The Rescuers

by Tony Masero

  Britt’s greatest fear was as the ground rose and he found himself crossing an unavoidable skyline where he would be exposed. His years of skill stood him in good stead though and at such points he dismounted and walked using the best cover available even if it meant going outside the path that he followed.

  Warren was in haste that was obvious by the heavy hoof prints in the soft dust, he went more slowly over rocky ground but still the clash of steel shoe on stone was obvious to Britt’s practiced eye.

  It was midday and from a range of high hills that Britt looked down and saw the small figure below pounding across to join a party encamped on the plain. Squatting down with his binoculars in hand, Britt made out the figures of Cromwell and Kant greeting Warren.

  Their meeting was not a long one and almost immediately, Kant kicked out their small campfire and the trio mounted up and rode off. They headed towards a low range of hills west of them and only when they were lost in the haze below the hills did Britt set off to follow them across the broad breadth of the open plain.

  Ahead of Britt, Warren was cross-questioning the others. His tone was somewhat bitter as he felt he had missed out after having been ordered to stay back and slow down the following party. He said nothing about his side trip to visit his family.

  ‘So where is she?’ he asked as they rode into the hills.

  ‘We don’t know,’ Cromwell answered. ‘Been gone some days now and I wonder if she has fallen foul of some misfortune.’

  ‘Breed hussy ain’t worth much anyhow,’ grunted Kant.

  ‘She was a good scout,’ affirmed Warren. ‘Led a fine path as I recall.’

  ‘Shouldn’t have a woman on a deal like this,’ said Kant. ‘Especially one that don’t give out, damned waste of time, you ask me.’

  ‘Nobody is asking you,’ said Cromwell tiredly. ‘Now, look here, Warren. What we have discovered is that across these hills there’s a party of Indians camped out. It is my intention to go down and ask some questions, might be they can lead us in direction of the Comanche or at least some word of Jan Marques.’

  ‘They peaceable you think?’ asked Warren.

  ‘I hope not,’ grinned Kant. ‘Could do with some fresh hair.’

  ‘I want you above,’ Cromwell told Warren, studiously ignoring Kant. ‘Somewhere up high to spot for us. Any bad moves when we go in and you will pick them off, is that understood?’

  ‘I’ve got it.’

  They crested the rise of the hills and looked down at the few lodges spread around the creek below. Fires were lit amongst the tipis and smoke was wafting in low streaks across the water. Cromwell pulled up and studied the layout, ‘Pick yourself a good spot, Warren and keep a sharp lookout.’

  With that he urged his horse on and with Kant beside him they started down the hillside. Their open approach was soon spotted by the Indians, who stood in a curious and defensive band of some twenty braves gathered between the tipis.

  Cromwell raised both hands high above his head in a sign that they meant no harm as they entered the camp perimeter. They sat their horses and were soon surrounded on all sides by the men of the small camp.

  ‘I wish to parley,’ he called. ‘Where is your chief?’

  ‘Ain’t got nothing in the way of firearms,’ Kant observed from the side of his mouth. ‘Easy meat.’

  ‘We’re just here for information,’ Cromwell reminded him.

  ‘Maybe you are,’ Kant muttered with quiet menace.

  They were interrupted as a small and portly Indian clad in a bearskin robe bustled forward, bow-waving his way importantly through the gathered tribesmen.

  ‘What want?’ he barked in an overloud voice.

  ‘Looking for someone,’ Cromwell replied. ‘You the chief here?’

  ‘I Adoeette, called Big Tree. Me chief of Kiowa.’

  Kant sniggered quietly at the concept of the small and tubby figure giving himself some stature with such a noble name.

  ‘Who you look for?’ asked the chief.

  ‘A woman, lady of color. Black hair, like so,’ Cromwell described with cascading hands.

  The chief frowned in a bemused manner, ‘Which color lady?’ he asked doubtfully, wondering if he had understood correctly.

  ‘Her daddy was a black man, a Buffalo Soldier, as you call them.’

