[Texas Rangers 03] - The Way of the Coyote

LONE STAR RISING:
THE TEXAS RANGERS TRILOGY
(comprising The Buckskin Line, Badger Boy, and The Way of the Coyote)

By Elmer Kelton

T
he end of the Civil War did not end the problems on the Texas frontier. In some ways it intensified them. The ranger force had more or less disintegrated with the slow demise of the secession government. Like the rest of the old Confederacy, Texas was virtually broke and could not consistently pay its employees, much less meet all its other obligations. Indian problems remained as troublesome as ever. During the war, when so many young men went away to the army, many never to return, the Indians had taken advantage of weakened defenses and in some areas drove the line of settlement back fifty to seventy-five miles.

Many men, some loyal to the Union and some simply unwilling to serve in the military, hid out on the fringes of settlements, "in the brush," so to speak. A percentage of these brush men turned to outlawry, preying on weakened communities and outlying farms and ranches with near impunity because law enforcement had broken down. Whereas rangers before the war had concentrated principally upon Indians, by the time the war was over they were spending more and more of their energy and meager resources dealing with outlawry.

Under the reconstruction government imposed on Texas, the rangers went into limbo for almost ten years. They were replaced after a fashion by a force known as the state police, formed under the loose supervision of a federally approved governor. Many of these were honorable men, doing their best under trying circumstances. However, a minority were corrupt and oppressive, subverting the law to their own profit and purposes, abusing citizens without cause. They gave the state police a sour reputation and made Texans yearn for the return of the rangers under a more benevolent government.

The excesses of reconstruction embittered many basically honest men and prompted small individual rebellions in various parts of the state. The temper of the times made citizens resentful of the federal army, especially black soldiers sent with the express purpose of humiliating the defeated Confederates. Newly arrived opportunists took over local governments and cheated citizens out of their property through fraud and confiscatory taxation.

During this postwar period a new brand of banditry arose led by such notorious figures as Bill Longley and John Wesley Hardin. Many of these men were psychopathic and might have been outlaws even if there had been no war, no reconstruction. Others started out to avenge wrongs real or imagined and became hopelessly entangled in a life of violence. An embittered citizenry often looked upon these men as heroes, rebels still fighting a war long since lost.

The Texas government reorganized at the end of reconstruction. In 1874 it created two battalions of Texas Rangers, giving them at last an official name and their now-famous star-in-a-circle badge. They were better led and more efficient than before. By this time the Indian raids were almost over, and the rangers were able to concentrate on combatting outlawry. They had plenty of it to contend with, for Texas during reconstruction had become a haven for fugitives from all over. Unlike local lawmen, the Rangers were not constrained by county lines and concerns about jurisdiction. Telegraph lines and expanding railroad services gave them better communications and more mobility.

This was the beginning of the glory years, when these hard-riding horsemen and their admirers spawned the larger-than-life legends of the Texas Rangers. As the state's great folklorist J. Frank Dobie said, if some of these stories were not true, they
should
have been.

A
n old arrow wound in Rusty Shannon's leg had been aching all day, but the sudden appearance of Indians made the pain fall away.

"Them damned Comanches," he declared to the boy. "They don't ever give up."

Sitting on his black horse, Alamo, he squinted anxiously over the edge of a dry ravine toward half a dozen horsemen three hundred yards away. They milled about, studying the tracks marking the way Rusty and young Andy Pickard had come.

An afternoon sun glared upon the summer-curing grass. Open prairie stretched to the uneven horizon like a wind-rippled sea. To run would be futile, for both horses had come a long way and were as tired as their riders. This ravine was the only place to hide, though it seemed more likely to be a trap than a refuge.

"They're comin' on," he said. He drew the rifle from its scabbard beneath his leg.

Dread was in the boy's eyes. "It is for me they come, not you. I go to them."

"Hell no! I didn't bring you this far ..."

He did not finish, for the boy drummed moccasined heels against his horse's ribs and put it up out of the ravine before Rusty could move to stop him. Andy could easily be taken for an Indian. His hair was braided. He wore a breechcloth and carried a boy-sized bow. A quiver of arrows lay across his back, a rawhide strap holding it against his shoulder. He made no move to bring the bow into use.

He stopped his pony and looked over his shoulder as Rusty spurred to catch up. The boy said, "You stay back. They are friends of the one I shot. They want me."

Andy avoided speaking the name of Tonkawa Killer. To do so might anger the dead man's dark spirit and spur it to mischief against the living.

Rusty checked the cartridge in the chamber. "Maybe this rifle can convince them they don't want you all that bad." He stepped down, putting the horse between him and the oncoming Indians. He steadied the barrel across the saddle.

The boy's eyes widened. "Don't shoot. They are my people."

"Not if they're out to kill you. They're not your people, and they sure ain't mine."

Andy Pickard had been taken from a Texas settler family as a small boy and raised Comanche. Rusty guessed him to be around ten, too young to carry such a heavy burden on thin shoulders. His sun-browned skin gave him an Indian appearance, but in close quarters his blue eyes would give him away. They were deeply troubled as he watched the warriors move toward him and Rusty.

"They come because I did a bad thing," Andy said.

He had violated a basic tribal taboo; he had killed a Comanche warrior. Now he was subject to retribution in kind by the dead man's friends and family.

Rusty said, "You had to do it. That evil-eyed Comanche was set on killin' the both of us." His hand sweated against the stock of the rifle. Andy might foolishly consent to yield himself up, but Rusty had no intention of letting him. "Soon's they come in range, I'll knock down a horse. Show them we mean business and maybe they'll turn back."

