The Texans (29 page)

“What about the captive squaws? The Tonks may have something to say about them,” the Prussian asked.

“Placido can work it out with his Tonks, and we give the squaws a few of the worst horses and let them go,” Odell said.

The Prussian smirked. “You've been doing a lot of thinking, haven't you?”

“Some. I was thinking about taking those horses to Missouri.”

“And just what makes you think Placido will speak to the Tonks for you, or that any of these men will help you drive horses to Missouri?”

“Count me and Placido and a few others in with Odell,” Son said.

The Prussian hissed through his teeth. He liked the fact that some of the men seemed loyal to Odell even less than he liked anyone questioning his command. “And what about you, Frau Red Wing? Will you go with this foolish boy or come with me?”

Odell looked to Red Wing, but she kept her face turned away from him. Odell wished she would hurry up and answer. The waiting made what he feared would come even worse. He had never mentioned to her all the things he had promised himself to do for her if he ever found her again. He knew how badly she wanted to go back to her mother, and Missouri was nowhere near Massacre Creek. Maybe she could never really forgive him for killing her brother or bring herself to forget that he didn't have two bits to his name. She was smart enough to know just how little he had to offer, and the Prussian was going to make her admit it.

She studied the Prussian carefully with a lift of her head, and her little back as straight as an arrow. “I want to go home, but if Odie thinks we ought to ride to Missouri first, I'll go with him.”

Odell couldn't believe his own ears. She sounded almost proud and gave him one of the smiles he had missed so badly all the long months he had been alone. He felt his face burning like it was on fire.

“Herr Odell, I never would have thought you so ambitious, or I would've let the Comanches kill you last fall,” the Prussian said.

Odell couldn't deny the Prussian had pulled his fat out of the fire the day Israel Wilson was killed, but he wasn't about to yield. “Do we have a deal? I'd reckon you'd be glad to get shuck of me.”

“True, Herr Odell, but I don't like to lose.” The Prussian's hand went to his sword and Odell was just as fast to grab the handle of his Bowie.

“You're quick.” The Prussian smiled a smile that was no smile at all. “You've slandered my name more than once and questioned my leadership in front of the men. I intend to see just how quick and steady you are.”

Odell gauged the reach of the Prussian's sword. “I'm waiting.”

Red Wing looked from one to the other of them like they were crazy. “You two are neighbors.”

“Karl there won't have it any other way, and I ain't going to run,” Odell said.

Red Wing stepped in between them. “Karl, if you thought as much of me as you said when you proposed, then you'll let him be just to see me happy.”

The Prussian bounced his sword up and down in its metal sheath, and it sounded like an old bayou alligator clacking its teeth together. “I'm going to see if this overgrown boy is worthy of you.”

Son Ballard grabbed her and dragged her back. “Girl, this trouble has been brewing for too long to stop it.”

“As the challenged you are allowed to choose the weapons,” the Prussian said like one way to kill Odell was as good as another.

“I don't need all that gentleman stuff. You just come cutting or shooting when you're of a mind to.” Odell took a step back with his hand still on the Bowie.

“A hundred steps with rifles, one shot, and then to the blades if it comes to that,” Son said.

The Prussian looked to the old plainsman and then back to Odell. “It seems you have a second. Is that how it shall be?”

Son pitched Odell his long rifle. “Take a fine bead, and old Potlicker will shoot true.”

Odell caught the gun by the forearm and turned and started down a long lane running between the tepees. “Karl can count fifty steps the other way.”

The Prussian was no fool and wasn't about to go up against a rifle with his inaccurate smoothbore carbine. The men had gathered around to see the show, and one of them had picked up Kentucky Bob Harris's fancy squirrel gun from the battlefield. The Prussian borrowed it and checked the priming on the pan. When he was satisfied with its readiness, he started in the opposite direction from Odell, counting in German as he went.

When roughly a hundred steps divided them, the Prussian said to Son, “You will give the command to fire.”

The Prussian turned himself so that his left side faced Odell with his rifle pointed toward the ground at his feet. Odell did the same and dug his worn-out boots into the ground until he felt sure he was planted there. He waited for Son to give them the go-ahead.

Son held Red Wing against his side and looked from man to man with his one good eye cocked to see if both of them were ready. “Fire!”

To say that Odell had cut his teeth on the stock of a gun wouldn't have been too far from the truth. He'd been pulling triggers since he was big enough to hold up a rifle, and never had he thought that any man might be his match when it came to shooting. But the Prussian was quick, real quick. Odell had just found his sights when the Prussian sent a bullet through his side. Odell staggered back a step and tried to catch his wind. He could feel the blood already running down his pants leg. He gritted his teeth and raised his rifle. The Prussian looked grim but held his ground.

Odell put his front sight on the Prussian's chest and laid his finger ever so lightly on the trigger. He held his aim for a long count of five while the Prussian waited bravely for the bullet that would end his life.

“By
Gott
, if you think I will beg, you are sadly mistaken.” The Prussian stared unflinching into the business end of Odell's rifle a hundred steps away.

