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troops had withdrawn with the Indian prisoners. Reading Colonel Fisher's curt missive, he had half a mind to ignore the summons, but curiosity got the better of him. What could Colonel Fisher possibly have to say to him?
The Mission San Jose was on the outskirts of the town, and it took Rafael but a short time to saddle his horse and ride there. Shown into the colonel's quarters by a grim-faced young soldier, he was slightly disconcerted to discover that Colonel Fisher was seriously ill. But when he would have excused himself and murmured that he would call again when the colonel was in better health, Fisher snapped, "My health is no concern of yours! I wanted to see^you and I wanted to see you now!"
It was not, perhaps, the most conciliatory opening for their conversation. But then, Colonel Fisher was not in a very conciliatory mood. He was quite ill, so ill in fact that the young Captain Redd was in command of the garrison, and he was uncomfortably conscious of the fact that the meeting with the Comanches could have been handled with more tact. Not wasting any time in polite banter, he came right to the point.
"You are very familiar with the Comanche ways. Do you think they are going to bring in the captives when the twelve days we gave them are past?" he demanded from his bed.
Rafael, who had refused the proffered chair, stood with unconscious arrogance in the center of the room, his thumbs hooked casually on either side of the large silver buckle of the wide leather belt he wore, his black sombrero half-hiding the expression in the hard gray eyes. Bluntly he replied, "No. Why should they? You murdered their chiefs who came under a peace truce to talk of a treaty, and as far as they are concerned, the survivors you hold captive are as good as dead. What inducement do you offer them to bring in their captives?"
Fisher's normally tanned face was pale from illness, and there was a lackluster sheen in the dark eyes. Distractedly his fingers plucked at the edge of the sheets of his bed as he said doggedly, "We will not be held to
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ransom! They had no right to abduct our women and children in the first place—and we will not be intimidated!"
Rafael shrugged. "Then there's nothing to discuss, is there? If you will excuse me, I have other things to do." He spun on his heel and had started to walk toward the door when Fisher's voice stopped him.
"Wait!"
Looking back at the colonel, his face set in uncompromising lines, Rafael asked, "Yes?"
Fisher rested back weakly against his pillows. Tiredly he admitted, "We had our orders and we followed them. Certainly none of us believed that a massacre would result."
"Oh? You expected the Comanche chiefs to meekly allow themselves to be taken captive?" Rafael taunted.
"Damn it, they were only Indians! All we wanted was our captives. They'd been told not to come to council unless they brought them all in—your precious Co-manches were as much at fault as we were." Hastily he clarified, "Not that there was any fault on our side— the Comanches started the fight, after all."
His gray eyes full of scorn, Rafael said harshly, "I don't see much point in this conversation. So, if you will
excuse me.
r)>,
"Santana, don't go!" Reluctantly Fisher added, "I need your help. Texas needs your help. We need to know information that you can give us. You know about Comanches better probably than any man in Texas. What can we expect now?"
There was a time, and not too distant in the past either, when Rafael would have refused to answer such a question. He would have felt a traitor. But his own killing of the two Comanches, for whatever reasons, had made him irrevocably aware that his lot was with the white man. Still, the words came hard, and he almost spat them out. "First of all, I would advise you to give up any hope of seeing the captives alive!" he snapped. "Any of the white women and children that haven't already been formally adopted into a Comanche family are probably dead by now. As soon as the Indian woman you sent to the Comanche camp arrived, their
fates were sealed. The only ones who might escape death by torture are the adopted captives, but I wouldn't hold out much hope even for them." His eyes bleak and unforgiving he snarled, "When you broke the sacredness of the council, didn't it ever occur to you, even fleet-ingly, that you could be sacrificing innocent women and children?"
