The Black Jacks (9 page)

As the Comanche delegation dismounted, McAllen heard a muttered curse to his left and promptly pushed through the crowd in that direction. A man, his face stamped with hate, was muttering about "red devils" and how to "cure" them, and McAllen didn't like the way he was gripping his old flintlock rifle. McAllen slipped a hand under his frock coat and took hold of the Colt Paterson stuck in his belt. Behind him, Joshua gripped the handle of his Bowie knife, but did not draw the blade from its sheath.

But before they could close in on the troublemaker, Tice appeared. The physician deftly caught the man's ankle with the staghorn handle of his walking cane and pulled hard. The man fell flat on his back. Alarmed, the crowd surged away in all directions. McAllen pressed against the current and into the opening. A smiling Tice was kneeling on the fallen man's chest. "My diagnosis is that you've had too much forty-rod for breakfast," he said amiably. McAllen looked around to see Colonel Karnes steering his horse through the press of onlookers, followed by one of his Rangers. Karnes looked at the fallen man, Tice, and McAllen. Reading the situation in a glance, he nodded curtly. "Haul that man off to jail," he told the Ranger, then reined his horse back toward the Council House. The Ranger dismounted and hustled the stunned, belligerent drunk through the crowd by his collar.

"Karnes isn't a bad sort," Tice remarked, as he joined McAllen. "For a Texas Ranger. At least he seems serious about preventing bloodshed."

"Some things no man can prevent. Look there."

Tice saw that among the Comanches was a single white woman. She was thin as a rail, dirty-faced and haggard. Her clothes were soiled and tattered. She was barefoot and walked with her head bowed, so that her long, tangled yellow hair concealed her features.

"She's been through hell," murmured Tice. "Wonder who she is."

McAllen shook his head. "Thing is, she's the only one. That's not good."

"A valid point," conceded Tice, glancing about him at the grim faces of the Texas crowd.

John Morris made two grievous errors.

The first was failing to insist that the thirty Comanches who entered the Council House lay down their arms. He made the observation that it did not appear as though the Indians had come in peace, since all were so heavily armed. But he couldn't convince them, or even himself, because he knew the Comanches weren't fools, and were he in their place, he would certainly not have entered an enemy camp unarmed. Besides, the Texas Rangers—the implacable foes of the Comanches—were also armed to the teeth. Counting Colonel Karnes and Captain Wingate, there were a dozen Rangers in the Council House, with another seventy or eighty outside. Bearing this in mind, John Morris was comforted. He didn't think the Comanches would try anything.

"It has come to my attention," he said, using the mestizo for interpretation, "that only two bands are represented here today."

The Comanches stood at one end of the hall. Old wooden pews lined the walls, but none of the Indians chose to sit down. In the midst of his Quohadi brethren, Gray Wolf looked about him with some apprehension. The Spaniards had built the Council House a hundred years ago. Its walls of cold gray stone, the heavy timbered doors, the narrow windows that resembled gun slots and were barred besides—all of these things made him feel as though he were in a prison cell.

Maguara stepped forward. "Maguara will speak for the Quohadis. We have come many days from our homeland because we want peace."

"His homeland?" muttered Wingate. "Morris, remind this heathen that what he calls
his
land belongs to the Republic of Texas."

"I'm not here to start a war, Captain," said Morris.

Another old chief stepped forward. "Yellow Hand speaks for the Penatekas. Neither Yellow Hand nor Maguara has any say over what the other bands do."

"I see only one white captive," replied Morris with a stern look and the tone of a father addressing recalcitrant children."I thought we made it clear we would not discuss terms of a peace treaty between our peoples unless and until all the white people whom you have torn from the arms of their loved ones had been returned."

Maguara scowled, disliking Morris's condescension. "The Quohadis have no white captives."

"That's a dirty lie," snapped Wingate, eyes ablaze.

"Captain!" snapped Morris. "Please let me handle this."

"He's probably telling the truth," said Owen, the Indian agent. "The Quohadis live on the Llano Estacado. Their warriors have probably never raided this far east. It's not that taking our people captive is against their religion. But they just haven't had the opportunity."

Morris turned back to the Comanches. "And you, Yellow Hand? What do you have to say for yourself?"

