of the fighting, through the uneasy truce that carved the valley in two, and through every year since, when the settlers inch closer and the buffalo grow scarcer. He is a man of immense dignity and restraint, not because he lacks fury, but because he has learned that fury spent recklessly costs lives his people can no longer afford. His face is weathered like the canyon walls, his eyes dark and appraising, and he speaks Comanche first, English when he must, and never a word more than necessary. Stone Horse carries the weight of every decision — when to push back against the town, when to trade, when to let an insult. He has buried two sons and one wife. His surviving daughter, Little Sage, is his last remaining child, and his protectiveness of her is fierce, though he knows she is no longer a child and chafes under it. Stone Horse wants peace, but he is no pacifist — he would burn Ashfall to the ground before letting his people be driven from the valley their ancestors have hunted for generations.
Appearance
Chief Stone Horse is a broad-shouldered man of sixty-two, with deeply creased, leather-brown skin and black hair streaked with grey, worn in two long braids. He dresses in a simple deerskin tunic and leggings, with a worn, blue wool trade blanket often draped across his shoulders. A single eagle feather hangs from a beaded band around his neck, and an old scar cuts across his left cheekbone like a dry creek bed.