  ‘Ah!’ sighed Big Tree slowly, his frown altering to one of speculation.

  ‘So you have seen her,’ Cromwell said, quickly catching onto the man’s hesitation.

  Big Tree turned the edges of his mouth down, ‘No, not think so.’

  ‘You seen any Comanche?’ Cromwell pressed. ‘Maybe with five white children. They pass by here?’

  Big Tree shrugged, ‘What I want with Comanche?’ he asked innocently.

  ‘I’m not asking what you want with them, I’m asking if you’ve seen them.’

  ‘I know no Comanche,’ Big Tree answered dismissively, his attention wandering. ‘White men come here all alone?’ he asked slyly, looking towards the hills overlooking them.

  ‘This sucker is lying,’ Kant snarled. ‘He knows something.’

  ‘I believe you are right,’ Cromwell agreed.

  ‘You want me to get an answer?’ asked Kant, his hand straying to the handle of the long knife at his belt.

  Cromwell’s eyes narrowed, ‘I think we might well have to take that route. This fool thinks he can dupe us. Maybe something incisive will change his mind.’

  Kant grinned, ‘You got it,’ he said.

  The blade, almost as long as a machete came from its scabbard with a rasp of steel and at the same time Kant urged his pony forward, pushing it into the crowd before them. There were wails of distress from the Kiowa as they fell back but with no hesitation, Kant lashed out, swinging the hefty blade to left and right and slashing at the surrounding Indians.

  Cromwell was at his back, his pistol in his hand and firing at point blank range into the crowd before the Indians could respond.

  With shrieks and cries of alarm, the Kiowa made a vain attempt at defense but the two moved swiftly, swinging their ponies in every direction and handing out death freely.

  Kant was laughing maniacally as he struck, cutting savage blows that shaved skin and split heads. When his knife was embedded in a bony skull he shed the blade and drew his pistol continuing his deadly work with the bullet.

  The surprise and violence of the attack was total and the Indians broke and fled, Cromwell and Kant in pursuit. Cromwell had his rifle out and stood his pony beyond the tipis, picking off fleeing Indians as they dispersed beyond the camp’s perimeter and tried to make their escape across the creek. Soon the sound of Warren’s Sharps could be heard and bodies fell as the marksman steadily dropped the terrified Indians in mid-flight.

  Kant was amongst the lodges, crashing his pony into them and bringing the poles down to expose the women and children hiding inside.

  The resistance they met was timid and ineffectual and it was only Kant who suffered a slight wound from a flying arrow. He dragged tent material across the fires burning out in the open and the dry skin burst quickly into flame. Then in an almost demented manner he charged through the camp, riding from end to end, bellowing loudly and blasting with his pistol at anything that moved.

  Smoke from the fires filled the air and joined that of the gun smoke, pools of blood and bodies littered the ground and as all movement ceased, Kant was down from his pony and going to work with his recovered knife. Lifting the heads of the fallen he cut rapidly with the ease of long practice, gathering as many scalps as he could.

  Cromwell walked his horse through the carnage and back to the village center. He found Big Tree, lying surrounded by wailing women; a long cut marked his fat cheeks and shoulder, the blood thick on his bearskin cloak.

  ‘Now,’ said Cromwell, leaning over his saddle, the reloaded pistol hanging down from his relaxed hand. ‘You want to tell me what I want to know?’

  Big Tree looked at him with obvious hate filling his eyes and sa
id nothing.

  ‘You really don’t want to say anything?’ Cromwell asked, pointing his pistol at random into the gathered women. ‘Come on, fat boy, speak up I really do insist.’

  Big Tree spat a few rapid words in his own tongue, their insulting meaning obvious.

  ‘Very well then,’ said Cromwell, pulling off a shot that felled one of the women and caused the rest to break out in terrified cries and screams.

  ‘Stop! I tell,’ shouted Big Tree in an anguished voice.

  ‘I thought you might,’ said Cromwell, blandly eyeing the remaining survivors. ‘The woman and the white children, you have seen them?’

