“We wasted our time,” Harland said.
“Told you,” Thaxter said. “We should take a rock to Reuben Weaver’s skull for this wild-goose chase.”
“You let him be,” Luke said.
“Or what?” Thaxter taunted.
“You’ll answer to me.”
“I’m real scared.”
“You two cut it out,” Harland snapped. “Thax, I won’t remind you again. Pa told us to leave them be. There’s a time and a place to stand up to him, and this isn’t it.”
Luke wondered what that was about. “Stand up?” he said.
“None of your business,” Harland said.
“Aren’t you the diplomat, big brother?” Thaxter said sarcastically.
“For thirty thousand dollars,” Harland said, “I’ll do whatever I have to.”
Chapter 22
Ebidiah saw the whole thing through his spyglass. He saw the Comanche melt away before Luke Burnett and the Kurst brothers climbed within rifle range. He saw Luke Burnett dismount and search a bit, saw them give up and head down. And he saw the warrior reappear and hunker where the three couldn’t see him. Thanks to the spyglass, Ebidiah saw the warrior’s sly smile at having outwitted them.
Ebidiah went on watching the Comanche. There was a saying to the effect that where you saw one, there were always more. But he saw no sign of others. An advance scout, he reckoned, for a war party. Or maybe a lone warrior on a killing spree. That happened from time to time, he’d heard.
Whatever the case, it spelled trouble for Owen and the rest. The warrior would bide his time and pick the most advantageous moment to strike.
Ebidiah had to decide what to do.
He could ride down and warn Owen. But then he’d have to explain how he saw the warrior through his spyglass, which might lead to embarrassing questions about him spying on the Kursts.
He could deal with the Comanche himself. He’d fought a few Indians in his time. But he wasn’t about to delude himself. He was well past his prime. Neither as strong nor as spry as he used to be. He’d be putting his life at risk.
The sun climbed, and the Comanche didn’t move.
Ebidiah considered using his Sharps. Once, years ago, he’d dropped a buffalo at six hundred yards. But that was on an open plain, on level ground. Where he’d had a clear line of sight. Where he didn’t have to take elevation into account or worry about other factors.
Ebidiah lowered the spyglass, rubbed his eyes, and raised it again. He calculated the range to be pretty near eight hundred yards from his hill on the south side of the creek to the hill the Comanche was on, on the north side. Much too far for him to try.
His only recourse was to get closer. That in itself was dangerous. The warrior didn’t have a spyglass, but Comanches were known for their fine eyesight. They were like hawks, able to pick things out at a distance that baffled most whites.
Ebidiah turned his attention to the camp below. The men, and that one gal, were busy preparing for the roundup. No one was standing guard. Maybe they thought they’d scared the Comanche off.
“Blamed fools,” Ebidiah said to himself. He’d seen it before. Overconfidence killed more pilgrims than disease. Emigrants who loaded down their Conestoga with a piano and cabinets but neglected to bring enough food and water because they were sure they could find plenty on their own, and died of thirst on a dry stretch. A cavalry officer who believed that hostiles would run at the sight of him and his men, and was turned into a pincushion with arrows when the hostiles proved him wrong. Or the hunter who poked his head into a grizzly’s den without first tossing a rock in to see if the grizzly was there, and lost his head to a swipe of the bear’s paw. Overconfident, one and all.
Ebidiah fixed his spyglass on the girl. Her name was Lorette, if he recollected right. She was trouble, that girl. She sashayed around like a she-cat on the prowl, and seemed to have attached herself to young Sam Burnett. The kind of girl, his ma used to say, who was always up to no good. Even so, she didn’t deserve to spend the rest of her days in a Comanche lodge. And there was a very real possibility that she was the one that warrior was after.
Comanches took white women for wives now and then. They weren’t like the Apaches, who thought white women were too weak to make good wives.
It could be that warrior wasn’t out for blood. It could be he was out for romance.
