The Texans (4 page)

“You hold on for a minute.” She turned and ran for the house.

While he waited, he stuffed his sack of corn into the long Mexican saddlebags that were tied behind the cantle. By the time he finished she was running back to him with something clutched in both hands against her skirt. She stopped, panting in front of him with a small bar of lead in one hand and a wadded-up piece of cloth in the other.

“You take this, Odie. There's a bit of powder in that rag, and if I had the time, I'd mold your bullets for you,” she said.

“Thanks.”

“You mold those bullets good and grease your patches carefully. I want you to shoot straight when you have to, and come back to me.”

There was nothing left to do but ride, but he hesitated anyway. “Maybe you don't think I'm man enough to do this thing I'm setting out to do, but I promise you I'll be back.”

“I know the kind of man you are, Odie. I know it better than anyone else, and that's what scares me. When others might turn back, you'll go on, because that's the way you're made. Vengeance has a hold on you, and you've always been half wild and more like the Comanches you hate than you know.”

“I'll come back to you, I promise.” He wasn't as sure of that as he tried to sound.

She was so, so near to him, and her lips seemed to be begging for him to kiss her. She was only fifteen, with her willowy body only starting to take on the curves of womanhood, and perhaps too young for a man to court. But Odell was a young man himself, and he loved her. She had always been his woman, even if only in his mind. What that meant was only a vague, shy concept fluttering around inside him, but he did know if there ever was anything he should do, it was to kiss her. He'd never kissed a girl, although he'd thought about it enough. His body wouldn't seem to obey his will, and he stood flat-footed and clumsy before her without a trace of anything on his face but awkward and handicapping shyness.

Mrs. Ida had walked outside and was watching them from the porch. “Where are you going with her horse?”

Odell threw one look at the old lady and took Red Wing in his arms. He kissed her clumsily but long. She yielded to him softly and passionately in one last effort to keep him with her.

He pushed gently away from her and shoved one big foot into the stirrup and swung aboard her good horse. “So long, Red Wing. Maybe I won't be gone too long.”

Mrs. Ida was starting down to path to the corral with a frown on her face, and he waved to her as he rode out of the gate and set old Crow to a high lope toward sundown. Red Wing shaded her wet eyes once more and watched him disappear in the distance. He never looked back, not even once.

“What's that boy doing with your horse?” Her mother said behind her.

“I loaned Crow to him. The Comanches killed Pappy Spurling and the Youngs, and Odie's going to hunt them down.”

“That fool boy will get himself killed, and maybe your father too. You shouldn't have given him your horse.”

Red Wing gave her a wistful smile as she passed by her on her way back to the house. “You don't know him at all.”

“I won't have a daughter of mine mooning over the likes of Odell Spurling. Where do you think you're going?” Mrs. Ida asked with a halfhearted scowl. “That hominy needs tending to.”

“I'll tend the hominy pot, but when I get done I'm going to start sewing on a wedding dress. That fool boy is the man I'm going to marry when he gets back.”

Chapter 4

T
he tracks left by the Comanches driving their herd of stolen horses and those of his neighbors following them were plain, and Odell stuck to them like a cocklebur tangled in a mustang's tail. Crow was as tough as Red Wing had said he was and they rode the sun down and kept on traveling by the light of the moon. The trail he followed seemed to be going up the river to the northwest, and though he lost it in the dark, faith and feel kept him moving and he picked it back up again at sunrise.

He traveled hard for two days, only stopping to sleep for a few hours at a time. He had nothing to eat but mush made from the hard corn pounded into coarse meal between two rocks, but vengeance fueled him and gave him strength. The trail veered west from the Colorado to follow along another river he presumed was the San Saba. All of the country was new to him, and when the trail turned north again and crossed the Colorado a second time, he slowly began to leave behind the low, rocky ridges and stands of oak, cedar, and mesquite. The country began to open up into grasslands with only scattered timber along some of the drainages. The brown summer grass was thicker and healthier than the rugged country he had left behind.

