by Lauran Paine
“Sure would be a good farmin’ country.”
Coke looked around himself in critical appraisal. He knew this land like the back of his hand, but he’d never thought of it as particularly good farm land. He shrugged. “Mebbe. If you could get shed of the Injuns an’ get some water, then maybe a man could farm it.”
Hause lit his pipe and the usually offensive odor didn’t seem so objectionable when it was mixed with the fragrance of the sage. “The Injuns won’t give us trouble much longer. It’s on’y a question of time, with them.” He lowered his head briefly and spat. “But the water’s somethin’ else again.”
Coke would have argued the Indian theory if he hadn’t heard a horse loping up behind them. He turned slightly and saw Abner Larson riding in beside him. Karl Hause smiled affably at the young emigrant, and Larson carefully ignored Coke.
“The boys just come in from out front, Karl. They say there’s a whale of a big bunch of Injuns camped on the prairie out there.”
“On our trail?”
“Yep.”
Hause turned to Coke. “What you make of it?” Coke shrugged indifferently. “Probably a migratin’ band, headin’ for their summer huntin’ grounds.”
Larson’s domineering features were gravely watching Coke. “Yeah, or maybe they’re out after emigrant livestock.”
“I don’t allow so. Injuns out here don’t jump emigrant trains so close to towns. Hell, you’re not more’n twenty-five miles or so from Santa Ynez.”
Larson was smiling unpleasantly. “Well, I allow you oughtta know, livin’ like an Injun most o’ your life.”
Coke tossed a wry smile at Larson and gave him stare for stare. “I reckon you’re right, at that. Anyway, those of us who’ve lived out here know enough to stay in our own country.”
Larson flushed a deep red. “You lookin’ fer trouble?”
Coke shrugged again. “If you aren’t all mouth, clodhopper, go for your gun.”
The words were softly and quickly spoken. Karl Hause didn’t have a chance to interfere. Larson snarled an oath and made a surprisingly smooth and experienced grab for his .44. He was fast, but not quite fast enough. Coke Bright’s hand was jumping and bucking under the recoil of his own Peacemaker. Larson dropped his gun as his horse shied violently. He looked surprised for a fleeting second, then he slid off his mount and tumbled like a sack of wet meal to the prairie.
Chapter Three
Karl Hause looked up, ashen-faced, from the wounded man’s side. “Damn. Ya almost done fer him.” His hand wagged as he looked at the swollen, purplish flesh of Ab Larson’s shoulder, where Bright’s slug had carved a gory passageway. “Trouble. That’s all we’ve had since we left Taos.”
If he was going to say more, he never got the chance. Two things happened almost simultaneously. Fidelity Hause came running from the stopped wagons. She fell at the side of Larson, who was groaning and beginning to push himself into a sitting position. “Ab, are you badly hurt?”
Larson looked dumbly at Fidelity and amazement more than anything else shone on his face. He didn’t answer. Coke wanted to be swallowed up by the hard earth at his feet as Fidelity swung slowly around, splotches of angry red on her creamy cheeks. “You killer. You aren’t fit to associate with decent people.”
She came up to her feet and her violet eyes were shades deeper than their natural color. “You know what I hinted at last night, and, if you’d been smart, you’d’ve left then.”
Coke stood transfixed. In her fury she was even more stunning than before.
Karl Hause was looking doubtfully at Coke as his daughter’s tongue twisted under the impetus of her anger. “Those posse men that rode through Santa Ynez spoke of you. They were hunting you, probably for some murder or robbery.” Coke opened his mouth and Fidelity leaned forward and fired her final salvo as Larson got painfully to his feet and pointed off toward the west, drawing Karl Hause’s attention. “I heard those men say your name. They said ‘Bright’s a killer, ’ I heard that, and now I believe it.” She spun on her heel and walked away.
“There’re your migratin’ Injuns.”
Coke yanked himself back with an effort and turned toward Larson, who, white-faced and venomous-eyed, was pointing with his good arm off toward a dust cloud. As Coke squinted into the distance, Hause threw an arm around Larson’s shoulders and helped him toward the Hause wagon. Coke was left standing alone, watching the oncoming horde. He felt unsure and discouraged. Fidelity hated him. That she was mixed up, some way or another, didn’t matter; that she hated him with all the animosity of her being was all that mattered. And, too, the Indians that he had so confidently guessed as migrating hunters, were a war party.
