by Carl Dane
I just missed whoever had been downstairs in the bar. They’d ransacked the place looking for cash, apparently, but finding none settled for bottles of liquor, judging by the fact that two were dropped by the window, one of them smashed. The window itself had been torn out of its casing and lay on the boardwalk. I climbed through the opening.
The bullet buzzed by me and tore my hat off. I know it sounds like a made-up plot device in one of those dime novels but having a hat shot off does happen; I’d seen it many times in battle.
I had a choice of diving back through the window or seeking cover in the street. Going back through the window would take too long and leave me exposed, and in any event it would be bad for my image. So I ducked behind a fire-barrel full of water and hoped that the barrier was between me and where I reckoned the shooter to be.
A shot struck the barrel and blew out the staves in the back, soaking me. The bullet was deflected and missed me and probably wasn’t traveling very fast after hitting the water, which absorbs a lot of energy, but my cover was literally draining away by the second and I had no choice but to rise up and take a shot.
They wore buckskins and leggings. They were Comanches on horseback, about a hundred feet away. They carried what looked like Sharps rifles, both pointed directly at me, a view that from my perspective made the Sharps look more like 24-pounder Howitzers. I fired all my rounds in their general direction as rapidly as I could and ran to the cover of an alley to hunker down and reload.
The Comanches hadn’t expected my wild six-shot volley and they hesitated for a fraction of a second. I’d missed them all but hit a horse; it tumbled instantly, throwing its rider, and panicked the other two animals. In the few seconds it took for the mounts and riders to regain their equilibrium I’d reloaded and I sent off a careful shot around the corner. It caught the brave who’d been thrown to the ground square in the center of his forehead.
One thing you learn in combat is to not waste time admiring your work. I immediately shot again and winged one of the riders and ducked back behind the building, but not before I saw what looked to be half a dozen more buckskin-clad riders pour into the street behind them.
The hail of bullets actually chewed through the wood like a horde of giant, industrious termites. I could see sunlight slanting through the corner of the building.
It was time for a strategic retreat. Whether the locals would get out their guns and fight back was a question I couldn’t answer because in the few days I’d been here I’d spent too much time playing detective and not enough organizing a vigilance group, or even the skeleton of a posse. So the fact that I was cornered was nobody’s fault but my own. I knew that Carmody would come to my aid but I’d never set up any mechanism or signal to reach him. He’d taken a room at the hotel, which was past the knot of Comanches, so scuttling over there was temporarily out of the question.
The running gun battle had probably taken no more than two minutes. I’d have to find a place to make a stand and reconnoiter somehow with Carmody when he made his appearance.
When I heard the unique belching boom of his shotgun I knew he’d saved me the trouble. I couldn’t place the source of the gunfire, and neither could the Comanches. They didn’t panic, exactly – Comanches aren’t known for wilting under fire – but they spun the mounts around looking to return fire but couldn’t find the shooter. They bolted in different directions, so as not to make themselves a concentrated target, but not before two of them fell.
It was my turn to go on offense. Figuring I now had some covering fire, I ran back into the street and fired three rounds, aiming carefully this time. I hit one Comanche square in the chest, but missed the next shots.
It was then that I saw Carmody. He was armed with a shotgun and a rifle, and by now had slung the scattergun over his shoulder and was preparing for some precision work. The man is apparently part squirrel because he certainly loves to climb things; he was atop the livery, the highest point in town because it has a hayloft, and he could rain down riflefire at will and step back and be covered by the overhang when they returned fire. But from my location, he was in back of them, and we had them in a perfect crossfire: I could shoot without fear of hitting Carmody, and as he was shooting down none of his rounds could strike me unless there was some sort of a crazy ricochet.
And then the Comanches evaporated. On some signal I could not detect they slung their dead and wounded over their mounts, massed together, and thundered down a side-street. I ran to the corner and saw them already disappearing over the closest hill. I could see about a dozen of them. Some wore colorful headdress, some not. Bodies of killed and wounded were slung on some of the horses. As I peered through the dust at the vanishing group of horsemen I noted that they all shared the same broad build except for one. It looked like a very young brave; almost a child. But at that distance I couldn’t tell.
My horse was at the livery, and I assume Carmody’s was, too. We could elect to follow the raiders but by the time we were saddled up they’d have a substantial lead and at that moment I couldn’t imagine what we’d do if we actually caught them. Carmody could read my mind. He shook his head, I shook mine in reply, and holstered my sidearm. He slid down the peak of the roof on his backside and when he reached the eaves he handed me his rifle and I helped him down to the street.
I was going to suggest we check to see what, exactly, the raiders had done, but he cut me off, not, apparently, in the mood for chit-chat. It occurred to me his head was probably hurting as much as mine.
“It don’t add up,” he said, without preamble.
“What?”
“Why was they here?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “I was upstairs at the Silver Spoon with…well, anyway, I was upstairs and when I came down I heard a shot. I came down and the place was ransacked. Some liquor was apparently taken.”