  ‘Comanche come, stay here,’ Big Tree admitted. ‘Chief Esacona has prisoner.’

  ‘Esacona, huh? He is some kind of big shot, I take it?’

  ‘Will not be so easy to kill him, white man,’ spat Big Tree. ‘Nor his brother Kowa, they are mighty warriors.’

  ‘And what about the children?’

  ‘Has four whites and the Buffalo Soldier woman.’

  ‘Four children!’ Cromwell stressed, holding up fingers. ‘You say four?’

  Big tree nodded affirmation.

  ‘Too bad, must have lost one along the way. Which direction did they go?’

  The chief hesitated, he did not want to say more but as Cromwell waved his gun in the direction of the cowering women Big Tree reluctantly pointed direction.

  ‘Very well,’ said Cromwell, turning and calling out to his scalp hunter companion. ‘Come on, Kant! We’ve got all we need here.’

  ‘I sure have,’ grinned Kant, his wrists and hands dyed red and his face spattered with droplets of blood. ‘Hey! I got time for one of these squaws? I get kinda randified when I’m taking hair.’

  ‘No, not now, come on. We know where the Comanche are headed, there’s no time to waste on your rapine inclinations.’

  ‘Whatever,’ grumbled Kant, scooping his pile of bloody scalps into a bundle of loincloth he had ripped from a fallen brave. ‘Least the Mex government will pay well for this little load.’

  Kant tied off his bloody sack then rode over to join Cromwell as Warren came riding down from the hillside.

  ‘You find out anything?’ he asked as he joined the others.

  ‘We did,’ Cromwell agreed.

  ‘Quite a killing ground,’ Warren observed, with some satisfaction. ‘Like fish in a barrel.’

  ‘What about him?’ asked Kant, eyeing the wounded Big Tree and the terrified and wailing women gathered around him.

  ‘That’s easy,’ said Cromwell, coldly leveling his pistol and firing directly into the chief’s face, killing him instantly.

  ‘Looks like that’s cut down the Big Tree to size,’ chuckled Kant.

  They were long gone by the time Britt came over the hilltop rise above and saw the devastation below.

  ‘Hell’s Teeth!’ he breathed. ‘They did this?’

  Slowly he made his way down and walked Pencil through the creek, now running red with the blood of the bodies that floated in the slow moving water. Britt could see a trail of retreating women and children making their way on foot off into the distance, leaving behind a scattering of bodies and burnt out tipis.

  Britt made his way slowly through the camp, noting the scalping that had gone on as he went.

  He stood at the edge of the camp and using his binoculars looked off into the far distance, seeing the direction the three barely discernable figures on horseback were taking.

  ‘Looks like they know where they’re going, guess they got the information they wanted here,’ he whispered to Pencil, patting the pony on the neck. ‘Time to pick up the rest of our boys, I reckon. That damned Warren and his long gun will have to wait until another day.’

  Chapter Twelve

  ‘You look like you’re the only one with some balls.’

  Jan had sidled up to Nathan when Esacona had called a halt whilst one of his scouts reported back. Nathan had been standing with his pony, cradling the animal’s head in his arm as he petted it.

  ‘How are you making out, ma’am?’ he asked her. She too had been given a blanket over her torn clothing and stood with it wrapped around herself Indian fashion.

  ‘Ma’am!’ Jan chuckled. ‘Been a long time since I been called that. Name’s Jan Marques, so call me Jan.’

  ‘Nathan Boise,’ he introduced himself.

  ‘I aim to get out of here, Nathan. Are you up for making a break?’

  Nathan looked around cautiously, ‘They hear that and they’re apt to take it badly.’

  ‘I don’t give a good goddamn what they think. I don’t reckon on being squaw bait for this pack of bastards for the rest of my days. Seems to me you’re the only one of these kids who’s still got some backbone, so you want to try or not?’

  Nathan took a deep breath, ‘I worry about the others.’

  ‘They ain’t your responsibility. You’re your responsibility. You want to carry accountability for the rest of these children and you’ll be wearing war paint and riding with this red scum within a year, I promise you. Time to get out is now, believe me.’

