Comanche Sunset

by Rosanne Bittner

  “Maybe something or someone scared them off before they finished. Maybe whoever it was helped the woman after he chased off the Comanche.”

  Enders put his hat back on, contemplating Deaver’s suggestion, surprised at the man’s ability to think of it. “Let’s look around a little more,” he said. “That sandstorm didn’t blow through here. Maybe we can find some kind of unusual tracks or something.”

  Both men began searching, while the rest of the men, already bone weary from riding most of the night, their faces crusted with dirt from the sandstorm the day before, began digging shallow graves for the mutilated bodies.

  “Look here,” Enders shouted to Deaver, who had walked in another direction. The heavy rain that had fallen before the attack had left the ground soft, and Wade’s boot prints, now hardened into the soil, were easy to spot. Deaver came running over, and both men inspected the prints. “A big man,” Enders said thought-fully. “And the prints are deep. He was either heavy set, or maybe carrying something.” They looked at each other.

  “Maybe carrying the woman,” Deaver said.

  Enders rose and began following the footsteps to nearly a quarter of a mile from the site of the massacre and over a ridge. Deaver followed, and both men found an abandoned campsite, where the cold coals of a small fire were evident.

  “Look here,” Enders said. “There’s still a flattened spot where someone slept.” His eyes widened when he spotted something white and red. He hurried over to pick up some torn material that looked like it came from a slip. It was stained with dried blood. “My God! Maybe she is alive, but hurt! Maybe somebody did find her and help her.”

  “Not till the Indians had had their way with her, I’ll bet.”

  Enders threw down the bloodstained material. “And if they did, whoever found her probably figured her for fair game. A big man with a small, hurt woman at his mercy. God only knows what has happened here!”

  “But if it was just one man, how the hell could he have scared off the Comanche? That must be what he did, or the woman wouldn’t have been left alive. She’d have been killed or carried off.”

  Enders rubbed at the back of his neck. “I don’t know. It doesn’t make any sense. Besides that, it must have been a white man. He was wearing regular boots, not moccasins. Let’s see what else we can find. See if these tracks lead anyplace.”

  Both men began searching again, until Deaver shouted to his friend to come and look. He pointed out the definite marks of something being dragged. “Looks almost like the marks left by an Indian travois. There are boot prints all around, but up ahead are the prints of a horse. Looks like it was dragging the travois, and I’ll be damned if it isn’t an Indian pony—no shoes. Can you beat that?”

  Enders shook his head. “I don’t understand any of this.” He moved his eyes forward in the direction of the horse and travois. “The tracks lead northwest, the straightest line toward the fort. Whoever it is, maybe they decided to get to the fort as fast as they could, maybe because the woman was hurt bad. Maybe he found her bags and such for her. The fact still remains that if her bags were intact and the rest of the baggage wasn’t looted, why? How could one man scare off a whole pack of renegade Indians?”

  “I’ve never seen anything like this,” Deaver told him.

  “Neither have I. But as long as those tracks head toward the fort, we’re going to follow them, and we’re going to ride hard and fast. I don’t care how tired the men are. I intend to find out what happened to Jennifer Andrews. We’re only about a day and a half from the fort, if we go at full gait. One man dragging a travois with a wounded woman on it couldn’t have made very good time. Maybe we’ll even come across them before they reach the fort. That sandstorm farther north we came through must have held them up, let alone if the woman’s wounded. Maybe the man is wounded, too.”

  “You think she’d be safe, traveling out here all alone with a stranger?”

  Their eyes held. “If the Comanche got to her first, she’s no good to any man. He can have her, for all I care. I just want to know what happened.” Enders looked off into the horizon again. “But if she was untouched, she was my property. If some stranger took advantage of her, I’ll personally kill the son of a bitch.”

  He stormed back to the site of the raid, barking at the rest of the men to hurry it up.

  John Andrews paced and stewed, then poured himself another drink. “Who the hell do they think they are down there, refusing to send my niece back to me,” he grumbled. The young man who worked for him at one of his warehouses and who had brought him the telegram waited nervously.

