The Texans (5 page)

Chapter 6

S
ome mighty force struck the warrior in the chest and he tipped over the back of his horse as gunfire cracked from behind Odell. The frightened Comanche pony passed over him again, and another hoof clipped him on the head. His vision was blurred and his mind was swimming dizzily when two more horsemen thundered by. He could just barely make them out, and they were well past him before he recognized the Prussian racing away with his saber brandished above his head.

Odell propped himself up and watched the Prussian and Israel Wilson take the fight to the Comanches. Both men had emptied their rifles, and Israel pulled up to reload while the Prussian kept up the charge. Two of the Comanches burst out of the gully riding double on a single horse. They headed for the little mountain, but their pony was no match for the Prussian's Kentucky horse on a short run.

The Comanche riding behind twisted and snapped an arrow at their pursuer. The shaft seemed to strike home as the Prussian reeled in the saddle for an instant. However wounded he might be, he straightened and closed the last few yards on the braves. His saber flashed and the rearmost warrior's head toppled off his shoulders and bounced along the ground beside the running horses, as if it were no head at all and nothing but some childish toy. The headless body still clung to the warrior in front of it for several strides before it slid slowly off the horse.

The remaining Comanche rider parried the Prussian's next blow with his shield and tried to veer away from the saber's reach. The Prussian knew he had to stay close to keep the bow out of the fight, and he clung to the Comanche's side like a mesquite thorn buried in his flesh. He feinted at the shield and then changed the arc of his stroke to strike the Indian's bare leg just above the knee. The shield dropped and a backhand slash in passing took the brave across the chest and cleaved him from the saddle.

The Prussian pulled up his lathered horse and turned broadside to the fallen Comanche. The bloody warrior had risen on his one good leg and was fumbling weakly with his bow. The Prussian calmly pulled a pistol from his belt and shot him dead.

Odell tore his attention from the scene and staggered past the dead Comanche at his feet. The warrior's horse was standing just a few yards away, and Odell tried to ease up to him. He needed a mount badly, but the animal shied and blew at him loudly in fear. It took off in a run with its head canted to one side to avoid stepping on the rein of the war bridle trailing from its mouth.

Odell didn't have the time to cuss his rotten luck before he heard Israel scream. He turned to find the settler wounded and on the ground. The warrior standing over him looked up at Odell with hate and pleasure smeared across his face as plain as his war paint. He smiled a wolf's smile and ran his knife around Israel's head. He jerked a handful of the old man's gray hair away with a sickening snap that was audible even at a distance.

Odell grounded his rifle and rushed to reload it. The Comanche tucked the bloody scalp behind his breechclout belt and jerked two arrows from his victim's body. He took up Israel's rifle, powder horn, and supply bag. Before Odell's shaking hands could ram another ball home, the warrior swung astride Israel's horse and let out a mad whoop. He whirled away and headed for the hills.

Odell capped his gun and leveled it to his shoulder, but the Comanche was a hundred yards away and a dim target in the dust and smoke. He tried to steady his weakened muscles and will a good shot home, but finally lowered his gun without firing.

The look on the brave's face was etched into Odell's mind as if with a sharp chisel into soft rock. It was the face of the Comanche he'd snuck up on along the creek days before. Thinking back, that moment seemed much farther in the past, as if years and years ago.

“You just keep riding, Mister Injun. You ride as fast and as far as you can, and I'm still going to remember you,” Odell said.

The Prussian rode up with two Comanche heads in one hand and an arrow sticking out of his thigh. He dropped the heads and slid off his horse to sit on the ground. “Herr Odell, come pull this arrow out of me.”

Odell crossed over to him, avoiding the heads. The Prussian wasn't that much shorter than him, and even broader. The arrow was buried deep in the massive thigh. Odell tried not to look at the severed heads or Israel's body while he examined the wound.

“I don't know about this. It's in pretty deep,” Odell said.

“Pull it out,” the Prussian rasped.

Odell knew that the longer he waited, the harder it was going to be to make himself do it. He grasped the shaft of the arrow and pulled as straight and hard as he could. The first tug didn't free it, and the Prussian shouted his pain and pounded the ground beside him with one fist.

“Lucifer's balls, pull it out!”

