by Anita Mills
That just about said it. Hap would write it up, no doubt embellishing it suitably before sending it on with his own recommendation for payment. And hopefully the editor of the Daily Austin Republican wouldn’t make too much of the incident, at least not the way he’d done with the State Police.
The trouble with newspapers, he reflected bitterly, was that while they cried for protection of the Texas frontier, they refused to sanction the necessary means of achieving it. And he was tired of listening to them whine that too few outlaws lived long enough to make it to the hangman’s noose. The fools writing their articles never seemed to understand the problem of transporting hostile thieves and murderers hundreds of miles across a barren, waterless land.
On the Comanche war trail, the Indians killed Anglo men for just such a reason, taking mostly women and children too young to pose a threat. An occasional Mexican they’d keep for a slave, but the captor was responsible for seeing that his prisoner behaved and kept up. That made a lot of sense to Clay.
He put his report book back into his pocket and lay down. Rolling into the blanket, he pulled it up over his shoulder and stared into the coals of the campfire, listening to the seemingly empty desert, knowing that he was not alone. Out there somewhere there was a Comanche war party.
He turned onto his back and stared up at the bright, almost orange moon. A Comanche Moon, the settlers called it, saying whenever it was full like this, a man could always bet the Indians were going to raid. And they’d be right. Even as he thought it, Clay could feel the tug of another lifetime and remember the excitement of a warrior’s first war trail.
The sky itself was so clear that it looked as though a man could reach up and touch the stars. On nights like this, when he lay in the silence and closed his eyes, he could still remember Sees the Sun’s face, and he could still feel the comfort of her arms about a young white boy’s slender shoulders.
They were all there, permanently etched in his memory. The father who’d taught him to ride with the skill and grace of a Comanche, who’d taken such pride in teaching an adopted son the ways of The People. The round-faced little Cries Too Much, who’d gotten her name by wailing when brought to the medicine woman. Walking Woman, the wrinkled grandmother who’d had the patience to teach a frightened boy sign language, then how to speak her tongue. The fierce Buffalo Horn, who’d valued bravery over everything else, who’d honored a thirteen-year-old Stands Alone for carrying not one but two wounded warriors home. The old chief had even reported Clay’s first coup, making sure that his parents held a giveaway dance for it.
And poor old Mexican Pete. The image of Pete lying on the cold ground, his body still shielding Cries Too Much, came vividly to mind. And with it came the others—Sees the Sun, her eyes glazed, her life’s blood spilling from her neck. Walking Woman dead in his arms. He’d never forget the horror of that day. Never.
The Texans had nearly killed him with the Comanches, but a young ranger had stopped them, saying he was white. Some had wanted to shoot him, anyway, arguing he had been with the Indians too long to ever be civilized. But in the end, Hap Walker won, and he took the half-savage boy to San Angelo with him.
For months after he’d been captured and returned to so-called civilization, Clay’d tried to go back, to find what was left of his Comanche family. But each time he ran away, either soldiers or rangers caught him, until finally they managed to discover another, earlier life for him. He was Clayton Michael McAlester, they said, named for his mother, Ellen Louise Clayton, and his father, Michael James McAlester, both killed during an 1850 Indian raid near Gainsville, Texas. His unlucky parents had been on the southern trail bound for California, lured by stories of fortunes made there in gold, his aunt had later told him.
For a time he’d refused to believe any of it, but at night, tossing fitfully on a hard army cot, he began to remember a pretty blond woman who’d sung to him, and a tall, stern man who’d seldom smiled. But for whatever reason, he never had any memory of the raid that killed them. All he remembered was a long, cold ride, and a full moon’s light on frosted mesquite limbs. And finally the welcoming arms of Sees the Sun, who laughed and cried as she held him.
In the end it had been Hap Walker who located an aunt in Chicago willing to take a rebellious fourteen-year-old boy. A tall, determined woman, Jane McAlester had done her best to civilize her brother’s only son, hiring tutors rather than risking his ridicule in a public school, seeing he not only learned to read, but that he read what she considered to be the classics, sending him to a Presbyterian Sunday School, where he heard of a heaven whose streets were paved with gold and a hell where the ungodly burned forever. It was the predestination that bothered him. He figured if God already knew what was going to happen, then a man was doomed before he got started.