Fisher wouldn't meet his eyes, and Rafael snorted with disgust. With an effort he controlled his rising temper, and, pulling up the chair he had refused earlier, he turned it around and straddled it easily, his crossed arms resting lightly on the wooden back. Honesty made him say, "I can't tell you exactly what will happen, but I can tell you what I think they will do." Frowning, he sent a hard look across at the other man. "I suspect that sooner or later you're going to have one wrathful war party appear on the horizon screaming for the blood of every Texan. As for the twelve-day truce you so generously offered, I wouldn't hang any hope on it. The Comanches are going to be outraged and furious, feeling, I think, justifiably betrayed. On the other hand, they are going to be confused and uncertain, something that may work to our advantage... at first." Unemotionally Rafael said, "You've killed all their great leaders, and I doubt that there are very many warriors of sufficient prestige within the tribe who can weld them into a concerted force. In time, yes, but at the present, no. That won't stop them from seeking revenge, though." His face becoming increasingly grim, he continued, "You can also expect to have raiding and killing on the frontier the like of which you have never dreamed... not even in nightmares! They have no reason to hold back now. You have given them a just cause to hate us with all the ferocity and unforgivingness of their nature." His voice as unyielding as granite and the gray eyes like flecks of obsidian, Rafael ended stingingly, "And I'm sure you realize why they will not be willing to sit down to any peace talks you might want to offer them. The Council House Massacre will be viewed by them as the vilest treachery possible—they will never forget or forgive it. Worse, you, Lamar, Johnston, and all the others have given them a common cause that could—
I don't say will—but could lead to the unification of all the Comanche tribes. In short, sir, you can expect a war with the Comanches that will not end until either the Texans are driven from the Republic or the last Comanche has been killed/'
CHAPTER TWENTY
Rafael left the Mission San Jose full of rage and frustration. He had almost enjoyed flinging those last words at Colonel Fisher, and yet deep inside he was sick. Everything that he and all the others had sought to avoid would happen and all because of one senseless outbreak of violence.
His mood was surly for the rest of the day, and he avoided the house, being in no mood for polite conversation. Instead he rode the big dapple-gray stallion out toward the limestone hills and spent the afternoon gaining peace from the clear blue sky and wide vista.
It was late when he arrived back at the house. The ladies had retired some time ago and even his father had gone to bed, leaving Sebastian the only one still awake except for a stray servant or two.
Rafael wasn't deliberately searching for companionship, but when he discovered Sebastian, nursing a brandy in the small study at the rear of the house, he was almost pleased.
Sebastian looked up when he entered and asked, "Where did you disappear to? Everyone was quite concerned when you were not at dinner."
Rafael grimaced. "I keep forgetting to tell someone where Fm going. Blame it on a life spent in solitude on the plains."
Sebastian smiled in commiseration. They drank in companionable silence for a few minutes, Rafael lounging carelessly in a worn Spanish leather overstuffed chair, his long legs stretched in front of him, his booted feet crossed at the ankles. After a while they began to talk of Sebastian's plans for the future, more specifically of the land he was going to apply for the next day.
Sebastian's young face was eager, the emerald eyes flashing with enthusiasm. Leaning forward in his chair, he confessed, "When Father first mentioned Texas, I had my reservations. I could have gone to England and taken over some of Mother's estates, or Fat
her even thought I might like to try my hand at running the plantation in Virginia, but neither appealed to me." He gave a rueful laugh. "It seemed so tame. When I said as much to Father, it was then that he suggested that possibly I might find it more to my liking if I created my own lands in the manner I saw fit. He said, in that rather dry way he has, that Texas was as good a place as any for a young man affray talents." Sebastian grinned, his wide mouth curving attractively. "He wasn't wrong, either! I can't begin to tell you how eager I am to start carving out my own estate. It gives me, I think, much the same feeling father must have had at the prospect of taming Terre du Coeur." After taking a sip of his brandy, he finished with "I guess that I am feeling the same urge that he did to take raw land and subdue it and form it into one's liking... or dreams, if you care to call it such."
At first, listening with indulgent affection, Rafael was unmoved by Sebastian's words, but the thought of taking untamed, wild land and making it into the stuff that dreams are made of woke an emotion that had been slumbering deep inside of him. Staring with great interest at the tip of his booted foot, he was aware of a spark of something that resembled envy at Sebastian's future. No, envy wasn't the right word—Rafael envied no man—but he was suddenly conscious of the fact that he wanted intensely to do exactly as Sebastian was going to do. To take untamed land and form it into dreams...