Odell jerked the arrow again and it came free without the arrowhead. He pitched the shaft aside and pressed his hand to the bleeding hole in the Prussian's leg. The pressure must have moved the arrowhead within the punctured hole, and the Prussian shouted his pain again. Odell had nothing to bind the wound, and when he let go of it to find something, the blood poured in a steady, percolating pulse.

He ran to Israel's body and removed the rough cotton shirt. He cut two long strips from it with his knife and folded one of them into a large square. He returned to the Prussian and pressed it against the wound while he tied the other strip firmly around the leg to hold the compress down.

“The odds are the wound will get infected if that's a hoop-iron point in your leg,” Odell said. All the Indians in Texas gathered barrel hoops and other scrap iron from the settlements and ground out blades and arrowheads from them.

“I'll probably bleed to death first.” The Prussian tried to laugh but didn't quite manage it.

“Where's the rest of your party?” Odell asked.

“By
Gott
, they turned back home yesterday when we lost the trail for a while.” The Prussian broke into a string of what sounded like cussing, even though it wasn't in English. “I wish Israel had taken the excuse and gone back with those cowards.”

“Can you ride?” Odell asked. “This grass is like tinder, and if the wind was to swap, that fire's going to be hard to outrun.”

The Prussian merely nodded his head. The fire had run out of the gully and was rapidly spreading as it raced north in a wall of smoke and blazing grass. Even with the strong south wind the flames had steadily neared them on the downwind side of the gully. The air was thick with smoke and ashes. He made it to his feet with Odell's help, and the two of them managed to get him mounted. Odell started to get on behind him, but the Prussian pointed to his trophies on the ground.

“Get my heads for me,” the Prussian said.

“No, I don't think I will.”

“Get them.” The Prussian sidled his horse away, forbidding Odell to swing up behind.

Odell sighed and went over to where the Comanche heads lay in the grass. The Prussian had braided the hair of the two together for a handle, and Odell carried them back and handed them up to him.

“Now go take the head from that Comanche Israel shot off of you.” The Prussian offered Odell his sword.

“You get down and fetch it yourself.” Odell waited until he saw Prussian was resigned to the fact that he wasn't going to gather another trophy. He handed up his rifle for him to hold while he crawled up on the horse behind him.

“What about Mr. Wilson?” Odell asked.

“I assume he is very dead?”

“He's past helping, but we ought to bury him.”

“Herr Odell, we've nothing to dig with. The buzzards and coyotes will tend to him soon enough. We'll tell his family that we buried him.”

“Still, I hate to leave him lying like that. He's in kind of a bare spot there, so maybe the fire won't scorch him.”

“He's long past caring.”

They walked the horse eastward and the Prussian pointed out the two dead Comanche horses. “Herr Odell, you are a horse killer.”

“Those bucks didn't give me proper time to aim.”

“Oh, I thought you were aiming for the horses.”

“No, I guess I put up a pretty poor fight.”

The Prussian stopped at the far horse carcass and motioned to the bladder water bag tied to the animal's neck. “We might need that.”

Odell slid down and fetched it. The Comanche canteen was made from the bladder of a buffalo with the dried flesh molded around a wooden stopper at the drinking end. He slung the carrying strap over his head and mounted back up behind the Prussian.

“You might think you've fought poorly, but I'd say you did quite well for a boy so green,” the Prussian said.

Odell didn't like to be called a boy. “How do you figure that, Karl?”

“Any time you fight Comanches and come out alive, you've done okay.”

“I don't feel like a winner.”

“By
Gott
, I promise you are, and I'll wager you'll get another crack at those red devils if you stay in Texas long enough. That Comanche that got away might be riding right now to get some help to finish us off.”

“I intend to stay after them until I get that Injun that did for Israel.”

“That might be a very long ride indeed.”

“I don't care how long it takes.”

Odell scanned the country around them for signs of Crow. The black horse apparently hadn't died where Odell had left him but was nowhere to be seen. Odell whistled as he'd heard Red Wing do, but there was still no sign of Crow. He regretted the loss of the horse terribly but was glad that the animal might survive his wounds if the fire didn't get him. He continued to whistle while they rode along.

The Prussian altered their course just enough to pass by a clump of mesquite trees. He pulled up beside one of them and hacked a hole in the thorny limbs with his saber, leaving one bare branch about horse height above the ground. He draped the braided handle of the heads over the limb and left them hanging there.

When they were fifty yards away Odell looked back at the heads dangling from the tree. “Why'd you do that?”