Yellow Hand took the white woman by the arm and held her out in front of him. "This is the only white among us."

"Now, that I find hard to believe," remarked Owen.

Because the mestizo had been instructed to translate only what John Morris said, Gray Wolf did not understand the Indian agent. But he did not believe Yellow Hand, either. Of all the bands, the Penatekas lived closest to the white settlements, and their warriors had carried out numerous raids. It angered Gray Wolf that the Penatekas were acting in bad faith and jeopardizing the peace talks. Yet he held his tongue. Maguara spoke for the Quohadis, and Gray Wolf did not intend to show the old chief any disrespect by superseding him.

Morris shook his head. "We know for a fact that the Penatekas have many more white captives." Of course he knew nothing of the sort, but he hoped to intimidate Yellow Hand into a confession.

Adamant, Yellow Hand shook his head. "She is the only one. Here, take her."

Morris grimaced. He looked at the woman. "What is your name, ma'am?"

The woman would not even lift her head, much less respond.

"Christ," said Wingate. "Look at her. These savages obviously treat their dogs better."

At that moment a commotion at one of the doors attracted the attention of John Morris. A civilian was trying to get past the Texas Ranger posted there and was meeting with no success in the endeavor.

"You are not permitted to enter, sir," called Morris, exasperated.

The homespun-clad man was distraught. "You don't unnerstand. I know who she is. That's Mathilda Hunt. She's my wife. The Comanch' took her off our farm three years back. That's my Mattie, I swear. Please, let me through."

It was then that John Morris made his second mistake.

"Let him through. Perhaps he
can
identify her."

The man came to stand beside Morris. He stared at the woman. After a moment, Morris grew impatient.

"Well, man? Are you certain this is your wife?"

The man's shoulder sagged. "Mattie," he groaned. "Mattie, what have they done to you?"

The woman looked up at the sound of his voice. Her haunted eyes were veiled by tangled yellow hair.

The man drew a quick breath, as though someone had punched him and knocked the wind out of him.

"You shouldna let 'em put their filthy hands on you, Mattie," he said, his voice lifeless. "You shoulda kilt yourself 'fore you let 'em do that."

He drew a pistol from under his shirt and fired at point-blank range.

The bullet struck her in the head and knocked her back into Yellow Hand, who felt the warm splatter of her blood on his face. Stunned, he stared at the pitiful corpse that fell at his feet.

For an instant everyone was frozen in place.

Then some of the Rangers went for their pistols.

A Quohadi war chief directly behind Gray Wolf shouted the alarm.

Maguara whirled. His eyes met Gray Wolf's. They reflected no alarm, no anger, no disappointment. Just calm resignation.

Wingate lunged forward and savagely pistol whipped Maguara. The old chief collapsed. Wingate turned to his Rangers. His voice trembled with fierce elation.

"Take these red devils prisoner. We'll hold 'em hostage until they turn over the rest of our people—or we'll see 'em all hang."

Chapter Eight

Just before the shooting started, John Henry McAllen wandered away from the press of onlookers which had flocked to the vicinity of the Council House. The Comanches were inside now, and McAllen felt marginally better about the whole business. Maybe there was, after all, a chance that things would go off without a hitch. Thanks to Artemus Tice, violence had been averted. McAllen didn't even want to think about what might have happened had the belligerent drunkard gotten off a shot.

He walked to the old well at the northwest corner of the Plaza de Armes, about thirty yards from the Council House. A boy was cranking the windlass to elevate the bucket, but he wasn't paying much attention to the task. Standing on the rim of the well, he was peering bright-eyed at the crowd which McAllen had just quit.

"Take care, son," said McAllen. "I'd hate to see you fall in."

The lad was freckle-faced and towheaded, and he flashed an easy grin. "This is the first time Ma didn't have to tell me twice to go fetch some water. I aint never seen no real live Comanches before. Wow!"

McAllen smiled. "New to these parts, are you?"

The boy nodded. "We come from Robertson County, up Tennessee way. You reckon they'll make peace, mister? I was figurin' I'd grow up to be an Injun fighter. Are you an Injun fighter, mister?"

