The Texans (19 page)

“The Prussian said he wanted to catch a big camp of them. That's what he promised these men,” Odell said.

Son scowled at him for his chatter. “If he passes up this bunch, he won't have anyone left to follow him. These men ain't the sort to tolerate a coward.”

“But what about all the talk of striking the Comanches a big blow?”

“Just because there's only one smoke coming out of that draw doesn't mean we ain't in for a fight. Anytime you're after Injuns expect surprises. I've seen many the time when I'd have sworn so many Injuns couldn't have been hidden in a draw or gully, and they still came boiling out like hornets from a nest.”

“But . . .”

“But nothing. Those tracks we ran across were made by at least forty warriors and their families. If it's them in that canyon, we're in for a fight. You just keep your trap shut and pay heed to what I do. Depending on what the Tonks have to report, our aim is to run off the Comanches' horses while the Prussian and his bunch come hell-bent for leather up the canyon,” Son said.

One of the Tonks came loping back from the rim of the canyon and talked briefly with Placido, who soon sent him racing to the Prussian's force. Son left Odell and went to talk with the chief. By the time Odell caught back up to him, everyone was riding on.

“What's the matter? They're all acting like there isn't going to be a fight.” Odell kept Crow at a trot to stay alongside Son.

Son somberly shook his head and loped away from him to the front of their party. Odell threaded his way into the single-file column they made as they followed a narrow, switchback trail down the side of the canyon. A tiny, spring-fed stream trickled down the middle of the canyon, and a campfire was smoldering within a clump of mesquite along its bank. As they rode down a broad bench above the canyon floor, Odell noticed the ashes of many fires and the beaten circles were at least forty tepees had stood.

The Prussian and his men arrived at the source of the smoke at the same time, and the entire force gathered at the edge of the mesquite trees. They sat their horses for a long time in silence and studied what the Comanches had left behind. The mutilated, naked bodies of two Mexican men lay like broken, bloated effigies of human beings. The smoke that had drawn the Tonks' attention wasn't from a campfire of the normal sort. The Comanches had built two little fires under the bound prisoners' feet, and nothing was left of the bodies' lower legs but charred flesh falling off the bone. There wasn't one square inch from the dead men's heads to their knees that wasn't cut and hacked.

Odell's stomach threatened to empty itself, and he ducked his eyes away from the sight of the tortured corpses and leaned out of his saddle to retch. When he straightened up and willed himself to look again he noticed that none of the men on either side of him seemed to have noticed his weak moment, or at least they understood enough to act like they hadn't.

“There's a cart back yonder in the thicket.” Son Ballard rode out of the mesquites and jerked a thumb back over his shoulder. “From the looks of things I'd say these men came out from Chouteau's trading post up on the Canadian to hunt meat.”

“It's hard to tell what they were by looking at them,” the Prussian said.

Odell had never heard anything truer. The blows from clubs and tomahawks had warped the skulls until the faces were hardly human. Both of them had been scalped and had suffered other things Odell hoped he would someday be able to forget. The rest of the Prussian's little army stared at the dead men with tight faces, but Odell tried to keep his eyes averted.

“Let that Injun-lovin' Houston see this and then tell me about peace with the Comanches. Damned their black-hearted souls to hell,” Hatchet Murphy swore.

“Damned Injuns,” Son said loudly to himself, and then remembered he was sitting his horse beside Placido. “No offense, old friend.”

“None taken,” Placido said. “I've called you ‘damn white men' plenty of times.”

“It's just two Mexicans.” The Prussian didn't like the depressing turn their morale was taking.

“I remember when we found old man Hazlewood and his son down on Walnut Creek. He and the boy had gotten caught without their rifles while out gathering honey. The Comanches nutted both of them and ran burning chunks of wood up their asses. I found the old man first, and he was still half alive and sitting there like a coon on a stump.” Son cleared his mind of the memory with a grunt and a shake of his head.

“There ain't no Hazlewoods left anymore. The Comanches killed them out last year when they got Jim and his family,” somebody said.

“No, the Hazlewood men ain't rubbed plumb out. I hear there's another brother down at Seguin,” someone else at the back of the group offered.

“There is, but the brother got his nuts crushed by a kicking mule and won't be siring any more Hazlewoods,” another threw in.

“What the hell is the matter with y'all?” Odell all but shouted at the men.

