“Jarrett! Son!”
Creed hadn’t said anything for a moment, just stared dispassionately. Then he’d responded, “I am Wolf, of the Penateka. My ap’ is Crooked Trail. I am not your tua.”
“The hell you say! The Comanches stole you from me, boy. You’re my son, all right. Where’s your mother?”
“The woman who bore me is paraibo, chief wife, to Buffalo Man, a war chief of the Quohadi.”
He’d watched Simon Creed’s face blanch white, then flush red with rage. “I suppose every one of those goddamned Red Devils raped her first.”
“It is the way of The People to rape women captives,” he’d replied matter-of-factly.
“Who is that with you?” Simon asked, finally acknowledging the young woman who rode beside Creed.
He’d smiled proudly. “This is my wife, Summer Wind, soon to be mother of my child.”
“Your wife?” Simon Creed observed the very pregnant woman with disgust and disbelief. “No son of mine is going to sire a bastard half-breed brat.” Then Simon had raised his musket to shoot Summer Wind.
Creed had responded instantly, an arrow nocked in his bow in the time it had taken Simon to aim. “You will be dead before the sound of your bullet echoes in the wind,” he’d promised.
His father had believed him, but Creed had inadvertently given Simon a weapon against him much better than a gun. “I don’t care whether you shoot me or not,” Simon had said. “But if you want your squaw and her brat to live, you’ll come along home with me.”
“I will kill you and come back here again,” Creed had replied.
It was then that Creed’s older brother had spoken for the first time. “You’ll have to kill me, too.”
“Tom?”
“Why don’t you come back with us, Jarrett? I’ve missed you.”
Creed had missed Tom, too. As a child he’d shared his thoughts with Tom, who’d been a buffer between him and his father. Creed could have killed the tabeboh, Simon Creed, and never looked back, but he could never have killed Tom.
So he’d turned to Summer Wind and said in Comanche, “Go back to The People. Tell them I have gone to live among the White-eyes for a while. But I will return.” Then he’d added, “Take good care of our child.”
He’d ridden away with his white brother and his father, thinking he’d be gone for a few days, or a few weeks at most. They would see that he was no longer a tabeboh, and they wouldn’t wish for him to stay among them.
Simon and Tom took him to a cotton plantation on the Brazos River, called Lion’s Dare, which Simon had won from its owner as a wager on a horse race. It was Tom, though, who worked the land.
Creed had thought surely his father would feel the urge to roam and forget about his erstwhile Comanche-raised son. He hadn’t counted on the old trapper’s orneriness. Simon didn’t like having Creed around, but he couldn’t let him go, either. Simon had lost his wife, but the grizzled old man had his son back. At the same time, Simon couldn’t help punishing Creed for what the Comanches had done to Mary.
“Your mother was soiled by those Comanches, boy. I could never let that woman back in my bed after she laid herself down beneath those filthy Comanche animals. That woman should’ve killed herself and spared me the knowledge of what she’s become.”
“I am one of those filthy Comanche animals,” Creed had said. And he’d seen in his father’s eyes that, yes, he was. “I am not welcome here. I will leave.”
“You try leavin’, boy, and I’ll hunt you down and kill that squaw of yours when I find you,” Simon had threatened.
There were many things he was not, but Simon was an excellent hunter. So Creed had stayed a little longer. He allowed Tom to dress him in trousers and a shirt, but he wouldn’t cut his hair, and he slept inside the house, even though he eschewed the feather bed for the floor.
Tom was a solace to him in those days when he thought he would go mad with the waiting.
“I must leave,” he’d railed to Tom.
“He means what he says,” Tom had cautioned. “Stay a little longer, Jarrett. I enjoy having you here. It’s like old times. I know you’re satisfied working the land. I can see it when you walk the fields. I understand how you’re missing Summer Wind, because I’ve been in love myself. But if you love your wife, you have to stay here to keep her safe.”
The brotherly bond was strong, and Simon was an old man given to gasping spells. Creed convinced himself that Simon would surely die soon.