  There was some truth in Jan’s words and Nathan knew it. There had been the temptation creeping into his mind of finding a way to live amongst the Indians, something about the wild freedom that their life offered and the possibility of discovering some standing outside any imposed conventions. The release from the hidebound regulation of his militaristic upbringing was playing through him almost like a drug. He knew it had been insidiously sliding into the back of his thinking and her words struck home and troubled him.

  ‘Getting to enjoy it already, ain’t you?’ Jan asked. ‘I see it in your eyes, like to be treated like a man instead of a boy. I can appreciate that, trouble is you don’t belong with them and you never will. It’ll be an uphill climb and never feel quite right if you stay. I should know, I been trying to fit into the white man’s world all my life.’

  ‘How did that work” he asked curiously.

  ‘My daddy was a man of color; a soldier serving with the cavalry, my Ma was white. She didn’t amount to much, her being a whore and giving it out to the colored troops. So there I am, half and half, not in one world or the other. I made my own way in the end, found my own country as it were but it ain’t been easy.’

  Nathan could hear the gritty determination in her voice, it was hard-edged with all the suffering she had experienced and he sensed that she was not a person to submit or give in easily and it was this that finally decided him.

  ‘You have a plan?’

  ‘I’m gone first chance I get. Thing is you have more freedom of movement than me, you can make it happen.’

  ‘I don’t know about that, they still keep a close eye on me.’

  ‘But not so much, I seen that chief there, he favors you. Play that out and there’ll come a time when a clean break is possible.’

  ‘But what then? I have no idea where we are or where we’re going.’

  ‘Right now we’re heading for the Pecos to cross over into Llano Estacado and then Comancheria, once over the river it’ll be mighty hard to escape as they’ll be on their home ground. But I have people behind coming after us, we get away and we can meet up with them.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Sure I’m sure, they’re my party. Your folks have offered reward for your safe return and these people with me, well, they like those greenback dollars, they’ll be coming for definite.’

  ‘What about the army? I thought they were after us as well.’

  ‘Oh, they’re out there all right but I reckon they couldn’t find their own ass if you handed it to them on a plate.’

  Nathan was doubtful that his father and the army were as useless as she implied but even so they had not seen any sign of rescue since the ambush with the horse herd.

  ‘What about Elizabeth and the other two, we can’t just leave them?’

  Jan shook her head, ‘That’s not an option; they would only slow us down. The girl’
s hopeless on a horse, too used to fancy stables, I’ll warrant. The baby child is happy where he is and the other boy is almost half Indian already. No, you want to make a clean break it has to be fast and slick. We can’t take nobody that will hold us back.’ She studied him for a moment and noticed how the concept was troubling him. ‘Don’t worry they’ll still be rescued. It’s a cash money bonus for each child brought back alive and Captain Cromwell ain’t about to let that slide.’

  It all sounded somewhat mercenary to Nathan but he had to admit that the incentive was certainly there and it did something to mediate with his concerns.

  ‘All right,’ he said. ‘I’ll do it. I have to fill out my role as horse guard tonight; it might be that we can get away then. If I stampede the ponies at the same time they’ll be on foot and we should be far away by the time they recapture the mounts.’

  ‘Yes!’ she nodded keen agreement. ‘That’s what I want to hear. Will you be guarding alone?’

  ‘There’s usually two of us but it varies so I don’t know who I’ll be up with. Like I say they still like to keep an eye on me.’

  ‘Then whoever it is has to go down, you realize that, don’t you? Are you up for it?’

  That one troubled Nathan, ‘I don’t know about that,’ he mumbled, thinking of the young bucks who were being so kind to Butler Royce.

  ‘Well, if you can’t do it, I will. I got no love for these creatures, they beat on me and used me sorely so I have no second thoughts about cutting their hearts out.’

  Nathan nodded, remembering how he had felt when he had seen small Samantha Child’s head bashed against a rock.

  ‘Yes, you’re right. It will have to be done,’ he accepted.