by Zack Wyatt
A few had been traded for the return of Mrs. Webster’s son Booker and two other Comanche captives.
The rest?
Fisher might have been fool enough to breech a peace council, but he was wasn’t cold-blooded. His originally ordered execution of the captives was never carried out. Instead the squaws and children had been given to townsfolk as “servants.”
Sands sucked at his teeth. Servant in this case was just another word for slave.
However, no Comanche, not even a child, would bow his neck to a white man’s yoke. After a few weeks of “servanthood” every one of the Pehnahterkuh had escaped from San Antonio. Often they rode back to their prairie bands astride a horse stolen from their “employees.” Even the Mexican boy who had been released with Matilda Lockhart had stolen away and rejoined a Comanche band.
Then, in early summer, the raids stopped.
Ranger patrol after ranger patrol rode out and returned never seeing a sign of a Comanche, or their camps. Indian scouts reported the Pehnahterkuh had withdrawn to the high plains with its massive herds of great hump-backed buffalo.
Now as dawn rose on the sixth day of August, Sands and the patrol of five men he led only found the hot Texas sun challenged their right to ride the prairie. So it had been for seven weeks.
“Josh,” Clay Poteet, one of the San Antonio “Minute Men,” called out and handed Sands a slim, brass, collapsible telescope. “About a quarter of a mile to the east. What do you make of it?”
Opening the spyglass, Sands held it to his right eye and scanned the area Clay pointed toward. Nothing, he saw nothing but prairie. What did Clay expect him to ...
Sands caught his breath. There, exactly where Clay had indicated, the ground was tramped as though an army had moved through. Lowering, the glass, he looked back at the man.
“Comanche?” Clay asked.
“It wasn’t there three days ago when the patrol passed this way. And there ain’t no buffalo herds that big this far south.” Sands reined his mount toward the east, using his heels to nudge the gelding into an easy gallop.
The rest of the patrol followed, stopping when they reached the wide swath of trampled ground. Sands swung to the ground and knelt. His right hand tentatively reached out to one of the tracks. When he looked up, his forehead was furrowed with deep lines of concern.
“Unshod mustang ponies. It’s Comanche all right. And lots of ‘em.” Sands stood and stared over the wide trail. There was trampled ground for at least a quarter of a mile to the east, and it stretched as far as the eye could see to the north and south. “They moved through here at least two days ago heading south.”
He understated the situation. A quarter mile swath of tracks indicated more than “lots” of Comanche. Hundreds of Nermernuh, astride their mustangs, had ridden through here undetected—and they were headed south. They had penetrated the frontier border and now rode directly into the heart of unsuspecting settled Texas!
For a long, silent moment, Sands stood, his gaze lost in the open land to the south. He could only guess at the actual number of the Comanche; there were simply too many hoof prints for an accurate estimate. He glanced back at his men. Their worry-wrinkled brows said they shared his thoughts—and those weren’t pretty!
“I’ve got to warn Ben McCulloch over in Gonzales,” Sands said as he stepped back into the saddle. “Will, I want you to ride with me.”
Will nodded.
“Bill, Jim, we’ll need extra mounts. Double with Sam and Howard and ride back to the garrison. Tell Hays what we’ve seen. Tell him what we’ve done.”
The men did as ordered, stripping their mounts of saddles and bridles, then climbing on behind their companions. Looping ropes about the free animals’ necks, Sands and Will tightened their holds and eased their own horses into an easy lope. As soon as the horses they led matched the pace, they urged their mounts into a gallop, then a full run on a course straight for Gonzales.
If need be, they’d ride their own mounts until they dropped, then saddle the borrowed horses and ride on. It was an old Comanche trick, one that allowed the braves to cover a hundred miles in a single night if need be. It was a trick Sands hoped would prevent those same braves from laying waste the vulnerable heartland of settled Texas.
Sands gave one quick glance over his shoulder to the four men who rode double back to San Antonio, then turned his full attention to the trail ahead.
They found Captain Ben McCulloch three hours later as he pulled a saddle from a lathered mount outside the Gonzales garrison.