The pain of the Prussian's bullet hitting him had given Odell pause enough to cool his temper and to think a little. Odell grinned and shot the skull emblem off the Prussian's hat, and then grounded old Potlicker and drew his Bowie knife. “You're a stubborn sonofabitch, but I reckon I owed you that much.”

It took the Prussian a moment to realize he wasn't dead. He straightened his hat and slowly laid his rifle down. He slid his saber from its sheath but made no attempt to come forward.

Odell's wound hurt like hell, and it felt like the Prussian's bullet had gouged out a ditch in his side. He held the Bowie before him, liking the deadly weight of it balanced in his big fist. Supposedly, its original owner had taken down men armed with swords, and even guns. He knew he was a damned fool for not shooting the Prussian when he had the chance, but it had felt too much like murder. He just hoped he was half the man Jim Bowie had been.

The Prussian made a few practice swings while he smiled at Odell. The blade whistled through the air like a Comanche arrow in flight. Odell tried not to think of the razor edge on that long, curved blade swinging like that at him.

The Prussian sheathed his saber with parade ground flair, and took off his tall hat to examine where the skull had been shot away. He laughed quietly and then put his hat back on and gave Odell some kind of salute.

Odell let his knife fall beside his leg and watched the Prussian walking away from him. “Where are you going?”

The Prussian stopped and turned back to him. “Both our honor has been satisfied. Take your horses and the girl and go.”

Odell was too baffled to understand just what was happening. “Well, I'll be damned.”

The Prussian laughed again, loud and long. “You very well may be, Herr Odell. You are a brave and reckless man. I think if you stay in Texas long, you might someday be a legend.”

Chapter 36

O
dell and Red Wing sat their horses at the edge of the river and watched the horses splash across the shallow ford. Placido rode by them leading a string of packhorses loaded with prime buffalo hides. He had a big smile on his face that was no way in keeping with all the stories of stoic Indians.

“The Comanches maybe follow us, and then we ride through the Kiowa and Osage. I'm pretty sure we're gonna have a heap big fight,” Placido said in passing.

“I don't know about that Indian,” Odell said.

“Wolf People and man-eaters,” Red Wing said, but she smiled just the same.

Son Ballard waved the two of them on from the head of the herd. He had a piece of red wool blanket tied over his empty left eye socket that made him look like the footloose rover he really was. He was surprisingly spry considering that Odell had to pull the arrowhead from his skull with a pair of horse nippers and a boot braced against his head.

Odell hefted his rifle and studied the repair job he had done. A little copper wire and some rawhide shrunk around the grip of the stock had made the Bishop gun almost as good as new. The Bowie knife and the fancy pair of repeating pistols fit just right around his hips, and the gray horse seemed just as willing to strike out across the country as he was. If it hadn't have been for the crease the Prussian had put in his side he would have felt as right as rain.

“I told you that was a good horse,” Red Wing said.

He patted the gray horse's neck. A pad and a rawhide boot around his hoof had him traveling sound. “He ain't Crow by any means, but he's growing on me.”

“It's hard letting go of what we've lost. I think that's half of being happy.”

“I'm glad you're coming with me,” he said.

Red Wing gave him a stern little frown and fought back the smile she felt when she looked at him. “Why, Odell Spurling, I'm not crossing this river until you ask me what you should have asked me a year ago.”

“I thought we had an understanding.”

“Do you think you can trade for me or just steal me? I've had just about enough of men dragging me around the country and treating me like the squaw they see.”

He lifted one side of his hat a little and scratched at his temple as if in deep thought. “Just how many ponies would you say you're worth? Maybe I can't afford you.”

She folded her arms across her chest and her eyes were like the bores of two little shotgun barrels pointed at him. “I can't for the life of me understand what I see in you.”

He squirmed in his saddle uncomfortably. “I figured we'd said about all that needed said.”

She was like a bulldog when she got something bayed, and wasn't about to let go until she'd shook him a bit. “You just keep talking, and I'll run down Karl. He used to talk sweet to me, and he owns the biggest farm on the upper Colorado.”

Odell leaned close to her. “Red Wing Wilson, you're the prettiest girl in Texas, and I'd be proud if you'd marry me.”

She patted at the tight little bun of her gathered hair and smoothed her skirt over her bent leg on the sidesaddle. “Hmm. Maybe there's hope for you yet.”

He turned in the saddle to watch the black smoke rising from the Comanche camp behind them. The Prussian and those going home were already growing small in the distance, and he could just make out the dust trail of the Comanche squaws and their children making their way west. He almost felt as if he and Red Wing were alone on the face of the earth, and liked that feeling just about more than anything. He sat under the broad expanse of merciless and beautiful sky, and could not put a name to just what poetry it was in the windswept distances that called to him so. It was if the all the living and the dying that was ever contained in the slowly beating and ancient heart of the land whispered a song. It felt like freedom; it felt like home.

“Did you ever imagine anything like it?” he asked.

Red Wing stared into the distance with the wide sweep of country reflected in the deep pools of her brown eyes like a fevered dream. “Nobody ever imagined a place like Texas.”