Creed had been gone five long months when Long Quiet finally tracked him down. It was a fervent reunion, albeit a quiet one, since Long Quiet had sneaked in through Creed’s second-story window.
“Hihites, Wolf. You have a son.”
“And Summer Wind?”
“She is well.”
Creed’s joy had bordered on euphoria. He wanted to go home. And home was with Summer Wind, not at Lion’s Dare. Long Quiet stayed secreted in the woods nearby, coming at night to keep Creed company, and planning what to do about Simon so Creed could travel back to Comanchería.
Then, one night, Simon caught the two youths together in the barn. Even though his black curls had been straightened with bear grease, Long Quiet’s gray eyes proclaimed him white. Simon wasn’t one to leave a white boy in the clutches of the goddamned Comanches. Simon had closed off the only escape and called his burly Negroes to subdue the two boys. The fight that followed was savage and bloody.
Simon resorted to putting a bullet hole in Long Quiet, and even at that, it took more than a few Negroes to hold the two boys down so Simon could chain them hand and foot like recalcitrant slaves.
“There’s only one way to get the Comanche outta you boys, and that’s to send you where there aren’t any goddamned Red Devils for thousands of miles. If either of you causes any trouble whatsoever, I’m going to round up every planter from one end of the Brazos to the other and wipe out every one of your ‘People’ I can find, starting with Jarrett’s wife and bastard brat!”
Wolf and Long Quiet had looked at each other with wild eyes. Simon Creed made no idle threats. And while the tabeboh were no match for a band of Comanche warriors on horseback, what would happen to the old men and women and the children if the tabeboh raided a village while the warriors were gone? And so the two of them spent four long years in faraway Boston, being transformed into what the White-eyes thought were civilized men.
When they were finally graduated from school, Simon Creed granted them permission to return to Texas. Creed had spent four years hating his father. Simon had stolen his life as an Indian and given him one as a White. He felt no pity when he returned to Lion’s Dare and found Simon dying, a withered old man confined to his sickbed. The shell of humanity in the canopied four-poster was no threat to anyone.
“I did it for you, boy,” Simon explained. “You wouldn’t have been happy as a goddamned Indian. You’re blood of my blood, good Tennessee stock. In a few years there won’t be any more Comanches. They’re savages, and savages can’t survive when there’s no more wilderness. One day you’ll thank me for what I did.” Simon coughed, and the Negress with him wiped the bloody phlegm from his lips.
Creed looked down upon his father and felt grief, but not for Simon. Never for Simon. The grief was for the years he’d lost and could never have back. He might have thanked his father, would have thanked him, because Creed had been as greedy for the knowledge he’d soaked up as the dry land for a spring rain.
But what he’d gained wasn’t worth the price he’d been forced to pay. The pain of four years away from his wife and child was more than he could forgive. He and Long Quiet slipped away from Lion’s Dare and disappeared into Comanchería.
He was going home.
Why had he thought he would find things as he had left them? The rivers and winds were constantly shifting. The moon grew and diminished in its monthly orbit. Even the rolling prairies developed seams and cracks of age. Creed knew it was so. Why had he expected to find Summer Wind and a four-year-old
son waiting for him? Because he did not think he could live the rest of his life without them. So he kept his hope tied tightly to his breast and went searching for them.
What he found broke his heart. They had died of cholera the third year he’d been gone.
The white man’s disease had taken many in the tribe, who had no natural immunity, but not his enemy, Tall Bear.
“She hated you,” Tall Bear had hissed at him. “Once, when the loneliness was too great, she gave herself to me. I took her willingly and would have kept her for my own. But she said you would come back. She waited for you. She buried your son alone. In the end, as she lay dying, she wished you dead, too, White-eyes.”
The Comanche, Wolf, knew Tall Bear must be lying, but the white man, Jarrett Creed, feared he told the truth. He didn’t belong here anymore. There was nothing left to keep him among the Comanches. He said good-bye to his friend Long Quiet and fled Comanchería. He would find a place in the white man’s world. But not near Simon Creed. Nowhere near Simon Creed. He had no father. He was no man’s son.
