The Texans (28 page)

Chapter 35

T
he first thing Odell saw when he came into camp was Son Ballard sitting on a stack of buffalo hides with a rag tied over one eye.

“Well, kiss my ass. You're the only Texan I know that can find a pretty woman in an Injun scrap,” Son said. “And that gray horse ain't too shabby either.”

“I thought you were dead.” Odell couldn't believe what he was seeing.

Son lifted up the rag to reveal the mangled socket of his left eye and the hoop-iron arrowhead still buried in his brow. “No, but I'm glad to see you back. Nobody's been stout enough to pull this damned thing out of my head.”

“That must have smarted some,” Odell said.

“It disturbed the hell out of my aim for a while, but I think I'll live,” Son chuckled, and then pointed to Red Wing. “Ma'am, won't you step down and have a cup of coffee with me? I ain't as pretty as I was this morning, but I can only stare at you half as much as the rest of these hairy-legged womanizers.”

There was a little man with a freckled face and a bad sunburn sitting beside the old scout, and he squinted at the new arrivals as if he wasn't sure they were real. He reached out a hand to Red Wing, even though she was on her horse ten feet away.

“Is that you, Red Wing?” he asked.

“Why, Agent Torrey, I think you are going to have to find you a new hat before you're burned to a crisp,” she said.

“I thought you were dead. I thought we were all dead,” Agent Torrey muttered.

“We've been through a lot, but we're very much alive,” she said.

“Poor Commissioner Anderson and Captain Jones. Mr. Ballard here tells me that they were used terribly, and I can't quite understand why I'm still here.” He scratched at the wet blisters on his red cheeks and studied where his bare feet stuck out of the long, buckskin hunting shirt that somebody had given him. Whatever Comanche the shirt had been made for was bigger than the agent, and the sleeves hung past his hands and made him look like some kind of sad puppet when he moved his arms.

Placido was sitting nearby and rubbing some pasty tanning concoction into the raw flesh of a fresh scalp. He smiled a greeting at Odell, and then went back to his work.

Son noticed Odell staring at the scalp. “Placido chased a fat Waco out of camp that none of us saw. He never has liked Wacos, and he's especially proud of himself.”

“I wish he would put that scalp up while Red Wing is around,” Odell said.

Son cocked his head and considered the scalp in Placido's hands. “Just be glad you don't have to see what's in that bag beside him. I have a sneaking suspicion that he thought that fat Waco was fed out too well to ride off without taking a few cuts of him for snacks later.”

Odell couldn't tell if Son was kidding him or not. He could see what looked like blood soaking through the buckskin bag. “He better not cook his dinner in front of me.”

As Odell was helping Red Wing down from the horse he noticed a group of about ten squaws huddled together on the ground under the guard of some of the Tonk scouts. They kept their eyes down, and clutched several small children protectively to them. Beyond them, a filthy and ragged white girl sat rocking back and forth with a blanket pulled over her shoulders in an attempt to cover her nakedness. Her blond hair had been hacked off as short as a man's, and the one long leg Odell could see stretched out in front of her was striped with welts and the scabs of healing cuts. She mumbled strange, singsong words, and looked half crazed and even more miserable than the Comanche squaws.

Odell expected Red Wing to sit and rest, but instead she went over to the squaws. The captive Comanche women looked at her with as much fear as they did the Tonks, who were leering at them lustily and telling rude jokes. After much effort, she finally managed to find one squaw who seemed willing to talk. She knelt beside the old woman and began to question her.

The Prussian went straight to the captive white girl without a word to Red Wing. In fact, he hadn't said much to her all the way back to the camp. Odell knew the Prussian had set his cap for her and couldn't understand his complacency. He also knew that the Prussain hadn't forgotten his promise. The man had said he was going to kill him in front of all the men, and a prideful sort like that wasn't about to crawfish on his word and give anyone an excuse to question his bravery or his honor.

“Try some of this if you're hungry.” Son pointed to the cast-iron pot over the little chip fire in front of him. “I don't know what kind of Comanche soup that is, but it ain't half bad.”

Odell hunkered down and scooped a bit of the stew out of the pot with a buffalo horn spoon. He tried a slurp of the bubbling hot concoction, but he couldn't quit thinking of what might be in Placido's sack. His appetite left him, and he set the ladle aside. He kept watch on the Prussian, because he knew the man's violent temper and wasn't about to be caught unaware.

“I don't think that Prussian is going to be too concerned with you or your woman anymore,” Son said laconically.

“Oh?”

“The Prussian doesn't know it yet, but he hit the jackpot when we stumbled on this camp.” Son jerked a thumb back over his shoulder to where the Prussian was trying to talk to the captive girl. “There are several men here who swear that pitiful little thing is Susie Smith.”

“So?”

“She's Senator Smith's daughter,” Son said. “She was stolen away over two months ago, and the senator offered Jack Hays and his Rangers a thousand dollars to go after her.”

“How much?” Odell tried to imagine just what that much money would look like. He hadn't seen more than twenty dollars in gold since he came to Texas.

“There's a standing reward out for a thousand to any man that can bring her back alive,” Son said.

“That's a lot, even split between so many of us.”

Son gave him a wry look, even with only one eye showing. “The Prussian will share the reward, but he'll make sure he's the man who's known for saving her.”

“Well, it was his expedition,” Odell said.

Son jerked his thumb over his shoulder again. “That man yonder has always had ambitions, and being a hero won't hurt them at all.”

Odell looked around the camp. Most of the exhausted men were eating or napping, but he noticed that several faces were missing. “How many men did we lose? I saw the Harris brothers down, but nobody else.”