Ebidiah went back to pondering how to stop him. He could sneak down close to the camp and wait for the warrior to move in, and hope he picked him off before he struck. Or he could go after him. Hunt the warrior down as if he were a buck or a bear.
Ebidiah balked at the notion of killing him, though. His whole life he’d never liked to kill other people. It felt wrong.
Some whites claimed that killing redskins was all right because they weren’t human. They were animals. Which was ridiculous, in Ebidiah’s estimation. It wasn’t the color of the skin that made a person human. It was what was under the skin.
In that regard, Indians weren’t any different than whites except in some of their beliefs. Even there, whites had so many different beliefs of their own, they took to waging wars over who was right and who was wrong, with each side thinking it was better than the other.
Ebidiah shook himself. He was straying off the mental trail again. The issue was the Comanche, and how to stop the warrior from hurting anyone.
By the position of the sun, it would be six to seven hours yet before nightfall. Plenty of time for him to make up his mind.
Opening his possible bag, he took out a bundle of pemmican, broke off a piece, replaced the bundle, and set to chewing and thinking.
He remembered his ma and his pa, good people who’d done the best they could by him, and how he’d heard about their passing more than a year after the fact when a letter from his sister caught up to him. His pa went first, of cancer, and his ma died three months later. She’d refused to eat or drink, and wasted away. One of Ebidiah’s regrets was that he’d never gone back to see them. They would have liked that.
Ebidiah remembered a Crow gal he’d lived with for several seasons. She wasn’t much of a looker, by white standards, but to him she’d been downright beautiful, with as tender a heart as ever beat. He’d lost her to an avalanche one winter’s morning when she went to the stream for water. He’d hated snow ever since.
Ebidiah recalled as many good times as came to him, and the few friends he’d had, and the pleasures of smoking a pipe, and the taste of apple pie, and the sheer delight of chocolate pudding.
All things considered, the Good Lord had granted him a fine life. He could go to his grave content.
Careful not to show himself, Ebidiah turned and descended the far side of the hill to Sarabell. She was dozing, as usual, and looked up when he took hold of her lead rope.
“Wake up there, girl,” Ebidiah said. “I’ve made up my mind. We’ve got us a Comanche to kill.”
Chapter 23
Sam Burnett was doing as his pa had told him and making a final check of the rope they’d strung to hold the longhorns. To Sam it seemed pointless. He didn’t see how a puny rope would keep a longhorn from going wherever it hankered to go.
His pa also wanted him to check that the ring of small fires were set to be lit. Sam had helped gather the wood for the fires, and extra wood, besides, plus a lot of kindling. Supposedly, the fires, and the smoke, would hold the longhorns in check if the rope failed. It was a trick the Spanish used.
He came to the third and dismounted. Just as he thought, there was nothing more to do. Turning, he was about to climb on his dun when a mare came out of the trees.
Her rider grinned like the cat that ate the canary.
“Here you are,” Lorette Kurst declared as if she’d been hunting him for a while and was glad to find him.
Which made no sense to Sam. “You heard my pa tell me what to do,” he remind
ed her. “You saw me ride off.”
“Well, true,” Lorette said, and laughed that impish laugh of hers. “You caught me, you handsome lunk, you. I’m guilty of following you.”
Sam wished she wouldn’t talk to him like that. Her antics puzzled him sometimes, in that he was never quite sure if she was serious. “Don’t you have work of your own to do?”
“Not at the moment,” Lorette said, “so I thought I’d help you.”
Forking leather, Sam said, “I don’t need any help, but thanks.”
“Dumb as a stump, you know that?”
Sam would have been insulted, except she was smiling like it was a joke. “I am no such thing.” He wasn’t as quick-witted as Luke but he wasn’t stupid, either.
“Don’t get your dander up, handsome.”
“I’m not that, either.” When it came to looks, Sam knew that Luke had those over him. He was as plain as rawhide. “I’m not much to look at, and I won’t be teased about it.”
