Slocum and the Comanche Captive

by Jake Logan

  “Said he was.”

  “He lied to you. This place belongs to the state of Texas. I already checked it out before I rode south to get the herd. The purchase price was never completely paid by the Tucker family, so they defaulted according to the county clerk.”

  “We’ll see.” Williams was breathing hard through his nose.

  “Williams, maybe you should ride on. This country ain’t big enough for both of us.”

  “We’ll see.”

  “No, my dollar paid down and my pledge to pay the full price for it in one year will hold it that long.”

  “What’s the price?”

  “One thousand dollars. Shorty, you gather all their guns. We may need them if they want to come back looking for trouble.”

  “Yes, sir. I was wondering when you’d get around to that.” He bailed off his horse and went to disarming them.

  “I still think you’re bluffing.” Williams scowled hard at Slocum under the blazing sun.

  “Williams, I’m not the man to mess with. I’ve had enough. Another word out of you and you four can walk back to where you came from.”

  “We’ll see.”

  “I got the horses,” Randy said, out of breath. He held the reins on the four of them.

  “Well, saddle them then,” the colonel said in anger.

  “Yes, sir.”

  In ten minutes, the angry crew rode out the gate headed for Mason. Slocum stood with Shorty at the gate and they watched Williams’s departure. Then the bells of the approaching train rang out in the distance. Slocum nodded in approval at their coming.

  “I never knew you went to the courthouse to ask about this place,” Shorty said, raising his hat and scratching his scalp.

  “Sounded official enough, didn’t it?”

  “It sure did.” Shorty began to chuckle, then laughed till he bent over. “Man, it was a real bluff if I ever heard one.”

  “Williams will be a few days figuring it out.”

  “Then what?”

  “Possession is nine tenths of the law.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “That we’ve got a good chance of staying here till spring.”

  “That’s all we need.”

  “Right.”

  “Beats the hell out of me. We’ve got three new Henry rifles, one more Spencer, and four pistols. That’s about enough to defend it.”

  “Some ammo, and we’ll be set.”

  Shorty narrowed his eyes and looked at the western crest. “What about them scattered horse apples I been finding?”

  “Let’s see. We’ve made enemies of Williams, there’s a killer called Matt who done in the crew, and a couple thousand Comanches want us to fail. I’d say the odds are good we’re going to have more problems.”

  “You know something?” Shorty said as the first cart with Mary and Tomas aboard came through the gate with them waving and shouting all excited about the new place.

  “What’s that?” Slocum turned to him.

  “I never for one minute felt any fear facing that guard or them fellas.”

  Slocum nodded. He didn’t fear much either. But when it came, it cramped his guts.

  20

  In the darkness of the jacal, shaved, bathed, and clean, he lay with his arm across Mary’s bare stomach and fondled her left breast. Outside, the fandango music still filled the night, the big celebration showed no signs of wearing down. Alone at last in their own small jacal, with Baby Heck asleep, Slocum was itching for a night of lovemaking with her.

  She clutched his hand that massaged her breast. “Oh, I feel so good to be clean at last.”

  “Guess I’ll mess that all up.”

  “No. That’s why I’m so clean—for you.” She rolled in his direction.

  He raised up and kissed her hard on the mouth, feeling her smooth flesh against his, the rock-hard pockets of her breasts under his chest as she turned onto her back with him going along, her fingers combing through his hair and her breathing hard through her nose as their tongues sought each other. The world began to swirl in his brain. His need for her started to rise like a mercury thermometer soared up when plunged in a boiling pot. His palm began to slide over the tight skin on her hip and the mound of her butt, pulling her closer against him.

  Under him, his erection began to rise and poke her belly. He slipped between her silky legs as she parted them for him. His emerging hard-on began to throb with power, and he arched his back to prepare for his entry. Reaching under him with her small hand, she guided his spear to the gates of her lubricated cunt. At his entry, she gave a small cry of pleasure and clutched his upper arms, then arched her back until he was against the bottom.

