The Black Jacks

by Jason Manning

  "That's a good idea," said one of the Black Jacks, and a murmur of agreement rippled through the crowd.

  "They'll come from the west or the north," surmised McAllen. "They always do. So keep your eyes open and your weapons close at hand. Our job will be to hold them up long enough for our people to get across the river."

  The men nodded. They knew without asking that if it was humanly possible, McAllen would join them as soon as he got his own people at the Grand Cane plantation across the Brazos to safety.

  That was all McAllen had to say. Most of the Black Jacks went back to their work. A few lingered awhile to talk things over. McAllen declined Yancey's invitation to stay for dinner. He was sorry to see nothing more of Emily, but he thought it the wiser course to take his leave. Reluctantly, he mounted up and rode back to the plantation.

  Taking Jeb aside, he told his overseer that in all likelihood there would be a Comanche raid, and soon. This was all he had to say; Jeb knew what to do in that eventuality. There were several boats down at the landing, and the overseer was well aware that it was his responsibility to get all the slaves—and Mrs. McAllen—down to those boats and to the other side of the river. The captain and Joshua would be busy trying to hold off the Indians if there was an attack on the plantation.

  McAllen found the big house empty, so he walked out back to the kitchen. Bessie and Roman were there, Bessie stirring up a delightfully aromatic stew in a big iron kettle suspended from one of the hooks in the fireplace. As usual the two were bickering. McAllen would have thought something wrong with them if they were getting along.

  "I declare, Marse John," said an exasperated Bessie, "I doan know what I'm gwine do with dis ol' man. I found him out in dat garden dis mornin', jis' workin' away. He gwine work hisself to death. Doan he know he's older'n Moses?"

  "You had better take things easy for a spell, Roman," advised McAllen, even though he knew it was a waste of breath.

  "Then I be's good for nothin', Marse John. And dat won't do. Nossir, dat won't do."

  "If something happened to you, who would Bessie nag?" asked McAllen. "Have either of you seen Leah?"

  Bessie and Roman exchanged wary looks.

  "She be's off with dat Englishman," said Bessie, disgusted. "Mark my words, Marse John." She waved the wooden ladle at McAllen. "Dat man ain't no gennelman. He be's nothing but trouble. You oughts to run him off dis place."

  McAllen smiled. "No, I can't do that. The general wants him taken care of. So we must make him feel right at home."

  "Oh, he be's making hisself right at home," said Bessie, caustically. "Doan you worry none 'bout dat."

  "And don't you worry, Bessie. Everything is working out just fine." McAllen sat down at the rough-hewn table in the middle of the kitchen. "Now, how about some of that stew?" he asked cheerfully. "I'm starving."

  Bessie stared at him. What in the world had gotten into the captain? It was bad enough that Miss Leah did the things she did in Austin and Galveston and all those other places, but now the shameless hussy was cutting eyes at another man right here under her husband's roof! And here was the captain acting like he didn't have a care in the world! Bessie shook her head. "Beats all I ever seen," she muttered as she ladled some stew into a big crockery bowl.

  Chapter Fourteen

  After the Council House fight, weeks passed with no sign of the Comanches, and some Texans began to think the Indians had been, in Lamar's words, chastised so severely that they had decided to leave the settlements alone.

  Tucker Foley and Dr. Joel Ponton of Lavaca were the first to find out otherwise.

  The two men were traveling together, having left Columbus bound for Gonzales. A large party of Comanche warriors jumped them, killing Foley and gravely wounding Ponton. They chased Ponton for several miles before giving up. The doctor reached his home and raised the alarm before passing out from loss of blood. Adam Zumwalt and thirty-six men set out to find the hostiles. That same day, the mail rider en route from Austin to Gonzales crossed the Indian trail at Plum Creek. He galloped hell for leather into Gonzales. "I ain't never seen the like," he gasped, wide-eyed. "Must be a thousand of them red devils. They left a trail a half mile wide. I swear, this ain't no ordinary raiding party. I'd swear it on a stack of Bibles, boys. How come ya'll lookin' at me thataway? No, dammit, I aint been drinin'!"