“Hays’ men, huh?” McCulloch responded to Sands’ quick introduction. “Does Jack know that it looks like all hell’s broken loose? It looks like a whole damn army of Pehnahterkuh are moving on Victoria!”
“Victoria?” this from Will, who glanced wide-eyed to Sands then back to McCulloch. “That’s eighty miles from here. They’re moving that fast?”
McCulloch’s eyebrow lifted. “Then Jack knows?”
“He should, by now,” Sands answered and hastily reported the quarter-mile wide trail they had ridden upon that morning. “I sent the rest of the men with me back to San Antonio to tell Captain Hays what we’d seen, then rode here to warn you.”
McCulloch nodded and threw a blanket and saddle on a fresh horse one of his men led from the stable. “I appreciate what you’ve done. But damn, I wish you’d brought every man in San Antonio. Ain’t no doubt it’s Comanches that cut the trail. And it ain’t no raiding party! From what I’ve seen it looks like every buck from the plains is riding right through Texas.”
McCulloch then explained he had ridden across the trail earlier that morning. “Followed it for ten miles. They hit the Johnson place ... ‘bout two days ago if I make the signs correctly. Killed Tom and his wife and their three young’uns. The two milk cows had been butchered, and the string of horses Tom kept were gone, stolen. Not much left of the place except ashes.”
McCulloch looked at Sands then Will and shook his head, then he reached beneath the horse’s belly to get the girth that hung there.
“Any plans?” Sands asked.
McCulloch slipped the clinch through the girth and pulled it tight. He popped a hand against the horse’s belly and pulled the leather strap even tighter. “Ain’t much I can do. I got two dozen men here in Gonzales. Twenty-four men ain’t enough to go charging off after a Comanche army that’s at least two days ahead of us.”
“You’ve got to do something!” Will protested.
“I intend to,” McCulloch said as he tied off the clinch. “First thing I plan to do is draft you two boys into my company. Ain’t no use for you to go riding back to San Antonio when you’re needed here.”
“But Captain Hays ...” Will started.
“Would do the same if he was in my place,” McCulloch cut him off. “I need men and you two are warm bodies.” Sands and Will both nodded their acceptance to McCulloch’s stern gaze.
“Good,” McCulloch edged back his hat. “My men are scattered all round here now, trying to round up every able bodied man they can. As soon as they get back, we’ll be riding toward Victoria, keeping to the Comanches’ flanks. Like I said, there ain’t much a handful of men can do against an army. The way I see it, we can keep at their heels and bury the dead they leave behind.”
McCulloch paused. “I got riders out to some of the other ranger companies in the area. They’ll send out the call the same as me. But we need the time to gather our strength.”
“What I need now is scouts, men to stay on them bucks’ asses and keep me informed of what’s happening,” McCulloch said. “That’s what you two will be doing. I want you two as close to them butchers as possible, and I want to know their every move. If one of ‘em picks his nose, I want to know about it. Understand?”
Again Sands nodded and Will followed suit.
“That’s good, because scouting is all I want. Until we got the men to stand against whatever made that trail, I don’t want no foolishness. At no time are you to engage the Co
manche. And that, my friends, ain’t gonna be easy,” McCulloch said. “’Cause if you’re as close to them as I want you, you’re going to see things that’ll turn your gut inside out. Things no man could just stand by and watch. But you’re going to have to do just that. Watch! And that’ll be a damn sight harder to do than acting the hero and getting yourself killed!”
McCulloch paused, his gaze coolly sizing up Sands and Will. When neither protested, he nodded and continued, “By sundown, we should have riders out in front of the Comanche, warning them that’s in their path. We ain’t going to be able to get to them all, but we’ll get the majority. Saving lives is the best we can do until we gather the men to face the Pehnahterkuh.”
Easing the reins over his horse’s neck, McCulloch swung into the saddle and looked down at the two. “If there’s no questions, I’ve got work that needs doing.”
“Just one,” Sands said. “Any idea who we’re up against?”