  Then he began to pump it to her. Her hair spilled around her face as the soft moans of pleasure escaped her slightly open lips as he braced himself over her. They were headed for heights never before attained. From the top of that pinnacle, he wanted their glide back to reality to last forever. Harder. Faster. Wilder. Walls began to contract. The drum-tight skin on the head of his swollen dick felt ready to burst. Her clit rubbed like a pencil stub on top of his shaft with each plunge. The effort by both of them was coming out in grunts. Straining, driving, hunching hard to wrench the last drop of pleasure out of each stroke. Then her fingernails dug in the skin on his upper arms and she clung to him for dear life as her butt levered off the pallet and she pushed so hard.

  He exploded inside her. Twin needles pierced him in both cheeks of the ass. Then a powerful force squeezed his testicles so hard, the pain flashed to his brain and forced his hips to shove deep into her for the second hot flush that filled her with his cum.

  He lay beside her. Dazzled and dumb. Exhausted and spent. Then his eyes closed, and he never awoke till late in the night with her back curled to his belly. His half-deflated dick, he discovered, was still in her. He put it in her a little deeper, and closed his eyes. All right.

  Slocum made a trip with Paco to meet Goldman and discuss their current needs—flour, coffee, cornmeal, raisins, dried apples, lard, bacon, canned tomatoes, salt, sugar, and baking soda. As well as ammo for their weapons and two kegs of black powder, plus lead to mold bullets for the revolvers. The rifles took rimfire ammo, and the two men took several cases back with them. Slocum asked several folks around Mason about Colonel Williams, but no one said anything about him. He decided the colonel might have gone to the fort to lick his wounds. He even met the county sheriff, a man by the name of Allen. He looked harmless enough—he didn’t even carry a piece. Slocum could not understand all the farmers and people in the town who never even took a weapon with them in the buggy or wagon when they went somewhere. They didn’t take the Comanche threat as seriously as he did.

  He and Paco drove back the wagon filled with the goods, and were satisfied they had enough supplies for months. Days passed uneventfully through the late summer; things went to drier and hotter as August slipped by. Then some moisture came off the gulf in the form of thunderstorms and drenched them. All the roofs leaked, and that put all hands on roof repair. With one storm right after the other sweeping in and even the dry washes running, they worked hard relining the roofs with new canvas and mudding them in. By October, they had the leaks about corrected, though the rain still found some leaks. But the country greened up and the cattle looked a lot better with their bellies full and licking the hair in swirls on their sides and back.

  Cowboys went out in pairs, well armed, and relocated the strays back to the Bar C range. Shorty rode in one day and reported a big herd was coming from the south. He said the owner, Jake Cooke, wouldn’t agree to turn west and avoid the Bar C range, despite asking him nice.

  At daylight, Slocum put everyone in the saddle and they drove every head they could find to the east of the headquarters. Then he stationed his riders on the crests for Cooke’s passing. The big herd came through headed north. A tough-looking head man rode up to Slocum and gave him a once-over.

  “Kinda edgy, ain’t you, mister?” the middle-aged
man asked in a condescending tone.

  “Kinda,” Slocum said, not intimidated. “I’m just making sure you have all your cattle when you get through here—”

  “You accusing me of rustling?”

  Slocum shook his head. “Not my cattle.”

  The man twisted the end of his handlebar mustache. “I’ve left tougher ones than you for the buzzards to pick.”

  “I don’t doubt it, ’cept today you wouldn’t make it back to the herd. One of my boys would put a .44 bullet in your back. No gain in your herd passing through here either.”

  “What the hell’s your name?”

  “Slocum.”

  “Jake Cooke. We’ll cross trails again.”

  “Jake Cooke, next time my man asks you to skirt west of our place, you better heed his advice.”

  “Or what?”

  “I’ll plant a cross over you.”

  “I’ll see you in Bonner Springs next spring. We can settle it there.”

  “We might do that.”

  Cooke gave him a hand wave, turned the big horse westward, and rode off for his herd.