He dreamed one night of his mother. It bothered him that he couldn't exactly recall anymore what she looked like in his waking hours, but her face was plain in the dream. His father didn't appear to him, but Odell could feel his presence just the same. He wanted to ask them just what it was he had done that had cursed him so, but he awoke beside the cold ashes of his little fire alone. He closed his eyes and tried to summon the ghosts again but couldn't. The dream had felt so real that waking was like losing his parents all over again. The stars were already fading in the gray morning light, and he finally got to his feet and went to saddle Crow.

He passed the Prussian and his neighbors on the third day when he saw where they had lost the Comanches' faint trail. Although he considered himself no tracker, he trusted his own eyes and went where his hunch told him. Somebody in the party of white men had been a fair hand at reading sign, and Odell had simply followed them up until that point, hoping they would lead him to his quarry. When the Comanches gave them the slip Odell wasn't sure just how he could stay on the raiders' trail alone. However, the Comanches seemed to be traveling with a goal in mind. He found that if he kept to their line of travel that he usually came across some sign of them later on. Every time he was sure he had lost their trail he stumbled upon it again.

Somewhere north and west of nowhere, he crossed another dry riverbed and came out on a wide expanse of prairie scattered with prickly pear and yuccas. To the north was a line of rocky little hills and he spied a gap between them. He spent no more time looking for Comanche sign and aimed for that pass.

The sun was in his eyes and the dry grass crackled under Crow's feet. The heat coming off the ground threatened to jerk them both like strips of buffalo meat. The black horse had lost some weight and his former sleek and shiny coat was caked with dried sweat and dust. He was still willing but needed a long rest. Odell couldn't afford to give him that and knew he was pushing the limits of riding him to the point of ruin.

Crow stopped and lifted his head high with his ears erect and forward. Odell strained to find what the horse was looking at in the distance. Finally, he saw the slim finger of smoke coming off the hills. The odds were it was an Indian camp making that smoke, because no white man with any sense would build a fire so plainly seen in a land where that was liable to get him scalped.

“You've smelled smoke or Indians. Either way, you might just be the best horse in Texas.” Odell rubbed Crow's neck and booted him forward.

He had no plan how to proceed next, so he just rode straight for the smoke. He'd hung his rifle by a string from his saddle horn, and he freed it and rested its butt on his right thigh with the muzzle pointing skyward. He checked his knife in its sheath, weighed his powder horn, and jiggled the bullets in his shot bag to make sure they were still there. It was at least a mile to that smoke, but even at a walk he was going to get there pretty quick.

* * *

L
ittle Bull squatted by the fire with a chunk of greasy meat clenched in his teeth and hot juice dripping off of his chin. He glared at the Jersey milk cow tied to a tree at the edge of his camp. She wallowed her cud in her mouth and looked back at him in dumb contentment, with her tail switching flies and her fat, full udder almost dragging the ground.

If it hadn't been for that stolen cow slowing him down, Little Bull would have been almost back to his band's camp far to the north. As it was, most of the war party had left him behind, and he was still far south of the Antelope Hills. He knew the Tejanos were sure to be following him, but he couldn't bring himself to leave the cow behind. He'd stolen her two days back, and he was bound and determined to keep her.

Little Bull's belly bothered him terribly sometimes, and his chest ached liked something was hung there. By accident on an earlier raid he had taken a drink of the white man's cow milk. He had found that it cooled his burning stomach and settled the bile that rose up in his throat. His intent was to take the cow to his camp for his squaws to milk.

Tejanos traveled far too slowly to catch Little Bull at any other time, but the cow went even more slowly than those hated white men did. He threw down the bone he'd picked clean and moved to where he could watch the plains south of the hill. There were two separate dust trails worming their way toward him, and neither one was very far away. He knew the closest for the three warriors who had stayed behind with him. They had split off from him two days before to try to steal more horses from a Wichita village to the east. They were originally from one of the Honey Eater camps, and were far more familiar and at home in the land of timber and little mountains they had raided in the past days. Little Bull himself was Kotsoteka Comanche, the Buffalo Hunters, and his home range was the Canadian River Valley to the north.

