Comanche Cowboy (The Durango Family)

by Georgina Gentry

  Diego stood up, shaking his cigar at the elderly pet as it limped out toward the riders. “You’re too old for that, Tequila. Your rheumatism will give you fits tonight for trying to act like a young dog. You should wait and—”

  His voice trailed off as he realized he lectured the elderly dog in the same manner that the humans around here lectured him.

  The riders crested the hill and came closer to the hacienda. Diego’s pulse beat faster. The trail crew was finally home! There’d be lots of good talk, lots of tales about past drives tonight!

  Most of the riders split off to ride toward the bunkhouse, but a lone rider—a heavy, graying man—rode at a trot up to the courtyard where he reined in, the old Chihuahua bouncing excitedly while it barked and danced around the bay horse.

  Diego limped forward with a glad cry. “Sanchez, old compadre! We’ve been worried about you! Where’s Maverick?”

  He caught the old vaquero’s arm, pulling him toward a seat on the patio. “Come, come, sit down, tell me everything.”

  Sanchez pulled at his gray mustache with his crippled hand, looking wistfully toward the house where his plump wife, the head housekeeper, would be. “Now, Diego? You want to talk now? I thought I might go in, have a plate of tamales and eggs. . . .”

  “You can eat later.” Diego waved him to a seat, offered him a cigar, and lit it for him. “No one has time for talk anymore. Why are you so late returning?”

  “There was a small fight at the Red Garter.” He grinned, accepting the cigar. “So we were forced to enjoy the hospitality of that Wyatt Earp’s jail for a few days. Then there was news of war parties between here and there, so we hung around Wichita awhile.” Sanchez took the cigar between his maimed fingers, leaned back with a tired sigh, and inhaled it. “I forgot how good one of your fine cigars taste, Diego. My wife sees me, I get a lecture.”

  Diego grinned with devilish delight. “You think I wasn’t checking to see who that was coming so I could throw away my own if the rider was my son?”

  Sanchez laughed, tipping his sombrero to the back of his graying head. “We are two conspirators, no?”

  “Si,” Diego winked and nodded. “Later we will go into the study and have a big drink of whiskey.”

  Sanchez crossed his legs with a smile. “I will get a big lecture if they smell whiskey on you later.”

  Diego muttered and smoked his cigar. “When those who lecture us were still dirtying their drawers, we were fighting Injuns, rounding up mustangs and breaking them to saddle. You are still young enough to be useful, compadre, but me? No one thinks Tequila and I are good for anything except to lay in the sun and warm our bones. Sometimes I wish I had a friend who had lots of time to sit and talk of the good old days.”

  Sanchez looked wistfully toward the house again, shrugged, and took another puff of his cigar.

  Diego knew he kept his old friend from his wife, but he was lonely, eager for news. The two had been compadres since both were very young men, although Sanchez was not nearly as old as the Don was. He looked toward the bunkhouse. “Where’s Maverick? Did I miss seeing him ride in?”

  Sanchez rolled the cigar around in his mouth. “No, he didn’t come.”

  “Didn’t come?” Maverick of all people would give every glorious detail of the drive as if he sensed the lonely isolation of the old patriarch. And yet, even he who had raised the orphaned boy could not say he knew him well.

  Sanchez winked at him in a knowing way. “A Senorita.”

  “Ah! ” Diego leaned back, crossing his wrinkled old hands across his girth. “Oh, to be young and hot-blooded again!” He thought wistfully of his beautiful Cheyenne wife, so much younger than he. He had loved her so. “So you left him in Wichita?”

  Sanchez shook his head. “No, amigo, he took off with her across the Indian Territory, across the Panhandle.”

  Diego felt alarm. He paused with the strong cigar halfway to his lips. “With the Indian trouble, our young stud did such a thing?”

  Sanchez grinned. “The Senorita was very beautiful and very persuasive, I think.”

  Diego laughed, remembering his own young days. “Maverick has always stayed so detached from women, always enjoyed and enticed them with his easy charms. I never thought one would come along that could make him think seriously.”

  Sanchez smoked, obviously remembering the girl as he smiled. “She had green eyes a man could get lost in,” he sighed, “and hair the color of fire.”

