Michener, James A.

by Texas

  'Why do we bother with them?' young Andrew Masters from Illinois asked, and Mrs. Wetzel replied with more insight than she suspected: 'Because generals like to ride horses at Fourth of July parades.'

  This was too much for Louise Reed: This talk must stop. And it must not be resumed in my house. My husband is commander of a mixed unit, mixed in all ways, and it must remain harmonious.'

  The attention of the two senior women was diverted from the deficiencies of the cavalry to the more exciting behavior of young Nellie Minor, who found time heavy on her hands while her husband was off on an extended scout with his black horsemen. On the first afternoon she arranged an uneasy tea for the other wives. On the second she took the Reed daughter on a canter along the Brazos River. And on the third, following the good example set by Mrs. Wetzel, she went down to Suds Row to encourage the women there, but she was repelled by the conditions in which they worked and could find nothing in common to talk about.

  On the fourth day she saddled one of the horses reserved for wives and planned her informal saunter along Bear Creek in such a way that she had a good chance of encountering the Irishman Jim Logan as he returned from a morning canter to the north. They did meet, well apart from the fort, and they rode for several exhilarating miles back toward jacksborough. They did not dismount, but each was aware of considerable electricity in the air, for as Nellie observed as they rode side by side: it's like the quiet before a summer thunderstorm.' Actually, it was well into the winter of 1870, but she was correct in feeling that great events impended, for not only was her attraction to this dashing Irishman becoming known at the fort, but Comanche to the west were about to become active again.

  On this afternoon neither she nor Jim Logan was much concerned about Indians, for when they dipped down behind a small hill to the Larkin tank where no one could see them, she rode very close to him, saying as they moved slowly across the grassy plain: 'You ride extremely well.'

  'My father taught me, in Ireland.'

  'What's Ireland like?'

  'Greener than this.'

  'Do you miss it?'

  'We starved.'

  'Were you brave in the war 7 '

  'I knew how to handle horses, I knew how to fight. So they made me a major.'

  'I know. Do you mind being a lieutenant now?'

  'Wars come and go. I was lucky to have found mine young. But to tell you the truth, Mrs Minor, I don't feel unlucky to be a lieutenant during the long years.' He turned sideways and smiled, a ravishing, honest smile: 'My level even in war was just about captain. I was never meant to be a major, wasn't entitled. But I'm a damned good lieutenant.'

  She leaned over and kissed him: 'You're a captivating man, Major, and in my mind you'll always be a major.'

  He grasped at her arm, holding her close to him for a protracted kiss, and each knew at that moment that if either made even the slightest motion toward dismounting, there would be a frenzied scene among the sagebrush, but neither made such a move, and gradually they worked their way back toward Bear Creek, along which they rode with feigned unconcern until the fort became barely visible on the far horizon.

  'Shouldn't you ride in alone?' Logan suggested, and she agreed that this might be prudent, but before they parted she moved close

  again, and kissed him even more passionately: 'I long to be with you, Jim,' but he said simply: 'johnny's my superior, you I

  So she rode directly to the fort while he made a far swing to the east, coming in much later on the [acksborough Road, hut maneuvers fooled no one Fort Garner quickly knew it had a dangerous love affair on its hands, and Mrs. Reed did not pi to have some young snippet bored with frontier life imperil her husband's already difficult command. As always, she went directly to the source of potential trouble, or rather, she summoned the Source to her quarters.

  'Nellie, sit down. It's my duty as an older woman and as the wife of the commander to warn you that you are playing a very dangerous game

  'But—'

  'I seek none of your shabby excuses. Nellie, at the fort m Arkansas you behaved the same way, and you came very close to ruining three careers. I shall not allow you to imperil my husband's command. Stay away from Major Logan."

  'I haven't—'

  'Not yet. But you intend to.'

  'How can you talk like this? I'm not obligated—

  'You're obligated to conduct yourself properlv when you're m my husband's command.' She said this with such accumulated force of character that Nellie blanched.

