His wife, Cordelia, lay behind him, struck by a Comanche lance. Dead. His daughter, Peony, lay across her mother, sobbing. Salmon and his boy, Sammy Jr., both had rifles and were firing with a grim purpose. Sammy Jr.’s face was streaked with tears, but his expression was resolute.
Salmon just looked like he was in shock. Load, fire. Load, fire. Load, fire.
But he was accurate. Before him lay four dead Comanche, one of whom had made it halfway past the wagon’s whiffle bar. It was likely the Indian’s lance that had killed Cordelia, Jason thought.
Quickly, he knelt beside Salmon, shouldered his rifle, and took a shot at the swiftly circling Indians. “Should have got yourself a repeater!” he shouted.
“No money!” Salmon shouted back as he reloaded. And fired again. He was a good shot, all right. Another Comanche dropped from his pony.
“Sorry about your wife,” Jason added lamely.
Salmon paused, mid-reload. “Yeah. Those red sons of bitches!”
All business once more, Jason shouted, “Your kid isn’t hitting anything. Have him load for you instead.”
“Sammy!” Salmon barked, and it was done.
* * *
Across the circle, Jedediah had located Milt Billings, the only man of them who spoke any of the Comanches’ lingo. Milt was emptying his handgun into the swarm at the time, so Jedediah waited until he stopped to reload.
“Milt!” he roared, to be heard above the noise of the battle. “Milt! Can you talk to these Indians? Tell them we’ll give them cattle!”
But Milt, concentrating on loading his gun, simply shook his head. He looked up and shouted, “No way these boys are gonna settle for anything but the whole herd, goats, pigs, and all. And the girls.”
Jedediah’s blood ran momentarily cold. He’d known what the Comanche were after, but hadn’t wanted to admit it to himself, hadn’t wanted to believe their luck could be that bad. Why had he let Milcher and MacDonald talk him into taking this bloody route, anyway? If they got out of this, he was going to ride into Houston, Texas, himself, and take a good, hard kick at Hamish MacDonald’s brother-in-law’s backside.
Maybe his head.
And then he felt a sharp pain in his side.
“What?” he asked, much more softly than he’d intended.
He tumbled backward, and was lucky that his fall was broken by a steer who didn’t step on him, once he was down. Suddenly, he couldn’t see very well, which was strange because he’d always had eyes like an eagle.
Maybe it was later in the day than he’d thought.
Maybe it was getting dark.
That was good, wasn’t it? The Comanche would break off their attack, come nightfall.
Vaguely, distantly, he heard someone shout, “Mr. Fury! Somebody get Dr. Morelli! Dear God, Fury’s down!”
And then he heard no more.
* * *
Jason was over by Carrie English’s wagon, helping Carrie and her daughter put some sort of system in place, when Morelli came for him. He had just about decided to send Gil Collins, one of the hired men, down to help her. She was a widow, and she was a lousy shot.
Someone put a hand on his shoulder, and he wheeled, nearly shooting Morelli in the chest. Morelli quickly blocked the rifle’s barrel with his forearm—his quickened reflexes arising from the heat of the battle—and said, “Come with me, Jason.”
When he added, “Now,” Jason took him seriously, and shouted his apologies to the Widow English, adding that he’d send her some help.
Morelli said no more, just shoved his way through the milling, excited herd, leading a puzzled Jason. If there was something wrong, why hadn’t his father taken care of it? He stopped following Morelli’s relentless path when he spotted Gil Collins, who was helping the MacDonalds, who probably needed the least help of anybody. Both Hamish and Matthew were firing, taking down their share of the redskins, with Megan reloading like a maniac.
He shouted until he got Gil’s attention, then told him to go help out down at the English wagon. And then he stood there, being shoved around by crazed cattle and spooked horses, until Gil got on his way, taking Megan along with him. Gil was a cipher, and Jason suspected he was a bit of a slacker, too, something they could hardly afford right now. But Megan was a fine shot, when she was allowed to do something besides reload.