“Bullshit.” It came out bull-sheeit. “Never heard of no Comanches burglarizing a bar. Stealing horses, maybe, but nobody touched the livery doors. They go after weapons, but I’ll bet the jail and the provisions store are untouched. And sometimes they just feel like having a massacre for the fun of it, but that’s a simple matter of kicking in doors and killing people, none of which happened or we would have heard something sooner.”
“What, then?”
“You was set up, that’s ‘what.’ Somebody told them you were upstairs and they made some commotion to lure you out the front and they figured on taking some easy target practice. Shee-it, I know you’re a professor and all but sometimes you are just too fucking dumb to fog a mirror.”
I let it pass, as I did with a lot of his guff lately.
“So you think whoever got those Comanches to come looking for me is part of the same conspiracy. Whoever shot Billy Gannon, the thugs who tried to shut down the Silver Spoon, the Durans, our dead guy we just buried, the Apaches, and now the Comanches?”
Carmody shook his head. “I think the Apaches wanted to kill both of us just for fun. The rest of them, yes. Somebody’s pulling all their strings, and whoever’s doing that pulling is getting mighty frustrated. They keep upping the ante every hand.”
“If we can find who tipped them off that would give us something to go on. Who knew that I’d be in Elmira’s room?” I thought for a second. “Except Elmira.”
“You have a deeply suspicious mind,” Carmody said. “For Christ’s sake, practically the whole town was in and out of the Spoon last night watching you stalk her like a cougar. Don’t have to be no Pinkerton to figure out where you two was going to wind up.”
“I didn’t ‘stalk’ her, and in fact I recall that circumstances were just the opposite – ”
“By midnight you couldn’t recall your own name,” Carmody said. “
“I’m going to question her anyway.”
“Here’s your chance,” Carmody said. Elmira was running toward us. Something was way off-kilter. There was stark terror in her eyes. Strange, I thought. The danger
was over, unless I missed something.
“Marshal,” she said, our first-name basis apparently a thing of the past.
“Cassie. My daughter. She’s gone. They took her.”
Chapter 18
To tell you the truth, my initial reaction was to worry for the safety of the Comanches, but Elmira’s anguish was compelling and it had now fallen on me to do something. Cassie was missing from her room, which Elmira told me was two doors down the hall from hers, and the room showed signs of a struggle.
“We’ll go after her,” I said.
I was going to reassure Elmira as to how it wouldn’t be a fair fight, Carmody and me against only a dozen or so of them, but I was too hung over to be cocky and I faced a real dilemma in terms of what to do next. I could use ten men. Twenty would be better. But the local druggists and merchants probably would not be of much use. You never know, as the mildest-looking men sometimes had superior war records, but there was no time to figure that out. I suppose I could try to recruit a posse from the drifters who were in and out the saloons, but even if I could find them and wake them up, I had no way of telling who were the good guys and who were part of the growing contingent who wanted me dead.
The reality was that the Comanches had a young girl, who, despite the fact that she was a homicidal maniac, did not deserve the fate that could be in store for her. I say “could be” because it’s a crap-shoot. I’ve heard of young people taken by Indians who were treated humanely and actually absorbed into the culture. But some were raped and tortured and killed.
I held out hope that Cassie was taken for a specific reason, as a bargaining chip, and therefore would not be killed. But it was up to Carmody and me. Assuming we could catch the Comanches – not a given because they tended to be expert horsemen –there still remained the problem of what we would do when we caught them.
Our only option was to track them from a distance and sneak up when they made camp. And then think of something pretty damn clever.
Carmody had no trouble picking up their tracks and we kept a steady pace for about an hour. They were not moving quickly, Carmody said, judging from the length of the horses’ strides. We could probably overtake them, but the country here was fairly open, meaning that it would be impossible to sneak up in broad daylight.
Carmody’s eyes remained glued on the tracks and he was unshakeable at following them. I could mostly follow the tracks, too, but not always. There were a couple spots where the prints and disturbed vegetation led to the edge of a stream but we were able to spot trampled brush on the other side.
Inexplicably, Carmody grew unhappier by the hour and his scowl deepened. Just when I was about to ask him why he was such a moody cuss he motioned for me to follow and angled his horse up a steep hill.
“Where are you going?” I asked, keeping my voice low, even though I didn’t think anyone was close enough to hear.
“I want to check our backtrail. See if there’s somebody following us. This is too easy. They want us to follow them.”
I was surprised. “It doesn’t look easy to me. A few times you had to look twice to find where they’d cut through streams or gravel.”
“No. It’s still too easy. These are Comanches. They can ride elephants through a mud flat and hide the prints. But they also know that anybody who knows a little bit about tracking, and a little bit about Comanches, would know that. So they’re playing a game with us. They leave just enough of a trail that somebody could follow and think they’re a clever tracker. Not so much as to make it obvious that they are trying to bait us.”
Then the obvious occurred to me and my mood turned as sour as Carmody’s.
“And seeing as how we haven’t done nothing to hide our backtrail,” Carmody said, confirming the obvious, “if there’s somebody following us – which I’ll wager there is – we’re easy pickings.”