And, of course, there was the shooting. That Larson had gone for his gun first didn’t seem to matter to the emigrants. He had been shot, and that alone counted. Coke leaned back against one of the massive wagon wheels and watched the Indians stop out of rifle range and study the wagon train. He was bitter and angry and didn’t hear the man come up beside him until he spoke. “That means trouble.”
Coke turned indifferently and surveyed the shriveled old man beside him. He was leaning on a long, delicate-looking rifle of ancient vintage. Coke nodded brusquely and looked back to where the Indians were talking among themselves. The old man’s eyes were squinting against the off-center sun.
“ ’Paches.”
Coke took another look. The old fellow was dressed like the other emigrants. A faded butternut shirt, heavy clodhopper boots, woolen pants, and a lowtopped, flat-brimmed hat. But there was something else, too, and it gave an incongruous touch to the otherwise drab individual at his side. A heavy-handled Kiowa-Apache scalping knife in a beaded scabbard hung from the sweat-stained belt at the oldster’s waist. That wasn’t emigrant equipment. Coke’s eyes ambled back up to the man’s face, and a dawning curiosity forced its way past his troubles. “Who’re you?”
The narrow shoulders rose and fell eloquently and the squinted, faded old eyes swung slowly away from the Indians. “What difference does that make?”
Coke shrugged slightly and a hard grin flickered over his face. “None, I reckon,” he answered, “none at all.”
“Then I don’t mind tellin’ you. I’m Gus Hause.” Coke started to say something but the old man read the question before it was out and nodded his grizzled head. “Yeah. I’m Fidelity’s grandfather.” He shucked a thumb over his shoulder toward the battered Conestoga behind the Karl Hause wagon. “That there’s my rig.” His old eyes went back to the hesitating Indians. “I been on the frontier before, in your daddy’s day. I’ve seen those varmints before, too. Trouble, lad, trouble.” He looked back at Coke. “Listen, lad. I’ve seen somethin’ that Karl and Fidelity hain’t seen. Take my advice an’ kill him next time.” He nodded slightly. “There’ll be a next time, too, or I don’t know Ab Larson.” The old eyes were coldly critical as they swept over Coke. “She could do worse, at that, but she won’t do nothin’ ’less you open her eyes for her.”
“What’re you talkin’ about, anyway?”
“You hain’t that dumb, cowboy. Fidelity, that’s who I’m talkin’ about. Think I hain’t been watchin’ you today? You’re sweet on her. All right, then, do som’thin’ about it, don’t jest stand aroun’ every time she lights into you. Dammit, boy, give her what fer.”
Coke didn’t have a chance to answer. He heard the rumble of horses and looked back. The Apaches were coming in. There were at least eighty fighting bucks in the coup party. Short, stocky men with the primitive hatred of their race ingrained in their features for the transgressors before them.
Coke swung into his saddle and looked down at the old man. “Tell ’em to corral their wagons an’ put their stock inside, if they can get it all in.” He was gone as the old man nodded in that queer, offhand way he had. The emigrants were wringing their hands as Coke reined up beside Karl Hause’s wagon. Hause and Fidelity were sitting, ashen-faced, on the high seat.
Coke felt irritation at their
inactivity. “You do a helluva lot of good sittin’ up there like stuffed pigeons.” A little ocular resentment showed but not enough. “Get your wagons into a circle an’ bring your fightin’ men out.” He looked straight at Fidelity. “If you got any fightin’ men.”
Her cheeks showed a splash of crimson. “We have ’em, Mister Bright. Not killers, just honest American fightin’ men.”
Coke smiled thinly. He had aroused the spirit he needed in the emigrants if they were going to make a fight of it. He nodded approvingly. “Then get ’em out here with their guns.”
Karl Hause came out of his reverie with a start. The Apaches were riding in a large circle around the wagons. The noise of their cries, wild and blood-curdling, was mixed with the frantic profanity of the emigrants circling their wagons into a small, tight little oval.