He couldn't sit by and hear such idle talk while the Mexicans' bodies lay before him like bloody meat in a smokehouse. The memory of what the Comanches had done to his pappy was still fresh in his mind, and never again would he ever be able to swap lurid gossip about what the Indians supposedly did to their unfortunate victims. He slid from his horse and went to the closest body. He tried to avoid looking at the deceased's accusing and tortured eyes while he cut him loose from the stakes that bound him. Before he knew it, most of the men were helping him free the bodies. All of them had grown even quieter than they had been when they first discovered the Mexicans.

“Sorry, boy. Don't think we're taking this lightly. It's just that talking foolishness can keep a man from losing his mind.” Hatchet Murphy's one wild eye had grown wilder looking, and it was plain that he was reliving other such brutal scenes.

“This ain't an easy thing to look on,” Odell mumbled.

“And it doesn't get any easier with time,” Hatchet Murphy wiped a tear from his leathery cheek.

Odell looked over to see the Prussian staring at him. The man was as calm and cool as he ever was. Odell already knew that the Prussian was a hard man and had even envied that trait at one time. But now he wasn't so sure that he wanted to be like that, if it meant being able to look on such horrors without a trace of emotion. It seemed to him that a man would have to be half dead not be horrified and weakened by such violence.

They buried the Mexican hunters in shallow graves, and led horses back and forth over them to pack the earth. Son Ballard recited the Twenty-third Psalm, or at least what he could remember of it, and then they mounted and started north once again. They rode silently out of that canyon, a funeral procession of violent men grown more violent from the mere passing of such a day.

Odell couldn't quit thinking about Red Wing as they rode. She may have been a Comanche by birth, but any people who could do such things to their fellow humans were capable of anything. It didn't get spoken of much, but everyone in Texas knew what Comanches did to women captives. For all he knew she might already be suffering terrible things at their hands.

“We have to save her,” Odell said to the Prussian when they were two miles away.

“We will, Herr Odell. We will.” The Prussian kept his gaze straight ahead to where the Comanche trail headed into the distance. He looked as cold and hard as ever.

Chapter 22

R
ed Wing sat up and held the filthy, tattered hem of her long skirt in her hands and pulled a piece of grass from the tangle of her hair. She looked to the river and the commissioner nodded at her from where he stood at the edge of camp. She could tell by his posture and the look on his face that he meant his presence to comfort her, but she had to make herself rise and go far enough into the timber to be out of sight of the camp. She tried not to think about Jim Pockmark's body lying somewhere downstream.

She carried her valise to the river's edge and knelt and bathed her face and hands and combed at her hair with her fingers. She washed until her skin felt smooth once again, but she still felt dirty. The muddy water offered a poor bath, but she stripped off and waded in anyway. She laid back and let her hair float and listened to the slow sound of the river echoing in her eardrums. She felt for a moment as if her spirit would float away on the gentle current, but the feeling passed.

She dried her hair with the cleanest portion of her torn dress, and then took a fresh one from her valise. She felt better after her bath and change, but noticed there was still a slight quiver in her hands. The sun shone on the riverbank, and she stood there motionless with her hands upon her hips and looked out across the prairie while she soaked up the warmth. She told herself right then that she wasn't going any farther. Her captors were going to have to tie her hand and foot to take her beyond camp. The stubborn strength that she had relied on for so long had been spent in her ordeal with the renegade Delaware, and she had come as far as she intended to go.

The camp was well above the river, and the first thing she saw when she neared it was the commissioner standing in the same spot he had been earlier. She was going to tell him right then what she had decided, but something about the intense look on his face made her pause. He was focused on something to the southeast, and she turned to see what it was that had his attention.

Two Indian braves sat their horses on the far bank staring at the camp. Captain Jones had come down to stand beside the commissioner, and they looked uneasy.

“What are they?” The sun was in her eyes and she could barely make out the two warriors across the river.

“I'm pretty sure they're Comanches.” The commissioner gave her a strange, sad look.

The Comanche braves eventually waded their horses across the river and stopped several yards in front of the Peace Commission. The commissioner tried to grant them the hospitality of his camp, but the two refused the offer to dismount and eyed the white people with cautious disdain. It wasn't apparent whether their intentions were peaceful or not, and they seemed as uncertain about the whole situation as the commissioner did.

