by Tim Washburn
“What exactly are we talkin’ about here? What we been doin’ all along?”
“More.”
“You talkin’ about gettin’ married?”
“Eventually. We still have a little time.”
“Time for what? I understand you gotta wait—”
She silenced him by placing her finger on his lips. She leaned up on her elbow and looked at him. “You asked me a question and you didn’t let me answer.”
“Which question? About time?”
“Yes. We have a couple of months before I start showing.”
“Showing? Showing wha—oh hell, you’re pregnant.”
“I am.”
“Hellfire, why didn’t you tell me?”
“I just did.”
Leander rolled over on his side so he could see her face. “I ain’t tryin’ to make you mad—”
“It’s yours, Leander. I hadn’t slept with Amos in a long time.”
“Huh. Okay. Well. When’s it comin’?”
Rachel laughed. “Not today. You can relax. My best guess is probably June.”
Leander rolled onto his back and looked at the sky. “June, huh?”
Rachel hiked a leg over his and pulled herself on top of him again. “Could be July.”
It was late afternoon before they dressed and rolled up the blanket. Leander rocked his head from side to side, trying to stretch out the kinks. When he dipped his head to the right, he froze. “How long does it take you to ride home?”
Rachel could tell from his tone that something was wrong. She looked around quickly, thinking someone might be approaching, and didn’t see anything. “I don’t know. Why?”
“Look.”
She turned, followed his outstretched arm with her eyes, and just about peed her pants. A massive, nasty-looking thunderstorm that stretched so high overhead the top was obscured was lurking just to the west. “Which way is it moving?”
“Don’t know. Come back to my room until it blows over.”
She put her foot in the stirrup and threw her leg over. “Can’t. My children are home alone.”
“Surely they’ll go to one of the other houses.”
“Maybe, but what if they don’t? I’ll talk to you in a couple of days.”
“C’mon, Rachel. That thing’s throwing out lightning like crazy.”
Rachel didn’t wait to answer. She buried her spurs into her horse’s ribs and he shot forward like a scalded cat. Anywhere else a thunderstorm like that wouldn’t cause more than casual alarm.
But not here.
Here it could mean life or death. Home to some of the most violent weather on earth, a thunderstorm like that, here, could spin out a twister a mile wide that would suck up and destroy everything in its path. Rachel had seen it happen when she was a kid and you had to see it only once in a lifetime to know it was hell unleashed on earth. Rachel loosened the reins and let the horse run. She might kill the horse getting home, but she could always get another horse.
She was a mile from their rendezvous place when the skies opened up. It felt like someone had dumped a bucket of water over her head except the bucket was bottomless. She wiped her eyes once and then again, and then gave up. Her hat blew off and she hunched her shoulders in an attempt to keep the water from running down her back, but it was pointless. Lightning struck like bullets and the explosions of thunder reverberated through her body. A shaft of lightning hit a tree twenty yards to her left and the flash was so intense it was like being smashed in the face by a two-by-four. The booming thunder was instantaneous, and it sounded like a hundred cannons being discharged at once and the ground shook as if impacted by a rock the size of a house.
Unable to see, Rachel was forced to slow the horse to determine where she was, but the rain was too intense to take note of any landmarks. She spurred the horse back into a gallop, knowing she was going have to rely on him to get her home and she was praying the horse could see enough to know where he was going.
She turned her head to the side, listening intently for a roaring noise but couldn’t hear much beyond the rain and thunder. The last time she’d seen a tornado, Rachel didn’t have a point of reference to describe what it sounded like until she saw her first train roaring down the tracks. And that’s exactly what it sounded like. Rachel’s most immediate fear now was hail. She’d seen hailstones the size of cannonballs and if she got caught out in it, the stones would beat her and the horse to death. Her horse stumbled, fought for grip, and then started running again. Thinking that was almost a disaster, she pulled on the reins to slow him from a gallop to a canter.