Rafael had always been conscious that part of his indifference to Cielo had its roots in the fact that there was no challenge connected with the rancho, unless one counted Indians and Mexican bandidos. Cielo was beautiful, that was undeniable; but the land had been tamed long ago, and he took no pride in the gracious hacienda with its sumptuous furnishings, nor in the million or so acres that teemed with herds of cattle and
horses, as much because of his hatred of Don Felipe as due to his Comanche upbringing.
But the Comanche days were past, and Rafael discovered that he no longer truly yearned for them. He had made his own modest fortune over the years, trapping and trading as had his American grandfather, as well as capturing wild horses to sell for more than just a tidy profit. It was a fortune he could call his own, a fortune that owed nothing to Cielo and Don Felipe. The lands and money he had inherited from his maternal grandfather, Abe Hawkins, had increased in size to commendable proportions, making Rafael a man of substance without even touching the Santana wealth. As he and Sebastian sat talking, Rafael was thinking of the land he owned some miles north of Houston in the eastern part of the Republic, land he had grudgingly purchased after Texas had gained her independence and simply because Abe had thought it would round out his own smaller holding nicely.
It was part of an old Spanish rancho that had failed. Some thirty-five years previously, Abe had staked out about a hundred and fifty thousand acres for himself, including the crumbling, abandoned hacienda, and when the adjacent land came up for sale some thirty years later, Abe had been most insistent that Rafael purchase them. At the time Rafael hadn't known why it was so important he buy the additional two hundred thousand acres of woodlands and meadows, but now he did. Abe had known there would come a time when he would want his own land—not land inherited, but land he had bought with money earned by his own sweat and blood. And perhaps the time had come, Rafael reflected moodily.
Thinking of it, thinking of the pine forests and lakes, of the dogwood that bloomed in the spring, of the hardwood and palmetto forests, he knew with stunning certainty that it was there he wanted to be—not at Cielo with its painful memories, nor on the plains with the memory of what could never be, but at Enchantress, the name his grandfather had given the lands some thirty-odd years before when Black Fawn, his wife, had been afive.
Almost self-consciously Rafael mentioned the land, telling Sebastian how he had come to own it and how his grandfather had named it Enchantress after his Indian wife. They talked about its possibilities for several minutes before Sebastian asked idly, "What do you intend to do with it? Sell it? Or have you considered working it?"
Rafael stared moodily down into his glass of whiskey. "I don't know. It depends on..." He stopped, realizing how very far he had come in his thoughts. Frowning he said slowly, "I think I might ride up there some time in the next few weeks and see what condition the old hacienda is in, and possibly hire a few men to start clearing the land. It's good land for either cattle or crops, but first it has to be cleared." Smiling wryly, he said, "It will take months of backbreaking labor before anything can be done with it. But in time..." There was an odd note in Rafael's voice that caused Sebastian to glance at him sharply.
"Are you considering this seriously?" he demanded in surprise. "If I didn't know it was impossible, I would think you were considering settling down... and at Enchantress at that!"
The gray eyes hooded and a bland smile on his mouth, Rafael said lightly, "All things are possible, amigo. Sometimes it just takes a man a while to discover what he really wants out of life. Enchantress seems as good as any place to find out if a life of respectability appeals to me."
There was more news concerning the Comanches in the morning, but it told the Texans little more than they had known already. A Mrs. Webster, having been captured with her son and infant daughter the year before when her husband and the party they had been traveling with had been ambushed and killed at Brushy Creek, near Georgetown, had managed a daring escape from the Comanches. She had stolen a horse and, with her small daughter clinging desperately to her back, had ridden with all haste and fear to San Antonio, arriving on March 26. She was a pitiful sight, famished, her clothes in rags and her eyes full of remembered terror. She'd had to leave her son behind, and that, more
than anything, distressed her. Having disregarded Rafael's advice once, Colonel Fisher now seemed determined to have his counsel on ever3rthing. Consequently Rafael was there when Mrs. Webster was interviewed by the military. The information she imparted'that her son, Booker, had been adopted by a Comanche family gave Rafael hope that at least some of the white captives would escape death, but beyond saying that there were many captives among the Comanches and that the Comanches had been grief-stricken at the news of the massacre at the Council House, she could tell them nothing more.