“I left them for any Comanche who passes by to see. It lets them know that Major Karl von Roeder was here, and that his blade is sharp.”

“I don't like it.”

“Forgive me, Herr Odell. I am most impolite. Do you want me to ride back so you can get their scalps?”

“No, just keep on riding. I ain't much for scalps.”

The Prussian nodded as if he had heard some sage advice. “I'm not fond of scalps either. Heads are much, much better.”

“Texas has to be the hardest place on the earth,” Odell said quietly to himself.

The Prussian heard him. “Indeed, Herr Odell, indeed.”

* * *

L
ittle Bull stopped at his camp in the narrow pass through the hills and watched the two Tejanos heading east. His left arm throbbed where the Running Boy had shot his shield with the big gun. The bullet had failed to penetrate the bull hide, but it had left a deep bruise on his forearm. He had never expected the boy to be such a fighter.

He knew of the Prussian, as word of the strange talking man had spread across Comancheria. The Tonkawas called him Cuts Deep, and the Lipans called him Long Knife Man. The Mexicans and Tejanos called him the Prussian, and there was no doubt the man was a brave fighter. Little Bull had seen him cut down the two Penatekas like they were helpless children. The Penatekas were soft, but he had to admit the Prussian wasn't to be taken lightly.

He rose and went to his stolen horses and untied all their hobbles. He kept one fresh mount and waved his arms at the rest of them to run them off. He went and untied his milk cow after they were gone. Alone, he couldn't take the cow and the horses too. The cow was a greater prize to him, even though horses were the riches Comanches centered their whole economy around.

He climbed on his new horse with the cow's lead rope in his hand and started north with the black wall of smoke looming behind him in the distance. He already had one hundred horses to his name when he had left his band in camp far up in the Antelope Hills. The cow was something he wanted and did not have. His chest burned and his gut churned bitterly. He would stop and milk the cow that evening, and maybe the cream would cool his angry belly.

He passed the time on the trail by keeping an eye on the progress of the prairie fire and thinking of what he would do to the Running Boy and the Prussian. Tejanos were too foolish to fear the Comanche as they should, and he knew there would come a day when he would have another chance at the two. For some reason he wanted the Running Boy's scalp the most.

Chapter 7

O
dell lugged a hide bucket of water from the creek to the beehive-shaped grass hut where he and the Prussian had been staying for better than a week. According to his hosts it was squaw's work, but he was getting restless and needed something to do. He hung the bucket on a stob at the doorpost and went to sit down beside the Prussian on a deer-hide rug under the shade of a thatched arbor fronting the hut. The Prussian had his wounded leg propped up on his saddle before him and was running a whetstone up and down the blade of his saber. The stone slid along the metal in long, grating passes that were so evenly spaced as to make a rhythm all their own. Odell's father used to make such a rhythm when he stropped his straight razor before shaving.

The Prussian was looking unusually sour, and Odell kept quiet. The wounded leg had been slow to heal, and even if it did, the hoop-iron arrowhead lodged in it was probably going to give the Prussian a permanent limp. Odell watched the village stir around them and listened to the whetstone running up and down the blade.

They had been lucky to run across the Wichita village at a time when the Prussian was looking like he might not make it. Without rest and shelter, the loss of blood and the fever that racked his body would have killed him long before they made it back to their homes on Massacre Creek. For two weeks the Wichita medicine man had come to visit them daily, bringing the Prussian vile concoctions of bitter broth and smelly poultices. The wounded Prussian finally appeared to be on the mend, but Odell couldn't tell if it was the medicinal applications or the healthy dose of gourd-rattling and chanted incantations meant to run off evil spirits that did the trick.

The medicine man was nowhere to be seen, but the rest of the village was already going about their morning business. The Wichitas seemed friendly enough, but Odell hadn't been quite sure of them when he stumbled across their settlement. His recent experience with Indians had left him more than a little leery.

Like most of the Indians Odell had run across, the men wore breechclouts and moccasins in the summertime and nothing more. The women wore long deerskin dresses, some of them finely decorated with elk teeth and painted designs. They were a short people, and both the men and women wore tattoos on their faces. The men had horizontal lines and dashes running from the corners of their eyes and down their chins. The women had similar lines on their chins and a circle around their mouths. Once he got past their strange looks he found that they were pretty nice folks.

