by Zack Wyatt
It was easy for Sands to imagine what had occurred. While he and Will had been in Gonzales, Buffalo Hump and his united Pehnahterkuh had already reached Victoria. They had descended upon the town without warning, killing those caught in the fields on its outskirts, and slaughtering the livestock they found. Except for the horses and mules—those, the Comanche had herded together south of the town. Horses and mules were a sign of Nermernuh wealth; those they would never kill.
That had been just enough time for the townspeople to barricade their streets and homes.
The Comanche could have ridden into town were it not for their superstitious aversion for buildings. While they would readily attack a lone house or cabin, they saw white towns with their proliferation of stout buildings as bad medicine and shied from them.
Instead of riding through Victoria’s streets and burning the buildings to the ground, they formed a magic circle around the town. The shots Sands had heard last night had been the Pehnahterkuh riding about Victoria, trying to work medicine against the buildings—a magic that had no effect on the still standing walls.
Through the spyglass, Sands once more scanned the terrain around Victoria. A soft whistle escaped his pursed lips. The fact that so many Pehnahterkuh had banded together was unheard of—but this revealed just how confident Buffalo Hump was of success in his brazen incursion into the white lands.
There just beyond the herd of horses and mules, on the edge of a thick wood, Sands could see the conical forms of tipis. Around the tents of buffalo hide, he saw squaws and children. A Comanche purposely didn’t expose his family to danger. The presence of women and children meant but one thing—the Pehnahterkuh didn’t expect to face a Tejano force—Buffalo Hump had carefully planned this unexpected strike into the unprotected heart of settled Texas.
“How many do you make ‘em to be?” Will’s voice drew Sands from his thoughts.
“Eight hundred ... maybe a thousand,” Sands answered. The number was more ominous when it was given the reality of words. “It’s hard to tell. They’re spread out around the town.”
He quickly detailed for Will all that he could see and then added his speculation as to what had happened in Victoria yesterday. He breathed a silent sigh of relief when Will, with youthful enthusiasm, volunteered to ride back to McCulloch with the information.
Sands watched his companion carefully pick his way down the lofty pine, mount, and ride northward. Unless there were more bands of stragglers like the braves at the Davis place, Will would have an unobstructed ride, Sands thought as he turned his attention back to Victoria and the army of Nermernuh holding it under siege.
An hour, two, three, he lost all track of time as he watched the Comanche ride in endless circles about the town. His arms and legs, which had ached and cramped in their unnatural positions around the limbs, had gone numb when the Pehnahterkuh broke their magic circle.
Once more lifting the collapsible telescope, Sands peered toward the tipis where a heaping pile of dry branches was set afire. Perhaps a hundred war-painted riders filed by the blaze and accepted the flaming brands the squaws held out to them.
Sands shifted his weight a bit to the left. Buffalo Hump apparently had recognized the uselessness of the magic circle and now was ready to try a different tactic against the town and the people barricaded within its buildings.
Twenty of the mounted warriors charged the town. Sands could see their mouths twisted wide, though their war cries did not carry to his treetop position.
The hastily made torches were the Comanches’ new line of offense. The braves drove their ponies right up to the buildings of Victoria and flung the flaming limbs upward to the roofs of the wooden buildings.
In answer, townsmen concealed on those very roofs replied with a volley of rifle fire that echoed up to Sands’ pine tree perch. Here and there, braves jerked rigidly then tumbled from the bare backs of the mustangs as rifle balls took their toll. But rifles were not enough to stop the next wave of torch-slinging warriors, or the next, or the next.
With the tenth wave, Sands saw flames licking toward the sky from a wood-shingled roof of a home on the west side of town. Three men and two women darted from the house’s rear door in an attempt to reach the safety of a neighbor’s home. Comanche war lances cruelly ended their flight before they had cleared ten yards.
The waves of warriors and burning limbs continued: the Victoria rifles meeting each charge. Three more houses caught fire and another five townspeople died as the Comanches rode down upon them.
