The Texans (11 page)

He clenched his jaw and his brow drew down over angry eyes, but he showed no willingness to leave her side. Before the conversation could go farther she spurred her horse ahead. She pulled up alongside Agent Torrey and smiled at him. The shy man gave her a bewildered look while he shoved his glasses back to a proper position on his nose. Even though he managed only a stuttered greeting, she laughed loudly and laid a light hand briefly on his shoulder. All the while she kept a watch on the commissioner out of the corner of her eye.

From the fierce scowl on his face she was sure he was taking it all in. Agent Torrey was still stuttering, but she laughed again anyway, as if he was the most charming man in the world, instead of the most awkward, bookish human she had ever met, too shy to even look her way after three days of travel.

Commissioner Anderson jabbed his horse too hard with his spurs, and the animal wrung its tail and kicked up behind as they loped back toward the front of the line.

“Agent Torrey, keep an eye on her and see that she doesn't try and run away again,” he snapped at them in passing.

Before Red Wing could survey the position of the outriders to see if there was a chance to run, Chief Acequosh, or Squash as the white men in the party called him, also came loping by. He grinned at them and pointed up the trail. Red Wing studied the distance until she made out what he was trying to show them.

“Miss Wilson, you look like somebody just stepped on your grave,” Agent Torrey finally managed to say.

He hadn't yet seen the smoke from the Waco village rising up from the river bottom ahead of them. Only minutes separated Red Wing from being under the watchful eyes of even more guards, and her chances of escaping would grow even slimmer. In a panic, she whirled her horse and cracked him across the hip with the tail of her reins. Agent Torrey's mount almost unseated him when it tried to follow hers. He righted himself in the saddle and watched her fleeing down the trail with the long braid of her hair bouncing against her back. The Delawares had spotted her, and they were whooping wildly and racing to head her off.

Red Wing urged her horse to all the speed it was worth and judged the narrowing funnel of the Delawares closing in on both sides of her. There was a slim chance of getting through before their converging lines intersected before her, but she had little hope of success. She had tried flight twice in the preceding days, and the Delawares had caught her every time.

Chapter 13

B
y the time Odell finally reached Sulphur Draw, he had been a day without water, and two days without anything to eat. To make matters worse, it didn't look like he was going to get any relief. Smoke was rising from the little side canyon where the Mexican bee hunter had told him the big spring was located, and several tepees were visible along the trickling stream at its mouth. Considering how scarce water was in those parts, Odell wasn't at all surprised that the place had so much company. He just wished the neighbors were a little friendlier.

Although Comanches had beaten him to the spring, he still had hopes of getting a drink. He was far away, but the thin line of a larger creek channel was clearly visible running down the huge draw. He had no idea whether it was good water, or if it had anything in it at all. Still, he couldn't help but imagine it running bank to bank with cool, clear water.

His first thought was to circle wide until he was far enough downstream to be safe, but a long study and a brief scout only served to inform him that the creek was bone dry. Furthermore, it seemed that the spring-fed stream that ran out of the side draw and through the middle of the Comanche camp seemed to soak into the ground before it went much farther. Sulphur Draw was miles wide and treeless, and it was plain that he wasn't going to get a drink that afternoon unless he was willing to trade his scalp for water. The Mexican had told him it was over a day's ride on to the San Saba, and neither he nor Crow were going to make it that far without quenching their thirst.

He decided to hole up high on the opposite side of the draw from the Indian camp and wait. Once night came, he and Crow would slip down to water right under the Comanches' noses. There was even a chance that the camp might move on during the afternoon and leave the oasis to him. But he had little hope of that and settled temporarily for the shade of a large rock. The Mexican had sworn that the big spring was crystal clear and fourteen feet deep, and Odell daydreamed of splashing and swimming in water so cold that it put goose bumps on his skin.

Odell napped throughout the afternoon, and by dark his tongue had begun to swell and his head was too foggy to think straight. The glow of the campfires below told him that the Comanches hadn't left. He saddled Crow and started down to the floor of the draw. He stopped often to listen and to consider his best approach. He was too thirsty to turn back, but the hair on the back of his neck stood up every time he heard something go bump in the night.