The three Honey Eaters weren't especially good raiders or fighters, but any allies would be welcome help at that moment. The second cloud of dust had to be Tejanos, either on the trail of the three Penatekas coming to join him, or following his own tracks. Little Bull gathered his weapons and mounted his horse. From the size of the dust, the Tejanos were few, and he knew four Comanches were more than enough to whip them.

He left his hobbled bunch of stolen horses in camp with the cow and rode out of the pass until he reached a bare ledge of rock providing a better view of the prairie. He waited there for the other warriors to join him while he watched the Tejanos' dust grow nearer. He sat his horse with his long lance across the animal's withers, and his short, squat body was as still as the stone. He scratched at a sand flea on his muscular arm and his black eyes strained to make out his prey.

He laughed to himself when the rider came into view. It was just one Tejano, and he was almost sure that it was the long-legged one who had almost ambushed him on the little creek far down on the Colorado many days ago. He had watched him flee across the prairie that day and would have known him anywhere. He hated white men even more than Apaches and Mexicans, and the one coming his way had shamed him by stalking so near him.

The three Penatekas had reached the foot of the slope and stopped there to look up at him. They pointed toward the Tejano and made excited sign language, as if they thought Little Bull was so dumb as to have not noticed pursuit. Young as he was, he knew he was worth all three of those warriors in a fight. He started slowly down the hill, reaching them just as the long-legged Tejano made the edge of an especially open section of the prairie two hundred yards away.

The Penatekas fanned out to one side of him, angling for a long dry wash that ran in the direction of their quarry. He gestured angrily for them to follow his lead straight toward the Tejano. It was only one white man, and there was no need to sneak up on him. A quick charge and some bloody war whoops would unsettle the Tejano's aim and they would make quick work of him.

He fitted his buffalo hide shield to his left arm and made sure his bow and quiver were secure on his back. The buffalo tail that hung from his lance and the scalps dressing the edge of his shield whipped in the strong south wind. His heart throbbed deeply in his chest as he anticipated killing another of the hated breed of pale men who had taken his family away from him.

In his fervor to kill another Tejano, Little Bull failed to see the third dust cloud a few miles to the south.

Chapter 5

O
dell saw the Comanches riding toward him at about the same time Crow did. Just seconds before, the horse had seemed worn out, but now he fairly pranced along the ground, pushing against the bit. It was plain he sensed the coming fight or flight.

There were four Comanches spread out in a long line and trotting right at Odell. He knew nothing of Indian fighting, but he tried to calm himself and remember the advice that a seemingly endless number of Texans had given him. Common sense told him that he stood little chance against such long odds, and from what he'd heard his flintlock rifle was going to be little help in a horseback fight out in the open. The Indians were too close and his horse too used up to turn and outrun them. He spied the brush-choked gully just behind and to the left of the Comanches and decided to make for it if he should survive the charge.

A wild, shrill shout went up from one of the Comanches and it was answered all down their line. Odell took a spare bullet from his pouch and put it in his mouth for a quick reload. He cocked the hammer on his shotgun barrel and kicked his horse forward at a run just as the Comanches did the same. He charged forward with his teeth gritted and the wind folding the broad brim of his hat back against the crown.

If the Comanches were surprised by his charge, they didn't waver in their attack. They whipped their ponies wildly and shouted like crazed animals. Odell rode straight for their middle, and waited until he could see their painted faces before he veered sharply to his left. He ran Crow straight toward the last warrior on the left of the line. Two arrows sailed close past him and he shouldered his rifle and strained to steady his front sight on the Comanche not twenty yards in front of him. The brave fired one more snap shot from his bow and started to drop off the far side of his horse to pass by on Odell's left. Odell pressed his trigger a little too late to get the Comanche, but the shotgun pellets hit the brave's horse square in the face. Shadowed bits of blood and bone rained through the sunshine, and the horse went as limp as soft rope and melted into the ground in a cloud of dust. Its rider scrambled on all fours to get away from the wreck.

Odell leapt Crow over the dead Comanche pony and kept on toward the gully. The Comanches to his right were circling back to him and a musket ball from one of them clipped his sleeve. He made the edge of the gully with them right on his heels. The bank was too high and the brush too thick to leap down among it, and he bailed from the saddle at the lip of wash. An arrow struck Crow in the shoulder and he shuddered violently and almost went down. Odell pulled at the single rein he held while the black horse fought to steady his buckling knees.