The sun hung high in the sky when the last wave of warriors threw their torches high. Then it was over. To Sands’ surprise, the Pehnahterkuh abruptly withdrew from the town. Within a half hour, the tipis were dismantled and the Comanche army was once more on the move, heading toward the Guadalupe River and Peach Creek beyond.
Through the telescope, Sands watched as the hundreds of Indians spread outward in a great crescent. Four years before, Santa Anna’s Mexican soldiers had used a similar formation as they marched through Texas, leaving a smoldering trail of destruction in their wake.
McCulloch’s words echoed in Sands’ brain as he worked his way down the lofty pine—best we can do is stay on their heels and bury the dead. There would be hundreds of dead unless McCulloch made good his promise to send riders out ahead of the Pehnahterkuh and warn settlers of the advancing army.
Peach Creek!
Sands froze as he reached the base of the pine. Buffalo Hump no longer led his united band southeasterly. He had turned toward the north on a direct course for the Gulf of Mexico and Lavaca Bay.
Marion!
Sitting on Lavaca Bay was a small port community that had been established as a supply route for San Antonio—a town named after its main importer John Linn—a town called Linnville. There, living with her father Arlan Turner, was Marion Hammer and her son Jamie.
A silent prayer that Buffalo Hump would once again change course, moved over Sands’ lips as he swung into the saddle and spurred his mount toward Victoria.
Chapter Sixteen
Sands warily surveyed the lush vegetation around him. Since leaving Victoria, Buffalo Hump had developed a sudden, cautious respect for Texians. The war chief no longer pushed his army of Pehnahterkuh through settled Texas at the harried pace he had employed after breaching the frontier.
Now several bands of rear scouting parties combed the trail behind the massive column. Yesterday, Sands had barely avoided detection on several occasions. Only the dense, overgrown brush had sheltered him. Today, with the salty smell of the sea carried on the easterly breeze, he was constantly alert for the rear scouts. Yet, in the two hours since dawn, he had seen no trace of Buffalo Hump’s flanking outriders.
That was until now!
Sands glanced at the body laying face down in the high grass. With his right hand resting on the butt of his Colt, he eased from the saddle and stepped beside the corpse.
The body was that of a middle-aged man, a farmer who had not been warned of the marching Comanche in all likelihood. He was naked: either stripped by the Pehnahterkuh or dragged from his bed early this morning. The soles of his feet had been sliced away by hunting knives. The bloody pulp that remained told a grisly tale. The man had been forced to run mile upon mile after the Comanche knives had done their terrible work.
Sands knelt and rolled the man to his back. His stomach churned violently, threatening to upheave, and his head jerked away from the gruesome visage. Slowly, with forced determination, Sands drew a deep breath, and another, another, another. The rumblings of his belly quelled, and he turned back to the corpse.
Death had come to this nameless man in the form of a rifle shot to his forehead—a blast that had ripped away a quarter of his skull. But only after the Comanche had forced him to suffer their greatest of degradations. They had cut away his genitals and stuffed them into his screaming mouth.
Hand still on the Colt, Sands rose. What this man had done to incur the wrath of the Pehnahterkuh no one w
ould ever know. Perhaps he had just been in the wrong place at the wrong time, or maybe he had killed several braves before he was caught and tortured. While Sands silently hoped it was the latter, it didn’t matter, not now. This man was just another body for McCulloch to bury along with the countless others Buffalo Hump had left in his wake.
Sands stepped back to his mount and pulled himself into the saddle. He felt old and tired as the full weight of the past two days pressed down around him.
Two days ... only two days, he questioned himself.
Surely a century had passed since McCulloch had sent Will and him riding after Buffalo Hump. He pushed through the cottony fog blanketing his mind. They had ridden into Gonzales on the morning of August sixth. They caught up with the Pehnahterkuh in Victoria yesterday—that was the seventh. Which made today August eighth—two days ... only two days.
In those two days and nights, he had not slept. Nor had he eaten more than a few curls of jerked beef, washed down with water from his canteen.
A hot meal would be nice. More than that he needed sleep. If Will were here, he’d risk a few hours sleep while his friend stood guard. But Will wasn’t here: Will was ...
