The Lone Star Reloaded Series Box Set

by Drew McGunn

  The steady drumbeat of more than a hundred sets of horse hooves thundered across the plain as Will led the mixed command over a low rise. In the distance, he saw a dust cloud retreating westward, farther into the Comancheria. A few hundred yards away a horse was down. Will scanned the area, looking for his forward scouts, but apart from the fallen horse and the dust cloud in the distance, the only movement was the tall grass rustling in the sweltering breeze. He let his horse gallop until he closed the distance to the fallen animal. When only a few dozen yards separated them, he saw the bodies of his scouts from Smith’s Ranger company, lying in the grass. From beneath the downed horse, which had several arrows protruding from its body, he saw movement as Flacco, the Apache struggled to get out from underneath the dead animal.

  Juan Seguin leapt from his horse, rushing over to where the Apache was trapped. He grabbed the reins and tried dragging the horse in the opposite direction from where the Indian lay. Several men joined the officer as they managed to drag the horse from atop the Apache scout. When the horse no longer trapped him, the Apache attempted to stand up, but his left leg gave way, and he collapsed. He landed with only a grunt, and Will couldn’t help but to admire his stoic response to his injury and the loss of his horse.

  As a couple of men looked to the injured Apache, Will walked over to where one of the Rangers had fallen. A single arrow pierced his side. Despite only a few minutes passing between the time of the gunshot and the column arriving, the man had been scalped, and his clothing ripped from his body. Deep gouges were cut into his legs, and someone had been in the process of cutting off his genitalia when Will’s command had crested the ridge, as the job had been abandoned midway. He turned away from the body, desperately willing the image from his mind, and yelled, “Boys, get some shovels. We’re going to bury our fallen. We’ll not leave them for the Comanche.”

  ***

  Three wooden crosses were a few hundred yards away as the little army camped on the rolling prairie that night. The sky was dark, the distant stars standing sentinel in the night sky against the return of the new moon. Before collapsing into his bedroll, Will had ordered a strong guard to watch over the camp and the horses, which were staked out along a picket line. As he drifted to sleep, his mind was filled with the images of mutilated bodies. He awoke several times when nightmares broke through his restless slumber.

  The sound of gunshots startled Will awake when they shattered the stillness of the night. He leapt to his feet and grasped his sword. Standing over his bedroll, he saw other men rising and reaching for their weapons, which they kept by their sides each night. From where the horses were staked, Will heard more shouting and gunfire. “The horses! Juan! Deaf! They’re raiding the horses!”

  Will ran toward the picket line where shadows moved and rushed around the panicked animals. Only a few yards away, a shadow melded onto one of the horses and he realized it was a young warrior bounding onto the back of the startled horse. When the warrior spotted Will, he kicked his heels into the horse’s flanks and charged at him, brandishing a sharp spear. As the warrior lunged forward, Will dodged to the left, coming up on the other side of the horse. Will drove forward with his sword, piercing the warrior in the left side of the rib cage. A look of stunned surprise crossed the Comanche’s face as he slipped from the horse, crashing to the ground. Will barely contained his astonishment when the warrior climbed to his feet, grasping his side.

  Will scarcely had time to think, “What the hell! I should have punctured something vital.”

  When the Comanche brought his bloodied fingers away from his wound, he drew a knife from his leather belt and tried circling around Will. Will knew he would never be Inigo Montoya, but between his college fencing days, Travis’ own memories and frequent practice, he confidently interposed himself between the injured warrior and the stampeding horses. Rather than attempting to circle around again, the young Comanche warrior sprang forward, arm outstretched, blade first at Will’s chest. Will parried the short blade, and reposted. The warrior’s shock was complete as he ran himself into the outstretched blade. The knife slid from his fingers and blood bubbled from his lips as the young warrior buckled to the ground, where he quickly bled out.