Hause grabbed his rifle from the wagon and leaped into the confusion, bellowing orders in a loud, deep voice that arose above the reigning pandemonium. “Women an’ chil’run stay on the floor o’ the wagons. Some o’ you serve as loaders. Emil, break out that cask o’ powder an’ ladle it aroun’. Boys, stay behind som’thin’. Them heathen’ll get you sure iffen you’re in sight. Take your time, boys, an’ make every shot count.”
Coke turned his horse loose inside the circle with the other snorting, frightened animals and dumped his riding gear unceremoniously inside Karl Hause’s wagon, almost hitting Abner Larson with his saddle as he threw it over the high end gate. For a second their eyes met and Larson’s held a crafty, ruthless smile. He didn’t say a thing as Fidelity bandaged his swelling shoulder and he didn’t have to. Coke understood Larson would kill him yet, if he could, but now he wouldn’t try it with fists or guns. He’d use stealth the next time.
The Indian attack was launched with wild, uncoordinated fury. The emigrants were white-faced and determined. There was an acrid odor of gunpowder in the clear, warm air and the defiant bellow of rifles and pistols created and sustained a clamor over which rode the screams of the Apaches, coming down the still air to the grim, embattled pioneers. Coke watched the battle with a feeling of impersonal detachment. He noted Fidelity’s grandfather and father fighting side-by-side from beneath the younger man’s wagon. Nothing was said as they loaded and fired with fair accuracy. He noticed two bronco bucks on the prairie beside their horses, hunkering in the grass. The Apaches were trying to kindle a fire but finally gave it up, remounted and joined their hard-riding tribesmen in the siege circle that was being maintained around the wagons. Having no rifle, Coke Bright fired infrequently. He seldom saw an Indian close enough to warrant a pistol shot.
The emigrants were giving an unusually good account of themselves. Apache warriors and horses lay in sprawled, deathly disarray, beyond the wagon circle. Coke saw an emigrant fall stiffly forward. He ran to the man, flopped him over, noted the ragged hole in his head, scooped up the rifle, and leaped into the man’s vacated firing spot. He had fired and was reloading when a long, whitish sliver of wood grooved its way out of the wagon box a foot from his head. Startled, Coke ducked unconsciously and finished reloading on one knee. His charge rammed securely home, he straightened up, saw a fast-moving target, leaned forward a little to rest his rifle on a wagon wheel, and tracked the Apache over his sights. His finger was tightening on the trigger when something like a red-hot iron entered his body just above the hump of his left shoulder and ran down the full length of his left arm. The suddenness of the pain and the stunning shock of the blow knocked him a little off balance. He dropped the rifle and went down to both knees, holding the numb arm and dumbly watching the spread of scarlet through his buckskin shirt and where it dripped alarmingly from below his cuff.
Chapter Four
A sickening sensation went through Coke as he forced his attention away from the shattered arm. The smell of gunpowder, the yells of the emigrants, the angry cries of the attacking Apaches and the deafening thunder of gunfire swooped in around him where he knelt. Suddenly a leaden ball smashed savagely into the edge of the massive old wagon tire above him. He realized his peril, at the same time that it suddenly dawned on him that the shots were aimed at him directly, and were not errant slugs coming out of the maelstrom of the battle.
Rolling quickly sideways so as to achieve more protection from the marksman by gaining more shelter from the vast hulk of the old wagon next to him, Coke’s right hand flashed in a blurring movement and came up with his holstered six-gun. Steely hard, narrowed eyes searched the reigning pandemonium for his adversary. Deliberately he studied the milling emigrants, the closest Apaches, and the defending riflemen. Slowly his eyes, casually, almost indifferently, flicked over the wagons themselves and he saw it. He looked twice to be sure but there was no mistaking it. A small opening in the back of the younger Hause’s wagon showed the single, malevolent eye of a rifle barrel. It wasn’t pointed at the Apaches beyond the wagons at all; its ugly snout was pointing across the wagon circle and downward, toward where Coke lay.
He hesitated for the briefest part of a long second. The thought flashed across his mind that Fidelity and her mother were in there. He knew who was shooting at him. Abner Larson. But still, if he fired back, there was a good chance that he might hit one of the women. Other thoughts chased themselves through his mind but he shoved them abruptly aside, figured Larson’s position, and squeezed his trigger. Just before his own gun went off, the rifle jerked spasmodically, wildly, and fell out of the wagon. Coke was mildly surprised as he pushed himself to his feet and, dodging among the snorting, wild-eyed stock, made his way in a wobbly, erratic run, toward the wagon.