  “I’ve always heard Texans are a strange lot,” he spoke up.

  Andrews read the telegram again, sent to him by a good friend of his who had gone to San Antonio three years earlier to set up a merchandise store there.

  SHERIFF OF SAN ANTONIO REFUSED TO GIVE YOUR NIECE OVER TO MY MEN. SAYS SHE IS OF AGE—HAD VALID TICKET TO FORT STOCKTON—MARRYING A SERGEANT AT THE FORT. LET ME KNOW IF ANYTHING ELSE I CAN DO. DON.

  Andrews wadded up the note and threw it to the floor. Jennifer, running off to a place like Texas to marry a lousy army sergeant! What had possessed her to run off like that, to desert him after losing Esther, and after all he had done for her! The ungrateful little brat! This was the thanks he got for taking in his brother’s little girl.

  “You can leave,” he barked at the young man who still waited for his instructions. He left quickly, and Andrews threw his glass of whiskey at the fireplace, shattering it. For months, years, he had dreamed of the day when he could climb into Jennifer’s bed. With Esther gone, it would have been so easy—Jennifer would have been lonely and distraught. He would have consoled her. Just the right words and touch to a young innocent like that, and she would have been putty in his hands. He cursed himself for getting so drunk after Esther’s funeral. He had not even realized until he woke up the next morning that Jenny had not even been in her bed. Had he frightened her away when he crawled in beside her? Or had she never been there at all? If he had stayed sober, he could have handled her, he was sure.

  “I won’t leave it like this,” he grumbled. “That girl belongs here with me, her uncle, her only family, not with some loser in west Texas! I’ll wire the commander of that fort and tell him she does not have permission to marry that sergeant. I’ll threaten to complain all the way to the top if they allow this marriage to take place!”

  What angered him the most was the thought of Jennifer giving herself to a man who was hardly more than a stranger. He stormed out of the house and headed for the telegraph office on his own, deciding that even if Jennifer was already married to the sergeant, he would offer the man a bundle of money to have the marriage annulled and send her back to St. Louis. He knew the kind of men who were stationed in such desolate places. Worthless, all of them, as far as he was concerned. Let the man get his jollies. Maybe by the time he got the offer of money, he would be tired of Jennifer anyway and gladly send her back. She would return home sorry and devastated, a used, embarrassed, divorced woman and more vulnerable than ever.

  He adjusted his tie as he lumbered on fat legs down the street, reasoning that even if his pretty niece had been with another man, that wouldn’t change her looks or how she would feel in bed. In fact, she might be easier than ever, once she had known man. He would take her in, comfort her, offer her a home again. After experiencing the deprivations of fort life in west Texas and the abuse of a strange soldier, St. Louis and his fine home would look good to her. She would have to be grateful…very grateful.

  Chapter Sixteen

  “Can’t see the tracks any more, Tony,” Deaver spoke up. “Sandstorm wiped them out.”

  “I can see that for myself,” Enders answered irritably. “I’m wondering if they lost their sense of direction in the storm, how in hell they protected themselves from it.”

  “Hell of a way for a woman from the East to be introduced to west Texas. After that Indian raid and this sandstorm, if she really is s
till alive, I expect she’s more than ready to go back home.”

  Enders adjusted his hat. “Well, I’m going to do my best to convince her otherwise.”

  Behind him soldiers sat nearly asleep in their saddles, having ridden hard all day.

  “We can’t be more than a day’s ride from the fort,” Enders was saying. “We’ll keep going till past dark, then make camp and rest. However far they got, they’ll have to do the same tonight. Maybe we’ll catch up with them in the morning.”

  Earlier in the day they had found signs of another camp, near a dried up stream bed. More bloodied bandages had been left behind, as well as a pair of woman’s bloomers, one leg slit open nearly to the waistline, the material badly bloodstained. Enders was more concerned about the fact that the bloomers had been removed than by the fact that whoever had worn them had been badly wounded. Some stranger was traveling with the woman he was supposed to marry, and the man had apparently seen things only Anthony Enders should see. His small, suspicious mind was already at work, wondering if the bloomers had been removed out of necessity, or for some more devious reason.