“Only rumors,” the ranger captain answered. “A couple of Tonkawa scouts picked up word a few weeks back that a Pehnahterkuh calling himself Buffalo Hump was trying to unite the Comanche bands. The Kiowa they got that from said Buffalo Hump didn’t pull much weight with the other bands. However, the Pehnahterkuh were listening to him.”
Buffalo Hump, Sands had never heard of the brave. “There’s fresh mounts in the stable,” McCulloch said. “Pick yourself two and get on with what needs doing!” Ten minutes later, Sands and Will were riding southward toward Victoria.
Chapter Fifteen
Five braves squatted on their haunches beneath a stand of three lofty oaks. They wore breechclouts and moccasins only; their faces, arms, chests, and legs bore wide bands of red and black—the Nermernuh paints of war. A gallon stoneware jug was passed from hand to hand among the five. Except for the time needed to swill down a mouthful of the home-distilled corn liquor in the jug, the Pehnahterkuh never stopped talking and laughing.
The objects of their amusement were two captives!
Sands’ gaze shifted beyond the oaks’ cool shade. There, staked spread-eagle on the ground, were a man and woman no older than the ranger. Both had been stripped naked to feel the full effects of slow broiling under the unforgiving August sun.
From the blistery red of their bodies, it appeared as if the Comanches had kept the two staked out for most of the day. Here and there, Sands saw thin trickles of crimson mingle with the sheen of sweat covering the man and woman—blood that flowed from tiny cuts in their flesh.
The knife wounds weren’t serious, just deep enough to create constant agony as salt from perspiration entered the open wounds. It was the kind of never-ceasing pain that could slowly rob a man, or a woman, of his wits and eventually shatter his sanity. But then the braves didn’t want to kill these two ... at least, not quickly. They wanted to draw out the dying as long as possible, devising as much anguish as they could in that time.
“How many are there?” Will whispered as he leaned close to Sands.
“Five ... used to be eight.” Sands answered and passed the small telescope to his friend. He shifted his weight and removed a jagged-edged rock that pressed into his thigh as he lay belly-down in high grass. “There’s three dead near the door to the cabin.”
Will raised the spyglass and focused on the farm below. “The man and woman are still alive!”
“The braves are just cooking ‘em a bit now. Come dark, they’ll start getting serious. Suspect that the three dead were brothers or uncles or some family relation to the other five. The braves want to be certain the two are fully repaid for killing the others,” Sands said. “They’ll take their time with those two. Make them last all night.”
Will lowered the telescope and turned to Sands. His jaw was firmly clenched and his face had visibly paled. “And we’re supposed to ride on and let them die like that?”
“‘Under no circumstances are you to engage the Comanche’—that’s what McCulloch said.”
Sands peered through the spyglass again. Except for hunting knives, the warriors had neatly piled their rifles, bows, lances, and shields against the trunk of an oak ten yards from the captives. Nermernuh superstition, he realized. If a brave allowed his weapons too close to a woman, they could be contaminated and lose their medicine. That bit of superstition might be bad medicine in itself.
Carefully scanning the terrain surrounding the farm, Sands searched for a hint of other Pehnahterkuh in the area. All he saw was lush coastal vegetation: trees, tall with great branching limbs, and high grass, green and rich. There was a world of difference here so close to the Gulf of Mexico compared to the rugged hill country around San Antonio—and only a day’s hard ride separated the two.
He repeated his methodical search of the area for a second and third time. Nothing. And that boded well. Odds were that the five braves were stragglers fallen back from the main body of Comanche, who had ridden on to Victoria ten miles to the south. Revenge can make a fool of man—white or red.
Sands lowered the telescope and glanced over his shoulder. The sun sat on the western horizon; within an hour it would be dark. If the braves held true to form, they’d build a campfire before they began the slow torture of the couple below.
The night and a blazing campfire were what he needed to pull off the plan that germinated in his mind.
“Of course, McCulloch never said anything about defending ourselves if we happened to stumble on to a raiding party,” Sands said and explained his scheme.
Will smiled as he listened in silent approval of Sands’ plan.
A woman’s scream jerked both their heads around.