  Ben McCulloch led twenty-four men to Big Hill, where he joined forced with Zumwalt's bunch. Together, they found the Comanche trail. The mail rider hadn't been exaggerating by much. The hostiles were headed south and east and there were a lot of them. McCulloch calculated three or four hundred at least.

  The next morning they were joined by another posse, this one from DeWitt County, led by the noted Indian fighter John J. Tumlinson of Cuero. Captain Tumlinson now took command of a force numbering over one hundred riders.

  "If they keep to their present course," said Tumlinson, "they will run smack into Victoria."

  "They wouldn't attack a town that size," said Zumwalt. "Would they?"

  McCulloch was already in the saddle. "We'd better go make sure." He was grim, realizing that the Comanches were a day ahead of them, and that if the hostiles did intend to strike Victoria there was nothing he and the rest of Tumlinson's Texans could do about it.

  The Comanches killed thirteen people at Victoria, including seven Negroes, a Mexican, and a German traveler. They would have added a Frenchman to that tally had he not climbed an old oak tree and hidden himself in the Spanish moss that festooned the branches. The Indians roared through Victoria like a whirlwind of death and destruction and continued southward, toward the Gulf. Along the way they took a Mrs. Crosby and her infant daughter captive. It was said that Mrs. Crosby was Daniel Boone's grand-daughter. Boone's daughters had been captured by Shawnee Indians in Kentucky, and the frontiersman had fallen into Indian hands once or twice himself. Bad luck with Indians seemed to run in that family.

  The following morning the Comanches appeared on the Victoria Road on the outskirts of the seaside village of Linnville. Like well-drilled cavalry the warriors fell into a half-moon formation and rode at full gallop into the settlement, with the wings of the formation encircling the village on both sides. There was no escape except by sea, and many of Linnville's terrified inhabitants leaped into lighters and other small craft and found refuge in the bay, where they helplessly watched the systematic looting and destruction of their homes.

  The Comanches took their sweet time, lingering in Linnville for hours, burning one house at a time. Cattle and pigs were slaughtered in wholesale lots. Only horses and mules were spared—by this time the Indians had a herd of more than six hundred stolen ponies and knobheads. Some of the horses were laden with plunder, some of which was of no practical use to the Comanches—clothing, quilts, china, silverware, mirrors, rugs, spittoons, boots, stovepipe hats, and much more. Some of the warriors donned white man's clothing; the adorned their own horses with bright ribbons and calicoes taken from stores and residences. In the process they killed five men: three whites and two slaves.

  Gray Wolf, war chief of the Quohadis, remained aloof from this orgy of destruction and looting. He was not pleased with the way things were going. This was not what he had envisioned, and when Yellow Hand, the Penateka chief, and several other Comanche leaders, came to him with their decision to end the raid, he was angered.

  "We have killed many Texans," said Yellow Hand smugly. "We have stolen hundreds of their horses and destroyed two of their villages. The murder of our chiefs in Bexar has been avenged. It is time to go home."

  "Yellow Hand is wrong," was Gray Wolf's blunt response. "We have accomplished nothing. All this will not stop the Texans from invading our land. We must fight and win a battle."

  Yellow Hand shook his head. "The Penatekas are going home."

  "If you go," said Gray Wolf, "the Quohadis will not be going with you. Our raid is not finished."

  "Do what you will. The Penatekas are turning back."

  "Do not return by the w
ay we have come," advised Gray Wolf. "Separate into small groups and scatter to the west."

  "We will stay together," said Yellow Hand. He was not inclined to take the advice of a Quohadi. Besides, there was greater security in numbers.

  Gray Wolf shook his head and rode away. He located Red Eagle and Tall Horses and called them to his side to inform them of what had happened.

  "Yellow Hand is a fool," he added. "The Texans will expect us to return the way we have come. They will be waiting. So far we have moved too quickly for them to catch us, but when Yellow Hand and the others turn north they will find many Texans in their path."

  "Then there will be a great battle," reasoned Red Eagle, "and we should take part in it."

  "No. This is what we must do. Send the women and some of the men due west from here with the stolen horses. The rest of us will strike north along the Brazos River. We will hit hard and fast. The Texans will be gathering to stop Yellow Hand and the others. By the time they move against us we will have reached the Cross Timbers. There we will be safe and can turn for home."

