“Well they didn’t swallow you in Kansas. How are you, Long?”
“Great. We had a successful trip north. No big problems. Lost one cowboy, and a young boy who came down with a fever.”
“That may be a record ain’t it?”
“Might be. What are the Comanche up to this morning?”
“One of the men shot two of them three days ago at a watering hole.”
“How was that?”
“We knew they had been drinking there. Ross Durban laid low up there. He wanted a shot at them. The boys even took his horse away so they’d not see it. Three of them bucks came to water about daylight. They were stripped to the waist and had yellow and red war paint all over their bodies.
“One was on his belly getting a drink, one on foot. The third on a horse. Ross shot the horseman, reloaded his single-shot sniper rifle with another bullet and managed to get the drinker. The other one got away, but those two were dead. His fifty-caliber Sharps put them both out of their misery. He ended up with two good war ponies he caught. Rode one of them back and he led number two to the ranch. Things have been slower since then.”
“I can imagine. But can we still use a force to sweep our ranges of them?”
“Tomorrow Ross can show you some other places where they’ve been. Wash up. My wife will feed you all at the house.”
“What about your men?”
“They will eat the next shift. They aren’t back yet.”
“Okay, we’ll get our horses unloaded and we will be there,” Long said.
“Good. She will love to see you.”
“Men, unload and put the horses up. Wash up. Food’s on at the house.”
They thanked him and took Long’s horse.
Then Long and Hoot started for the house.
“How is your wife?”
“Pregnant again. Mexican women can get that way at the drop of the hat, but she loves the big house and loves having babies, so who the hell am I to complain. You know I thought I’d live out my life in Mexico. I had no fortune, no big ranch, and a few years ago when there were no markets, hell there was no need in having cattle. Figured I’d get me a hacienda and eat frijoles until I died.”
“But Dad got you off your rump, out of your hammock, and made you come help us?”
“He damn sure did. I never believed the cattle business would be this damn good this long. You had to own a thousand of them and they barely paid expenses. I thought he’d lost his mind branding all them worthless mavericks with you boys. That old son of a buck knew damn good and well it would change. Now who in the blazes told him that?”
“Intuition.”
“Aw, who in the hell is that?”
“It ain’t anyone. Something in his head told him that and it worked.”
“What else will do that same thing then?”
“I don’t have any of it. He has it and Harp and I are working it hard.”
Hoot took his hat off and beat on his dusty chaps with it. “I want a better explanation than that.”
“That is simply what it is.”
“Sounds like ammunition.”
“No. It might blow up but it is not real explosive. It is like you seeing something in mesquite beans to market and know they will be best sellers and you corner the mesquite bean market.”
“How do you get it?”
“I guess study some things until you find a winner.”
“I hated studying when I was a kid. Like why know what six times seven amounts to? I don’t give a damn. I know it and never used it in my life one time. And the teacher rapped me on the back of my hand for saying, ‘I will never use that in my life.’”
Long was laughing washing up on the back porch. He dried off and followed him inside.
Hoot’s wife’s welcomed him with a hug and then handed him a cup of coffee.
“It is hot but it is your brand. I am glad you buy that brand for all of us. How is your lovely wife?”
“Jan sends her best to all of you. We are hitting the brush so she stayed at home.”
“Good idea. These Comanche have us all upset.”
“You’re safe here. They want defenseless people and to kidnap their children.”
“Why do you think they do that?”
“A professor once told me Comanche women rode horses and lose them. They have a very low birth rate so they steal young white and brown children to raise them as Comanche.”
“I would hate to live with them. They smell bad.”
Long agreed.
Hoot shook his head. “You should teach school. I never knew what intuition was. I also never heard them redskins had a low birth rate.”
“Listen, when I was a boy I wanted to shoot crows with a twenty-two rather than study.”
“But today it stuck to you that is all that matters.”
One of the house girls brought him a plate with browned beef and corn on the cob. She then brought him some fry bread and a bowl of frijoles. That set down before him she asked if he needed anything else.
“No, and thanks. It smells wonderful.” He turned to Hoot seated across from him and not eating. “We had no mesquite fires in Kansas to cook beef over. Maybe you could cut down mesquite and sell it to them. I missed having it up there.”
Hoot made a painful face. “Won’t be me cuts it down.”
They both laughed.
That night he met Hoot’s Indian hunter, Ross Durban. They talked about Comanche and where to find their camps to attack them on a hit-and-run basis. Durban shared his thoughts on where they might find them. The man was past his twenties, had shoulder-length brown hair, mustache, and a beard. After a short conversation Long considered him to be a damn good tough scout, and, with his skills, they might actually send the Comanche packing from their country.
Fight fire with fire his father told him several times, and that meant making a surprise raid on them in their camp, so in the morning they were going to try to run them down. The tough men Long brought would ride with him and Durban, aiming to find and make a hard raid on the Comanche secreted in the hills of ranchland the family owned.
