Red River Rifles (Wilderness Dawning—the Texas Wyllie Brothers Series Book 1)

by Dorothy Wiley

  The Indian traders dealt mostly with the Choctaws who would come in peace from across the river to trade the number one cash crop, the skin of beavers. They also traded deer hides, venison, snakeroot, and pinkroot for merchandise and whiskey. Snakeroot and pinkroot where both used by drug companies in the east to make medicines. Snakeroot for insanity, fever, and snake bites, and pinkroot to get rid of intestinal worms.

  Next to Mabbitt’s place, he saw a poorly clad woman named Rose, with a warm heart and a cold, lacerated face. She sat on the porch of the settlement’s only tavern, the Red Buffalo, watching the happenings. She was as much a slave as any of the dark-skins at Pecan Point, Stephen thought. But her body was sold for purposes other than labor. The local men who were her customers had given her the name The Queen of Love. Others, mostly the settlement’s women, called her Hell-Bound Rose.

  The settlement’s men arrived at Pecan Point thirsty and, especially in summer, stayed thirsty. So the tavern, with its pictorial sign of a buffalo painted rusty Red River red, was always one of the busiest establishments. The Red Buffalo’s regular customers affectionately called the place their watering well. They drank mostly whiskey, sometimes called tarantula juice, because no one at the settlement could brew ale as of yet. And if a man wanted something to drink besides whiskey, it was coffee he ordered. For food, the tavern served chiefly beans, biscuits, beef, and bacon. Occasionally, the fare included Red River catfish, rattlesnake, or another unlucky critter.

  Flies hummed around a cart heavily loaded with skins of all kinds and dogs lounged under the shade of the tavern’s porch. A beautiful mulatto woman, her face veiled with sadness, worked on a deer hide. A few feet away, two muscled male slaves labored chopping firewood. The cadence of their swings filled the air with an ominous rhythm.

  As Stephen rode closer, he observed that the men, who normally shared the comradery of the frontier, all appeared tense and troubled.

  The tents and cook fires of new arrivals were scattered nearby with women huddled around them as well. Many watchfully clutched small children or babes in their arms. Some of the older children leaned into their mothers, their faces wary.

  None of the men were gambling as was often the case. Gambling, except on horse races, was a practice Stephen detested because he thought card games the ultimate waste of a man’s time. Baldy, however, found a poker game entertaining and often joined the gamblers, keeping a rifle across his lap in case Indians or anyone else decided to interfere with their card game. The rifle also had the advantage of discouraging cheating. Gambling gave Baldy an opportunity to sprinkle a little of God’s word into the conversation, words that these slippery gamblers might otherwise never hear. Ancient words that resounded with life, hope, and undeniable wisdom.

  Back in Kentucky, Baldy preached openly. Those that mocked him or wouldn’t listen attentively ran the risk of getting the hell beaten out of them. But here, he was careful to weave his sermons into the life he led as a physician. Still, his closest friend was a mighty warrior of the gospel who also used common sense and stories from his own life to lead others to the narrow gate. And when needed, Baldy would put down his Bible or medical bag and pick up his weapons to ride beside him. He couldn’t ask for a finer friend.

  The men at the settlement, their clothing dust-blown and stained, glanced up as he and Baldy rode up. Stephen knew at once that something was wrong. Normally, they were a brash bunch who wouldn’t hesitate to give a man who deserved it a full fist to his jaw or worse. On the other hand, they’d help any man who asked them for aid.

  “Get down from them horses and rest your saddle,” Mabbitt said through his soup-strainer mustache. The man was rough-hewn, as if God had carved him out of a tough log with a broad axe.

  “What’s wrong? I can see something has all of you bothered,” Stephen said.

  Wetmore regarded Stephen and Baldy with a hard gaze. “Indians attacked the Roberts family in their home last night. An arrow killed Billy’s young, breeding wife. Billy must have gone after them. He was killed nearby.”

  John Tweedy cleared his throat. “This morning, I found Billy’s body and lopped off head about a mile from their place. We’ll need a wagon for both their bodies.”