For a few confused moments he couldn’t remember where Will had gone. Then he recalled his friend volunteering to ride back to McCulloch with a report of what they had seen in Victoria.
That was ... He pushed the befuddling thought away. It didn’t matter when Will had left. All that mattered was that he push on, stay on the Nermernuh’s heels as ordered.
Sands lifted the reins from the bay’s neck and nudged him forward toward the salty smell of the sea.
Gunshots, war cries, and screams! Together they rose as a grotesque chorus that floated on the hot gulf breeze blowing from the east.
Blowing from Linnville!
Sands spurred his borrowed bay forward in an easy gallop as he reined directly to the south. If Buffalo Hump’s Pehnahterkuhs had reached the small settlement, he no longer had to worry about rear scouting parties—the braves now directed their full attention to fighting.
However, he had no intention of riding straight into Linnville. Bone-weary though he was, he still had wits enough about him to shy away from committing suicide.
To the south of the bay town was a long stretch of sandy beach. The rolling dunes there would provide the cover he needed for moving in close without being detected—if the Comanche weren’t already on the beach.
A half mile to the south, he broke from a tangled patch of entwined underbrush. Before him stretched Lavaca Bay, and beyond, the Gulf of Mexico. In gently breaking whitecaps, the sea swelled and rolled against the shore with foamy fingers that ran up the white beach.
Here, too, were slender palms with thick frondy tops and white gulls soaring wide-winged over the peaceful bay. For a man grown accustomed to the rugged terrain of the hill country, the sun-sparkling bay was like some virgin tropical paradise.
Sands gave the beauty of the sweeping panorama no more than a cursory glance. He smiled: the beach was barren—without a trace of a single Comanche. The second thing he saw was a swelling dune that rose eight feet into the air. He rode to the base of the dune, dropped to the ground, and belly crawled to the sandy crest.
Even without his telescope, he could see closely clumped, white-washed buildings of Linnville. The tiny community lay no more than a quarter of a mile up the coastline—and it was aswarm with Comanches. Fire already licked at two of Linnville’s twenty homes.
The Pehnahterkuh’s attention, however, was held by a small fleet of boats that rode the gently rising waves just beyond arrow and rifle range. In those boats were the citizens of Linnville, staring on in terror as Indians reined and ran through the streets of their settlement like a tidal wave come from the plains.
Sands pulled the telescope from his belt and extended its three cylindrical sections. Eyepiece to his right eye, he scanned the flotilla of small craft.
Nothing! Damnit! He didn’t recognize a face on any of the boats, nor could he find the one searched for—Marion’s.
Pulling the telescope away, Sands wiped at his eyes, hoping it was merely his weariness that hid Marion from him. Then he lifted the spyglass once more and peered back at the boats.
The faces were all strange to him; he couldn’t even find Jamie or ... Wait! There in a dingy bearing the name Maryjo, he saw Arlan Turner, Marion’s fleece-haired father. But where were Marion and Jamie?
Sands searched the six faces of the Maryjo’s occupants. None of them belonged to either Marion or Jamie. He shifted the telescope to a three-person sailboat beside the dingy. Still nothing.
Four boats later, he found Jamie’s small face. The boy lay clutched in the arms of a gray-haired matron Sands had never seen before. Again the faces he saw did not belong to Marion. Nor could he find her among any of the boats.
Ice stabbed at his chest. What if she hadn’t managed to make it to the security of the small crafts?
Sands’ telescope swung back to Linnville and the howling horde that now abandoned hope of reaching the boats and their occupants and turned their attention to Linnville’s homes and buildings. Amid that mass of coppery-red skin he found no hint of white, only red.
If Marion hadn’t made it to the water ... Sands refused to consider the possibility as he stared through the brass spyglass. Arlan and Jamie had made it to safety—she had, too! She had to!
Unlike Victoria, Linnville showed no signs of massacre. There were no arrow-pierced and mutilated bodies laying beneath the summer sun. Nor was there slaughtered livestock scattered around the town. From all indications, the settlement had received enough warning of the Comanche invasion to seek refuge in their miniature armada. A fact that began to melt the terrifying coldness in his heart.