“I feel we will find them in the drainage of Wooly Creek and Kennedy Branch,” Durban told Long. “That’s the country I found the most signs.”
“You know that country better than any man. We can head there. Taking only three pack animals with us will make us mobile, but we will need to be resupplied on the third day.”
Durban agreed that if they were not resupplied, their efforts would be shut down or weakened.
Hoot said that they need not worry—they would be supplied.
Before he undressed, Long stood in the dark bedroom and stared out into the moonlit yard. He felt the risk they planned would work, if they could manage the surprise. They simply had to do it right.
CHAPTER 25
It proved to be another hot late summer day when they made camp. All the signs of Indians they found were old, but Durban said they were still short of the country he’d found the most fresh sign. Long had a night guard schedule, and his men all knew the big dipper time clock to tell them when to go wake their successor—that made Long smile—they’d never call for him. Get up. It’s my time to take a turn.
They were all ready before dawn. Horses caught, a quick meal, and in the saddle on the move. By afternoon Durban began to point out fresh sign. Several barefoot horse prints and scattered horse poop, signs that were looked for. They split into two groups with plans to relocate at a spot nearby before dark.
Shade Clements could track and he carefully listened to Durban’s description of the land they’d find before taking the men on their hunt to a place Durban called Lost Hats. If they found something they were to come back. “Don’t be stupid. You see a handful of Injuns, there may be more just around the corner.”
Both Long and Shade agreed that made sense. They split up and Shade led half the crew on the dim road headed west by southwest.
Long decided the road had not been used for a
wheeled vehicle in many years. Some of this land had been widely settled much earlier, but with pressure from the warring tribes and a lack of market for anything they grew, made them move back to more populated areas.
In a land of cedars and live oak patched with grassy meadows and beds of prickly pear, they rode on. Long and the others were craning their necks around all the time—in case they spotted a Comanche.
A shot rang out. Long took charge. After not seeing the telltale smoke of a rifle or pistol, he pointed to the cedars ahead. They busted into the cover, unlimbering their rifles and handguns on the way.
“Two hold the horses. The rest get down and try to see who is shooting at us.”
Rex held over half the horses. Ivy had the rest all crowded in the tall cedars. Nearby, Shade was on his belly under the cedars shooting toward the way the other shots had come from. Long was beside him. He spotted something red, took aim, shot, and he knew that there was one less Comanche in the world. Ejecting the casing, he wondered how many more there were out there.
“Go easy on our ammo,” he told them. “This could go on for a while.”
Rex soon joined them on the ground under the pungent bows. “The horses are hobbled.”
“Good thinking,” Long said.
“Anyone has seen who it is?” Ivy asked.
“Can’t you smell them?” Boone asked.
“No.”
Just then two war-painted armed bucks came riding by, yipping like coyotes and wildly shooting at the thicket. For a moment they were there. Then a wall of bullets sent the horses to the ground, and their riders were thrown to the grass screaming in pain.
“Wave one,” Long said. “I have fought them before. That is the testing of what we can do—I expect much more shortly.”
“You really did this before?”
“My father, Harp, and I held them off on several occasions trying to recover captives.”
It wasn’t more than a few minutes when another, larger, wave of fierce bucks charged them. The horses were, again, shot out from under them and the raging screaming riders jumped free to stand with smoking guns cutting through the boughs of the cedars, but their action was short-lived. Accurate shooting soon wilted them all down. Long had had no doubts that his men could fight, and they were sure answering the call.
Long mopped his face with his kerchief. It was as hot as hell in that cedar grove waiting for another wave. The Comanche ponies, wounded and in pain, were limping around or were dying, lying on their sides in the dried grass among the corpses of the raiders.
Sweat—or was it tears?—masked his vision, and his eyelids couldn’t clear the moisture fast enough to suit him. This place under the evergreen needles was not a place he wanted to end his days. He had a lovely wife, a bigger ranch than he’d dreamed of ever having, and a life he found interesting.
The sharp smell of the spent ammo was burning in his nose. Belly down once again and he wondered how many more wanted a one-way trip to hell. It was amazing. His men had already held off two waves of them—obviously the Comanche had underestimated his small force’s ability to fight back.
Time crawled by as slowly as a caterpillar covering a road to reach the other side. Then he heard more shooting to the south of them. What was that all about? He rose to his knees, holding his palm out for them to be quiet and listen.
There were several horses coming their way.
“Men, get ready. I think Durban and the others have some Indians on the run, and they will come right by us.”
A cheer went up from his men.
Everyone frantically reloaded their weapons to be ready. The shooting was ear deafening, and there were enough horses shot to cause a jam-up. A billowing cloud of gun smoke became a dense fog as the desperate braves were being slaughtered, if not injured, by the crashing horses.
Then Long saw Durban and the others come riding hard in pursuit with smoking guns that assured him they would all see another sunrise. What a day in the Texas brush . . . he hoped the surviving tribal members would go back to their tepees and tell the others they found a hornet’s nest down there in the Texas brush and know to leave the ranch area alone.