The sound of the Indians’ angry voices brought Creed from his reverie.
These were no longer his people. He was a Texas Ranger, and they were his enemies. He’d chosen sides, and if a war came, he knew where he’d have to fight. But because he knew a little of both worlds, he could understand what made each one hate the other. If there was anything he could do to slow down this headlong rush to war, he was going to do it. He steeled himself to do battle, if necessary, with the man who’d been his lifelong foe.
Cricket couldn’t believe her eyes. Jarrett Creed, the consummate Texas Ranger, was surrounded by Comanches brandishing lances. When she’d left Sloan an hour ago, Cricket had saddled Valor and gone riding so she could be alone to think. Little had she dreamed she’d discover a band of Comanches on Three Oaks—or that she’d find Jarrett Creed in such grave danger. Her stomach still didn’t feel any too good from the whiskey she’d drunk the night before, and Creed’s predicament set her insides churning again. How had the Ranger managed to get himself captured by Comanches?
If there had been more Indians, she might have gone for help. If there had been fewer, she might have left the Ranger to fend for himself. But there were too many for Creed to fight alone, and few enough that together she and Creed might be able to make a fight of it.
Cricket reined her horse into the brush and angled him around behind Creed, close to the Indian camp. She’d done some quiet tracking in the past, but it had never mattered quite so much before if she was discovered. This time the consequences of a mistake could be deadly. Cricket’s palms were sweaty by the time she was close enough to dismount. Once on the ground, she planted each foot carefully as she moved through the undergrowth near the stream.
When she tried, Cricket could be very, very quiet. So it stopped her cold when her foot overturned a stone that rattled noisily. Her eyes shot to the Comanche camp. She thought she saw Creed turn toward the sound, but the Indians distracted him again. She’d been fortunate that none of the Comanches had heard her. She moved more slowly. Her muscles ached from tension by the time she got to a place where she thought she could do the most damage in the fastest time. She pulled her Patersons from her belt and took a deep breath to shout a warning to Creed before she started shooting.
“Creeeeed, run!”
“No, Brava!”
As Cricket started to fire, Creed ran directly in front of her. Her first shot went wild as she raised her aim to avoid hitting him.
“Are you crazy? Get out of my way!”
Creed was upon her before she had the chance to fire again, as were a dozen or so furious Indians. Creed yanked her guns out of her hands and threw them away. Frightened by Creed’s strange behavior, Cricket whistled shrilly for help.
The wolf and the stallion appeared from nowhere. Rogue attacked a shrieking Comanche, while Valor’s hooves grazed another. Pandemonium ensued. The superstitious Indians hardly noticed the berserk stallion when it became clear the woman had summoned a golden-eyed gray wolf, the talisman of that fierce warrior whom they’d been threatening. Who knew what powerful magic he’d conjured?
Creed had Cricket by the shoulders and was shaking her. “Call off your animals.”
“We’ll be killed!”
“Call them off!”
Why was he so angry? She’d saved his life. She noticed for the first time that the Comanches had fanned out in an awed circle around them, while Valor screamed his fury, rearing and pawing the air on one side of her, and Rogue growled menacingly, sharp teeth bared, on the other. Creed looked deadly. She decided to obey him.
“It’s okay,” she said quietly. Valor snorted and shook his head but came down on all four hooves. Rogue covered his bared teeth, but his furred hackles remained upright and his yellow eyes watchful. Cricket reached out a hand on either side of her to soothe the agitated beasts.
Creed left her to check on the Indians who’d been attacked by the animals.
“They’re more frightened than hurt,” Creed said, returning to her side. “It’s a good thing no one was seriously injured.”
Cricket’s indignation made her voice sharp. “What the hell’s the matter with you? I saw you surrounded by Comanches brandishing lances and assumed you needed some help. Now you tell me it’s a good thing no one was hurt.”
Creed lifted his hat and brushed a weary hand through his hair. Then he pulled the hat down firmly again and said, “I know these Comanches.”