One Comanche and then two passed across Odell's front, firing a single arrow apiece, then dropping on the far side of their running horses. The third Comanche still mounted came head-on at him with the sharp point of his lance lowered. The weapon looked impossibly long and wicked bearing down on Odell's chest. He cocked his last barrel and took aim at what little he could see of the warrior's head behind the shield.

His aim was off, and the .60-caliber bullet struck the cured bull-hide circle and ricocheted into the pony's neck. The Comanche was only twenty feet away when his mount crashed under him. The warrior rolled to his feet and struggled to unlimber the bow on his back. The other Comanches were coming back and Odell's gun was empty. He let go of his rein and leapt down into the plum thicket that filled the gully.

The little thorns on the plum bushes and the limbs ripped at him as his weight bore him through them and to the ground. He scrambled to a sitting position and tore the plug from his powder horn. He spat the bullet from his mouth into his hand and dumped a big enough mound of powder over it to just barely cover it. He poured the powder down his rifle barrel with his cupped palm and then started the bullet. His ramrod seated the charge home effortlessly without the resistance of a patch. The low-growing brush was too thick in most places to walk upright, and he crawled on his belly to the edge of the gully while trying to get the flintlock pan primed and ready to shoot.

He stood and peered over the lip of the bank several yards from where he entered the dry wash. Crow was standing pitifully with the arrow sticking out of his shoulder and two of the Comanches were passing back and forth some seventy yards beyond the wounded horse. There was no sign of the two dismounted warriors. He looked to the far side of the gully behind him but could see nothing for the thick brush. He was sure that the two that he'd put afoot were probably sneaking through the thicket to poke him full of arrows.

One of the warriors on the prairie spotted him and both of them were soon zigzagging back and forth toward him. They had loops of rope tied around their horses' necks, and they used their mounts to shield them from his rifle. With one arm in that loop, their heel and calf over the horse's back, and the bow or lance in their other hand hooked against the near side of the horse's neck, they hung suspended on the offside of their running horses. As they came ever closer to him his only chances to shoot them were the brief instances when they swapped from one side of their mounts to the other. Despite what many a windy old frontier blowhard swore, the only good thing was that they couldn't shoot their bows while hanging in such a manner.

Odell started to take an iffy shot but willed himself to hold his fire. When they turned and raced away from him at the last moment it dawned on him that they wanted him to shoot. With an empty gun he would be at their mercy, and their antics had already distracted his attention away from anything coming up from behind his position. He set his gun butt-first on the ground and carefully loaded the shotgun barrel with powder, wadding, shot, and wadding. It was more time-consuming to load the shotgun barrel, and there was no quick way to do it. A sloppily charged scattergun was more dangerous to the shooter than to what he was shooting at. By the time he was finished loading it, streams of sweat were rolling off of him. It was hot, but not that hot. He could feel the Comanches sneaking up on him, and he was as scared as he'd ever been.

Staying where he was would get him killed quickly, and he took one last look out of the gully to check the positions of the two Comanches on the prairie. They were keeping their eyes on the spot where his head stuck up above the bank and trotting their horses in a wide arc just out of easy rifle range. He dropped back to his knees and crawled along a rabbit run. The gully was fifty yards wide where he was at, and he found a deer trail running down its center. He rose to a crouch and ran twenty yards down it until he heard something in the brush and ducked off the trail. He shielded himself behind the base of a clump of bushes where he could see a few feet either way down the path. Flies buzzed about his head, and the heat of the thicket made it hard to breathe.

It seemed like an eternity before the Comanche showed himself, but in actuality it was only a few seconds. Odell heard him coming at the last second and had his rifle aimed at the sound. A war-painted face peered out of the brush twenty yards away and he pulled the trigger. He didn't take the time to shoot carefully, or his unpatched bullet flew wild, because his shot only kicked sand into the Comanche's face. Odell hustled to move his position in the thicket.