  Diego leaned forward. “Ah, a redhead! A Texas girl, I hope! ” He would miss Maverick if he went very far from the Triple D so that he could not visit him several times a year.

  “Si, and what a firecracker! I think I have never seen such a fiery one! Her name’s Cayenne!”

  “Cayenne,” Diego rolled it around on his tongue. “Now why does that sound familiar? Do we know the family?”

  Sanchez shrugged. “The last name meant nothing to me. Oh, Maverick told me to give you a message.” He stood up, yawned as he took one final puff, and threw the cigar down to grind out beneath his boot heel. “He said he’d be home in a few weeks. Our young Romeo’s escorting the red-haired beauty back to west Texas. Maverick said you’d understand.”

  Diego didn’t have the least idea what his old friend was talking about. He was a little annoyed and disappointed that Maverick was not here to enjoy a drink with, to tell him all the news when Sanchez was obviously so eager to go into the house. “Why did he think I’d understand?”

  Sanchez’s crippled fingers rubbed his swarthy face. “Dios, compadre, I don’t know. He said to tell you the girl’s father was McBride. Joe McBride. He said you’d understand.”

  For a long moment, Diego felt a pain grab his chest and he almost doubled over.

  Sanchez stared at him anxiously. “Diego? Are you all right? What in the name of our Lady is wrong?”

  “Nada,” Diego managed to shrug. “It is nothing. I’m not even sure I ever met a McBride,” he lied, averting his eyes. “Compadre, I am thoughtless, keeping you away from your lovely wife.” He stood up, clapping the old vaquero on the back. “Here it is Saturday morning. She’ll want you to take her into the village this afternoon shopping and visiting.”

  The other paused, looking wistfully toward the house. “Ah, old friend, I’m in no hurry if you want to talk some more. . . .”

  But Diego wanted to be alone to think, to decide what to do. “No, you go on, I insist,” He waved him away toward the house and stood looking after him. The small dog trotted at the vaquero’s heels as he crossed the patio to the French doors.

  When he had disappeared inside, Diego collapsed limply in his chair, tossing the cigar away. Joe McBride. What was he to do about this terrible thing that was about to happen or might even have happened already?

  Joe McBride. He had kept the information from the boy for a year now, lighting a few candles to the Virgin in hopes that Maverick’s trail would never cross that of the big Kentuckian. It had been too much to hope for. Diego stared at the water bubbling in the fountain with unseeing eyes. About one year, he thought, about one year ago I met him at the Cattleman’s Association meeting in Austin.

  Maverick. He considered the strange, distant boy he had raised since the age of fourteen. There were more scars deep within him than just the one of his dark face. Now the half-Comanche was a grown man, as tough and rugged as the Texas Hill Country itself. No one knew Maverick well, although Diego and Trace had both tried. He seemed to keep people at arm’s length, as if he feared intimacy of any kind. Maverick could be kind and generous to a fault. But he had a dark side, this adopted son. The vaqueros whispered about Trace that while Maverick never forgot a friend, he never forgave an enemy. And he could carry a grudge longer than anyone the old Don had ever known.

  He ran his tongue along his wrinkled lips, stared down at his arthritic hands. Once he’d been a good shot, as were Trace and Maverick. Last year, of course, his hands had shaken too badly to enter the shooting contests at the association meet
ing, even though the prize was a fine Winchester ’73 rifle that had just been introduced. That was why he’d stopped by the table in the hotel to admire the gun and congratulate the man who had won it.

  He remembered now holding out his hand. “Senor, my heartiest congratulations! Never have I seen such skill with a rifle!”

  The red-haired man took his hand and shook it warmly. “You are too kind.” His ruddy complexion colored with modesty. “Do sit down, Senor—?”

  “Durango. Diego de Durango.” He pulled up a chair, gesturing for a waiter.

  “Ah, the Triple D in the Hill Country.” The handsome stranger nodded, “Of course, your place is well-known.”

  Now it was the old man’s turn to become embarrassed, flustered. The waiter came over. “Whiskey,” he ordered, “since my son and old Sanchez are off looking at a display of new saddles and aren’t here to lecture me.” He looked into the other’s wide green eyes, liking the honesty and the open friendliness he saw there. “Amigo, may I buy you a drink?”