  'I will endanger no one,' she said softly.

  'Nellie, can't you find happiness with your husband 7 He's a splendid man. My husband cherishes him.'

  'He works with niggers, and he smells of niggers, and he can never amount to anything.'

  Very harshly Mrs. Reed said: 'If you believe that, Nellie, you must leave this fort today.' When the sniffling younger woman tried to speak, Mrs. Reed silenced her: 'I said today. ' Her voice rose: 'Pack your things while I stand over you, and leave this fort, because if you stay, you can bring only tragedy.'

  'I can't go. I have nowhere to go.' She began to weep.

  Mrs. Reed did not attempt to console her. Instead, she waited for the tears to halt, and then she asked, flatly but also with obvious compassion: 'So what shall we do 7 '

  'We?'

  'Yes, this is as much my problem as yours.'

  'I can't go. I have nowhere, I tell you.'

  'Then I shall tell you what you must do. Love your husband. Help him as Mrs. Wetzel and I help ours. lake pride m his accomplishments, which are many. And stay clear of Jim Logan.'

  'Will you tell the others?'

  The others told me.' Now she softened: 'Nellie, I'm always the last woman on the post to know what's happening to the wives in my husband's command. Believe me, I do not look for trouble, I castigate no one. But when trouble is brought to my attention, so blatantly that I cannot. . .' She hesitated, choked, and had to fight back her own tears.

  'Nellie, I think we should pray,' and the two officer's wives, there at the remotest outpost of their civilization, knelt and prayed. When they rose Mrs. Reed took Nellie's hand and said: 'Who ever promised you that an army officer's life would be pleasant? Believe me, this storm which assails you now will pass.'

  'I am torn apart, Mrs. Reed.'

  'Have you ever sat in a lonely fort, with snow about the door, and watched your child die? That's being torn apart, and even that storm passes.'

  1 shall try.'

  'And I shall . . .' She wanted to say either 'I shall pray for you' or 'I shall watch you,' but she knew that each was inappropriate and inaccurate. So she did not finish her promise, because what she proposed doing was much more practical. She would ask her husband to keep his young Irish cavalryman absent from the fort as often as possible and on missions of maximum duration.

  Among the men on the frontier who followed the establishment of Fort Garner with close attention was a small, scrawny fugitive with watery blue eyes and a somewhat withered left arm; he lurked in Santa Fe, waiting for any good chance that would enable him to slip back into his preferred Texas. His name was Amos Peavine, and his ancestors had prowled the Neutral Ground, that bandits' no man's land bordering old Louisiana.

  As a young man with a bad arm he had had to be more clever than most and had soon built a reputation throughout East Texas as a holdup man and a ruthless killer. He was so devious, so quick to strike, that men started calling him Rattlesnake, and some, to their quick dismay, tried shooting at him, but he, well aware of his disability, had trained himself so assiduously in the use of guns that it was always he who drew first, fired first, and nodded ceremoniously as his would-be assailant fell.

  Frontier gunmen, noticing his affected left arm, assumed that it played no part in his behavior, but they were wrong. Through long practice Rattlesnake Peavine could bring that bad arm up across his belt, providing a rocklike platform on which to rest the gun as it was being fired, and the action was so swift and smooth

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nbsp; that even close watchers could not detect exactly what had hap pened.

  In those hectic days he began to carry two Colts, and since Ins left hand was practically useless, he slung them both on his right hip, the only gunman known to do so. He spent about a year, . perfecting holsters for his two guns, and then another, 1864, in shortening the barrels to make the guns easier to swing loose Tins made his draw a fraction of a second quicker than that of a challenger. He also invented a clever way of making the trigger more responsive to his right forefinger: he filed down each until even a whisper would release it.

  Peavine did not notch his guns to keep track of their effectiveness; he was content to be known as 'that little bastard, about a hundred and thirty pounds, who can shoot faster than a rattlesnake strikes, and more deadly.' At nineteen he was an authentic Texas badman.