Rachel knew that a twister in November was rare, but around here one could pop up any time of the year and as hot as it had been today, she knew she’d been foolish not to have kept an eye on the sky.
Pea-size hail began to pepper her, stinging her exposed skin. If it didn’t get any larger, she thought she might be okay. But there were never any guarantees when it came to a thunderstorm as large as the one overhead. The rain tapered off a tad and Rachel glanced back over her shoulder to see an ominous-looking protuberance hanging from the bottom of a dark, rotating cloud and she knew if a twister was coming it would form there. The hail stopped and the rain lightened up some more and then the wind began howling as the immense thunderstorm sucked in an enormous amount of air, the inflows adding fuel to its violence. Turning back to the front she caught a glimpse of the outline of her parents’ house in the gathering gloom.
Suddenly, hail the size of her fists rained down and it felt like she was being pummeled by a thousand hammers. She was in real danger now and she spurred her horse into an all-out run. The large hail stopped as suddenly as it had started, and Rachel sighed with relief. But with the hail gone so was the racket it produced, and that’s when she heard the roar of a train and knew there weren’t any railroad tracks within three hundred miles of the ranch. Stealing a glance over her shoulder, she saw the monster of her nightmares.
The horse was snorting and huffing as if he knew it was run or die. Reining her horse to the right to adjust her course, she was now three hundred yards from home and had no clue if she was going to make it or not. She ticked off a list of needed actions in her mind, knowing full well that the only way to survive a twister of that magnitude was to get underground and that meant the root cellar under her parents’ house.
But she had to check her house first.
She flew by her parents’ place, the horse lunging and stretching for every ounce of speed. When she came abreast of her own home, she pulled on the reins and squeezed her thighs and the horse locked his back legs and squatted almost to the ground. Rachel jumped off and raced for the front door as the horse stood and took off, running for his life.
Rachel yanked the door open and rushed inside, hoping her children had already taken cover. But she found them huddled together in the front room, terror etched on their faces. “C’mon, c’mon, c’mon,” she muttered as she grabbed for hands, pulling them to their feet. The roar of the approaching twister was deafening, and she had to shout to be heard. “We’ve got to run to the cellar, okay?”
Three terrified faces looked back at her and then all three nodded. “Don’t look. Just run. Go!”
Rachel let the kids run ahead in case one tripped and needed help getting up. They flew out of the house as if it was burning down around them. Ranch hands were pouring out of the bunkhouse and racing toward the cellar and she spotted her mother running for the underground bunker and she ducked inside and reappeared a moment later, waving her hands to urge the children on. And despite what she’d told the children, Rachel looked. The monster twister was at least a half-mile wide and was churning straight toward them, plucking smaller trees out by the roots and shearing off the tops of others, creating a vortex of dirt and debris. And the roar didn’t sound like a train now—it sounded like a thousand trains. Rachel thought she had less than thirty seconds to get to the cellar and get inside. She turned and ran.
The winds we
re whipping and swirling, and the temperature had dropped twenty degrees as the air high up in the storm was pulled toward the surface. She saw Julia and Jacob disappear down the stairs, followed closely by Seth. Racing up to the cellar doors, Rachel was only a foot from her mother and still had to shout when she said, “Is everyone inside?”
Frances nodded and Rachel urged her mother down the stairs then ran down three steps and reached for the doors as the barn exploded in the distance. With the wind it was impossible to get the doors closed and she shouted into the dark interior for help. Eli came running, charged up the steps, and he and Rachel finally got the doors closed. He slipped a board into the two handles to keep the door from being sucked open and they hurried down the stairs.
With a dirt floor, the cellar was dank and steamy, and they sat, huddled together in the gloomy darkness. Conversation was impossible so all they could do was listen. And what they heard was otherworldly and hellish. The cellar doors began to vibrate and a few seconds later they started bucking and jerking and Rachel was afraid they weren’t going to hold. If they blew off, they were dead and everyone in the cellar knew it.