“Who’s teasing?” Leaning on her saddle horn, Lorette raked him with those green eyes of hers. “To me you are, and that’s what counts.”
“You need spectacles.”
Lorette laughed louder and longer than Sam thought was called for. Then, sitting back, she ran a hand over the front of her shirt as if to smooth it. The effect was to have her bosom sort of thrust out at him.
Growing warm all over, Sam said, “You might as well go back. There’s other work you can do.”
“I’d rather help you.”
Sam continued on. Within moments Lorette caught up and gave him another of her strange womanly looks.
“What would you like to talk about?”
“Nothing. I’m working. Go on back and leave me be.” Sam figured that would be the end of it but she stayed at his side. “You don’t listen very well.”
“I have my own mind, thank you very much.”
“Your pa might get upset,” Sam grasped at a straw.
“Pshaw. As if he cares what I do. So long as I’m not unladylike when he’s around, I can do as I please. And it pleases me for the two of us to become better acquainted.”
“Why?”
“Dumb as a stump and then some,” Lorette said.
“There you go again. I wish you’d stop playing games with me.”
“I’m not no child,” Lorette said. “And you are no game. I’m sort of surprised at myself, but there you go.”
“What are you talking about?”
Lorette chuckled, and shook her head. She idly gazed skyward, and her grin widened. “Look up there. What do you see?”
Sam did, and told her. “A pair of hawks.”
Lorette nodded. “A male and a female.”
“So?” Sam said. Hawks hunted in pairs all the time. Once the female laid her eggs, that would change, and the male would do most of it. He mentioned as much.
“Listen to the egg expert,” Lorette said.
“You say the strangest things.”
“I’m not about to lay any eggs.”
“See?” Sam said.
“Honestly,” Lorette said, sounding annoyed.
Sam was flustered. Again. She had that effect on him. To be fair, so did most any young female except his sisters.
Unexpectedly, Lorette swung toward him and asked, “Do you like me or not? Tell me true.”
“You’re fine,” Sam said in confusion.
“That’s not what I said. Do you like me?”
“What’s not to like?” Sam hedged. Besides her smirking at him all the time, as if she knew something he didn’t, and how she kept comparing him to a tree stump.
“I swear,” Lorette said. “If men aren’t the most aggravating critters God ever made, I don’t know what is.”
“What did I do?”
“I asked you if you like me and you won’t give me a direct answer. You keep beating around the bush.”
To shut her up, Sam said, “I like you.”
Lorette went from mad to sweet in the bat of her eyelashes. “What about me do you like the most?”
Sam indulged in a rare cuss, glad his ma wasn’t there to hear. “Hell and tarnation. I just said I like you and now you want more?”
“You’re stalling again, Sam Burnett. What about me do you like?”
Sam said the first thing that popped into his head. “Your hair, I guess.”
“You guess?”
“It’s sort of pretty.”
“Sort of?”
“Just like your eyes. They’re sort of pretty, too.”
“I could just shoot you.”
“What did I do?”
“You’re male.”
Sam almost cussed a second time. “Why are you making such a fuss over this? Maybe you should be asking Luke or Reuben Weaver questions like this.”
“Reuben Weaver?” Lorette said, and cackled. “I’d rather be poked by a Comanche. And your brother doesn’t interest me. He’s like Thaxter. All they care about are their pistols.”
Her mention of pokes had caused Sam to break out in a prickly itch. “A lady shouldn’t talk about things like that.”
“Pistols?”
“No. Pokes.”
Lorette laughed. “Maybe I’ve taken it into my head that I’d like a poke. You ever think of that? Maybe I’d like it with a certain fella my own age.”
Sam could have been knocked from his saddle with a feather. “Are you talking about me?”
“I’m not talking about your horse.”
Sam was flabbergasted. This was beyond his experience with women, by a long shot. “Why, you come right out with it, don’t you?”