Rafael was filled with a sort of helpless fury as he fought the battle within himself—the Comanche days of his past urging him to throw his lot with the Indians, to offer them his knowledge of the white man's ways, and yet every instinct reminding him that his place now was with the white man—and for the present he could do nothing but wait, like the rest of the inhabitants of San Antonio, for the Comanches to make the first move.
Two days after Mrs. Webster's return, the Comanches came. But, devoid of leadership as Rafael had said, they were helpless, and instead of wreaking the violence and death that they could have, they simply swarmed the hills northwest of the city, full of rage and uncertainty. There were close to three hundred of them, each screaming his defiance and hatred, and yet without their chiefs, with their councils divided, there was no one to lead an attack.
One minor chief, Isimanca, braver—or perhaps more foolhardy—than the others, galloped daringly into the middle of the public square and for several moments he and a companion rode around the plaza, shouting challenges to the astonished onlookers. Stopping in front of Bluck's Saloon on the northeast corner of the square, his black paint grotesquely distorting his proud features, his naked chest heaving with emotion, he stood up in his stirrups and, shaking a clenched fist at the bystanders, he raved and shouted at them, determined to fight with someone. Fortunately, everyone seemed more bemused than afraid, and after a bit, an inter-
preter informed the Comanche that if he wanted a fight he should go to the Mission San Jose and that Colonel Fisher and the soldiers would be glad to oblige him. Glaring at them, the black eyes flashing with fury, he nodded curtly, and with a shrieking whoop he and his fellow Comanche rode out of town at breakneck speed.
Captain Redd and his men were surprised when shortly thereafter some three hundred s
creaming and threatening Comanches thundered up to the limestone walls of the mission. The troops were eager to start firing, but Captain Redd, conscious of the fact that the truce had officially three more days to run, ordered his men to hold their fire. There w£k a great deal of grumbling but the soldiers did as ordered, as the Comanches galloped madly about hurling insults and challenges, their lances upraised in aggressive positions, some even notching their arrows to their bows. But despite all their hostile actions, the Comanches were not quite daring enough to start a battle with the men safely ensconced behind the high walls of the mission, and eventually they rode off in fi^ustration.
The men of the First Texas Regiment were incensed at the orders not to fire, and Captain Lysander Wells went so far as to accuse Captain Redd of cowardice. Heated words were hurled, and with two hot-tempered Southern gentlemen, a duel was the only way to solve the not so thinly disguised insults. Grim-faced, they stepped out the twenty paces and wounded each other fatally. The Comanches would have been pleased.
Beth was oblivious of most things, but by the time Nathan had been buried a week, her own common sense told her that she was accomplishing nothing by remaining in a half-drugged state. Her guilt had not lessened, and while she resolutely stopped taking the laudanum during the daylight hours, she simply couldn't face the night without it. She was aware that she should do something, make some effort to pick up the pieces of her life, but she seemed momentarily helpless to do anything but accept the sympathy and kindness of the Santanas. That it was Rafael's hospitality she accepted she preferred not to acknowledge, and with Sebastian and the older Santanas in the house it was very easy
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to pretend it was their unstinting hospitality that she so very willingly accepted.
No one appeared in any hurry to break up the small gathering in San Antonio. Sebastian was busy seeing about his land patents and overseeing the buying of various implements to start carving out his estate near Cielo; Dona Madelina always enjoyed being in town and she was constantly visiting her acquaintances. Don Miguel frequently accompanied her and he was apparently as eager as she to postpone their return trip to Cielo. Senora Lopez was more than happy to continue her not very arduous duties of companion to Beth rather than return to the loneliness of her quiet little house, and perhaps she secretly hoped that Rafael would allow her to stay indefinitely.
Louisiana 08 - While Passion Sleeps Page 34