  During the war he had ranged the northern border, siding now with the Union forces, more often with the Confederate, but proving so unreliable to each that in the end both armies were trying to hang him, and it was then that he felt it advisable to quit Texas: 'I got me a passel of enemies in this state. North or South, they don't realize a man is entitled to make a livin'. No future for me here.' What was more persuasive: 'Hell, come peace they hain't much goods movin', a man hain't got much chance to pick a few bundles off for hisself.'

  He had drifted slowly toward Santa Fe on the principle 'A man cain't make it in Texas, he can always succeed in New Mexico,' and after trying vainly to profit from the exposed trade with Mexico, he discovered that the real money was to be made in a trade centuries old and infamously dishonorable. The Plains Indians wanted whiskey and rifles, and generations of disreputable traders had found profitable ways of supplying them. Spaniards had done so in the 1600s, Frenchmen in the 1700s, Mexicans in the first years of the 1800s, and now a wily crew of adventurers from Kentucky, Mississippi and Texas continued the tradition

  Amos Peavine was the most daring of the bunch, for he traded with the most deadly of the tribes. He was a Comanchero, a lawless man who roamed the Comancheria, that vast expanse of wasteland which coincided with the buffalo range. Especially he worked the Texas plains, and when he learned that a new fort was to be established on Bear Creek, he rejoiced, because although it brought more soldiers into the area, which meant a greater chance-that he would ultimately be shot, it also brought two developments extremely favorable to him: the Indians under attack would have

  to have more guns, and the slow military trains crossing the empty plains carrying guns and ammunition would be more open to attack. A really crafty Comanchero stole guns from the army, sold them to the Comanche, then served as tracker for the army when it went out to confront the well-armed Indians. A Comanchero prospered in troubled times, and was adept at devising strategies for keeping them troubled.

  While Mrs. Reed was lecturing young Mrs. Minor on proper behavior at a frontier fort, Rattlesnake Peavine was some two hundred miles to the west, astride a winded old horse and leading a Rocky Mountain burro he had obtained from a Mexican family by the persuasive process of shooting the entire clan in one unbroken fusillade.

  He was on a mission fraught with a medley of dangers, and any man who was afraid of nature, Indians or the retaliation of the United States Army would have blanched at what faced him as he probed the empty plains, seeking contact with Chief Matark of the Comanche. Scorpions and snakes awaited him if he was careless when he dismounted; death from dehydration got those who missed their water holes, so infrequent and so hot and alkali-ridden when found. Indian tribes at war with the Comanche would surely kill him if they caught him, and he faced equal danger from Comanche to whom he could not identify himself quickly. And there were always new forts with energetic new commanders eager to take up the chase against any despised Comanchero.

  Amos Peavine, threading his way through these encroaching disasters, was a brave man, almost a heroic one, for the forces of evil require just as much strength of will as do the angels of goodness; it is only the force of character that is missing. Peavine had enormous will; he had no character at all, not even a consistently bad one, for, as in the old days of 1861-65, he stood willing to trade with anyone, to betray everyone. Now he had a promising scheme which might produce substantial profits if acted upon swiftly, but before action could take place, he had to find Matark.

  He had left New Mexico, haven for Comancheros like himself and other bandits who ravaged Texas, and had entered that refuge known throughout the West as the Palo Duro Canyon. It was a formidable depression, more than a hundred miles long, dug through solid rock by millions of years of active water, and so lonely and awesome that white men rarely tried to penetrate or conquer it. Those who did saw sights that were majestic. High walls of colored rock hemmed in valleys of surprising richness, where a man could herd a thousand cattle and be assured that they could feed

  themselves on the ever-green grasses but not escape from the natural corral which kept them penned

  Cattlemen were not able to try this experiment because the Comanche had reached Palo Duro first and had for more than a hundred years utilized it as their one totally secure hiding place Within the canyon, at about the center of its east-west reach a pile of reddish rocks known as The Castle, and it was to this traditional meeting spot that Peavine was heading