“Captain Jones, don't you speak a little Spanish?” Commissioner Anderson asked.

“I do,” the captain admitted reluctantly.

“They don't seem to speak any English, so try some of that Mex lingo on them. Tell them that we have come to talk with their chiefs.” The commissioner was trying to keep his rifle handy without appearing hostile to their visitors.

Captain Jones rattled off a long explanation in halting Spanish. When he finally paused, one of the Comanches pointed up the river and said something.

“He wants to know why there is a dead Delaware lying down there in the trees,” the captain said.

“Tell him the truth,” the commissioner said.

The captain spoke again, and then listened to the two Comanches' reply. He turned back to the commissioner. “Their Spanish is almost as bad as mine, but they seem to think it's funny that you shot Jim.”

“Can they take us to their chiefs?” the commissioner asked.

The captain shrugged and tried again. When he was through, the same Comanche who had asked about Jim's body jerked his chin toward Red Wing and asked another question.

“He wants to know if she is your woman,” the captain said.

Red Wing studied the two Comanches from behind the barricade of saddles they had thrown up. Agent Torrey stood beside her nervously gripping his shotgun. It hadn't been so long since she had lived among the tribe that she had forgotten such warriors. Everything about the two Comanches was familiar, from the naked brown bodies covered only in a breechcloth, to the long lances in their hands, and the haughty, cunning stares from behind their high cheekbones.

The commissioner carefully avoided looking at her. “Tell them that she is a Comanche taken from them long ago, and that we have brought her back to her people as a token of our goodwill.”

The captain apparently had some trouble communicating her status, but after a long discussion with the warriors he seemed satisfied. The Comanches talked among themselves in their native tongue while they stared up the hill at Red Wing. They didn't seem impressed by her, or totally convinced that she was
Numuunuh
, or of the People. Finally, the talker of the two said something to the captain in Spanish.

Captain Jones looked even more uneasy than before. “They say most of their band is gathering for a big hunt a little over a day's ride south of here.”

“Is that all?” the commissioner asked.

“No, they said a bunch of things I can't understand. Apparently, there will be many lodges present at this gathering, and some bigwig named Iron Shirt will be there. I get the impression he's a pretty important fellow among them.”

“Can we safely pay this camp our respects without getting killed?”

Captain Jones sucked in a deep breath and looked at the commissioner like he was crazy. “These two are out scouting for buffalo, and they've offered to take us back to their village. I'll let you be the judge of how safe that would be.”

“So be it. Tell them we need a little time to pack our things and saddle up,” the commissioner said.

The two Comanches said something to each other and pointed at the commissioner and laughed. Captain Jones asked them what they found so funny, then smiled at the commissioner.

“They say you a have a very pretty coat.” The captain chuckled.

“They can go to hell.” The commissioner looked down at his rows of brass buttons and slapped the dust from the front of his jacket. “But don't translate that.”

None of them knew that Red Wing spoke fluent Spanish, and she didn't tell them either. She had listened closely to the conversation, and quickly learned that the captain's Spanish was as bad as his whiskey breath. While he got most of the details right, the Comanches hadn't meant to just poke fun at the commissioner's fancy jacket. What they had meant was to call him the Pretty Man. Had it not been for her dire situation, she would have found that very funny.

The commissioner went to bring up their horses, and in doing so he passed close to Agent Torrey and Red Wing. The little man wrinkled his nose and looked up at his superior with more than a little trepidation.

“Did I hear you plainly? Are we to ride with those two Comanches?” Agent Torrey asked.

“You heard right. Saddle up.”

Agent Torrey sighed. “I was afraid that's what I heard.”

Captain Jones took up his saddle and stood before the Indian agent. “Don't worry, Mr. Tom. You can draw the Comanches' pictures in that little book of yours.”

Although Agent Torrey had devotedly sketched the various plants and wildlife he had passed along the trail, somehow he had lost his once grand desire to paint the legendary Comanche in his native setting. Not only had he lost the urge, he couldn't remember for the life of him what had led him to want to do such a thing in the first place. He could only chalk it up to naïveté and foolish, romantic notions of the frontier. Days and nights of hearing Captain Jones's horrid tales of Comanche massacres had terrified him, and knowing that the commissioner was about to turn them over into the hands of such savages made his knees tremble.

“Agent Torrey, saddle your horse. We have no choice but to be brave,” Red Wing said gently.