After fifteen minutes of sheer terror, the cellar grew quiet and Rachel heard the heavy, frightened breaths of her family and the ranch hands. She stood and felt her way to the stairs. With her hand sliding along the wall, she ascended to the doors, pulled out the board, and pushed the doors open. Sunlight flooded the basement and Rachel didn’t know if she could bear to go any farther. She willed her feet to move and she walked up the next step and then the next and her head cleared the opening and she looked around and sagged to her knees.
“That bad?” Eli asked as he stepped past.
Rachel stood and walked outside as the others began spilling out. Some sobbed, and some were too stunned to do anything but stare. Not a single structure was left standing. They had all been flattened and it looked like someone had detonated a thousand cases of dynamite. It was impossible to determine where each house had stood and the horses that had been in the corral were all dead, some flung hundreds of feet away.
Rachel turned in a slow circle and saw the massive monster plowing up the fields to the east. The utter devastation she saw was astonishing. That Mother Nature could create such an ugly, unruly monster was almost beyond comprehension.
“We certainly aren’t accomplishing anything standing here,” Eli said. “I suggest we start gathering up anything that is undamaged, if such a thing exists. And let’s stack any usable lumber into a pile.”
It took several moments for everyone to overcome their disbelief then they fanned out, searching for the things that would allow them to rebuild their lives.
CHAPTER 64
Percy had spent two days at Fort Sill, trying to gather information about Emma’s abduction and stoking the fire he’d lit under the Indian agent’s ass. The agent was now fully aware of the situation and what Percy’s expectations were. And he’d had some success persuading the agent to buy some cattle. Not the two thousand head he was hoping to sell but he had agreed to buy a thousand steers, payable upon delivery. Percy was hoping they could round the steers up and get them started toward Fort Sill by the end of the week. Having accomplished that, he was now back in the saddle with hopes of making it home before dark.
One of the Indians he had visited with, through the use of an interpreter, was the same one his father had talked to, the Kiowa chief Kicking Bird. He had gotten much of the same information his father had, but he did learn something that amused him and that was the fact that the Indians had a name for him—Little Heap Big Guns. He assumed his father had been Heap Big Guns, but he hadn’t asked.
Davidson had promised to send a runner Percy’s way as soon as the army’s plans firmed up. Percy wasn’t expecting any news until spring at the earliest and he was going to have to tell Abby the bad news. He had also talked to several other Indians, again through an interpreter, to get an idea of what Emma might be experiencing during captivity. Some of it he would share with Abby and some he had no intention of sharing with anyone. But the overwhelming opinion had been that Emma would be assimilated into the tribe. And that’s where things got a little sticky. As a young woman she would be expected to perform certain duties that her mother would find reprehensible. Percy didn’t like it, either, but there wasn’t much he could do about it. Anger wasn’t going to help him find Emma any sooner.
The more he pondered Emma’s probable mistreatment, the more he wanted to mount another search. If the weather held and they could get the cattle delivered, maybe he and Wilcox, along with a couple of Indian scouts, could ride out for another look. And if they took along extra horses, they would be able to cover a lot of ground in a hurry. There was both good and bad in leaving the wagon behind. It would allow them to travel faster and more covertly, but they’d also be without any real firepower. Percy wasn’t really concerned about his own safety, but the original idea had been to use the war wagon as an overwhelming force to bend the Indians to their will. Without it, they wouldn’t have much left to persuade the Indians that it was in their best interest to turn Emma over. Although the situation deserved further study, Percy knew the best bet was teaming up with the army. However, if Abby insisted on another search in the interim, he didn’t know if he had the heart to say no.