Aunt Jane had done her best for him, he knew and appreciated that. But despite all her efforts, there was still that within him that refused to be tamed, that refused to accept anything more than the thinnest veneer of civilization. The result was decidedly mixed, he had to admit—what she’d made of him was a reasonably literate rebel, one able to quote Shakespeare, Homer, and the Bible, who still believed more in himself than in any higher power.
Six months past his eighteenth birthday, by mutual agreement, Jane reluctantly gave up the struggle for his soul, and he left for Texas with her tearful blessing and twenty-five dollars in his pockets. He still had ten of it left when he reached New Orleans and enlisted in the Confederate army, becoming a soldier in that hopeless cause. And with the separation of time and distance, he and his aunt came to the understanding they’d lacked when he lived with her. In her loneliness she wrote often, and no matter where her letters found him, he took the time to answer as soon as he received them. She was, after all, his only living relation.
By the summer of 1865, he’d found Hap Walker again, and together they’d bummed around Texas until the carpetbag government organized the State Police, where he’d served, often with such ferocity that his superiors were appalled. But with the reinstatement of the Texas Rangers, Hap Walker had gotten himself commissioned a captain, then hired Clay, saying he needed “a man as tough and ornery as a Mexican, a Comanche, and an outlaw combined.”
So for thirty-three dollars a month and all the ammunition he could use, Clay’d signed on with the understanding that he could bring in horse thieves, rustlers, Comancheros, and any other desperadoes he found plying their trades in sparsely populated West Texas, dead or alive. All he’d had to do was furnish his horse, his mule, his guns, and his traveling gear. In the absence of any sort of ranger uniform, he’d kept the three-dollar badge from his state police days, wearing it when it suited him, which wasn’t very often. He’d never actually needed it. Most folks on the western Texas frontier knew who he was, anyway, and more than half of them were afraid of him.
His paint pony lifted its nose, then moved restlessly, breaking into his reverie. He sat up, his hand on the shotgun, listening intently. Not that he expected to hear or see anyone, not when a lone Indian could steal a regiment’s horses without so much as a sound. As the paint settled down, Clay lay back, his hands laced behind his head, staring up at the still-rising Comanche moon.
His thoughts turned to the young woman on the stage. John Ross’s daughter, all dressed up in silk, come to claim a piece of Texas someone else had fought and died for. But for all her fancy airs and high temper, she’d taken that Colt and fired it, hitting not one but two Comancheros, while the dandified Spaniard with her had quailed at her feet.
But the way she’d looked at him still irritated him. As though he were the savage, Garcia the victim. Still, she was about as pretty a girl as he’d ever seen, he’d give her that. Tall, slender, with a delicate face framed with that dark red hair, and expressive brown eyes that betrayed her thoughts. A man might not like it, but he’d know where he stood with her. If he didn’t, she wasn’t afraid to tell him.
He turned on his side again and closed his e
yes. He was too tired to think anymore, and tomorrow he had a long ride back beneath a broiling sun. He just hoped she remembered to give his report to Hap. And leave his gun at the fort. He’d paid too damned much for the newest and finest pair of revolvers to lose one of them.
When he finally slept, there were no dreams, no nightmares to break his peace. But he woke up suddenly, thinking he’d heard something. Alert on the instant, he realized he’d be seen reaching for the shotgun. His body tensed, and beneath his blanket, his hand crept to the butt of his Colt. Slowly, he eased it out, and as he rotated the cylinder one chamber, he threw back the blanket, rolled away, and came up on his knees with the gun ready to fire.
A rider bolted past him, but before he could take aim, a shadowy figure jumped on Little Pedro’s nervous horse, reached down, and grabbed the half-lame mare’s bridle. Whirling, as if for a show of horsemanship, the first rider came back at full gallop, then reined in. And by the light of the moon, there was no mistaking the dark paint on his face nor the pale stripe that parted his hair. He was Comanche. And he was on the war trail.