  “Thank you, no,” Joe McBride gestured toward his coffee cup and the waiter refilled it. “Enjoy your spirits, Senor, but I’m a man of the Lord and I find liquor causes me more trouble than it’s worth.”

  Diego glanced around to make sure there was no one in the crowded dining room of cattlemen who would tattle on him before he lit a cigar, offered one to the other man who shook his head. “A minister who shoots so well? How can that be?”

  The other man laughed good-naturedly. “I only felt the call three years ago after my wife died,” he admitted. “But I’m from Kentucky and I was always able to knock a knothole from a tree when no one else could see it. Too poor to waste the powder, you know.”

  Diego nodded, although he did not know. His family was old Spanish aristocracy who had been in Texas since it had belonged to Mexico. “I don’t believe I caught your name, Senor.”

  The man paused, a forkful of steak halfway to his lips. “McBride. Joe McBride.”

  Diego went into a spasm of coughing. The waiter came just then and Diego grabbed the whiskey, gulping it.

  McBride half rose from his chair. “Are you all right, sir? May I do something—?”

  “No, no, I—I’m fine,” he lied, waving the man back down. “Did you say Joe McBride?”

  The other nodded, staring at him, concern in the honest face. “Senor, you have turned very pale. Should I call a doctor? Go find your son?”

  Diego shook his head, signaling the waiter to bring him another drink. It couldn’t be the same man. It just couldn’t be. “Did you say you were from Kentucky, Mr. McBride?”

  The other nodded, returned to his steak. “You know, I don’t even have a son to pass this fine gun on to.” He stroked the etched barrel. “Seems a shame now, don’t it?”

  “It surely does.” Diego stared at him, accepting the whiskey from the waiter and sipping it thoughtfully while he watched the man eat his steak.

  He liked Joe McBride instinctively. Everything about the man spoke of character, of honesty, of open friendliness. “You have daughters then, sir?”

  Joe grinned and nodded, bringing out small photographs from his coat. “Sure do. Five of the reddest-haired girls you ever saw in your life!” He held the pictures out proudly and Diego took them, staring. Four of the girls were little, but there was a young woman of eighteen or so that showed a lot of fire in her beauty.

  “That one will lead some man a merry chase some day,” he laughed, handing the photos back. “Fine children, Senor.”

  The other man looked at the pictures fondly a long moment before returning them to his pocket. “That oldest is Cayenne; you know, like the pepper. I’m all the girls have,” he said with a slight shadow crossing his face. “With my wife dead giving birth to the little one, there’s nobody to look after them should something happen to me. Oh, my wife’s Aunt Ella’s in Wichita, but she’s in pore health and doesn’t much like kids anyway, so don’t think she’d come to stay with us in west Texas.”

  He described the little community as Diego toyed with his whiskey glass, turning it around and around in his fingers as he considered. This couldn’t be the same man, the unfeeling monster whom his adopted son hunted, intended to kill, and yet . . .

  He must know. “Senor,” Diego said hesitantly, “did you ever know a girl called Annie Laurie?”

  The man’s face paled, and his nerveless fingers dropped his fork so that it clattered to the floor. No one else seemed to pay the pair the slightest heed as they stared into each other’s eyes in the midst of the noisy, crowded dining room.

  The Don sighed. “I guess there’s no reason to ask a second time. I’d hoped I might be wrong. . . .”

  “What do you know of her?” the man demanded, half rising from his chair and reaching across to grab Diego’s lapels. “What do you know of my Annie?”

  The tragedy of his green eyes told the older man how very much Joe had loved the girl. Slowly, he reached up, disengaging the man’s clenched fingers from his coat. “Senor,” he whispered, “I think we need to talk.”

  The man stared into his eyes and his lips trembled. “You know of her? What—?”

  “I think we’d better find a more private place to continue this discussion.” Diego said. He stood up, threw money down on the table, and took the man’s elbow that trembled in his grasp. “Isn’t there a garden outside?”

  The man stared at him, tears in his eyes, and nodded dumbly.