Quickly, he caught sight of Morelli, who had paused and was waving at him frantically to hurry along. The roar of battle assaulted his ears as he pushed forward again, leaping over dead and dying livestock, shoving the living ones out of his way. He fervently hoped they weren’t losing as many people.
And still, the whoops and screams and battle cries came. He suddenly realized he had no idea how long the battle had been raging.
Forever, maybe.
When he caught up with Morelli, he was standing over a prone, blanketed figure, and the bottom dropped out of Jason’s stomach. The toe of his father’s boot protruded from one end.
He said, “It’s not . . .”
Morelli had the grace to look uncomfortable as well as saddened. “I’m afraid so, son. Your father took a lance through the lungs. There was nothing I could do.”
Jason barely had time to absorb this—that his father, who had joked that he’d been through things that would have killed most men twice, yet lived to tell the story, could actually die—when a great roar and cry arose from the east side of the circled wagons.
Jason saw that the circle had been breeched beside the gambler’s rig, and that there were Comanche inside their camp, driving out livestock, and taking captives. Women screamed in terror, girls cried hysterically as they were snatched up into the arms of mounted heathen, as men and boys alike tried their best to hold back the seemingly endless horde.
A tomahawk swung, and young Tommy Milcher, the boy that Jason had saved from a beating by Matt MacDonald, back in Kansas City, fell dead, his head nearly separated from his body. A lance split the air, and fatally pinned Miranda Nordstrom to the side of a wagon. Her husband, Randall, screamed and ran to her, putting a slug squarely through the neck of the brave that had killed her.
By the time Jason, Dr. Morelli, Hamish MacDonald, and Saul Cohen hastily worked their way through the terrified livestock, the Comanche were already riding off and had cut off their attack. They had a small herd of horses and cattle—“Got three of my goddamn Morgans!” Hamish shouted—and a small number of the older girls that had been at that end of the circle.
“I’d think you’d be more concerned about your daughter, Hamish,” Jason said, clipped and hard, and began searching for Jenny. His sister had been wearing a yellow dress, he remembered. Where in that milling mob of confused and heartbroken settlers could he glimpse even a flash of that color?
Hamish set in to search, too, shouting, “Megan! Megan, girl, answer your father!”
Jason could find that yellow color nowhere in the camp. But as the Indians breasted a distant hill, he saw it. She was slung across an Indian pony, and as far as he could tell, she was still fighting her captor.
Good girl.
Good Jenny. She was a Fury, after all. And it was up to him to save her.
Chapter 9
Jason barely gave Morelli time to get the arrow out and patch up his arm before he was in the saddle. The weeping of women was all around him, and the silent tears of the men he felt, more than heard.
Lord knows, it was all he could do to keep his own tears back. He had lost his father and his sister, all that remained of his entire family. But he wasn’t alone, he kept reminding himself. Nearly everyone had lost someone—man, woman, or child—either to the lance or the arrow or the blade, or to the kidnapping.
Milt Billings, the man who spoke Comanche, came along, as did Ward Wanamaker. They had to go along, because they worked for the Furys, which meant they now worked for Jason. And, oddly enough, Saul Cohen tagged along. Jason couldn’t figure what Cohen was trying to prove, but he wasn’t about to turn down any volunteer.
Except Matt
MacDonald. Jason didn’t want to ride with anybody who’d screw it up, which was something Matt was bound to do.
Instead, he told Matt and Hamish that he needed them both at the wagons. They were both good shots, and the Comanche could well come back.
And they bought it.
But Jason knew there wasn’t a chance in hell those Indians would return. They’d gotten what they wanted.
He gave orders that the dead be buried, the injured be taken to Dr. Morelli’s wagon, which was serving as their hospital, and that the dying livestock be put down as painlessly as possible.
He also gave orders that somebody get the dead steers dressed out and start them to roasting. He didn’t want anything to be wasted. They’d need that meat.
Through the twilight, Jason and his group rode over the same hills the Comanches had traveled with their prisoners. Through the night, under the moon and the stars, they followed the savages’ trail.