  Paco rode in and slid his pony to a stop. “What did he say?”

  “Said he’ll see me in Bonner Springs next spring.”

  “What for?” Paco frowned after the man, who was almost to the dust of his own bunch.

  “To kill me.”

  “You going to Bonner Springs?”

  “No, I’m going to Abilene.”

  Paco slapped his large flat horn and shook with a belly laugh. “How long is he going to wait for you there?”

  “Till hell freezes over, I guess. What he tried was called the big sweep. He rides through and gets all the cattle he can in his herd, then blots the brand before they arrive at the market.”

  “Plenty of bad hombres, ain’t there?”

  “Plenty. But we outfoxed one. Now we need to make some traps. The next full moon, the Comanches will ride down and make raids.”

  “What kind of traps?”

  “I’ll show you what I mean.”

  Matilda had saved and washed all the airtight cans for him. He took one that afternoon, filled it with black powder, set it on a rise, then ran a primer cord with a primer attached to the end of it and buried it in the black powder. A hundred feet away, he struck a match and they watched the cord spark across the ground. They were all shouting until the can blew up in the largest explosion of smoke and powder they’d ever seen or heard, which made them all draw back.

  “That’s a Comanche chaser. It’ll make their horses go wild and panic. They won’t wait for many more to go off. Who can throw a stick of blasting powder that far?”

  “I can,” Toledo said, and came forward.

  Slocum handed him a bundle of sticks that weighed as much as a stick of blasting powder. The drover reared back, ran three steps, and the package was launched high in the sky. It landed less than ten feet from the explosion site.

  “You get that job.” Slocum nodded and tossed a whiskey bottle to Tomas. “Put it on that rise out there.”

  Tomas took off in small cloud of dust, his sandals churning up dirt.

  “Now one shot at a time. I want to see the real shooter who can bust that bottle. Either a Spencer or Winchester.”

  “Can I shoot?” Hertz asked.

  “Sure, you’re one of us.”

  The youth took a Spencer, set the sight leverage at thirty yards, kneeled down, looked hard through the sights, and squeezed off a shot. The bottle flew in a thousand pieces and Hertz looked around at the awed crowd. “Who’s next?”

  Paco squeezed his chin and shook his head in disbelief. “That boy could kill a fly down there.”

  “Tomas, put up a new bottle. Who’s next?”

  The crowd began to applaud and nod their heads in approval of Hertz’s shooting. He swept off his small black hat for them as he went back to his wife. She smiled and hugged him with pride. Slocum knew the boy with the hard-to-understand accent had just found his place on the crew.

  “Me.” Shorty stepped forward, picked up the same rifle, chambered in a shell. He took aim at the new one and busted the neck off it. More applause.

  So the afternoon went, but no one else a busted bottle like Hertz had. Even the four women shot rifles. Matilda and Mary hit the target after some coaching. The other two shot wild enough that Slocum excused them from rifle practice.

  He cut the distance down and the crew had pistol practice on an array of bottles. They all could shoot, and some were crack shots. The plan for the Comanches was laid out. Paco made a new clapper for the old ranch bell; then he used a wet rawhide wrap to reinforce the loose nails that held it on the post. A new pull rope, and the alarm was ready. When it went to ringing, they were to come in and support the ranch’s defense.

  Each night Juan brought in the remuda. That was what the Comanches would steal first. Each morning, the youth and a guard armed with a rifle went to grazing with them. Each night they came in long before sundown.

  Slocum sipped on his morning coffee as the horses went out in a long jog. November was a good month for the warriors to come in during the full moon of the gray goose. The honkers had been going over for a week. The boys had shot some low-flying ones for the table. Paco, Tomas, and Juan had ridden into the hill country and shot six deer. The cool night kept them fresh enough while the women jerked the meat, pounded it with pumice with the wild plums they’d picked and dried earlier. Stored in leather bags and sealed under four inches of beef tallow, it was the Mexican version of pemmican and could stay fresh for years.

  They also picked and shelled mesquite beans.