  For a long moment, Don Diego feared the man would collapse, but he seemed to pull himself together. Joe picked up the prize rifle and let Diego lead him outside to a secluded bench under a live oak tree.

  “She’s dead, isn’t she?” he whispered. “Otherwise, you would have told me. She’s—”

  “Si.” He could think of no way to soften it for the man. Joe McBride put his face in his big square hands and for a long moment his shoulders shook much as Maverick’s had shaken when he’d finally told his adoptive father of the terrible night he had fled the Indian camp.

  After a long moment, the man reached into his pocket for his Bible, clasping it in his hands as if drawing strength from it. Diego looked at it. The black volume was dog-eared and worn from much reading. “Your religion will give you strength.”

  Joe McBride nodded. “Yes, it has since the day my wife died.” He looked off toward the horizon, where the sunset turned the sky golden and peach and orange as only a Texas sky can look. “He must have had you seek me out for a reason, Senor Durango. There’s a time and season for all things. Why has He sent you to find me?”

  The Don considered. Had some Great Force caused him to be at this place in time at this moment to change the course of things? He could only be grateful that Maverick was back at the Triple D and had no reason to go to west Texas. His trail might never cross that of Joe McBride’s in his lifetime, and yet . . .

  He sighed and pulled at his white mustache, trying to decide what to do. “McBride, you have five daughters and no wife?”

  The big Scots-Irishman nodded. “I told you that.”

  Was he being disloyal to his ward? On the other hand, if he did not warn McBride, blood would be on his hands if Maverick should catch him unawares. “Annie’s son is looking for you,” he said softly, “and when he finds you, he intends to kill you.”

  “Annie’s son . . . ” The man stared into space, his green eyes seeing only a scene from the past. “She always told me she would give me a son.”

  Diego grabbed his arm, shook him. “Don’t you understand what I’m telling you? He’s out for blood and he won’t give up until he finds you!”

  The man looked down at the Bible in his hands. “Can’t say I blame him,” he said softly.

  “I mean it, Senor, and he’s a good shot; best with a pistol I ever saw. Trace trained him to shoot. I tell you this now because I can’t stand by doing nothing while he orphans five children!”

  “Well, I’ll pray about it.” Joe said, staring down at his Bible.

  �
��Pray?” Diego almost shouted. “Pray?”

  Joe shrugged. “What else would a preacher do? Do you expect me to go gunnin’ for him?”

  “Well, no,” Don Diego muttered, rubbing his wrinkled face. “But if he comes after you, you should be at least prepared to defend yourself. . . ”

  “I—I don’t know if I could do that—kill Annie’s boy, I mean.” He stared off into the growing dusk. “I suppose I won’t know whether I can pull the trigger on him until that time comes that, God forbid, he’s standing there ready to kill me. That day, I’ll find out what kind of man I am, what kind of stuff he’s made of. I can’t imagine Annie’s boy as a cold-blooded killer. There’d be too much of Annie in his heart and soul.”

  The man had loved her, perhaps even more than Maverick had, Diego thought, blinking away the sudden wetness that blurred his vision. “If I thought it would do any good, I’d try to talk him out of it. All I can do is warn you, McBride, describe him to you in case he ever shows up in your area. That way, you at least got time to make your decision before he pulls the trigger.”

  McBride fingered the worn Bible in his hands. “He’s got gray eyes, hasn’t he?”

  Diego looked at him sharply and nodded. “How do you know that?”

  He smiled slightly as if remembering. “Because my Annie had gray eyes.”

  “But he’s dark, with the blackest hair, like a Comanche warrior, and he’s big, too. He’s got a jagged scar down his left cheek.”

  Joe nodded. “I wonder if he has her smile? No one ever thought her pretty ’til she smiled.”

  Diego thought now how seldom he had seen the boy smile. Maverick’s mind seemed to be constantly on his grim revenge. It was his duty to warn this man who was being stalked so relentlessly. “Let me describe his horse, you’d spot that instantly. a giant of a gray stallion called Dust Devil.”

  “Revelations six, verse eight,” Joe said softly. “Yes, it’s a sign all right. I only wish I knew what the Almighty was plannin’.”