Not many months before, he might not have been so worried about sneaking a drink in the night, but he had grown more cautious where Comanches were concerned. Despite all his plans for vengeance, he had failed to even begin the war against them that he had once hatched in his heart. In fact, he had found that a man alone could get himself killed in a hurry prowling around their country, much less near their camps. A bad attitude and a little foolish courage meant little when you were vastly outnumbered and totally lost half the time.

Despite his travels, he had seen Comanches only twice since leaving the Prussian the fall before. The first time came when a small bunch of decrepit old men and a handful of squaws had come into the Wichita hunting camp to trade. They were a pitiful, starving lot who seemed to have come on hard times. Apparently their headman had gotten himself and his relatives kicked out of his former band over some gambling feud. Odell could find none of his recent hatred for Comanches when he looked at them.

His last encounter with the Comanches was after he had left the Wichitas to wander the Llano. He had topped a swell of land and stumbled right into a Comanche camp. There must have been at least forty lodges there, and he was almost in the middle of them before he knew it. By the time he recognized his predicament, the squaws going about their chores and the children on horse guard were already yelling warnings. Several braves returning from a hunt had closed off retreat behind him. There was nothing left to do but stick the spurs to Crow and ride right through the Comanche camp. He was there and gone before the highly surprised Comanches even had a chance to get a good look at the crazy white man on the fast black horse.

The predicament Odell was in at the moment felt like running that gauntlet all over again. A large herd of horses was scattered out some two hundred yards from the Comanche camp, and that meant there were guards about. His pappy used to tell him that sometimes you had to sink or swim, and he had come too far to back out. The moon was just a sliver in the sky, and he dismounted and led Crow among the herd, staying close to the horse's side. He stopped and started intermittently, hoping any sleepy guard would mistake Crow for just another grazing horse.

The night was dark, and he moved toward the camp more by feel than anything else. He tried to picture just how far from the camp he had seen the Comanche horses watering during the afternoon before. He could see the Comanches' fires glowing through the hides of the nearest tepees, and he had no wish to get any closer to them than he had to. As it was, he was barely sixty yards from the edge of the camp when he almost stepped into the shallow creek before he saw it. He knelt beside Crow and lifted a handful of water to his lips. His nerves were wound tight, and the drops that escaped from his cupped palm sounded incredibly loud to him in the stillness.

He drank slowly and long, enjoying the cool water coursing through his body. When neither he nor Crow could hold another drop, he filled his water bag and started back the way he had come. He heard someone cough nearby, and his return trip seemed to take even longer than the eternity he had spent making his way to the water.

Once he was high above the draw, he climbed back in the saddle and started southeast. The safest thing for him to do was to ride by night until he was far away from the Comanches. The stars were bright overhead, but he knew nothing of navigating by the heavens. The San Saba River lay somewhere to the southeast, and he hoped he couldn't miss it. He looped his reins around his saddle horn and trusted Crow to keep them pointed in the general direction they needed to go. The water had saved him, but now that he was not dying of thirst he realized just how hungry he was. He dozed off and on in the saddle and dreamed of fried venison dipped in honey and glass after glass of cold buttermilk.

Come daylight he was twenty miles beyond the Comanche camp. His hunger was so great that it became all he could think about. The sight of a herd of antelope grazing his way excited him greatly, and he dismounted and took a stand behind a yucca bush to see if they might pass within rifle range of him. The buck must have spotted him, for he circled his little harem around Odell until he was straight downwind. Odell had only two more bullets left and barely enough powder to put behind them. There was nothing left to replace the last charge in his shotgun barrel. He debated on risking a long-range shot. Any Comanches around were sure to hear it, and he wasn't going to put up much of a defense with so little ammunition as was left to him. Just as he made up his mind to try a shot anyway, the entire bunch winded him and ran off with their white bottoms flashing and bounding away at a speed that made even Crow look slow.

Odell mounted up, and by afternoon he felt so light and hollow he feared he might blow away. The day was hot and the whole country seemed like a sweaty dream. He prayed for a buffalo, or anything that resembled good red meat. He must have gotten lost in his fancies of bountiful game prancing all around him, for he found that Crow had stopped in the middle of a wide-open plain with little of anything that could be considered a landmark. Even the high, flat-topped mountain that he had kept behind his right shoulder all morning had vanished in the distance. Odell had no clue whether he had stopped the horse, or if Crow had decided to take a break of his own accord. He studied the horizon all around him and wasn't even sure they were still headed east.