  Will stepped over the body, rushing toward the horses, where he, Seguin and Smith directed their men to corral all the horses they could find. The night’s raid appeared to be an unmitigated disaster for the Texians, for as the sun arose less than an hour later, they discovered they lost more than thirty of their mounts. For the Comanche’s troubles, Will’s men found the bodies of four warriors. As he and his officers took stock of the situation at dawn, they found three more dead and five wounded among their men. The news grew progressively worse, when Seguin reported two of last night’s watch were also missing.

  Will understood, only too well, the frustration which had plagued the Texian and US armies in the history he had learned, in their fight to pacify the Comanche, for it was now his own. He had ridden into the Comancheria with one hundred thirty riders. Six were dead, five were wounded and only a hundred horses remained. And two of his men were missing. As he looked out across the vast prairie of west central Texas, he felt a sinking realization. He wasn’t going to win this fight. He was outmatched and outnumbered. There was a bitter taste in his mouth as he considered he had led the Texas army to victory against the larger Mexican army using tactics which were not entirely dissimilar to those of the Comanche. Now, as the invader, Will knew defeat, lacking the resources and men to successfully avenge the massacre at Fort Parker. But before he would permit himself to withdraw, he owed it to his men to find the two missing troopers.

  A day later, and twenty miles south from where they lost their horses, Smith’s Rangers found the two men. When they reported back the location, Will led the rest of the command there. Will found both troopers had been stripped and staked atop fire ant mounds. Both had been tortured, their bodies mutilated. One had a bullet hole in his forehead. Will turned to Smith, “Did you find him like this?”

  Smith spit a stream of tobacco juice onto the ant mound and shook his head, “No. Poor bastard was still alive when we came upon him. What those red devils did to him was … ghastly.”

  Will shuddered at the thought. “Did your boys end his misery, Deaf?”

  Smith shook his head, “No. Had to do it myself, damn it. General, I ain’t doing this anymore. When we return to San Antonio, I’m done, all I want to do is get back to my wife and daughters.”

  Taken aback by Smith’s outburst, Will realized Deaf’s frustration was entirely justified. As he played back in his mind the past few weeks, he realized his first mistake was racing north to Fort Parker. Despite thinking he had the resources, circumstances proved otherwise, as a third of the men were riding double, with the loss of their horses. The Comanche never deigned to fight his men on terms remotely equal. The attack against his scouts had potentially crippled his Apache scout and the attack on their horses had effectively ended his campaign.

  Seeing no other option available, he ordered his command to ride to the southwest, toward San Antonio. He stopped his horse as his men filed past and turned, looking at the land of the Comancheria. “I swear, I’ll be back. And when I do, we’ll end, once and for all, these raids on our settlements.”

  ***

  True to his word, Deaf Smith resigned the same day Will’s column limped back to the safety of the Alamo’s ramparts. To replace him, Will brought to the fort the captain commanding the Rangers assigned to patrol the area between the Nueces and the Rio Grande. Matthew Caldwell was thirty-eight years old and had earned a reputation for being decisive and a hard fighter. Before Will could lead the army back into the Comancheria, he needed to stop the raids. He needed someone like Caldwell to lead the Rangers.

  Part of Will was glad the provisional government had relocated eastward to the population center of Harrisburg, on the western bank of the San Jacinto River, around fifty miles north of Galveston. The failure of the campaign to punish
the Comanche was overlooked by the provisional government as they were busy scheduling a plebiscite to adopt the recently completed constitution. When he sent a requisition for more Rangers, he was surprised how quickly Burnet authorized the expense, until he realized the acting president wanted security along the frontier to increase turnout for the vote. Even on the edges of civilization, the provisional government wanted as open and democratic elections as possible.

  Will and Matthew Caldwell sat in his office, with the window open, letting in hot July air. “I’m not going to look a gift horse in the mouth, Matt. If Burnet has loosed the purse strings, then let’s not delay in building up the Rangers.”

  Caldwell joined Will at looking at map of Texas spread over the large desk and said, “With six companies, we can establish a line of forts along the frontier. General, I’d like to set our northern most fort on the West fork of the Trinity River.”