Keeping his eyes on both Indians, McAlester laid aside his Colt and stood up, showing himself. The man on Little Pedro’s horse leaned down quickly, dropping something, then applied his rawhide thong to the animal’s rump, and raced off. His companion wheeled again, dug his moccasined foot into his pony’s sides, and disappeared into the night.
Sliding his gun back into its holster, Clay looked first to where the sturdy paint stood grazing on scrub next to the imperturbable mule. Turning around, he saw that the two Comancheros’ bodies lay where he’d left them. He walked over to where their horses had been and bent down to retrieve the broken arrow the brave had dropped.
His hand ran the length of the split mulberry shaft to the turkey feathers, and he knew why they’d given it to him. He was still one of The People, and no matter why he was there, he was safe among them.
He stood for a time, staring first at the arrow, then up at the full moon, and he felt an intense yearning for the years of his youth, a desire to belong somewhere again. Finally, he shrugged it off and lay down. But this time, as his fanciful mind wandered toward the valley of sleep, he could hear the distant, rhythmic beat of Comanche war drums calling him.
By the time she’d arrived at Fort Stockton, Amanda was more than half-sick, suffering what the post surgeon called exhaustion and heat prostration. She’d intended to stay only overnight, but one of the officers’ wives had joined the doctor in insisting she remain, saying the weather must surely improve. It had to—the surgeon said the thermometer in the infirmary had read one hundred ten degrees by noon every day for the past week. A drop to one hundred would seem like a cool spell, he’d joked.
Not that she’d required much persuading. The prospect of another two or three days of bone-jarring travel, added to her step-cousin’s determined declarations of affection, was daunting. Unfortunately, her Alabama-bred hostess, Louise Baxter, thought Amanda utterly foolish for discouraging him.
As they crossed the dusty parade ground toward the officers’ mess, the silly creature persisted, declaring, “Why, it’s plain as the nose on your face that he adores you, you lucky creature. Such a courtly manner—ah swear, if ah weren’t a married lady, ah should encourage him myself.”
Fed up, her husband snapped, “He’s a damned Mexican, Louise!”
“Why, Charles, ah do believe you are jealous! It’s no such thing—is it, Miss Ross?” Before Amanda could answer, Louise Baxter had turned back to her mate. “He’s Spanish, Charles—just like Miss Ross.”
“No, he isn’t,” he retorted. “She’s half-Anglo.” Coloring, he stammered an apology to Amanda. “Pardon, ma’am—the Ybarras were fine folk, I’m told.”
“I quite understand,” Amanda cut in quickly, seeing Ramon. “Really, I … uh … I ought to get inside—the heat, you know.” But even as she said it, she was too late. He’d found her, and there was no way to avoid him.
“Mr. Sandoval!” Louise waved her handkerchief. “Why, what a pleasant circumstance—isn’t it, Charles? Mr. Sandoval, ah was telling Miss Ross—”
The lieutenant laid a restraining hand on her arm, growling, “Don’t make a spectacle of yourself, Louise.”
Unperturbed by Baxter’s scowl and Amanda’s chagrin, Ramon bowed. “Señora Baxter, you are so lovely.” Grasping Amanda’s fingers familiarly before she could draw away, he murmured softly, “Ah, Maria mia, you are recovered of the heat, no?” As he spoke, he turned her hand over and pressed his lips to the inside of her wrist. Coloring uncomfortably, she quickly disengaged her hand.
“Senora,” he said to Louise, “see how she blushes? The nuns have taught her well, no? Such modesty and such beauty,” he added warmly.
But the lieutenant’s wife had her eyes on him rather than Amanda. “Why, suh, how you do go on—doesn’t he, Miss Ross?” she said, simpering.
“Yes,” Amanda muttered, “he does go on.”
“Tell me, suh,” the blond woman asked, fluttering her lashes, “are all Spaniards as flatterin’ as you are?”
Amanda eyed the simpleton balefully, and Lt. Baxter appeared ready to strangle her, but Ramon flashed a grateful smile.
