Comanche Moon

by Anita Mills

  “What are you going to do if she won’t have you?”

  Clay hesitated before swinging into the saddle. “I guess I’ll cross that bridge when I get there. But first I’m going to get Sandoval.”

  “Sort of like ‘bring me the head of Ramon Sandoval,’ eh?”

  “He tried to kill her.”

  Romero had his answer then. There was no way Clay McAlester was going to let the younger Sandoval live long enough to reach Texas. And he didn’t blame him, not one bit.

  It was the heat of the day, and there was no sign of life as they approached the hacienda where the fugitives had come to hide. A small dust devil whirled across barren ground, then disappeared. In the corral several horses stood clustered against a small adobe building, trying to find what little shade it provided. One raised his head, and his nostrils twitched as he caught the scent of them.

  It was a small house for men like the Sandovals, a real comedown from the Ybarra. But that made it easier—once inside there weren’t many places anybody could hide. Keeping to the back of the squat adobe building that served as a bunkhouse, they dismounted.

  “Cover the door, and shoot the first man who tries to come out,” Clay ordered.

  “You’re going in there alone, amigo?”

  “I don’t see any more of us.”

  Leaving Romero, Clay moved around the side of the house, keeping close to the wall as he approached a window. When he looked inside, he could see the naked back of a man riding a woman so hard that the bedposts rocked noisily on the hard-packed floor. He’d found Ramon.

  He came around the corner, then tried the door. It gave way, creaking inward. He gripped the shotgun and slipped inside. He could still hear Ramon taking his last ride, but now he had to find the father. The soles of his moccasins made no sound as he crossed the main room toward the arched door on the other side. He caught a glimpse of white shoulder, and heard the soft, melodious voice of a woman coaxing the man straining beneath her. Like father, like son, he guessed.

  He went back to the younger Sandoval, easing his way to the door. Clay swung around the opening, leveling the shotgun on him. Ramon was too busy to notice. Clay moved closer, jamming the barrel against the younger man’s bare back.

  “Now you come off real easy,” he said softly. “Otherwise, your guts are going to be all over her.”

  The girl’s eyes widened, first in disbelief, then in terror. Panicked, she struggled to crawl out from under Ramon, who seemed to have frozen.

  “Get over against the wall,” Clay told her. Going to the foot of the bed, he pulled off a dirty sheet, then tossed it toward her. “Cover yourself.”

  Ramon’s mind raced, assessing his chance of getting away. It was as though the ranger read his mind.

  “I wouldn’t try it,” Clay drawled. “You just get down without pulling anything funny, and we’ll go get your father together—savvy?”

  “Papa!” the younger man cried out. “Papa, they’ve found us!”

  At that, Clay grabbed his hair and slammed his head into the wall. Ramon slumped as he caught him with his free arm. Dragging the junior Sandoval, he came out ready to shoot. But Alessandro, on hearing his son’s warning, went out the window, leaving a cowering woman behind. Still holding Ramon, Clay gained the door in time to let one barrel go. Too far away to kill the old man, he nonetheless got him. Blood spattered the sallow skin where the buckshot hit.

  Alessandro went down, rolling naked in the dirt, wailing he’d been shot. Grim-faced men watched from the bunkhouse, while Rios kept them covered. His eyes on the doorway, the younger ranger moved to where the old man wept. Leaning down, he pried a revolver from Alessandro Sandoval’s hand, then tossed it out of reach.

  Clay turned his attention to Ramon. “It’s your turn,” he said silkily.

  “No! It wasn’t me!” Ramon cried. “I didn’t do it!”

  “I brought Amanda Ross back to the Ybarra. Don’t tell me you didn’t do it—you left her out in the desert to die. She’s alive, Ramon—she lived to tell what you did to her.” Clay’s voice was soft, menacing.

  The boy’s eyes darted to where Alessandro had managed to sit up in the dirt. “Papa, tell him—tell him it wasn’t my idea!”

  “Shut up!” the old man shouted at him. “Shut up!”

  “Killing’s almost too easy for you,” Clay went on. “Maybe I ought to just take you out and leave you, huh? How would you like to crawl through rattlesnakes and scorpions. I guess if you got lucky, they might make it quick. Otherwise, you could do what she did—you could walk for miles without water.”

  “No! It wasn’t me, I tell you! I never wanted to do it!”

  “You went back once to put a bullet in her.”

  “I didn’t want to do it—he made me do it!” Ramon cried tearfully.

  “Shut up!” Alessandro screamed. “Don’t be a fool! It’s just your word against hers!”

  “But I’m not going to let you get to court, Ramon,” Clay whispered. “So if you’ve got anything to tell me, you’d better say it now. There isn’t any tomorrow—I’ve got every one of them in this gun.”

  “Papa, tell him—tell him it was you who wanted her dead! Please, Papa, please! He’s going to kill me!”

  “He won’t do it—it would be murder!” the old man yelled at him.

  “I don’t have to leave any witnesses, Ramon.”

  The younger Sandoval closed his eyes and swallowed. “Please,” he choked out, “it wasn’t me, I tell you.”

  “You’ll have to do better than that. Your father didn’t take Amanda Ross out there. Your father didn’t leave her.”