  “Good God,” Baldy said. “She was due to deliver her babe next month.”

  “Where should we bury them?” Tweedy asked.

  “We’ll worry about burying the dead later. For now, we need to take care of the living,” Stephen said. He swore beneath his pursed mouth as rage twisted his gut. How many more green settlers would set off on a fool’s errand against an enemy far more ruthless than they? He squared his shoulders and he told them about the Osage and Comanche raids at the Pate’s cabin and at his place, where three braves met their end.

  “We should organize a militia company,” Tweedy said. “I never want to see a sight like that again.”

  Ranging militia companies were often organized in response to an immediate need and afterward promptly disbanded so the men could return to their homes as quickly as possible. Fiercely independent free men, these citizen soldiers rarely formed up into a cohesive team. Stephen knew they could be guided, but not commanded, and then only by elected leaders.

  Stephen sensed that they were all waiting for a leader to emerge from among them. Because he was the most educated among those living at the settlement, except for Baldy who held several degrees, the men seemed to hold him in high regard. He dreaded the prospect of being asked to lead this mulish bunch. But for the sake of young Billy, his wife, and their unborn child, he would do what he had to. Their murders could not go unanswered and Billy had been a good friend of Samuel’s. He knew this would hit his oldest son hard. Maybe it would help Samuel to deal with it if he knew their murderers had been punished.

  “We have to determine which Indians deserve retaliation,” Stephen told the gathered men.

  Never content to stay in the background, Cloudy Bowers stepped forward. “You said yourself they were Osages and Comanches.”

  “Yes, but which one? The other problem we have is that we don’t know if it’s a few dishonored renegades who have been evicted from their tribes or if it’s the tribes’ chiefs that are behind these raids. Both are possible. One is a lesser problem. The other is a major problem.”

  “What difference does it make? An Indian is an Indian. Like a wolf is a wolf. We need to rid the frontier of all Indians, just like we did in Kentucky and Indiana,” Mathew Hardin said.

  Stephen knew the man was a veteran rifleman of the 1811 Battle of Tippecanoe. Hardin, a hawkish-looking man with a high temper, was always greased for a fight. His father had been killed by Indian treachery. The experience warped his mind and twenty years later he still sought vengeance.

  Baldy pushed his mount closer to Hardin. “It’s the same difference there is between a good, honorable man and a lying, thieving, no good of a white man,” Baldy told them. “I know because I’ve met a lot of scalawags, shysters, and opportunists in my lifetime.”

  Baldy was right, of course, but Hardin wasn’t the only man there who held all Indians in contempt. At least half of them regarded any Indian who was seen near the boundaries of the settlements to be a fair target. In fairness, even though tribal leaders spoke of peace, they could not restrain their young men from straying into the settlements to plunder, rape, and sometimes murder to attain wealth and war honors. Stephen suspected that this was the case with the unfortunate attack on the Roberts.

  And so, once again, the settlers would be forced to push back, and the frontier would remain a dangerous place—a place where death and life held equal strongholds.

  “I want justice for the Roberts as much as all of you,” Stephen said. “But we have everything to be gained by peace and nothing to be gained by war with entire tribes. I suggest we follow the tracks from the Roberts’ place and see where they lead. Then we’ll deal with the culprits. Nothing more. Agreed?”

  The group of about thirty men nodded their consent.

&nbs
p; All but Hardin. The blowhard of the settlement, though outvoted, decided not to stay whipped. “If we’re going to go after Indians, I say we kill all we see and then some.”

  “I say we put Stephen Wyllie in charge,” Wetmore suggested.

  Everyone said yes or aye, and it was settled. Everyone but Hardin.

  And Stephen. Without a say in the matter, he was now the leader of these men. “All right, we leave in fifteen minutes. Use that time to get your weapons, powder, canteen, and your horse and yourself ready. Once we start, there will no stopping.”

  “I don’t have a horse,” one young man said.