  “Let’s go,” he told the others. “We can cover more ground yet tonight.”

  They headed out, amid groans and complaints from the other men, passing a high plateau, braced by a wall of limestone. Unknowingly they passed another abandoned campsite, a cave-like shelter in the stone wall, where Anthony Enders’s betrothed had given herself to another man.

  “We should make the fort by noon tomorrow,” Wade said. He had managed to get a fire going with some dried mesquite and some buffalo chips he had picked up as they traveled that day. “I thought we were a little closer than we are.” Jennifer watched him set a pot of coffee on the fire. “This is the last of my roasted coffee beans, and they’re getting stale at that. I hope we can stand this stuff.” He pulled more jerked meat from his supplies. “Sure wish I could have spotted a rabbit or a prairie chicken or something today. You need better nourishment than this.”

  “I’ll survive,” she answered, taking the meat from him and watching him lovingly. “Some day we’ll have a home of our own, and I’ll make you fine meals of turkey or venison, with whipped potatoes and home-grown vegetables and apple pie. How does that sound?”

  He grinned as he chewed on a piece of the jerked meat. “Damn good,” he answered. “I can’t wait.” He met her eyes. “You’ll get along well with my mother. She’s a great cook, and she’s a generous, loving person, like you.”

  Their eyes held, both of them wondering what lay ahead. “Tell me more about your folks,” she asked.

  He laid aside the meat, deciding to wait until the coffee was done before finishing it. “They went out to California from Houston.” He drank some water from a canteen, then handed it over to her and began rolling a cigarette. “My mother came from a fairly wealthy family who had moved to Houston from Louisiana, and my pa had worked for her father. He wanted to make a good life for my mother like what she was used to. He had this big idea about how profitable it might be to set up a supply business out west. That was back in the thirties.”

  He leaned forward and drew a small burning branch of mesquite from the fire, holding its flaming end to his cigarette to light it. “Pa said that back then he was one of very few people who believed this area would grow, or that some day California would be a part of the United States. He ended up being right on both counts.” He took a long drag on the cigarette. “I know when you’re out in these parts, it still seems wild and unsettled and raw. But there are lots of places out here that are really growing fast, the eastern cities of Texas, and places like Denver, Colorado and Salt Lake City, Utah and Los Angeles, which isn’t far from where my folks live in San Diego.”

  He lay back against his saddle, and Jennifer enjoyed watching him, feeling a rich satisfaction that this man belonged to her, that she had learned how to please him in the night, and he had taught her the joys of being a woman. Now she knew what love was, and it was wonderful.

  “At any rate,” he was saying, “my pa’s idea turned out to be a good one. He was one of the first big suppliers to the Southwest, and now he’s going to run his route all the way to Galveston, ‘into home country,’ he puts it. He’ll set up a warehouse and pick up supplies shipped through the Gulf from New Orleans. That’s what I had to see that businessman in San Antonio about.”

  “Tell me about when they found you.”

  He looked up at the stars, taking another drag on the cigarette. “My mother had just lost a baby, so they tell me. She wasn’t well, and she was pretty depressed. They came through this country with a huge supply train of wagons, and my poor mother was the only woman along. She was lonely, and the trip was hard on her. Then one night she heard my crying and sent Pa out to investigate. He found me all wrapped up in an Indian blanket. They realized I had been abandoned. My pa never said, but I expect most of the men on that train would just as soon have left me there. My pa said that at first even he considered it, not because he’s hard-hearted, but because he figured there was some good reason my Indian mother had left me behind. Whites don’t like to go messing with Indian custom. It was obvious I wasn’t wanted, and that was all my mother needed to know to feel sorry for me and take me in. Pa says it took her all of two minutes to love me like her own. He thought maybe he should turn me over to some reservation or something later on, but then he got hooked, too, and they kept me and raised me.”