“We were lucky to catch them in their town. They'll be leaving their crops to go out after buffalo before too long. They plant and harvest between spring and fall, and hunt and gather the rest of the year,” Odell said.

“You've learned a lot about them for a man that doesn't speak their language.” The Prussian never looked up from his blade.

“Old Star, that medicine man, he speaks a little English, a little Spanish, and a whole lot of stuff I don't understand. But somewhere in the middle of all that I've picked up a thing or two, and even learned a little sign language.”

“Don't you go to trusting these little farmers. I don't care how much corn and watermelons they eat, they're still Indians.”

“They took us in when we needed it and seem scared of Comanches.”

“Everybody is scared of Comanches, but don't think that makes the Wichitas our allies. When the Comanche are in the mood they trade with them, and I've even heard they've fought together before.”

“Are you saying we aren't safe here?”

“Herr Odell, I'm saying don't trust any Indian. No white man can understand how they think. The same warrior that gives you food and shelter one day might scalp you the next.”

“There's bound to be some good Indians.”

The Prussian adjusted his wounded leg to a more comfortable position. “Yes, but as a whole I don't trust them. Among their own kind they can appear to be a loving people who sing and dance and live and die just like we do. But that same Indian you see playing with children or telling jokes around the fire might think anybody outside his tribe is an enemy and maybe even less than human. He'll kill you or torture you and laugh while he's doing it, like a kid poking around in an ant mound.”

Odell watched the women and children heading to the fields, laughing and telling stories just like his people would to pass the workday. “I trust this bunch.”

“You tend to your scalp, and I'll tend to mine.” The Prussian smiled thinly and tested the edge of his saber against the hair on the back of his arm. It shaved like a razor.

“That suits me,” Odell said. “I can look out for myself.”

The Prussian gave him a sour look. “You sure don't know anything about Indians. Just what did you say you were back in the States?”

Odell shrugged. “My pa was a barber, but he was intending to build a riverboat if he had made it to Texas.”

The Prussian shook his head. “No, I want to know what
your
trade is, or what you're considering making
your
living at. This Texas is a place where a man with a little luck and vision might one day make a fortune in land or the right business venture.”

The Prussian's talk irritated Odell. Pappy too had always prodded and poked and questioned him about what he intended to do with his life. Pappy Spurling had set great store by a man amounting to something, even if was just his own measure of self-worth. Across three states and one failed homestead after another, he had thrown down his farming tools and picked up his rifle every time some big talker came along and claimed the government needed him to fight Indians or Britishers. Pappy proudly claimed he was just doing his part to help build a country. He busted his back breaking ground for the crops he was sure the fickle weather would one day actually allow him to grow, and for all his trouble all he got was hacked to death by some Comanches.

Odell wasn't sure just what it was his parents had dreamed, but he recalled vague bits and pieces of big ideas and bold hopes that to a young boy sounded as sweet as candy and sure to happen. But in spite of all their praying and hard work and measuring their life by the meager hoard of coins in an old lard can in the cupboard, they ended up broke and then dead on the banks of a muddy river in a place they had never even dreamed of. Who could plan for such?

Odell made no claims on wisdom, but he was sure that anybody who thought they could plot out the course of their life on a calendar was just fooling themselves. Life was just generally unpredictable as hell, and he had learned not to make a habit of thinking past the day at hand. Things were easier that way, and the lumps you took wouldn't come as any more of a surprise than if you had tried to plan for them.

“I get the notion you were a soldier once.” Odell sought to change the subject.

“In my former country, all men of any quality are soldiers.”

“I once heard that horse soldiers don't keep their swords sharp for fear of cutting their horse on accident.”

“Maybe American soldiers don't, but Prussian cavalrymen do, or at least some of us did. A dull saber isn't any better than a club in a fight.”

“You were fighting back where you came from?”

“I am a hussar. I have always fought, as did my family before me. My father charged the French emplacements at the Battle of Leipzig with nothing more than a pistol and a saber in his hands. He and his men charged two more times with just their sabers.”

“That sounds like some fierce fighting.”

The Prussian let out a scoffing hiss of air and shook his head. “The French are not made for war. They are better at sipping wine and bragging about their own art.”

“I heard you fought with Houston at San Jacinto.”

“I was there.”

“I'm going with the Wichitas on their buffalo hunt,” Odell said.

“What if you run across some Comanches and these new friends of yours sell you out?”

“It's a chance I'll take.”