Somehow he managed to saddle his horse. He felt as if the Comanches were watching his every move, and his hands and fingers were unusually clumsy. His three companions were already mounted and waiting for him. He could see the impatience written plainly on the commissioner's face, but he couldn't seem to make himself put his foot into the stirrup. The thought of getting on his horse and riding away with the Comanches felt comparable to jumping off a cliff.

“Just think of it this way. You can either ride with us, or try to make it back home by yourself,” the commissioner said.

Agent Torrey couldn't deny the logic of that. If he was going to be killed by Indians, he would rather not be lost and alone when it happened. He took his ragged old wool scarf and snugly tied it over his stovepipe hat and knotted it under his chin. The tall crown seemed especially prone to catching the wind, and the commissioner had become angry in the past when they had to stop their travels for him to get off his horse and chase his lid.

Captain Jones held his shotgun for him while he mounted. He had lost his gun sling somewhere along the trail and hadn't gotten around to making another. He had not quite mastered the art of mounting with his shotgun in his hand, and it felt highly undignified to have to give up his weapon to a more competent man to hold for him while he climbed into the saddle. It was at least as embarrassing as having to tie his hat on.

His little mustang was in a good mood that morning and didn't try to throw him or run away with him. He took his shotgun back from the captain and tried to form an optimistic vision of the day to come.

“Care for a slug?” the captain asked.

Agent Torrey looked up from cleaning his glasses long enough to realize the captain was holding out a bottle of whiskey to him. While they all knew the captain was prone to drink, he usually attempted to keep his crutch hidden. However, he seemed to have been imbibing a little more freely as of late, and his saddlebag supply of liquor was in danger of running dry.

“I daresay, Captain, I think you're a little drunk,” Agent Torrey said.

“I haven't even begun to drink. Care to join me?” The captain smiled wryly and looked to him with his red-rimmed, hound-dog eyes. “I find that Comanches, and life in general, are much more bearable with a touch of the spirits warming my belly.”

The commissioner was scowling at both of them. Normally, Agent Torrey would have been far too scared of displeasing the commissioner or of getting too drunk and falling off his horse. However, the thought of having to ride all day beside the captain while the man regaled him with tale after tale of their impending horrible deaths at the hands of the Comanches was too depressing for him to bear. He reached out for the bottle and took a healthy slug, and then another. The whiskey burned his chest like a dose of turpentine. He looked to the captain with tears streaming down from behind the thick lenses of his glasses, and gave the man a faked smile.

“That's the way, Mr. Tom. Keep it up and the day is bound to get better,” the captain said.

And in fact it did. After following their guides five miles across the country, the prospect of dying a bloody death had lost much of its horror. Remarkably, Agent Torrey found himself scoffing at such trivial matters after several more slugs of whiskey. By the time they had ridden ten miles or so he had grown so bold as to ride forward to generously offer the Comanches a drink of the captain's whiskey. He couldn't remember why they had looked so scary to him earlier, but he felt sure that all of them would soon be the greatest of friends. The two warriors tried to shoo him away with fierce looks and threatening holds on their weapons, but he was having too good of a time to notice. Obviously they were shy sorts, and he felt it his duty to make them feel welcome. At least they weren't so rude as to interrupt his trying to teach them his favorite song, although from their silence he assumed they had no voice for Irish pub ballads.

Red Wing rode between Commissioner Anderson and the captain. The captain's whiskey had made him quiet, and the commissioner seemed too ashamed to speak to her now that what he had set out to do finally appeared to be coming to fruition. Both of them kept their attention on the two Comanches, and a careful eye on the skyline for signs of any more of the tribe.

She tried to keep her courage up, and to find whatever strength it was within her that had kept her going thus far. She thought the commissioner a fool to trust himself to the Comanches, and the feeling that the expedition was going to end badly for all of them wouldn't go away. Comanches were no different than white men when it came to lies, and their hatred of the Tejanos knew no bounds. She wondered why the commissioner couldn't see that his ambitions were going to ruin all their lives.

She stayed as far away from the Comanches as possible. The two warriors had said little to them since leaving the Washita, other than to relate that they would reach the main village the following day. Her Comanche was coming back to her enough to catch bits and pieces of the quiet conversations they carried on between themselves. She picked up nothing to confirm her distrust of the two, but she feared them nonetheless.