“Most of ’em are thieves and Comancheros,” her husband muttered under his breath.
“Oh, if ah didn’t know better, ah’d think you meant such a thing,” his wife teased. She half turned to address Amanda, and stared over the younger woman’s shoulder instead. “Well, ah do declare—now where in the world did he come from?” Wrinkling her nose in distaste, she added with considerable feeling, “Really, Charles, but there ought to be a law protecting decent folk from that man.”
Her husband followed her gaze. “He is the law, Louise.”
She sniffed. “Even the newspapers say he’s a cold-blooded killer.”
“Editors and reporters don’t fight the wars,” he retorted. “If it weren’t for men like him, the only people in this half of Texas would be soldiers living in forts.”
“The man is a savage,” Ramon declared.
“Well, ah just hope he doesn’t expect to dine with us. Ah swear ah couldn’t eat a morsel with him at the table. He will eat with the nigras, won’t he?”
Somehow, Amanda knew it was Clay McAlester. Turning to look, she confirmed it. She felt a stab of guilt that she hadn’t been able to deliver his report or the Colt revolver to his captain. She shaded her eyes, thinking her eyes hadn’t deceived her before—he was still the wildest-looking man she’d ever seen. And the best-looking.
That blond hair streamed from beneath the broad-brimmed black felt hat that shadowed those eyes, obscuring their coldness. This time, he wasn’t wearing the frock coat, and his sweat-soaked shirt clung to his shoulders and back, giving him a raw masculinity far different from the men Amanda had known in Boston. Momentarily, she thought of the immaculate Patrick Donnelly.
As she watched, the ranger reined in and swung down about twenty feet from where she stood. Without so much as a nod to anyone, he headed for the colonel’s house, leading his odd little pony and the pack mule. At the rail he dropped the reins, and both animals stood. Moving to the mule, he untied what looked like a blood-stained cloth sack from his packs. He dropped it on the ground.
Coming out onto the porch, Col. Hardison saw McAlester, and his expression froze. “I heard you’d gone to Mexico,” was all he said.
“Last month.”
“More rustlers?”
“Uh-huh.”
“One of these days you won’t get back,” Hardison warned him. “One of these days they’re going to hang you down there.”
The ranger shrugged. “Maybe. Maybe not.”
It was then that the colonel noticed the sack. “What’s that?”
“What’s left of Hernan Mendoza. I was wondering if there was a price on him.”
Hardison flinched. “Hernan Mendoza,” he repeated. “A Comanchero?”
“Yeah
. He and some others tried to get Garcia from me. When I went after them, he split from Pedro and Javier.” Clay smiled faintly. “He thought he’d made it, but when I was finished with them, I tracked him down.”
“Garcia’s dead,” the colonel said matter-of-factly.
McAlester nodded. “His compadres killed him by mistake.”
“I see. And the other two—or should I ask?”
“They resisted arrest.”
“Before long you’re going to run out of Comancheros,” Hardison observed dryly, his eyes still on the sack.
“Not as long as they can make money trading with Indians. Well, let me know if you find out anything on Mendoza, will you?” With that the ranger turned and walked toward the post store.
Hardison looked to where several Apache scouts lounged along hitching rails. Motioning them over, he gestured toward the bloody bag. “Bury this.”
One of the Apaches picked it up. “Where you want?” he asked.
“I don’t care. Somewhere outside of the fort.” The colonel took a deep breath, then let it out. “I don’t want to know anything about what’s in there.”
“My God,” Baxter murmured. “He took McAlester’s word for it.”
“That man tortured Mr. Mendoza to death,” Louise declared. “Ah just know it.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Amanda snapped. “There isn’t room for a body in that sack. I don’t know what it is, but it’s not a body.”
“It’s probably Mendoza’s head,” Baxter guessed.
“That man is an animal, Maria,” Ramon whispered. “You must promise me you will stay away from him until we leave here.”
His manner irritated her, prompting defiance. “I hardly think even a man of Mr. McAlester’s reputation could get away with bringing in someone’s head,” she muttered. Starting after the ranger, she called out loudly, “Mr. McAlester!”