  “Then you can stay behind and help guard the settlement,” Stephen told him. “Be sure all the women are armed and their weapons ready to shoot. Tell them to keep their children inside until we return.” With the brutal murders of the Roberts, the present Indian threat was now far more serious.

  “Yes, Sir,” the young man said.

  With Stephen and Baldy at the head, the men from the settlement soon stormed toward the Roberts’ home in a jumble of rough woolens, buckskins, and misshapen hats. Some carried only a rifle, others only a pistol or a long knife. But glinting, steel-like courage shown on all their faces and buttressed their hearts.

  When they arrived at the Roberts’ place, Stephen recognized the arrows left behind as those used by Comanche.

  As expected, all of Billy’s horses were gone. Over the last two years, the young man had collected wild horses and spent endless hours training them. Billy must have heard the Indians leaving with his horses and gone after them. It was a decision that cost him dearly. After killing Billy, the braves snuck back to kill his wife and rob his home.

  Stephen’s face hardened at the sight of Billy’s brutalized body. That could have been one of his own sons. But unlike his sons, the poor young man didn’t have a family around to help protect him. He had been all alone.

  And the West was no place to be alone.

  Stephen soon found the tracks of six braves leading away from Billy’s body. They followed their trail upriver. Occasionally, they would lose their trail and have to scour the riverbanks along the waters of the Red until they found them again. Their tracks continued following the river.

  After an hour or so, they encountered the camp of the band of six. Their tied horses all carried packs stuffed to overflowing, no doubt crammed with stolen belongings. Billy’s horses were clustered nearby and watched over by two of the braves.

  On Stephen’s signal, they attacked, riding toward the braves in a cloud of brown dust. Their horses’ hooves beat thunderously upon the hard ground. Stephen felt his chest tighten as he anticipated having to kill.

  When he was within range, he slowed and then settled George as he unsheathed his longrifle. His well-trained, exceptionally intelligent horse stood motionless.

  The braves heard the storm coming and remounted swiftly. All lean, hard, and full of fight, the six bristled with weapons—shields, lances, bows, knives, and, worst of all, rifles. French and English traders had introduced firearms to the Indians in order to trade for pelts and win them as allies in both trade and war. And Spain’s failure to regularly supply the Indians with trade goods, especially firearms and ammunition, caused peaceful relations with the Comanche to end. This left American settlers to receive the brunt of Indian resentment.

  The warriors Stephen saw before him trained and lived for fighting such as this. They would be aggressive, quick, and fierce. Often called the ‘Lords of the Plains,’ they presided over a large area called Comancheria. They’d moved south in successive stages, attacking and displacing other tribes, even the Apache, whom they drove from the southern Plains. The area they claimed continually expanded as, one or two tribal groups at a time, they would move further south and east. Pecan Point was a little east of their territory, so this raid made him worry that they planned to continue their nomadic migration.

  Stephen leveled his sights on a brave who was just then raising a rifle to take aim at one of the settlers. A blink later, through the smoke of the flintlock’s black powder, he saw the brave slide off his pony. The settler would never know how close he had come to death.

  The other men from the settlement, their rage fueled by the killings, were full of fire and mettle. The fray lasted mere minutes. When the fighting ended, they had killed three braves. One of them from Stephen’s rifle.

  Greatly outnumbered, the other three braves rode away from the Red and turned south. Unwilling to relinquish their plunder, they each tugged along the other three horses that had belonged to their dead companions.

  Two of the settlers had taken arrows in their arms. While Baldy swiftly removed the arrows and temporarily dressed their wounds, the others quickly searched the three dead braves. They found young Roberts’ hat on one of the braves and two men recognized his wife’s locket on another. Worse, the third brave wore a large copper bracelet on his upper arm from which hung a collection of scalps.

  Hardin removed it and held it up for all to see. Blood still moistened one of the scalps.

  Billy’s.

  Stephen dismounted, unsheathed his knife, and marched over to Hardin. Swallowing the sour bile in his mouth, he removed the bloody scalp as Hardin and the other men watched silently. Then he carefully wrapped it in his handkerchief and stored it in his saddlebag before remounting.