And then finally, at about three o’clock in the morning, they were just breasting a rise when Jason whispered, “Down! Everybody get down!”
He had spotted the camp.
Ward took the horses back down the rise and out of sight, while the other three men lay on their bellies, scouting the camp with binoculars or spyglasses.
Down below, all was quiet. Only a couple of small fires were still burning themselves out. There were a few teepees set up, but it didn’t look to Jason like any sort of permanent camp. Probably just a raiding party.
“There’s our stock,” whispered Saul, at Jason’s right. He pointed quickly to the northeast.
Sure enough, their cattle and horses, along with the Comanche ponies, stood quietly, dozing within a crude corral their captors had tied together from the plentiful tumbleweeds. It was staked, at intervals, by lances thrust down through the thickest part of the sage.
As Ward Wanamaker joined them, Milt Billings said, “This is gonna be easy.”
Jason, lowering his spyglass, twisted toward him. “Easy? Just how is that?”
Milt looked at him like he was an idiot. “We just sneak down and drive off all the livestock.”
“And what about the girls?” Saul asked.
“Oh,” Milt said, and looked away. “I forgot about them.”
Jason turned back to the camp and raised his glass again. “You’ve got too much of your mind on MacDonald’s Morgans, Milt. You’d best be thinking about his daughter, instead.”
Saul Cohen asked, “So, is anyone hatching anything close to a plan? I’m thinking that maybe we should just ask them nice, but then again, I’m thinking that’s probably the best way to get them mad again.”
“Don’t take much,” said Milt.
“Nope,” echoed Ward, who was obviously at a loss, too. “Maybe Milt didn’t have such a bad idea, Jason. I mean, Mr. Fury.” This last part he added quickly, as if he’d just remembered Jedediah was dead, and now Jason was the top boss.
“It’s still Jason.” he said. “And you mean we should use that as a diversion?”
Ward nodded.
“Been thinking the same thing, myself.”
“It could work,” Saul said, sounding very unconvinced. He shrugged. “Or not.”
“Guess I ain’t so stupid after all,” Milt muttered beneath his breath as the four of them backed down the slope.
* * *
Twenty minutes later found them creeping along the outside fringes of the camp. So far, so good, other than the camp cur that had started barking. Milt’s cranky, growled “Shut up, dog!” in Comanche had quieted him, though.
Jason was in the lead, and he had just reached the makeshift corral. He pulled the knife from his boot and cut the first thin strip of buffalo hide that held the brush together, when he heard a scuffle behind him.
He wheeled to see Ward Wanamaker down on the ground, fighting off a Comanche warrior. He ran back toward Ward, knife in his hand, when he was bushwacked by yet another brave and went sailing to the side. He hit the ground rolling, and brought the point of his knife up just in time. The young brave who had bowled him over stopped his attack quite suddenly, and stood there, a rifle in his hand and just out of reach, smiling.
Jason didn’t think that smile of his was any too wholesome. Neither was the rifle, come to think of it.
He heard a yelp behind him as Saul Cohen was taken down—not permanently, he prayed. He could see Ward and Milt. Ward was on the ground. Milt was kneeling, head down. A Comanche blade was at his throat, and he looked like he was waiting to die.
He was likely the only sensible one among them.
Jason’s pa had always said he didn’t have much sense, though, and he wasn’t ready to give up. To the young Comanche standing guard over him, he said, “Speak any English? You savvy American?”
The brave remained silent. “Milt!” he called.
Haltingly, a knife pressed to his throat, Milt repeated his question in the Comanche tongue.
Jason’s guard barked something back to Milt, who answered him carefully. Then Jason’s guard lowered the muzzle of his rifle, just a touch.
“You are Fury?” the brave asked, and Jason realized that as big as the brave was, he wasn’t just young, he was a kid! And then he realized the boy had spoken in English.
“Jason Fury,” he said, trying not to let all the surprise he felt show in his voice.
“A relation to the Fury called Jedediah?”
“My father,” Jason replied, and couldn’t keep the bitterness from his voice.