  Tall Horses nodded enthusiastically. "This is a good plan."

  Red Eagle frowned. Like Gray Wolf he was a young war chief, and he saw Gray Wolf as his principal rival. He knew that the warriors tended to look more to Gray Wolf for leadership than they did him; they knew Gray Wolf was more levelheaded and had proven himself a better strategist in raids against the Utes. Besides, they believed Gray Wolf had been spared at the Council House by the Great Spirit for some special purpose. So Red Eagle swallowed his pride and agreed with Gray Wolf's plan.

  And so, when the Comanche horde turned north, retracing their steps, leaving a ruined, smoldering Linnville behind, it was without the Quohadis, who slipped away to the northeast, a hundred strong after dispatching their women and about thirty warriors westward with the stolen stock and plunder.

  As Gray Wolf had suspected, the Texans were gathering. Lafayette Ward and twenty-two men from Lavaca met Captain Matthew Caldwell and thirty-seven men at Gonzales. Together they rode on to Seguin and joined forces with another party of twenty men. Here they received their first reliable intelligence concerning the Comanches. The hostiles were following their old trail north. Caldwell decided to cut them off at Plum Creek. The Texans marched all day across prairie scorched by a grass fire, through a cloud of ashes that blinded and choked men and horses.

  That night, Captain James Bird and thirty more riders joined them. Ben McCulloch and a handful of men also rode into camp; they had quit Tumlinson's group in disgust after Tumlinson lost his nerve and let slip an opportunity to strike at the Indians in the vicinity of Victoria.

  Early the next morning General Felix Huston, late of the Texas Army, showed up, and Caldwell graciously surrendered command to him. This displeased many of the Texans, who knew Caldwell—Old Paint, they affectionately called him—had proven himself as an Indian fighter. Still, no one quit over it. Just before dawn, scouts rode in to report the Comanches three miles south and coming on. Almost simultaneously, a rider galloped in to announce the imminent arrival of Colonel Edward Burleson with eighty-seven Texans and thirteen Tonawas.

  Felix Huston's command, now numbering nearly a hundred men, waited in the trees and thickets along Plum Creek as the new day dawned. They wondered who would be the first on the scene—the Comanches or Burleson. They did not have long to speculate. An hour later the Comanches appeared with their huge horse herd, on the open prairie west of Plum Creek. They paused to let their ponies drink from the creek hardly more than a half mile upstream from where the Texans lurked, undiscovered, in a thicket.

  Deciding they could wait no longer for Burleson's force to arrive, the Texans mounted up and rode out into the open. The Comanche warriors formed a barrier, intent on delaying the Texans until their women and the horse herd could escape. The warriors' faces were painted red. Many of them wore buffalo headdresses. Their buffalo-hide shields were daubed with colorful symbols. The manes and tails of their war ponies were painted carmine red. The Texans could not fail to notice that some of the hostiles wore plundered white man's clothing—a stovepipe here, a clawhammer coat there. Nor did they fail to note the scalps dangling from some of the long red lances.

  For a few minutes neither side advanced. Felix Huston could tell he was outnumbered three or four to one, and held his men in check. The Comanches screamed taunts at the Texans. Some performed exhibitions of riding skill up and down their line. Then a chief, conspicuous by his feather warbonnet and bone breastplate, rode forward. The Comanches cheered—only to fall abruptly silent as a rifle spoke from somewhere along the Texan line and the chief tumbled off his pony, shot through the heart.

  Felix Huston looked at Captain Caldwell, who lowered his smoking rifle. "Charge them now, General!" said Caldwell. "Do it this instant and we'll have them whipped!"

  Huston gave the signal. With a savage roar the Texans surged forward, guns blazing. At that moment Burleson and his men appeared, most opportunely, on the Comanche flank. The horse herd stampeded, and after a brief and bloody affray, the warriors broke, scattering, with the Texans hot on their heels.

  In the aftermath, eighty Comanche dead were located, many on the prairie, some in the creek, others in the thickets where they had tried in vain to elude their relentless pursuers. Only a handful of Texans had lost their lives, and a few more had sustained wounds. Of the four captives taken by the Comanches during the raid, three were recovered. The fourth, Mrs. Crosby, descendant of Daniel Boone, was killed by her captors.