Some movement at the corner of his eye caught his attention, and before he could see what it was, something else moved right in front of him. He rubbed his eyes and stared at the little critters sitting on their haunches and staring back at him. They were about the size of a cottontail rabbit and looked something like a fat-bodied squirrel without the bushy tail.

He finally got his brain wrapped around the fact that he was looking at a huge prairie dog colony. He hadn't heard of anyone eating prairie dogs, but looking at them right then, he was quite sure they were the tastiest morsels on the face of the earth. He caught himself dreaming again and got down off his horse.

The little varmints sat by the mounds of earth around their burrows and craned their necks to study him and twitched their stubby tails. He hated to use up his last shotgun load, but the more he thought about what a prairie dog might taste like, the more practical it seemed. The trouble was getting into range before they ducked into their holes.

He slipped toward one bunch of them after another with Crow following loyally behind. Every time he was almost close enough to shoot, they disappeared into their dens. They waited until he had gone on in pursuit of their more distant neighbors and popped right back out behind him. They gave out shrill little whistles to warn each other, and he soon realized that he had been led along a giant circle through the dog town. It was if they were playing with him. He needed food in a most dire, primal sort of way, but the hunt was becoming a matter of honor. A strong dislike of prairie dogs began to build within him.

A particularly bold little rascal kept popping up some seventy yards away from him, and Odell tried a new tactic. If he stared directly at the animal, it would dive back into its hole, but if he kept sideways to it and didn't make eye contact, it didn't seem so nervous. Odell avoided looking that way and ambled along as if he were focused on something else. He chose a course that would take him near the prairie dog, without appearing to be stalking it. He was only forty yards away when he whirled and fired the shotgun. All he saw was a flash of brown fur as it disappeared in an explosion of dirt.

Odell shouted his victory and ran to the hole. When he arrived he saw only chewed earth, and no carcass. He fell to his knees and cocked his eye right over burrow opening. He remained on hands and knees, swapping eyes occasionally, but continuing to stare down the hole. He finally looked up and noticed a prairie dog sitting on a mound straight out in front of him. Starvation messed with his mind, and he wasn't at his rational best. As a result, he was sure it was the very same one who had dodged his shot.

“You think you're smart, don't you? Well, you have to get up mighty early in the morning to fool Odell Spurling.”

Little white caliche rocks littered the ground, and he gathered one up. He threw it as hard as he could, but the prairie dog ducked into its hole. It quickly dawned on him that his aim and his velocity were no match for their reflexes or their sharp eyes.

He wondered how bad his big-bore rifle would tear up one of them while he waited for the dog to pop back up and laugh at him. He thought about how many times he had passed through prairie dog towns, and taken them for granted. Never had he imagined what devious little creatures they really were. Right then he promised himself that as soon as he got back to civilization he would purchase a couple of kegs of black powder and come back. Imagining the explosion and hundreds of prairie dogs blown from their holes soothed his wounded pride.

One of the enemy popped up in front of him. He watched the little whiskered nose curl up in a sneer as it rose up as high as it could on its haunches. He reared back to let fly with another rock, but the prairie dog disappeared in a flash. Odell drew his knife and charged toward the hole bellowing like a mad bull. It wasn't just food he wanted, it was a reckoning.

He stabbed wildly down the hole with the knife. When he realized the little genius had evaded him, he began to attack the burrow itself. He dug with the ferocity of a badger, and great spurts of dirt flew out between his legs and behind him. When he had worked down a foot, and widened the hole sufficiently enough to get one shoulder in, he stopped to listen. His keen hearing detected a faint sound.

“Now we'll see who has the last laugh.” Odell was already laughing very oddly.

He dug more, and the sound grew louder and nearer. He plunged his arm into the burrow all the way up to his shoulder and his fingers groped blindly to find the prairie dog's hide. Something bit his hand, and he angrily shoved farther into the hole. His fingers wrapped around a victim, and he had drug it halfway out before it dawned on him that it was no prairie dog in his grasp. A shiver ran down his spine and he let go and scrambled back from the hole. Instead of fur he had felt scaly hide.

The rough treatment put the four-foot rattlesnake in a foul mood. It coiled at the mouth of the burrow and rattled its tail in fierce indignation. Odell raked the diamondback along the ground with his rifle until he could stomp its head. He decapitated it with his knife and flopped down beside it to examine his wound.