  Will arched his eyebrows, as the location was just over the loosely defined border of the Comancheria. “Do you think thirty Rangers can hold the fort that far away from our population centers?”

  “I ain’t one to underestimate the Comanche. They are fierce warriors. But that fort's going to be full of thirty Rangers, not a few settler families like at Fort Parker. I’ll personally make sure them Comanche don’t see it as low-hanging fruit when we’re done building it.”

  Caldwell also marked a spot on the Brazos river, fifty miles south of the first marker, and again on the Brazos River at the confluence of the Bosque. The fourth marker was on the Lampasas River, about fifty miles northwest of where Will had met Jacob Harrel on the bend of the Colorado River. The fifth mark was drawn on the falls of the Pedernales River. The sixth mark he placed at the Alamo.

  He looked up at Will and said, “With these six forts, we’ll hopefully have warning before the Comanche raid into our eastern settlements. Also, these men can, when we’re ready to clear the Comanche from Texas, form the core of our mounted force, if you want.”

  Will nodded in agreement and took the charcoal marker and added a fort at Laredo and another at the mouth of the Rio Grande. “It will be the responsibility of our infantry and regular cavalry to man these two forts, but let’s not forget when we’re looking at the Comancheria that our back door is the Rio Grande.”

  ***

  7 th July 1836

  To Colonel William B. Travis

  The Alamo, San Antonio, Bexar, Republic of Texas

  Your recent inquiry into our patented revolving pistol has come at a fortuitous time, and I and my investors have set a price of $15 per pistol. We will also sell for $1 each extra cylinder for the pistols. I will consider a license to your government for the manufacture of replacement parts for $2,000 in gold, silver, or US Treasury certificates. I urge you send an experienced gunsmith to our facility in Connecticut where we will provide him the necessary dies for the replacement parts, at cost. As a sign of goodwill between the Patent Arms Manufacturing and your government, I am sending with this letter a matched pair of the Patterson Model Revolving pistol as a gift to you. May you wear the pistols with continued success.

  Your humble servant,

  Samuel Colt

  The letter and package’s transit between Paterson, New Jersey and New Orleans, Louisiana, was fast, arriving in less than three weeks. But it languished in New Orleans several more weeks before one of the Republic of Texas’ small schooners docked in New Orleans for supplies. A week later, the letter and packet arrived in Galveston, and another two weeks passed before a wagon laden with supplies for the army arrived in San Antonio with it.

  Will opened and scanned the letter on the 20th of September, and then gazed lovingly at the blue finished barrels and ivory handles resting in the cherry wood case. He found Lt. Colonel Johnston and they went out to the firing range, located north of the Alamo. Like a giddy child on Christmas morn, eager to play with his new toy, Will charged both pistols’ cylinders with gunpowder and seated the lead balls on top of the powder. Finding a tin of percussion caps in the case he gently squeezed the caps onto the cylinders’ nipples. He handed one of the pistols to Johnston and then, with the other pistol, stepped up to the firing line.

  The target was thirty feet away and Will sighted down the gun, ignoring the lack of sights fixed on the barrel and squeezed the trigger. He smiled at the recoil and unloaded the other four rounds into the target. Johnston finished firing seconds after Will. He handed the gun back to Will, saying, “You can load it on Monday and fire all week, Buck! That was, dare I say it, fun.”

  After setting pistols back into the case, ready to be cleaned, he slapped Johnston on the back as they walked back to the fort. “Just wait until we get these guns into our Rangers hands, Sid. We’ll see about sending a message to the Comanche they won’t soon forget.”

  Chapter 3

  The referendum ratifying the constitution passed by a wide margin, and acting President Burnet, in accordance with the new law, set the presidential election for the 6th of September 1836. Will wasn’t surprised when Sam Houston and Stephen Austin threw their hats in the ring before the referendum. Henry Smith, a Kentucky transplant, who had been in Texas for nearly a decade, announced his candidacy immediately after the results of the referendum were known. David Crockett announced his own candidacy a few days later.