“Three men killed, twice that many wounded, and one that might not make it 'til morning,” Son said.

“How many Comanches do you think we got?”

Son frowned. “It's hard to tell with Comanches. They'll do anything to haul off their dead, and you never kill as many of them as you'd like to think. The Prussian will guess more, but Placido says from the blood on the grass and what the men say, that we did for about twenty of the bastards, and two squaws.”

“That doesn't seem like much for such a fight.”

“Well, it would if you were one of them that bit the dust, or got your eye jabbed out by an arrow.”

Odell noticed that the Comanches had managed to haul away very little of the camp, and some of the Texans were holding a good-sized herd of captured horses on the prairie nearby.

“There's a lot of plunder here,” he said.

Son nodded his head. “The Prussian's fought Comanches before, and he'll know what to do. He'll take a few of the best horses, shoot the rest, and burn down everything that the men don't want to carry with them on their saddles.”

“Shoot the rest of the horses?” Odell asked. The kind of Texans who had followed the Prussian thought a lot of a good horse, and he couldn't imagine them being willing to kill an entire herd of them.

“Don't think we've seen the last of those Comanches. The odds are, they'll follow us and try to steal back their horses. That's a big herd to have to guard at night, and that Prussian is smart enough and hard enough not to remount his enemy if he can help it.”

“That seems a shame. There are some good horses yonder, and I'll be danged if I could shoot them.” Red Wing's insistence that he keep the gray buffalo runner had gotten him to thinking. He had nothing left back on Massacre Creek but the burned ruins of a cabin. A woman was going to expect a little more than that from a possible suitor.

Son read the way Odell was looking at those horses. “I can't say for sure that the Prussian will do things just like I said, but me and Placido were talking about those horses. If the Prussian and most of the men would settle for all the reward for that Senator's girl, a few of us might gather those buffler robes and the extra horses and take them up to Missouri to sell.”

“Why not take them back to Austin, or maybe to San Antonio or Houston?” Odell asked. “We might even take them down to Mexico.”

“Naw, half those horses were probably stolen from those parts, and we'd end up having to give too many of them back to their rightful owners,” Son said. “They've all got the Oregon fever back in the States, and a herd of good horses might sell for a king's ransom in Independence or St. Joe.”

“You've a point there,” Odell said.

“What about you, Mr. Torrey? Are you going to throw in with us if we head for Missouri?” Son asked. “I must say that an educated man like you to tell me some new stories would be a welcome change on the trail.”

Agent Torrey shook his head vigorously. “No, I'll go with the others. If I make it back to Houston I'm going to catch a coach down to Galveston, and then a fast ship to Baltimore. There's a chubby shoemaker's daughter there, and if she'll have me, I'll gladly wed her. I'll sit in a dark little shop behind a sturdy door and cobble shoes until I forget Texas ever existed.”

He rose to his feet and stumbled away from the fire. Odell noticed for the first time that man was naked from the waist down, and he seemed oblivious to fact that the shirt wasn't long enough to completely cover his bare ass and flopping parts. Odell found it highly unsettling that he should parade himself in such a fashion with women in camp.

“Where are you going, Mr. Torrey?” Son called after him.

“I need to find my glasses,” Agent Torrey said.

Odell watched him wander off, tottering weakly from one Comanche tepee to another with his eyes squinted tight, and pausing bent far over at the waist to examine everything he came across on the ground.

“Somebody ought to get that strange fellow some britches,” Odell said.

“He's a little off his mark right now, but I'd say he would've fit right in with us,” Son answered.

Odell's mind was too full of Son's plan to give Agent Torrey any more thought. “Sounds like a few brave men might make some hard money if there's the market in Missouri you say there is.”

“Are you game?”

Odell looked at Red Wing among the squaws. “I don't know if she'd be willing to go with us, and I ain't leaving her again unless she makes me.”

“I guess you'll just have to ask her,” Son said. “She has to have some grit in her craw to have come this far, and I wouldn't be against her coming with us.”

As if on cue, Red Wing started over to them, and the Prussian fell in behind her. She looked upset and he had his hand on his sword.

Red Wing started to say something to Odell but turned around when she realized the Prussian was right behind her. “What do you intend to do with those Comanche women?”

The Prussian gave her an impatient look but answered her while he stared at Odell. “I'm going to take them to Austin and see if I can get the Comanches to come in and trade white captives for them.”

“Let them go, Karl. Please,” Red Wing said.

“Turnabout is fair play. No Comanche ever turned loose a captive unless they were ransomed or taken back from them,” the Prussian said.

“Those are women and children and have no part of your war.” She tore her eyes away from the Prussian to give Odell a pleading look.

“Frau Red Wing, it is best for you not to worry about such matters,” the Prussian said.

She whirled back to him angrily. “If you take those women, then you are no different from the Comanches you hate. And I've had enough of kidnappers and woman stealers to last me a lifetime.”

The Prussian stared at her indignantly and tugged at the front of his black shirt and straightened his gaudy hat. “I can understand your interest in those squaws, but war is never pleasant and is best left to soldiers.”

Odell had as little use for a Comanche as the next man, but looking at the squaws, he felt no desire to see them suffer more. “I understand there is a large reward for that captive girl you were talking to.”

The Prussian's eyes narrowed and he continued the cold, silent treatment he had given Odell on the way back to the camp.

Odell had never been much of a trader, but the hopeful, expectant look Red Wing was giving him forced him to try. “How about you take the girl, and what plunder the boys want, and I take the rest of the leftover horses and all the buffalo hides?”