“Is everyone all right?” he asked Boone.
“A few got skinned. Nothing serious. We’re fine.”
“Our horses all here and sound,” Ivy said.
“Hey, what have you guys been doing?” Durban shouted as Long beat the sticky needles off his hat and chaps.
The two men embraced, and Long thanked him and the rest of the men. “We did very well, men. The smallest army to ever whip the Comanche besides the Texas Rangers. You did a great job.”
The men congratulated each other . . . a real grateful feeling between them all of a job well done.
The group counted the number of Comanche and sent any of them not gone on with their brothers to hell. Sixteen Comanche braves were not breathing. They managed to catch six sound horses. With all this done, Long felt that the Comanche would go somewhere else, gather their forces, and raid. Anyway he hoped so.
There were enough supplies to hold one man for a few days, so Durban decided that he would take a packhorse and the rest of the supplies with him to search more of the ranchland for signs of Comanche. Long shook his hand before he rode out and thanked him for taking the job, and to get back to the ranch fast if he saw more. Obviously the man liked the job and would be a good lookout. The rest rode back with Long to Hoot’s headquarters.
Back at the ranch and kitchen table, Hoot listened to Long’s description of the battle. “We had no idea the size of the force. We were pinned down, in good cover, but how we all came out unscathed I will never know. Except God must have saved us.”
“He must have. That Durban is a helluva scout isn’t he?”
“Yes, a great one.”
“He told me he had been kidnapped by them and lived among them for many years. They never treated him right. One day a sub chief kicked him around as that damn white boy. He said it might have been over his talking, earlier, to his daughter, but the beating made him so mad he left them and swore revenge.”
“I’d say it was to our good fortune. Keep him on the payroll.”
“Oh, I plan to. Long, thanks for handling this. They may get out of our hair after this.”
“Or seek revenge.”
Hoot nodded, a very serious look on his face. “They are vengeful.”
Long missed his lovely wife more than usual. “Well, I’m headed home in the morning. Harp should be getting back. I have more ranches to buy. You ever see an eight-acre lake off in the southwest on some private land?”
“Is it in our block?”
“Yes.”
“I bet some of my men have found it. I’ll check around and let you know.”
“I met the son of the owner of that section up in Kansas. His name is Clyde Nelson. It’s isolated and he told me they’d sell it when they get back home. I’m going to go find and look at it. It is on a section in the southwest.”
“I think that’s funny. You found a lost Texas lake in Kansas.”
“Things are under control here for now. Are there any mavericks left to brand?”
“We keep finding a few, but they are almost all gone.”
“I guess everyone found they’d better brand them or someone else would do it.”
Hoot agreed and shook his hand. “That spring you two went to Missouri. I should have branded a few thousand and I’d be rich today.”
“Dad had us doing that every chance we got.”
“Him and I argued about it. Me telling him why do that . . . they aren’t worth the effort.”
“I almost felt that way, too.” They both laughed.
“When you sold that first herd, what did you think?”
“It struck me, when we got back home, that we had thousands of dollars because of those cattle.”
Hoot shook his head. “It’s been unbelievable hasn’t it?”
Long agreed. His whole life had been unbelie
vable ever since. He thought he’d found his woman in the captain’s widow, but she wouldn’t have him. Then some women came and went. Like fog, they were gone in the morning. Then Rose came into his life, and losing her left him alone and sad. He’d worried, headed for home, if being a breed was his problem with women, but then he found Jan. She didn’t care about his origin, and now he was sure anxious to get back to her.
The next day he and his crew hurried home. Hiram met him. One of his men took Long’s horse and they walked to the main house as Long told him how they sent the Comanche packing.
“I’d liked to have been there and gave them what for with ye.”
“I thought about that, with five of us denned up in the cedars and my men busy mowing them down. Then this tracker Durban brought the rest of the men on the run to support us. Not one man was more than scratched—”
Just then his wife, Jan, shedding a straw hat, came on a hard run for him and jumped into his arms. “You’re back in one piece.”
She smothered him with kisses as he swung her around in a circle like she was a feather. “Damn right I am, girl, and am I glad to see you.”
When he set her down she looked a little embarrassed.
“Don’t worry . . . I missed you that bad, too.”
“Oh, Long, I was so worried you’d been hurt or shot—”
“No way. We beat them at their own game and sent them packing.”
“I can’t say how excited I am to have you back in one piece.” She pressed her forehead up against his.
“Damn, Jan, I really miss being with you when you’re not around.”
“That makes two of us.”
“What would you like to do?”
She glanced around and, satisfied no one was close, said, “Let’s go get lost in our bed.”
“Good idea.”
CHAPTER 26
They got up the next day and went down to breakfast. Harp and Katy were down there at the table.
“It’s trying to freeze us outside,” Harp said.
Long scooted the chair under his wife. “Is it that cold?”
“Water left outside is frozen.”
“That is cold down here. I have always been glad winters were not as hard down here as when we lived in Arkansas as boys.”
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