Marion has to be in those boats! I just can’t see her, Sands reassured himself.
The Pehnahterkuh might have found few victims for their arrows and lances in the port settlement, but while Sands stared on, they discovered an unexpected cache of the white man’s treasure—Linn’s warehouse.
The great doors to the long, wooden structure were thrown open and the Comanche poured in. Within minutes braves, squaws, and children alike were carrying off armloads of booty. Here Sands saw three squaws fighting over a bolt of red cloth. There he stared on as warriors rode through the town with stovepipe hats adorning their heads. Others paraded about beneath umbrellas and women’s parasols.
Pots, pans, silver, gold, barrel hoops, cloth goods, shoes, ammunition, ladies’ finery, longjohns, rifles came flowing from the warehouse in a steady stream. Within mere minutes the Comanches emptied the building’s two-year store of merchandise—riches the Pehnahterkuh had never dreamed of were suddenly theirs.
And among that wealth within Linn’s warehouse—a woman!
Sands’ temples pounded as he focused on the red-haired woman who struggled to free herself from the two braves dragging her from the warehouse.
Even at this distance, Sands recognized the flaming hair and the delicate features of her terrified face. It was Marion! Unable to make good an escape to the boats, she had apparently taken refuge in the warehouse, hiding herself among the boxes and crates. Now she was once again at the mercy of the Comanche, and the Nermernuh had no concept of the word mercy!
Images of Carolina Davis staked naked to the ground, her white flesh slashed by hunting knives filled Sands brain. Marion’s face and flawless body superimposed over that agonizing image. Unlike Carolina and her husband, Marion didn’t face five braves: Buffalo Hump’s whole damned army surrounded her. For Marion there would be no rescuers riding out of the night with Colts ablaze.
If she were to be saved, it had to be now while the Pehnahterkuh were pre-occupied with the treasures stolen from Linn’s despoiled warehouse. Sands swung the telescope to the boats. They weren’t that far offshore. All he had to do was ride down the braves holding Marion; once she was free they could ride into the surf and swim for the boats.
Sand
s knew the Comanche would see him, but surprise would be on his side. If he rode hard and fast, it just might work! It had to work—it was the only chance Marion had!
Sliding down the dune, Sands grabbed up his mount’s reins and tossed them around the horse’s neck. Within a heartbeat, he was in the saddle with his Colt firmly clutched in his right hand. His boots swung out then jerked down to dig spurs into the bay’s flanks.
The horse lurched forward in a dead run—for two strides. An awful sound of snapping bone echoed in Sands’ ears, and he knew instantly the sandy beach had taken a deadly toll—one of the bay horse’s shins had given way, broken!
Kicking his boots free of the stirrups, Sands pushed from the saddle. His action came a second too late. The bay went down in a head-over-heels somersault, throwing his rider forward.
Through a grainy curtain of flying sand, Sands saw the twisted log of driftwood he hurled toward. There was a burning instant of agony as pain lanced through his skull—then the maelstrom of darkness that sucked him down into oblivion.
Chapter Seventeen
Cool and wet—the soothing touch of a damp cloth on his forehead drew Sands out of the yawning well of unconsciousness. His eyes opened and blinked against the harshness of flickering torches.
His body went rigid for a heart-pounding instant, then relief suffused him. The faces beneath those torches were white, not red.
“Hoped to give you a mite more hospitality than this when you came visiting,” a voice came from beside Sands, who turned to stare up into the face of Arlan Turner. “But I’m afraid the Comanches didn’t leave much more than what you can see.”
Comanches? What is he talking ... Buffalo Hump—Linnville—the boats—John Linn’s warehouse—Marion—his horse—the driftwood—they came cascading back into his head like a horrible nightmare.
Ignoring the bass drum thumping in his head, Sands pushed to his elbows and stared beyond the faces peering down on him. The darkness outside the glow of the torches was night, and the flapping sound above his head came from a makeshift tent of sailcloth. The acrid, smoldering effluvium that filled his nostrils told him what the night cloaked—Linnville was no more! Buffalo Hump’s Pehnahterkuh had burned it to the ground before continuing on their bloody trail.