  Plum Creek was a decisive defeat for the Comanches. Satisfied with their work, the Texans disbanded, returning to their homes secure in the knowledge that they had taught the hostiles a lesson they would not soon forget. The great raid was over.

  They had no way of knowing that on the very morning of the big scrape at Plum Creek, a force of nearly one hundred Quohadi warriors struck the settlement of Grand Cane.

  Chapter Fifteen

  The Comanches first appeared at the farm of Jellicoe Fuller, two miles south of Grand Cane.

  When he'd first moved onto the section which Captain McAllen had deeded to him out of the republic's generous land grant, Fuller had turned over forty acres of partially cleared land with a bar-share plow and then, with an eye on the future, proceeded to clear approximately forty acres more closer to the river. This meant cutting down trees a foot or less in diameter and "deadening" the rest, which was accomplished by girdling the trunk all around to the depth of six inches or so. In the intervening years all of these trees had died. Windstorms had stripped them of most of their limbs, providing plenty of firewood for the Fuller family. This spring, with the corn already planted and sprouting, Jellicoe Fuller was tackling the big job of felling the dead trees and burning out the stumps. Now, at least, his fourteen-year-old son, Billy, was big enough to wield an ax and lend him a hand.

  Billy was hacking away at a tree about thirty yards from where Jellicoe was building a slow fire in a hollow space carved out of a stump when the elder Fuller heard a sound resembling thunder. Perplexed, he looked up at a clear blue sky. Then the blood in his veins seemed to turn to ice. Picking up the percussion rifle that was seldom out of reach, Fuller called his son to him. His voice was calm but firm.

  "Boy, you run on up to the house fast as your legs can carry you, put your ma and sister on the back of the plow mare, and light out for town like the hounds of hell are snappin' at your heels."

  "What's the matter, Pa?" Billy was looking up at the sky, searching for thunderclouds.

  "Just do what I tell you. Go, now."

  Billy caught on then. He wasn't slow-witted. His eyes got wide. "Is it. . ."

  "Run, boy. Run!"

  Turning pale, Billy Fuller ran.

  Jellicoe watched his son go, knowing he would not live to see Billy or his wife or daughter again. At least he had known the joys of married life and fatherhood for a few precious years. That was more than he'd expected or deserved. There was a time to live and
a time to die, and when it came right down to it a man had very little say in the matter.

  The thunder was getting louder. For once, mused Fuller, Captain McAllen had miscalculated. The Indians were coming from the south, not the west or the north. He could feel the ground vibrating beneath his feet. He moved as quick as his game leg allowed. A Seminole arrow with a poisoned tip had made a cripple of him—it was thanks only to Dr. Tice's quick work that he had survived. He and the rest of the Black Jacks had been chased through the swamps by a hundred howling red devils for three days, but nary a man had even suggested that Jellicoe Fuller was slowing them down and ought to be left behind. Now it was time to pay the boys back. He would do whatever he could to hold the Comanches here as long as possible.

  Dragging his stiffened leg behind him, Fuller cut across the cornfield in the warm spring sun and reached the cabin just as the Comanches came swarming out of the woods in the direction of the river. Spotting Fuller, they cut loose with bloodcurdling war whoops. Fuller checked to make sure his family was on their way to Grand Cane. He was relieved to find the cabin empty, the plow mare gone. He had but one regret—that he hadn't been able to tell his wife and little girl good-bye.

  Standing on the porch, he watched the Comanches, who had paused at the edge of the woods. He figured there had to be nearly a hundred of them. What were they waiting for? What if they decided he wasn't worth the trouble and went right on around him to Grand Cane? That wouldn't do. Grimly, Fuller lifted rifle to shoulder and aimed at a knot of warriors he took to be leaders on account of their warbonnets. Squeezing the trigger, he fired and then stepped sideways out of the powder smoke to see if his aim had been true. He was gratified to see one of the Indians slump forward and then slide off his pony. Yelling like banshees, the rest of the Comanches surged forward across the cornfield.