Cricket’s jaw dropped, and she jerked it shut again. Her lips pursed thoughtfully. A Texas Ranger who was friends with Comanches? She met Creed’s open look with suspicious eyes. He was supposedly here to keep the Comanches from stealing her father’s horses. Wasn’t this a little like letting the fox guard the chicken coop?
“Who is this woman?”
Creed was so totally absorbed in gauging Cricket’s reaction, he’d forgotten about the Comanches. Tall Bear’s demand caught him unprepared, and he answered without thinking. “She’s the daughter of the white man who owns this land.”
Cricket’s eyes rounded when she heard Creed answer in the Comanche tongue. Where had he learned their language?
A murderous look came into Tall Bear’s eyes. Wolf had made fools of them all. He had used trickery to frighten them. But it would not work. He would see to that. “These are no spirit tokens of the Wolf,” he called to the other Comanches.
“But she commanded the beasts,” one of the others protested.
Tall Bear sneered at their fear, making them ashamed. “She is merely a woman. There is no magic here. She will be the first to pay for the deaths of The People.” He started toward Cricket, pulling his knife from its sheath at his waist. Creed’s voice stopped him.
“No. She belongs to me.”
Tall Bear turned and a malevolent grin lit his features. “That is good. We will even an old debt. You once took my woman from me. Now I will take yours from you.”
Cricket could tell from the tension in Creed’s shoulders that all was not right, and she worried about the wicked gleam in the cold eyes of the Comanche who’d started toward her with his knife drawn. She drew her own knife.
“I ought to let you try your luck,” Creed muttered under his breath when he saw what she’d done. “You might just win at that.” Instead he ordered, “Get on Valor, call your wolf, and get out of here while you still can.”
“What about you?”
“I’m not in any danger here. Do as I say, and do it now.”
“I can help,” Cricket argued.
“Dammit, Brava, do as I say!”
At that moment Tall Bear lunged for Cricket. Creed caught Tall Bear’s wrist in an iron grip just before the Comanche’s knife blade reached Cricket’s heart. The two men turned to face each other and the hatred of one for the other that had seethed for years beneath the surface finally bubbled through, as foul and fetid as a sun-rotted corpse.
The Indian was quick, and Creed had at least
three bloody slashes in his flesh before Cricket had time to realize what had happened. The other Indians formed a circle around the combatants that excluded her, their guttural shouts inciting the two men to a killing frenzy. Creed had forgotten her. His eyes lit with a barbaric violence that made her shudder. Cricket could do nothing but stand and watch as Creed drew his knife to fight the Comanche.
She should have made good her escape then. No one would have stopped her. But she couldn’t take her eyes off the life-and-death struggle taking place before her. The fight was noisy, riotous in fact. But it wasn’t the whoops and cries of the circled Comanches that Cricket heard, it was the grunt from Creed as a knife blade seared his skin, his ragged breathing, the ominous moment of quiet when he tripped and fell and life-giving air was knocked from his lungs. Cricket couldn’t tell whether he was winning or losing. In fact, the two men appeared surprisingly well matched.
Creed had discovered the same thing. Once he admitted the fight with Tall Bear was inevitable, Creed had settled down to enjoy it. His corded muscles responded when he called upon them, his quick reflexes saved him more than once. He had to find Tall Bear’s weakness. So he feinted and dodged and even tripped once and fell, lying apparently helpless for several seconds. But Tall Bear didn’t lunge in carelessly for the kill. He’d waited, somehow sensing the trap Creed had set.
Tall Bear’s cunning increased Creed’s cautiousness. It pleased him to find his enemy his equal. It was the Comanche way to admire the courage and resourcefulness of an adversary. He needed an edge to defeat his enemy, and he knew where to find it. Somewhere, deep within Creed, lurked a part of him he normally kept hidden, a part of him kept under control, a part of him as savage, as cruel, as barbaric as any Comanche. Creed set it free.
Cricket sensed the change in Creed immediately but didn’t know what had caused it. Her animals sensed it, too. Valor pawed the ground and shook his head. Rogue growled and bared his teeth.
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