  Hardin tossed the other scalps aside. “Savages!” he swore.

  The men swiftly remounted and they chased the braves at a thunderous gallop. Soon, though, about half their horses gave out and those riders were forced to slow. Only Stephen, Baldy, and four others were able to stay close enough to give serious chase.

  The Comanches differed from other Plains tribes in several ways. Perhaps the most important difference was that they were the finest horsemen of all Indians. It was their one trait Stephen admired. They sat their horses so gracefully and exercised such complete control that they seemed to be part of the animal.

  Widely dispersed in family bands, the Comanche ranged in a wide swath from the Arkansas River to the southernmost part of Texas. They were so ruthless, no tribe and few white men dared to challenge them. Stephen began to wonder at the wisdom of further pursuit.

  Stephen soon neared the mouth of a u-shaped valley. Shadowy, dark woods encircled the openness like the steel jaws of a giant trap. Sensing imminent danger, Stephen called a halt at once. “If we keep going, we’re likely to be caught in an ambush,” he told Baldy and the remaining four men.

  “They can’t be more than a few minutes ahead of us,” Hardin said. “Let’s finish this!”

  “The men elected me the leader,” Stephen said, making his voice firm. “And I say we stop here.”

  “Why?” demanded Wetmore.

  “The Comanche are masterful horsemen and mighty warriors, skilled with bow, lance, and tomahawk. They are known for their brutal treatment of captives and butchery of the dead. Do you truly want to risk falling victim to that if there are more of them hiding in those woods far enough back to escape our notice?”

  Hardin’s face reddened. “I still want to go after them. It’s the courageous thing to do.”

  “Sometimes men mistake stupidity for courage,” Stephen told him bluntly. “You could be riding into a storm raining arrows. I think those six weren’t just renegades. They’re part of a larger party. That’s why they were so well-armed. It’s why they camped until we caught up to them. They were baiting us.”

  Hardin bristled. “Who’s with me?”

  Except for Baldy, Stephen sensed the indecision among the others, but no one volunteered to go with Hardin.

  “Let’s get back to the others, while our tired horses can still gallop,” he said. Before anyone could object, he turned George and took the stallion to a run.

  When they reached the other settlers, Stephen halted and motioned for everyone to gather close. He glanced from man to man as he said, “Fearing a trap, we decided not to pursue any further. We killed half their number and in
doing so we achieved some measure of justice. They’ve received our message that they cannot kill among us without paying a price. Further justice will have to wait until we have a fighting chance. Until we can stand against them on our own ground.”

  Wetmore eyed the men. “I say we go back to our homes with our lives and bury the dead. Afterward, I will extend credit to any man who needs additional weapons or ammunition.”

  “I will do the same,” Mabbitt said with a sideways glance at Wetmore. “With no interest charged.”

  Not to be outdone, Wetmore nodded and said, “I’ll agree to the same terms. And with the purchase of every rifle, I’ll throw in a pound of black powder.”

  Anticipating the arrival of more settlers to the settlement and the continued threat from Indians, both traders had laid up a good supply of weapons of all kinds, along with powder and ball. It was to their benefit to ensure that all the settlers were well armed.

  Mabbit started to sweeten his offer again, but Stephen held up a hand. “Those are generous offers, Sirs,” Stephen told the two traders. “But we now need to hurry back and get prepared to fight another day. It may be tomorrow, or the next day, or even the next month. But we will have to fight for our land and our homes someday. Each man and woman should have at least one straight-shooting rifle and two good pistols. Fortify your homes, take turns standing guard, and bring your horses and cows in close. Especially at night. Most of all, don’t go out alone or in the darkness as Billy did.”

  “That there is good advice,” Wetmore said. “Especially the part about rifles.”

  Stephen had one more thing to say. “We’ve claimed this part of the province for American citizens. We must all dig in our heels on our land and trust to our weapons. We can’t let Indians or even Spanish soldiers bait us into taking foolish chances. We’re all Americans on American soil. But now…we’re also all Texians!”