The brave didn’t seem to notice, though. “I am son of Peta Nocona, Chief of the Quahada Comanche. My father knows your father, and is friend to him.” The rifle’s business end dropped a tad lower.
All of a sudden, Jason’s future didn’t seem so dark. He said, “Then you must be the one called Quanah Parker. My father spoke of you and your father. He traded with you often.” In fact, Jedediah Fury had been one of the only white men who could ride in and out of Peta Nocona’s camps, and keep both his hair and his intestines intact.
Quanah stared at him for what seemed like hours—but was probably mere minutes—then waved his rifle. “Why did he not come?”
“He’s dead. Your raiding party killed him.”
A few minutes longer of staring. No remorse, no apology, just that blank stare. Then Quanah said, “Stand up, Jason Fury. You are in no danger. Yet.”
Once Jason got to his feet, he saw that although tall and imposing in physique, the boy was about sixteen or seventeen years old—and had light eyes. His father had mentioned those disconcerting eyes more than once. They were a steely gray, a legacy from his white mother—Cynthia Ann Parker, Jason thought it was. She’d been a captive, too, just like their girls.
Jason started to sheathe his blade back in his boot, but Quanah shook his head. “Drop it to the ground. Your guns, too.” He barked a command at one of the other Comanches, and they all motioned their captives up, too, and divested them of their weapons.
They were making enough noise that the camp was waking. A few braves appeared at the flaps of their teepees, ready for action, but Quanah made sure they knew everything was under control.
“Why have you come here tonight, Jason Fury?” he asked. “Why have you come to steal our horses and cattle? You come to revenge your father, maybe?”
“I came to retrieve what was stolen from me,” Jason said. He knew that if he gave in, even an inch, he’d be seen as weak.
“I’ve come for my cattle and my horses and my sister. My father’s life cannot be taken back.”
Quanah’s brows shot up, and his smile widened. He swept an arm toward the slowly milling animals in the corral. “All these are yours? Will you play for them, Jason Fury?”
“Play what?” If this Indian thought he was going to sit down at a spinet and play “My Old Kentucky Home,” he was out of his mind.
Quanah started walking, and motioned Jason along. They were of a height. “I have learned a new game,” Quanah said, “from our friends in Mexico.”<
br />
Jason’s mind was suddenly flooded with what might define a game for Quanah, and his blood nearly froze in his veins. His father had told him plenty of stories about the Comanches’ penchant for cruelty as sport, even cruelty to their own dogs and horses. He shuddered, but he followed Quanah inside a tent anyway.
Quanah motioned for him to sit down on the buffalo-hide rug that made up the floor, and it was only once he sat that he noticed Saul, Milt, and Ward come into the tent behind him. They squatted down next to him, in a line to his right.
Poor Ward looked like Jason felt—terrif ied. Milt looked resigned, as if he’d already given in to destiny and just wanted to get it over with. Saul, on the other hand, seemed fascinated with everything he saw, from the feathered headdress hanging back against one curve of the teepee’s side and the scalp locks depending from Quanah’s spears, to the tent itself. He seemed to be making mental notes on its construction.
The warriors who had been guarding them followed them inside, making for a cramped tent, and sat down behind them, still holding their own guns on them.
Not the most auspicious setting for a parlor game, Jason thought.
While Quanah threw some sticks on the little fire that had been dying in the center of the tent on a broad stone hearth of sorts, he said something in Comanche, and all of a sudden Milt smiled a little. The braves behind them lowered the weapons they held, and seemed to relax. One even stifled a chuckle.
Well, Jason thought, at least it wasn’t going to be a blood sport. The man behind him would have allowed himself a big belly laugh for that.
Quanah turned to Jason. “You play the game called craps? Blanket dice? Do you know it?” He gestured with his hand, as if he were throwing dice.
A few years in Washington, D.C., had taught Jason a lot of things his father wouldn’t have approved of. He nodded. “I’ve played once or twice.”
“Good,” Quanah said. “I find it most amusing.” He spoke quickly in his tongue to the other Comanche, all of whom hurried from the teepee.
A Town Called Fury Page 6