  Hertz asked Slocum about the steers. Were any broken well enough to make teams?

  “Why?”

  “Many of the farmers need teams of oxen. They don’t have money, but they would barter trade.”

  “Like what?”

  “Oh, I could get four barrels of flour for a gentle team.”

  “We’ll have a meeting tonight. Some of them would make ox—they really tamed down yoked up. They’d get calm again yoked for a while, I figure. Let’s talk to Paco. I’m excited.”

  His partner blinked at the idea later that evening. “Sell oxen?”

  “Yes, lots of these farmers need teams. No cash, but they have commodities we can use.”

  “Yes, that would be wonderful, huh, amigo?”

  “Best idea we’ve come across.”

  “We will cut out several steers in the morning. I think we can find gentle ones.” Paco looked at Slocum, who agreed.

  The roundup began the next morning, and Hertz drove into Mason to post a sign at Goldman’s. OXEN TEAMS IN EXCHANGE FOR PRODUCE. BAR C RANCH.

  All the steers they drove in were not as willing to resubmit to yoking, and the dust flew in the corrals. Cattle bawled and bucked. The gentler ones were kept, the wild ones run out the front gate. Soon, the competition to find the right ones and drive them in from the range became keen among the two-person teams.

  The first purchaser brought four barrels of fine-sifted flour to trade. At twenty bucks a barrel on the credit, Slocum was backing Hertz’s ambition to find Mr. Gomer a fine team for his flour. Gomer didn’t like the first team they showed him—too small. The second one they drove into the arena was too tall and would eat too much feed. Paco found the next team, a shorter, blocky pair, to drive into the pen for Gomer to inspect. Gomer’s arms folded over his black suit coat and he made a great nod of approval at the sight of them.

  Slocum nodded to Mary—they had four precious barrels of flour.

  Another farmer, named Berner, sent Hertz word he wanted two of the tamest steers and would pay four hundred pounds of dried frijoles for them if they were tame. The tamest two were not the best matched, one was a few inches taller than the other. The man in his white shirt, funny black hat, and black suit delivered the beans in his oxcart. He walked around them and appraised them tied to the fence while the ranch crew looked on. He put his hands on them and they chewed th
eir cud placidly. Relief went through everyone when he decided they were tame enough and he nodded his approval to Hertz.

  Herr Berner drove them out of the arena, took a chain hitched to the back of his Red River cart, and attached it to the yoke. He didn’t give the new steers much slack. When they were tied on and dancing some on their toes, Herr Berner went around to his own team, flicked the whip, and said, “Get up” in German.

  They left the Bar C, and the new steers were either going to go along or be dragged, the onlookers could see. They didn’t go willingly, and even skidded as they left. Slocum figured by the time the pair reached Mason, they’d be used to oxdom. The second trade really opened the all-new business—swapping for oxen.

  The next team brought two barrels of dry apples. The crew was scouting every day for more potential draft teams out of the herd. A year’s supply of raisins came next for a solid black team, which was all Herr Gruder would accept. They traded two teams for some good barrels of wine. Slocum had begun to believe there was no end to this oxen business. A trade was made for a barrel of sauerkraut and two woolen sweaters. Matilda got one sweater because she was always cold, and Darla, who had begun to show her coming baby, got the second one. Besides, Hertz was doing the biggest share of the trading.

  Slocum was beginning to believe the Comanche had accepted his force at the ranch. They weren’t the kind of Indians to meet the army on the battlefield, but small bands made incursions and raids. Isolated ranches poorly defended, herders, lone travelers, and small wagon trains all were the targets of their raids. They went as far south as central Mexico’s north provinces to make raids on unarmed villages and isolated haciendas—gaining captives, horses, supplies, and loot.

  Shorty rode in one bleary morning to Slocum’s jacal.

  “More sign today. Several horses passed west of here last night.”

  “Ride out and tell Juan to bring in the horses. They’re better off hungry than stolen,” Slocum said from the doorway “Sure thing, boss.”

  “What’s going on?” Paco asked.