The high poop of the wagon was almost too much. He was trying to climb up the wheel spokes, still holding his gun, blood-soaked and slippery with the gushing elixir of his body, when Fidelity’s horrified, wide-eyed face came out of the canvas.
In a flash she was beside him, ashen-faced. “Sit down. Please don’t try to climb up there.”
She was pushing hard against his shoulder and he sagged back to the ground, an odd feeling of light-headed sweetness sweeping through him. He didn’t say anything as he sat down and leaned back against the wagon wheel. Fidelity pulled the shirt, soggy and red, off his upper body and, trembling and on the verge of actual illness, made a crude but effective tourniquet of his belt. The blood slowed and began to thicken, turning a thick, gelatinous maroon color.
Coke saw the girl clamber quickly back into the wagon and a sense of abiding appreciation settled over him as he watched the supple grace of her movements. He looked dizzily around as the sound of firing lessened. In the slowly gyrating, fuzzy perspective that had become his eyesight, a heavily beaded knife sheath dangled before him. It was an Indian sheath, and, while he felt dimly that he’d seen it somewhere before, he coupled its sudden appearance with the lessening of the gunfire and vaguely had a notion that the Apaches had breached the wagon circle. Shaking his head ponderously, he reached behind him with his good arm and tried to push himself up. The beaded sheath came closer and a strong, firm hand pushed him back down. He felt petulantly annoyed that the Indian wouldn’t let him get up. No man wanted to die sitting down. The pushing, insistent hand became a huge, heavy weight and it pushed harder and harder until Coke Bright fell beneath it and slid off the side of something into a huge bottomless pit of Stygian darkness.
There were murmuring voices and the smell of wood fires and food coming into the high wagon when Coke opened his eyes. Gradually things came into focus. The high, sagging canvas of the wagon covering, gray and spotted, was overhead, the arched ribs, rubbed smooth and shiny from handling, were evenly spaced around him. He looked down at himself. He was beneath a mass of none too clean quilts and his arm was a formidable swath of pink-tinted bandages, then his eyes, stronger, swung to his left and stopped. Fidelity Hause, her deep violet eyes somber and thoughtful, was watching him. He tried to smile apologetically and a look of quick reserve replaced the frank look of worry on her face.
“Are you feverish?” He wagged his head weakly
, suddenly remembering that he had shot her fiancé and wondering if she knew it. “I brought in some steak, just in case you’re hungry.” His eyes wandered from the thick crockery platter with the steaming meat to her white, capable hands, up her arms to the breadth and sturdiness of her bosom, beyond to the square, rounded shoulders and the handsome face beneath its canopy of taffy hair.
He smiled at the protruding, generous mouth and wide eyes. “Thanks, but I’m not hungry. What happened? I saw an Injun once, then I don’t remember any more.”
“It wasn’t an Injun. It was Gran’pa’s beaded knife sheath you saw. He helped me patch you up and put you in here. The Apaches left. They lost too many bucks, Dad says, an’ couldn’t breach the wagons, so they left.” Her eyes fell to her hands before the un-blinking admiration that shone in his glance. She started to get up.
“No. Please sit here a minute.” She relaxed again and looked gravely at him. He was going to ask about Larson, they both knew it, but each had a different dread of the topic. “Larson?”
“He was killed.”
Coke’s heart leaped a little. Her answer hadn’t shown any great sorrow, only a sort of dull acknowledgement. “What happened?”
“He was shot.” Suddenly her eyes, tortured and sad, swung up and met his steady stare. “Coke, do you know who shot you?”
He nodded slightly. She must have it all. He didn’t trust himself to answer and for the first time, since he had seen her there beside him, his eyes faltered. It was a distasteful subject and he felt distinctly guilty.
“I know, too.” The words were slowly, clearly spoken and he looked at her again, surprised.
“Well,” he was confused and wanted to soften her anguish. “I’m still around, so let’s forget it.”
“No, I also know something else. Do you remember when I said Westerners wore their guns so that they could rob emigrants?”