By late afternoon, Percy was nearing the Red River and he was busy thinking of the things that needed to get done. Having struck out on finding a teacher, he was going to pass that task on to Eli. They had to get the steers rounded up and he figured that might be a three- or four-day job to find them all. The war wagon needed to be retrieved from the blacksmith’s shop over in Wichita Falls and it also needed to be restocked with supplies. The ranch financials required a deeper dig to see if there were any savings to be had. And then he remembered that Thanksgiving was this week and that screwed up his hastily cobbled-together schedule.
He rode down into the river bottom and stopped to allow his horse a chance to drink. Once she had drunk her fill, he spurred the mare and she splashed across the ankle-deep water and he steered her up the bank. Trees lined both sides of the river and when he broke into the clear he reined the horse to a stop. He looked around to see if he’d crossed at the wrong spot, but he recognized several familiar landmarks so that wasn’t it. Then he rubbed his eyes and looked again with the same result. He clucked his tongue to put the horse in motion and when he rode up a small rise his throat tightened, and a surge of nausea hit him like a cattle stampede.
The ground was littered with debris for as far as the eye could see, and where the five houses once stood was now an empty spot on the horizon. The pungent odor of rotten meat filled his nostrils, and he looked for the source and found it when he saw a pile of dead horses.
Out of habit he rode over to where the barn used to be and climbed down from his horse. Everyone was out picking stuff up and Percy couldn’t take his eyes off the devastation as he walked out to his brother, who was pulling nails out of boards.
Eli looked up at his approach and said, “Welcome home, Percy.”
“What the hell happened?” Percy asked. “Somebody come along and blow up every damn thing we had?”
“In a manner of speaking, if you want to include Mother Nature as one of your somebodies.”
“Goddamn it, Eli. I don’t have the stomach for one of your riddles right now.”
“A tornado.”
Percy turned his head and saw the enormously wide path the twister took when it left. “Jesus Christ.”
“You are a tad late to be invoking the grace of God.”
Percy shot Eli an angry glare. “Damn it, Eli, put a sock in it. Is everyone okay?”
“Okay? No,” Eli said. “However, everyone who was alive prior to the storm remains alive today.”
“When did it happen?”
“Late in the afternoon, yesterday.”
Surveying the damage again, Percy saw the twisted hunk of steel that was once a Gatling gun that had been mounted i
n the main house and he mentally restructured his to-do list, moving the retrieval of the war wagon to the very top. Overwhelmed by the sight of it all, he turned back to Eli and said, “What the hell are we going to do?”
“The only thing we can do—start over.”
Nine months later
CHAPTER 65
September 1874
Spring had been unseasonably wet and most of the rivers and creeks in the area had flooded and that, along with the devastation caused by the twister, had quashed any attempts to mount a new search for Emma. It had taken Percy two months to put together a deal for thirty wagonloads of lumber out of Dallas and when it finally arrived the incessant rain put them farther behind schedule. But when Percy, Isaac, and Luis had ridden away from the ranch at the end of August, progress on rebuilding was well under way. Eli was in charge of reconstruction and he’d hired several men from Wichita Falls and they were ripping and roaring. Even Leander Hays was busy working after being welcomed into the family when he had wed Rachel a few months before the couple welcomed their daughter, Autumn, into the world at the end of June. To cover the costs, Percy had convinced the Indian agents for both the Choctaws and Chickasaws to buy a thousand head of cattle each and that had put the ranch in better financial shape.
Indian raids on white settlements had continued through the spring and early summer months of 1874, but it took an Indian attack led by Quanah Parker against a group of buffalo hunters at a place called Adobe Walls out in the Texas Panhandle to spur the army into action. And that action came swiftly.
Following the plan that Davidson had detailed to Percy late last year, three thousand soldiers were quickly assembled and issued orders to disperse to five strategically located forts and the plan was to march five columns of troopers from five different directions to squeeze the Indians until they were all annihilated or surrendered. To aid the army, every Indian agency in the Territory quickly registered every peaceful Indian and confined them to their reservations, leaving the remaining Indians out on the plains as fair game.