  He did not ride the well-marked path at the bottom of the canyon, for that would trap him in too dangerously; he kept instead to the less comfortable trail along the south rim, because from here he could look down into the rocky depths and also across to the other side, for the canyon was not extensive in its north-south dimension. And now as he led his complaining burro along the trail from which The Castle should soon be visible, he was satisfied that he had once more negotiated the canyon and brought himself into contact with the Indians he sought. There was, of course, still the possibility that he might encounter some idiot lieutenant from one of the forts, out seeking glory, who had boasted to his troop as he led his cavalry out: 'I shall invade Palo Duro and bring back the scalp of Chief Matark.' Often such a man would utter an extra vow: 'And I'll rescue Emma Larkin,' for she was constantly on the conscience of these soldiers.

  Peavine laughed as he thought of the men within the forts: Better they stay home. Come up here, to these walls, they're goin' to get shot. Various expeditions had come to grief at Palo Duro and it seemed likely that more would follow. These canyons will be Indian for a long time,' Peavine muttered as he saw the familiar signs which indicated that The Castle was not far off. He was justified in using the plural canyons because each small stream that fed the main architecture of this deep cut had gouged out its own smaller canyon, so that at the center, where he now rode, the land became a jumble of lateral cuts, some so deep that they could not be traversed if Peavine kept to the upper plateau

  So, crossing himself as if he were a believing Catholic, he edged his tired horse toward the rim, tugged at the rope guiding his burro, and started down the steep and rocky path to the lower level. He was now at the most dangerous point of his two-hundred-mile expedition, for he rode so close to the wall of the canyon that any rattlesnake, awakening from his winter sleep, could strike him full in the face if it darted forth; also, if either enemy Indians or roving troops were setting a trap, here is where they would spring it. But this time he made his descent peacefully, and when he

  gained the floor of the canyon he found himself once more in a congenial fairyland which he had known in the past.

  Land about The Castle leveled out and produced such a richness of grass, such protection from storms, and had such an equable climate—cool in summer, warm in winter—that it formed a kind of Indian Garden of Eden. Here, within this security, some squaws more adventurous than their sisters even tried growing vegetables from seeds captured on raids against ranches.

  Turning a familiar corner, Peavine waved to the scouts he knew would be watching, licked his lips in preparation for the Comanche words he would soon be speaking, and headed his horse toward the
Indian encampment. It was an amazing collection of tepees, for in their travels south from their original Rocky Mountain homeland the Comanche had acquired a variety of housing, some with tall cedar poles lifting the buffalo-hide covering high into the air (these were the Cheyenne contribution) and others little more than rounded huts depending not upon long poles but bent branches for their form (a pattern used by the Ute). Most notable were the small, compact tepees built about a minimum of moderately long poles; these were some of the best (a device of the Pawnee). The Comanche, a wandering tribe that had developed only a limited culture of its own, had borrowed types of tepees from everyone. Their fierce courage and their appalling cruelty to any captive, they themselves invented.

  'I seek Great Chief Matark,' Peavine cried loudly as he entered the haphazard arrangement of tepees, and he repeated the announcement until a group of young braves ran over to surround him, leaving behind the half-naked creature they had been tormenting.

  is that the Larkin girl?' he asked as the young men came up, and they looked back as if bewildered that anyone should care who the child was. They had already burned off her ears, and her nose would disappear before the summer was out; she was thirteen now, a most pitiful thing, but miraculously she retained enough intelligence to know that the arrival of a white man, any white man, meant that her chance of rescue was by that small degree enhanced.

  She took a tentative step toward Peavine, praying that he would take notice of her, but he looked the other way, and two of the young men grabbed stones and threw them at her with great force, shouting as they did so: 'Get back!'

  Matark and his four wives occupied a large tepee in the Cheyenne style, its cedar poles emitting a pleasing fragrance. It had a low entrance, requiring the visitor to stoop, but inside it was