We edged up a hill that got stonier and steeper the higher we climbed. Carmody pulled up under a broad live oak that would provide us some cover and pulled a brass looking-glass out of his saddlebag. He shielded the lens with his hand to prevent a reflection from giving our position away.
He handed me the glass. “Seven of them, I think. Dressed like those Durans who tried to take us out in the Spoon. Can you see them? Focus on that bald spot on the hill, drop the glass about ten degrees, and you’ll see them.”
Carmody’s eyes were exceptional. My vision’s good, but I couldn’t make out the details of their dress and had to take his word for it. But he was right about the basics. A line of riders was moving single file about what I would guess was an hour’s ride behind us. It could be seven. Maybe eight.
“There’s about two hours of daylight left,” Carmody said. “The way they’re moving in front of us, I don’t think they’re in no hurry. They’re interested in luring us in so they’ll make camp where we can see them and hope to spring a trap. They figure they win either way. Either we’ll catch up to the ones in front of us and commit suicide by Indian, or, if we don’t, they’ll just come up on our backside tonight or in the morning and pick us off. Frankly, I don’t think our odds are too good either way.”
“No, we can’t beat them head-on. We have to come up with another option.”
“Yep,” Carmody said. “I’m sure we can come up with something. I assume you have an idea.”
“I was hoping you had one,” I said.
“I do: Let the officer in the group figure it out.”
Chapter 19
I drew the scenario, what I knew for sure and what I surmised, in the dirt with a stick.
“We know the Comanches are somewhere north of where we are now,” I said, scratching out an X. They’re waiting for us to catch up to them so they can capture or kill us. And they’re using Cassie as bait.”
Carmody nodded and gave me the look that I’ve learned means he thinks I should speed things up.
“And following on our tail is the Duran gang. They’re a couple miles south. They’re tracking us in case we get lost or give up and turn around.”
“Correct. We knew that before we drew this little work of art. May I be so bold as to ask if this is leading somewhere?”
I told him I wasn’t sure yet, which was the truth, and which seemed to satisfy him for the moment.
“But give me your best guess about a few things,” I said. “You’re the woodsman. I can find my way around better than some and as good as most, but I’m no expert and I know enough to know what I don’t know. So first: The Indians are expecting us to try to get the girl. Will they double back and look for us? Will they keep going after dark? Or will they camp?
Carmody tapped a finger at the end of the line in the dirt. “They’ll camp. They are surely headed toward one of their villages but I doubt if it’s this close. Maybe another day’s ride, or maybe two. They won’t come back at night looking for us. Indians, as a rule, don’t like to attack at night, although some Comanches don’t mind. But it ain’t convenient. Even the best Comanche tracker would have a tough time finding us in the dark, and they would be walking into our stronghold. Nope…they know we have to come to them, so they’ll force our hand and they’re holding all the cards. They’ll camp, put up some sentries, and see if we try for them tonight. We could, I think. There’s an hour of daylight and then twilight enough so if they move at the pace they’ve kept up all day we could catch up and find them. But then we’re like a dog chasing a bear. What do we do when we catch it?”
“OK, question two: Will the Durans move at night?”
Carmody didn’t hesitate. “No. They probably won’t be able to follow the trail much after dark. I’m not sure they is good trackers to begin with. Gangs of guns for hire generally don’t operate deep in this sort of country. And what would be the point for them? Whoever sent them told them they were a backstop, so my guess is they will just cover the flank and catch us if we slow down or turn around.”
“Last question,” I said. “Do you think the Comanches
know that the Duran gang is in back of us?”
Carmody shook his head without hesitation. “No. Whoever’s behind the whole scheme has nothing to gain by telling the Comanches there’s a backup plan. The way I figure it, somebody with lots of savvy and lots of money and lots of good reasons – reasons that I just don’t understand at the present moment – wants us dead and is taking no chances. They hire the Comanches to kidnap the girl and goad us into following so the Comanches can ambush us or kill us if we catch up. But if we fell behind or came to our senses and hightail back, the Durans pulling up the rear would finish the job. Smart. And just as icing on the cake, our deaths would be pretty much untraceable. Just another two dumb sorry-ass bastards killed by Indians or bushwhackers.”
“Smart,” I agreed. And it would probably have worked if you hadn’t noticed that the trail of breadcrumbs was a little too easy to follow.”
“It still might work,” Carmody said. “In case you haven’t noticed, we are now between that proverbial rock and the hard place.”
That was true. To be sure, they had more men and more arms. But we knew something they didn’t, and in my line of work, that’s the trump card. And I could think of a way to play it.
In the gathering darkness, I knelt down and drew out the plan in the sand.
Carmody said it was crazy.
And then he added that it was so crazy there was an outside chance we could make it work.
Chapter 20
In some ways, the least stressful part of battle is the fighting. The aspect that wears a man down in war is the waiting and worrying.
When Billy Gannon was captain of my unit he said that a lot – just to reassure us that we weren’t crazy. Many’s the night we spent camped, waiting to attack at dawn, or killing time during the day waiting to attack at night. Those were the times that ate holes in your stomach.