  The presidential election was a few weeks away, when Will took a leave of absence from command of the army in San Antonio, joining Crockett as he campaigned. This was how he found himself in Washington-on-the-Brazos with the Tennessean in mid-August. Despite his keen interest in Crockett’s presidential aspirations, on which he feared his command of the regular army rested, something else also brought Will to Washington. During the early days of the revolution, as a result of his divorce, Travis received custody of his son, Charlie, who was eight years old. Travis’ memories were of scant help to Will regarding the boy, as Travis had arrived in Texas back in 1831 when the boy was only three years old. Travis had spent only a day with the boy since the child’s arrival at the end of 1835, before Will’s mental invasion of Travis. Although it pained him, Will concluded Travis was an indifferent father, at the best of times.

  Travis had left Charlie with a family friend, David Ayres, almost nine months previous. Ayres was a Methodist missionary and ran a school in town. Will knew the right course of action was to visit the boy and ensure his wellbeing, but a large part of him wanted to leave things as they were and pretend Travis’ life before Will was of no consequence. But when he turned the question around, he knew if he were in the same situation as Charlie, it would be a hateful thing to be altogether abandoned by his father.

  When they arrived the previous evening, Will and Crockett made camp on the outskirts of the town. “Riding into town on a Saturday morning, while folks are in town from their farms gives a bigger platform, and you’ll see plenty of folks looking to be entertained by a politician on the stump.” Sometimes Will forgot Crockett was a political animal until the Tennessean glibly reminded him. “Especially if they know they’re going to hear the Lion of the West and the Hero of the Revolution.”

  Will grinned at his friend. Few men could verbally capitalize words as well as the Tennessean. “I look forward to hearing you spin a yarn or two. Once I track down Charlie, we’ll come find you.”

  Crockett grew serious as he reached across his horse, offering his hand, “Good luck with the boy, Buck. I can’t claim to have had the best of relationships with my own boys, so I understand a bit of what you’re feeling. Just look for the largest crowd, that’s where you’ll find me.” Will shook hands with Crockett and nudged his horse down the lane, leading to the Ayres homestead.

  The road which the homestead faced was more path than road, Will thought as he came upon the split-log cabin David Ayres and his family called home. Next to the cabin, was another split-log structure, most likely the school. Across the road, the missionary from Kentucky also operated a small general store. Will thought it likely between running a school and
keeping a store, Ayres made ends meet.

  The oppressive heat of summer left the school empty. Will noticed the door swinging gently in the warm, morning breeze. On the porch of the Ayres log cabin he saw a slight boy sitting on a wooden bench, reading a book. The boy’s shock of red hair immediately reminded Will of his own. He was slight of build, just as Travis had been as a child. As the boy looked up and saw Will sitting on his horse, the look of uncertainty in the boy’s face removed any doubt in Will’s mind he was looking at Charlie, Travis’ son.

  Before this moment, Will had been unable to decide how he would handle this meeting. Travis’ memories were unhelpful, given the man’s emotional distance from his son. The look of uncertainty in the narrow face and sorrowful eyes broke his heart. When he dismounted and tied the reins to a tree branch, the boy set the book down and stood. As Will walked up the path leading to the Ayres’ cabin, the boy took a hesitant step forward, stopping on the edge of the porch. Will’s heart hurt seeing the fear and uncertainly writ large across the child’s face. He stopped a few feet shy of the porch, and Will faced the same uncertainty affecting Travis’ son. This boy wasn’t his own, but by some twist of fate, Will was the only father Charlie would ever know. Whatever choice he made next would define their relationship. He crossed the last few feet separating him from Charlie and pulled the slight boy into an embrace.

  Charlie flung his arms around the man he knew as his father. Will felt his cheek become wet as he felt the boy sobbing into his shoulder. The uncertainty returned, as the boy’s hurt poured out through his sobs. He had no idea how to comfort the child, but he patted the boy’s back and said, “There, there, Charlie. I’m here now, son.”