“If I waited for you to come out with it, I’d have gray hair and be using a cane.” Lorette grinned and winked. “Mull it over. You might cotton to the notion. I’m told I’m pleasing to the eye.”
Sam swallowed hard.
Raising her reins, Lorette said, “I’ll leave you to your work, like you want. But some day or night soon, you and me are going to get a lot better acquainted.” She blew him a kiss and used her spurs.
“Lord in heaven,” Sam said. “What do I do now?”
Chapter 24
As Ebidiah Troutman worked his way around a hill to the west of the cattle camp, he had second thoughts about his notion to kill the Comanche. He was putting his life at risk for folks he hardly knew.
Sure, Ebidiah liked the Burnett family. They were friendly, and always treated him decent when he paid them a visit. They’d even invited him to partake of their meals, something no one else ever did. Yet for all that, he knew very little about them. They were acquaintances, was all.
He didn’t care a fig what happened to the Kursts. The Comanches could count coup on the whole clan and he wouldn’t lose a wink of sleep. For that matter, he wasn’t much fond of the Weavers, either. Jasper was all right, but he was a drunk. Wilda Weaver was a shrew. Their boy was nice but a mite simpleminded.
Why die for any of them?
The Burnetts, yes. That was the crux of it, right there. He’d grown fond enough of Owen and his family that he was willing to hazard his life to save them from harm. Which was peculiar in itself. He’d seldom grown attached to anyone the past few decades.
“It’s my age,” Ebidiah said to Sarabell. He was growing soft in his twilight years. Back during his beaver days, the only person he’d cared a whit about had been himself. Except for that Crow gal. He’d liked her considerable. There had been something about her, something special. The day she’d died, he thought his heart died, too.
So he was doing this for the Burnetts. If he was smart, he’d go tell Owen about the Comanche and ask for their help in driving the warrior out of hiding. But here he was, bound and determined to do it by his lonesome.
“I have rocks for brains, old gal,” Ebidiah t
old Sarabell.
She flicked her ears.
Ebidiah grimly clenched his jaw, and continued on. There came a time in everyone’s life when they had to do what needed doing, and the consequences be damned. He told himself that in his head, several times, but it didn’t make the doing any easier.
Deep down, Ebidiah was afraid to die. He might be close to the grave in years alone, but that didn’t make a violent end any easier to contemplate. And no mistake about it, if the warrior turned the tables and took him by surprise, he’d be in for the most violent death imaginable.
It was do or die.
Circling wide to the north, he came up on the hill where he’d seen the warrior from the rear.
His thumb curled around the Sharps’s hammer, Ebidiah drew to within fifty yards, and stopped. He looped the lead rope around an oak, gave Sarabell an affectionate pat, and whispered, “I didn’t tie you tight. If I don’t come back, get loose and go to the Burnett place. They’ll take you in if anyone will.”
Loosening his bowie in its sheath, Ebidiah crouched and snuck to the bottom of the hill. Butterflies took wing in his belly, a feeling he hadn’t had in a coon’s age. It brought back memories of the old days: that time the Blackfeet chased him for a day and a half; the time a bull buffalo charged him; the time he was nearly bit by a rattlesnake.
The hill was covered with scrub and trees. Ideal cover for the Comanche. It would make sneaking up on him hard. To make matters worse, the vegetation was so dry, it would crackle and rustle and give him away if he wasn’t careful.
Easing down onto his elbows and knees, Ebidiah sank flat. He would stay flat, pretend he was a snake.
As he started up the slope, the butterflies multiplied. His throat became so dry, it hurt to swallow.
Off to one side, sparrows chirped and flitted. He crawled extra slow, so as not to spook them and cause them to take abrupt wing.
A little farther, and he spied a small rabbit, motionless except for its ears, which moved back and forth, and the twitching of its small nose. It was alert for the sounds and smells of any predators.
Ebidiah stopped to avoid scaring it.
Ralph Compton Texas Hills Page 9