"They not turn back."

As the Indians came close enough, Rusty thumbed the hammer. The click seemed almost as loud as a shot.

Andy said, "Wait. They are not Comanche."

Rusty's lungs burned from holding his breath. He gasped for air. "Are you sure?"

"They are Kiowa."

Rusty wiped a sweaty hand against his trouser leg. "I don't see where that's any improvement." Kiowas shared the Comanches' implacable hostility toward Texans. Rusty had seen people killed by Kiowas. They were no less dead than those who fell to Comanches.

The boy said, "Kiowas no look for me. I go talk."

He did not ask for Rusty's approval. He raised one hand and rode forward. Surprised, the Kiowas paused for council. Rusty quickly remounted and caught up to Andy.

"Damn it, young'un, you're askin' to be killed."

The boy did not respond. Instead, he began moving his hands, talking in sign language. The motions took Rusty by surprise, but they amazed the Indians more ... a white boy communicating in the silent language common to the plains tribes. Rusty kept a strong but nervous grip on the rifle, careful not to point it directly at the Indians. He was keenly aware that several stared at him with hating eyes that bespoke murder. It would not take much to provoke the thought into the deed.

One Kiowa responded with hand signals. A single thick braid hung down over a shoulder, past his waist, the hair augmented by horsehair and fur. The other side was cut short to show off ear pendants of bear claws and a shining silver coin. Rusty sensed a gradual easing of the Indians' attitude. He saw grudging acceptance, though he perceived that some warriors remained in favor of hanging his scalp from a lodge pole. Red hair was a novelty to them.

He said, "They must think it's strange to see a white Comanche boy."

"There are others. Not just me."

Like Andy, numbers of Texan and Mexican children had been taken captive and raised Comanche. Such forced adoption was one way the tribe offset losses caused by war and accidents of the hunt.

Andy said in a low voice, "I tell them you are my white brother. We been to trade with the Comanche."

"Let's bid them good-bye before their thinkin' changes."

The boy resumed the sign talk. The only part Rusty understood was when he pointed southeastward and indicated that to be their chosen direction. The Kiowas quarreled among themselves. Rusty could tell that a couple of the youngest favored freeing the boy but killing his white brother. Fortunately the older warriors prevailed.

Andy said, "No look back." He set his pony to moving in a walk to demonstrate that he had no fear.

Rusty forced himself to stare ahead and not turn in the saddle. He wished he could be certain the two hotheads were not following. After a couple of hundred yards Andy let his pony move into an easy trot. Rusty sneaked a quick glance. He was relieved to see that the Kiowas were riding westward, all of them.

He wiped his sleeve across his face to take up the cold sweat that stung his eyes. "You sure pulled our bacon out of the fire that time."

"Bacon? We got no bacon." Andy's puzzled look showed that he did not understand. Many expressions went over his head. He had only lately begun hearing the English language again after years of exposure only to Comanche.

Rusty said, "We've still got a ways to go before we can take an easy breath. We'd better ride into the night as far as these horses can travel."

Andy looked back over his shoulder toward the broad prairie and everything he was leaving behind. He appeared about to weep.

Gently Rusty said, "I know it's hard. Go ahead and cry. Ain't nobody around to hear you but me."

Andy squared his shoulders. "I would hear."

* * *

The Red River was behind them, but caution prevailed upon Rusty to stop occasionally and survey their back trail. The boy asked, "You think they follow so far?"

Rusty saw no sign of pursuit, yet experience had taught him not to place too much trust in appearances.

"Depends on how bad they want you."

Another long look to the north showed him nothing to arouse anxiety, at least no more than he had carried in the pit of his stomach during the days since he and Andy had hurriedly left the Comanche encampment. They had been two solitary figures on the open plains. The Llano Estacado was a haven to the horseback tribes but remained a forbidding mystery to white Americans, a blank space on their maps. It was a vast country of few landmarks and few tracks. It could swallow up a stranger, lose him in its immensity, and doom him to slow starvation. But for several years it had been the only home Andy Pickard could remember. He kept looking behind him.

"Back there ... I belong."

Rusty understood the boy's painful dilemma. "Them Comanches would kill you in a minute."

The thin voice quavered. "Most are friends."

"It don't take but one enemy to kill you." Rusty had been through this argument several times during their flight. He knew the boy remained strongly tempted to turn about and take his chances. Perhaps at his age he did not fully comprehend the finality of death.

Rusty had seen much of death in his thirty-something years on the Texas frontier. Comanches had killed his own parents and had taken him when he was but three or four years old. From that point his experience had diverged from Andy's, however. Texan fighters had recovered Rusty a few days after his capture. He had been raised by a childless pioneer couple and given their name, Shannon, because he knew no name of his own.

Years later he had followed his foster father's example and attached himself to a frontier company of rangers patrolling the outer line of settlements, guarding against Comanche and Kiowa incursion. He had remained a ranger volunteer during the four years of civil war. That service had exempted him from joining the Confederate Army and fighting against the United States flag old Daddy Mike Shannon had defended with his blood in conflict against Mexico.

Hardship had robbed Rusty of his youth, giving him the look and bearing of a man ten years older. His hair was the color of rusted metal, untrimmed in weeks and brushing uncombed against a frayed collar. A heavy growth of red-tinged whiskers hid most of his face, causing a deceptively fierce look belied by the gentleness in his voice. "It's tough to turn your back on everything you've known, but you're white. You belong amongst your own kind."