  Jennifer sighed, lying back on her own bedroll. “They must be fine people.”

  “They are. After they had children of their own, they taught my brothers to love and accept me as they would any brother. We’ve always got along. As I got older, I began using my inborn Indian instincts to scout for my pa’s wagon trains, except for the two years I spent back East studying English literature and business at the University of Pennsylvania. All that was after the fiasco with Rebecca. I thought about staying there and getting a law degree, but I missed the outdoors and the weather out here too much. I can’t stand the cold and humidity back East. I need the dry air and wide open spaces.” He grinned. “Pa says that’s the Indian in me, too.”

  She lay on her side and watched him. “Did it bother you a lot, knowing you were abandoned and unwanted?”

  He smoked quietly a moment before answering. “Sometimes,” he finally answered. “I prefer to think maybe I was a twin with an Indian mother. But then even if my real mother was white, to want to save at least one of the babies would have taken great courage, because if she got found out, she could be punished, maybe even killed, for keeping a child that would be considered a bad spirit. I figure if it happened that way, she must have loved her babies very much, whether she was Indian or white. It would have had to be a terrible decision for her, choosing one. I figure she did the best she could and probably secretly pined for the baby she left behind. At least I like to think of it that way.”

  “It’s so sad to think of having to choose,” Jennifer said quietly. “I can’t imagine having to make a decision like that.”

  “Well, I could be completely wrong about the whole thing. But with all this talk about me being a shadow of the one called Wild Horse, I’m thinking maybe I’m not so wrong after all. I know too much now not to want to know more, Jenny. That’s why I have to go and meet with this Wild Horse. I’m not afraid now. They’ve let me live for a reason.”

  “Maybe this Wild Horse means to kill you himself.”

  He met her eyes, seeing the fear and dread in them. “Maybe. I’ll just have to face that when I come to it. I can handle myself, Jenny. I’m going to come back for you no matter what.”

  Her eyes teared. “I wish we could make love again.”

  “You’re too exhausted. Besides, like I said, we can’t be seen even embracing. Soldiers could be anywhere now. They could be watching this camp even now with a spyglass. God knows I’d like nothing more than to make love to you once more before we reach that fort, but we can’t Jenny.”

  A painful lump
rose in her throat. “I love you, Wade,” she said softly. “I miss you already.”

  He held her eyes lovingly. “I miss you, too.” His eyes drank in her beauty. “I’ll never forget last night, Jenny. The thought of you is what will keep me fighting and alive while I’m gone. I love you, and nothing that happens can change that. We might as well get it all said tonight, because I expect it will be our last chance. You remember what I said about wiring my family if anything goes wrong.”

  “I’ll remember. And I’ll always remember last night, too. I don’t care how wrong it might have been. In my heart it was right.” She blinked back tears and turned onto her back, looking up at the stars.

  “What about you,” he asked, wanting to keep her talking so she wouldn’t cry. “Do you remember much about your folks?”

  She thought for a moment, realizing she was only eighteen but felt as though she had lived through enough that she should be much older. “I don’t remember a lot about my father, except that he was completely opposite from my Uncle John. He was thin and had a mustache, and he was kinder, more soft-spoken. He owned three big merchandise stores in St. Louis. My mother was pretty, and she was a quiet woman. She was always there for me.”

  She kept her eyes on a falling star, and a light breeze kept the mosquitoes away as she talked. “After the explosion and fire on the riverboat, it took me a long time to realize it was true that my mother and father were never coming back. I don’t think I could have stood the pain of my injuries and the pain in my heart if not for Aunt Esther. She came as close to being a mother to me after that as anyone possibly could.”

  She could not help the tears then, realizing there had been no time to cry over Aunt Esther. How she had loved her!

  Wade waited, staring at the glowing end of his cigarette, wanting to go to her and hold her but afraid of being spotted by soldiers. He suspected she needed a good cry by now, but it tore at his heart. He wondered how many more tears she would shed in the future for loving a half-breed.