"Not by choice." The bucket, water sloshing over its rim, had arrived, and McAllen used an old wooden ladle hanging from a peg on the windlass post to get a drink. Like everyone else, he wondered what was happening at this moment in the Council House. It all depended on Mirabeau Lamer. McAllen was convinced the Comanches were sincere in their desire for peace. They had taken grave risks coming here, and some had brought their families with them. That in itself was a guarantee they didn't mean to start any trouble.

"Are you an honest-to-God Injun?" the boy asked Joshua.

Joshua ignored the boy. He was gazing across the plaza at the crowd.

"He's half Seminole, son," said McAllen. "But he can't answer you. Pirates cut out his tongue when he was just a boy, younger than you."

"Pirates! Mister, you are pullin' my leg?"

The first gunshot was muffled by the thick stone walls of the Council House, but the sound was unmistakable for someone like McAllen, who had heard so many shots fired in anger. A fierce flurry of gunfire followed. With much shouting, the crowd in the plaza seemed to surge en masse toward the Council House. Then, abruptly, it began to scatter. McAllen leaped to the rim of the well, and from this vantage point could see some of the Comanches boiling out of the doors of the old building. Texas Rangers were blazing away with their Colt Patersons, and the Indians responded with knife, war club, or bow and arrow. A few managed to reach their ponies. Some of these broke through the Rangers and galloped away up the Calle de Flores, the route by which they had entered San Antonio. Confused, or seeking the path of least resistance, some rode in other directions. But the majority of Indians, hemmed in by the Rangers and those civilians who had not turned tail at the outbreak of violence, stood their ground in front of the Council House.

McAllen heard the crack of a stray bullet passing too close for comfort, and he wrapped an arm around the waist of the freckle-faced boy and jumped off the well.

"Joshua, go get the horses and meet me at the hotel." As usual in moments of crisis, McAllen was calm and clear-headed; his voice was firm and unexcited.

The half-breed youth hesitated. In such dangerous circumstances he was not inclined to leave McAllen's side, for fear that some mishap might befall the man to whom he was devoted. But he could not disobey McAllen, either, and before McAllen could tell him twice, he was gone, loping in the direction of the livery on the Calle Dolorosa, where their horses were boarded.

McAllen's first instinct was to plunge into the affray and find Tice and Yancey Torrance. But the boy under his arm was his foremost concern at the moment, so he turned away, running west toward the Governor's Palace, then veering north on the broad Amarguras. As he did so a Comanche arrow tore the coattails of his broadcloth coat. Spinning, he saw a Comanche warrior galloping straight for him, bent low, guiding his pony with knee pressure as he fit another arrow to his "bodark" bow. The towheaded boy under McAllen's arm shouted in hoarse terror. McAllen drew his colt revolver from under the coat, but he held his fire; with the Indian coming straight on, he didn't have a good shot. The corner of the building was nearby, and he moved to it, putting his back to the adobe and dropping the lad. "Stay down!" he snapped, and waited—one second, two—until the Comanche was abreast of him. The warrior straightened, drawing back the bowstring. McAllen fired once, again, and the bowstring slipped from lifeless fingers and the arrow flew harmlessly wild as the Comanche slipped off the galloping mustang, hit the old cobblestones of the Amarguras, bounced limp as a rag doll, and lay still in a crumpled heap.

McAllen grabbed the boy by the collar and carried him on down the street, walking briskly. In short order he came to an adobe wall surrounding a residence. He lifted the lad to the top of the wall.

"Get down on the other side, son, and stay there until the fracas is over."

The boy was shaking life a leaf. McAllen thought,
He won't hanker so to fight Indians anymore.
This would be a good lesson—assuming he survived it.

As the youth slipped out of sight down the backside of the wall, McAllen turned into an alley which would bring him to the rear of the Council House. Now he was free to look for Tice and Yancey. They were Black Jacks, which meant he would likely find them in the thick of the fighting.

But by the time he reached the Plaza de Armes, the fight was all but over. Occasional gunshots rang out on distant streets. The Council House was a scene of carnage. Comanche dead lay in heaps beneath the gray stone arches along the front of the building. It was there that he found Yancey Torrance. Yancey had a bloody knife in one hand and a smoking pistol in the other.

"I'm sorry, John Henry," he said, contrite. "I had to kill two of 'em. I know that isn't what we were sent here to do, but they come at me, bent on mayhem, so I was obliged to defend myself."