The sound of Odell's rifle was followed by Comanche war cries, and the three of them he hadn't just shot at made enough racket to sound like a whole tribe. He crawled farther down the gully and stopped just before it choked down to a narrow pass. A buffalo crossing had beaten down both banks and trampled away the brush in a wide swath. Two of the Comanches sat their horses on either bank. Only Odell's shotgun barrel was loaded, and he couldn't get into killing range without them seeing him. Their bows' range matched a shotgun charge, and he had no desire to take an arrow in his guts.

He assumed that the warriors on foot were still somewhere in the brush behind him, but that was the direction he had to go. He worked his way quietly to the far bank and crept along it. He found a place under an exceptionally thick stand of shinnery oak about eight feet tall and decided to wait things out. He couldn't see the Comanches if they were coming, but they couldn't see him either. He had no water but hoped he could slip away in the night.

Digging a place for his hips in the sand, he prepared himself for a long, hot day. He had barely begun his wait when he smelled smoke. In a matter of minutes a cloud of it was rolling up the gully toward him. The dry grass in the bottom of the wash was sparse and choked back by the shade of the brush, but there was enough of it and other dead, dry fuel to give him a bad scorching. He crawled to the barest spot he could find under the shade of an overhang in the dirt bank. The Comanches had him trapped and intended to flush him from the thicket like a covey of quail, or else roast him alive.

The low wall of flames moved with the wind until it was only a couple of yards from him. The bone-dry mass of branches on a dead clump of brush burst into flames like they were soaked with kerosene. The heat from the fire was unbearable, and he shielded his scorched face with his forearm. When he could bear no more he scrambled up the sandy, crumbling cutbank.

No sooner had his feet hit the prairie above than a cry went up and a Comanche started his horse toward him. The brave was fifty yards away and coming fast with his bow ready to draw. Odell took five running steps straight for him and then dove headfirst back into the gully. He had traveled just far enough to clear the advancing wall of flames, and plunged through the sooty limbs of the thicket. As soon as he untangled himself, he lunged forward on his belly with the Comanche stopped on the lip of the cutbank just above him. An arrow buried itself in the ground beside him, and two more glanced off the limbs above him. All three projectiles came in the space of that many seconds.

Odell clawed his way a few more feet and rolled over on his back. He pointed his gun between his knees at the Comanche above him and fired the shotgun barrel. The black powder smoke and the smoldering cloud from the fire kept him from seeing if his shot had any effect. Another arrow careened off the brush in front of him, and he knew that he had missed, or at least failed to deal the warrior a death lick.

Most of the Comanches were probably upwind of the fire waiting for him to show, and he hit the deer trail down the middle of the gully running like his pants were on fire—which by coincidence they really were. If there was one thing Odell could do well, it was run. A jackrabbit flushed under his feet and if it hadn't veered away, there was a chance Odell would have passed him.

He intended to get across the buffalo trail bisecting the wash and hide himself farther down its course. When he reached the crossing, he found that the other side only contained a thin line of brush and was bare past that. He could hear the sound of hooves thumping the ground behind him and knew he wasn't going to have time to reload even one barrel. He turned up the buffalo trail toward the opposite side of the gully from where the last Comanche had been shooting at him.

He cut a beeline across the prairie, hoping that he could at least reload his rifle barrel on the run. He fumbled at his bullet pouch and dropped the first two bullets he could lay his hand on. The sound of a running horse was right behind him, and he ducked behind a huge clump of prickly pear. He looked wildly behind him at another mounted Comanche circling around the cactus with his lance leveled like a jousting knight.

The circle Odell kept to around the prickly pear clump was small, and he could just stay ahead of the horse and that lance in such a tight turn, at least until he ran out of wind. At the pace he was keeping, it didn't take him long to burn out. He waited until the lance was almost sticking him in the kidney and then ducked and dove backward under the horse's feet. The lance passed over him, but a hoof thumped him between the shoulders and rolled him in a ball. The air was driven from his lungs, and he lay where he had been struck for a brief instant while he gathered his wind and his wits. That was just long enough for the Comanche to double back.

The lance was bearing down on him again, and there was no way he was going to be able to dodge. He could already feel the sharp bite of its steel piercing his chest when it was still several feet away.