“By
Gott
, even if they don't get you killed, how do you think you're going to find the Comanches you're looking for when it's hard enough just finding any kind of Comanche?” The Prussian waggled his saber point at Odell for emphasis like a shaking finger.

“I know I wouldn't recognize most of Pappy's killers if I came face-to-face with them, but I'll never forget one of them. He was the one that killed Mr. Israel, and I'm going to try and find him,” Odell said. “I'm going to give it until winter, or maybe spring. I owe Pappy and Israel that much.”

“I've my farm waiting for me and I'm going home as soon as I'm well enough,” the Prussian said.

“Maybe you think Red Wing's waiting for you?”

The Prussian didn't flinch. “If she'll agree, I will give her the finest plantation in Texas.”

Odell tried to tell himself that Red Wing would wait for him to return, but he was doubtful. The thought of the Prussian marrying his girl scared him almost as bad as going out on the plains with the Wichitas. He already felt infinitely alone and he hadn't even left yet.

“I ain't ready yet to quit what I started,” he said.

“You're a young fool. Finding one particular Comanche out on these wastes is impossible. Come home with me and be glad you're still alive to make the trip.”

Odell shook his head fiercely, as much to shake away any doubt that might be creeping into his mind as to disagree with the Prussian. “I reckon I can spare the time to stay after that Comanche a little longer.”

“Looks like you have company, and they're bearing gifts.” The Prussian pointed his saber toward the cluster of Wichita men coming their way.

Odell stood and went to the edge of the arbor with one hand shading his eyes against the sun. “Damn, they've found Crow!”

There was a half dozen warriors walking in front of the horse they were leading, but even at a distance Odell would have known the black gelding anywhere. He never expected to see that horse again, and he trotted out to lay hands on the animal while the Wichitas laughed and jabbered their strange talk in his ears.

Crow was gaunt but seemed little worse for the wear. The arrow was gone from his shoulder, and all that remained of the wound was a puckered lump of healing flesh. Odell rubbed Crow's jaw and resisted the urge to hug his neck. He and that horse had come a lot of miles together, and seeing him was like seeing a long-lost friend. Having Crow back was like having a little piece of Red Wing with him again.

Old Star, the medicine man, took hold of Odell's arm and focused his attention away from the horse. His dark eyes twinkled in their wrinkled seams of weathered hide and he smiled and gestured grandly to the horse. After five minutes of talk in three languages, hand signs, and a good bit of pantomiming, Odell understood that Crow had wandered into the edge of the village with the remains of Odell's saddle hanging under his belly. The girth had slipped and loosened and the saddle had probably turned when the horse lay down or rolled in the grass. Not many horses would tolerate being tied to something flopping around under them, and Crow apparently had kicked the saddle to pieces. The Wichitas had rigged a halter with a braided rawhide riata, as there was no sign of Odell's bridle.

“Were you just waiting to show up after you had lost all my gear?” Odell gave Crow one last pat on the neck and led him toward the arbor.

The Prussian was back at sharpening his saber, but he looked up long enough to nod at Crow. “You're lucky to get him back. There are Indians that would ride two weeks to steal a horse like that.”

“He's the best horse in Texas.”

“No, my Baron can outrun anything I've come across.”

Odell eyed the tall Kentucky horse tied to one of the posts supporting the arbor. It was common knowledge on the frontier that the Prussian had won him in a high-stakes poker game with a New Orleans cotton buyer. He was so cautious with the horse that he kept him tied, lest the Wichitas try to steal him.

Odell had been hand grazing and watering the Prussian's thoroughbred ever since they had arrived at the village. The Kentucky horse was indeed magnificent, but for all his beauty, he looked like only a shell of his former self. Wichita corn and some rest had fleshed his sorrel hide back out a little, but he wasn't fit yet for a hard journey. Crow, despite his wound and nothing to live on but grass, looked much more fit and ready to travel. He might not be as pretty, or as fleet, but he was mustang tough and smart as a whip.

“When you get back home, you tell Red Wing that your horse is better, and see what she has to say,” Odell said.

“She's as silly over that black Indian pony as you are and thinks the sun rises and sets under his tail.”

“I think he can smell Indians. He warned me those Comanches were fixing to attack me.”

The Prussian cocked one eyebrow. “How come he isn't doing anything now? There are Indians all around him and he doesn't seem bothered.”