Through the spyglass, Sands saw a grinning brave with knife in hand rise from beside the woman and move toward the man. A dark line of crimson oozed across the white mounds of her naked breasts. Her head, dark curls plastered against the side of her face, lay unmoving against her arm, and her eyes were closed.
Fainted, Sands sighed as he lowered the telescope. It’ll make the wait till night easier for her.
He didn’t look back when he heard a second scream—that of a man. Until dark there was nothing he could do, except wait.
Colts cocked and held ready, Sands and Will moved their mounts at an easy walk toward the blazing campfire and the five silhouettes squatted about it.
“Ready?” Sands glanced away long enough to catch Will’s nod. Then he leveled the pistol before him. “Let’s burn ‘em with powder!”
Sands’ heels dug into his mount’s flanks; the horse bolted forward. In twenty strides, the bay he had gotten in Gonzales was amid the five braves. The thunder of an exploding Colt roared over the hiss and crackle of the campfire. Will’s pistol barked in answer.
Three of the five died before they could rise; the repeating pistols opened dark holes in the back of their skulls. The remaining two did manage to stand ... and turn ... to be greeted by the yellow-blue blaze of fire spit point blank from the barrels of rangers’ pistols into their surprised faces.
Then it was over; less than a minute had passed and five Comanche braves had joined their three companions in death.
Sands swung from the saddle and waved Will to the house. “Bring soap and water to wash these wounds! Also see if you can find any lard or butter. These two are as red as boiled crawdads!”
Their names were John Lee and Carolina Davis. They had been warned of the oncoming Comanche horde by a fellow farmer that morning and had been gathering a few personal items before fleeing to Victoria when thirty Pehnahterkuh had ridden down on their farm.
“Kilt one with my rifle, then we holed up in the cabin,” John Lee said while coating his wife’s sun-blistered skin with butter. “The majority of ‘em rode on. But seven stayed. Kilt two more ‘fore three busted through the slats on the roof ... ”
“We knew we were dead then,” Carolina said from beneath the blanket that now cloaked her nakedness. “We just weren’t certain how long it would take for them to kill us.”
Sands and Will listened to the couple’
s recounting while husband and wife tended each other’s wounds and smeared butter over their sun-broiled bodies. The knife cuts were shallow and would heal long before either forgot this day—if they ever did.
When the husband and wife had dressed, Sands and Will escorted them to a thick woods a quarter of a mile from their cabin. They left them there in the leafy branches of a towering oak. Sands realized neither would sleep on such precarious perches, but they would be safe from any wandering bands of Comanche who might stumble upon them.
Five miles to the south, Sands halted. The cracking reports of gunfire came out of the darkness, sounding like the sharp snap of a bull whip in the distance.
“Best stay here for the night,” Sands said to Will. “If we get any closer, we might amble into the whole damned band without knowing it.”
Fifteen minutes later, the two rangers had hidden their mounts in a bushy stand of cherry holly. For themselves, they found the thick branches of a sweetgum tree.
Sands sat with legs straddling a dangerously small limb of a short-needled pine. His left arm was hooked around an equally weak-looking branch just above his head. The top of a pine wasn’t exactly made for a man accustomed to the wide seat of a Mexican-made saddle, but it, and the telescope, did provide the view he needed. And from what he saw, he realized there would be no better view of Victoria until Buffalo Hump moved the Pehnahterkuh on.
“Can you make out anything?” Wilt’s voice came from ten feet below.
“McCulloch wanted us on Buffalo Hump’s heels and that’s exactly where we are,” Sands answered. “Victoria’s about a mile to the south. I can see the whole town and most of the surrounding lands.”
The town itself appeared to be untouched by the Comanches, who rode in a wide circle about the wooden buildings as though they were a small herd of buffalo. The same could not be said for the outlying land.
Even at this distance, Sands saw the smoking rubble of cabins and houses that had been burned during the night. Scattered on the ground were the bodies of black slaves, cut down while they had been working the fields. The bloating carcasses of cows and oxen, Comanche lances jutting from their sides, littered the countryside.