  “He said I had to do it. He said if she wouldn’t marry me, she had to die.” Ramon swallowed again. “After the Comanches got Gregorio, Isabella wanted Papa to leave.”

  “Ramon!”

  “Go on.”

  “We took her out into the desert, just like with Maria. There wasn’t anybody to know. And when we went back, the animals had eaten her. There was nothing but bones and a few pieces of her clothing. It was easy to say the Comanches had taken her.”

  “You sniveling bastard—you worthless idiot,” Alessandro fumed. “You should have brought the girl to me. You weren’t smart enough to do it right.”

  “I’m sorry, Papa.”

  “Sorry! Before it was attempted murder, but you couldn’t wait to tell everything,” the old man told him contemptuously. “Now you have put a noose around your neck and mine.”

  Clay and Romero Rios exchanged glances, then Romero went into the bunkhouse, leaving the old man within a few feet of his gun. Clay turned to Ramon.

  “Get inside,” he ordered curtly.

  Even as he said it, he could feel the hairs on the back of his neck stand. Counting silently, he waited until he was sure, then he spun around as Alessandro cocked the revolver. He squeezed the Whitney’s other trigger. The full blast ripped a hole the size of a cantaloupe in the old man’s chest. A look of stunned incredulity crossed his face as he fell backward.

  “Papa! You’ve killed my father!”

  “He threw down on me.”

  “He didn’t have a chance! Papa!” Dodging Clay, Ramon fell on his father’s body, sobbing. “Papa, I didn’t mean to tell him!” he cried. He looked up at Clay. “You murdered him!”

  “If anybody throws down on me, one of us is going to die.”

  But as he lay over Alessandro’s body, Ramon felt the cold steel of his father’s pistol under his bare skin. And he knew the ranger had discharged both barrels of his shotgun. He pressed his mouth against Alessandro’s unresponsive lips as his fingers found the trigger.

  “For you, Papa,” he whispered.

  He rolled over and came up shooting, his bullet going wide of his mark. He never got the chance to fire another. Clay’s Colt .45 blazed, and the impact of the shot as it hit the younger man’s heart turned him around. He pitched facedown in the dirt.

  Rios came out,
gun still in hand. “Me and the boys in there have been talking, and we’ve sort of agreed that they didn’t see anything.”

  “Oh?”

  “Uh-huh. And now that he’s not paying them, they’d just as soon move on—if that’s all right with you.”

  “I don’t care. I got what I came after.”

  Clay walked over where the two bodies lay, and as he looked down, he couldn’t help remembering what they’d done to Amanda and her mother. He felt a surge of anger that they’d never feel the terror that the two women had felt, that they’d never suffered the terrible thirst, the heat, the relentless sun that had nearly taken Amanda’s life. But he could still get even for her. Taking out his Bowie knife from his belt, he grasped Alessandro’s hair and ripped it back with the blade. Moving to Ramon Sandoval, he did the same. He wiped the bloody knife on his buckskin leggings, then sheathed it. Coming back, he picked up his shotgun. The Mexicans who’d come out of the building stared at him as he walked by.

  Rios looked at the bodies, then back at the Mexicans. “¡Ándle—muy pronto!” he told them. They didn’t wait to be dismissed twice. To a man, they made a run for their horses. As the dust kicked up behind them, Rios caught up to Clay. “Why’d you scalp them?” he asked.

  “I didn’t want either of them going to heaven.”

  “What?”

  “You heard me.” Clay swung up into his saddle, then shrugged. “A man can’t go into the great beyond without his scalp.”

  “I don’t think they were going anywhere but hell anyway,” Rios murmured, stepping into his stirrup. “But who am I to judge?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You’ll never get that blood out of those buckskins,” he added.

  “I reckon I’ll be throwing them away, anyway.”

  And as he clicked the reins, turning the paint mare northward, he felt an immense relief. It was over, all over. Now all he had to do was convince Amanda Ross she still wanted him for a husband. It was a tall order, but somehow, some way, he was going to do it.

  Boston: September 17, 1873

  It was raining again, she reflected wearily. It had rained every day for almost a week, keeping her inside. She lifted the lace curtain at the window of her room and looked into the street below. It was nearly deserted except for a single horse-drawn cab. She let the curtain drop and returned to her needlework.

  By the time the baby made its appearance, it was going to be the best-dressed infant in Boston. But there wasn’t much of anything else to do. And she had no one to share her pregnancy with—except Hap Walker.

  She moved to a table and picked up his last letter. He and Vergara were getting along fine, he said. Between them they’d managed to land that fat government contract, and they’d be supplying beef to the reservations up in Oklahoma. He was learning the ranching business and liking it. She reread it, getting to the part that had interested her most.

  You won’t be needing to come back for any trial. Both of the Sandovals were killed trying to escape, then buried somewhere down in Mexico. Before he died, Ramon confessed, implicating his father in the death of your mother. The motive was control of the Ybarra. I know it won’t make you feel any better knowing it wasn’t the Comanches, but Clay wanted me to tell you. Other than that you don’t have to worry none about the place. Vergara and I are keeping it going until you decide to come back.

  There was a sharp rap on her door. Hastily refolding Hap’s letter, she went to answer it.

  “Mrs. Walker, there’s somebody to see you,” the boardinghouse maid told her.

  “Are you sure? I mean, I don’t know who it could be.”

  “Yes’m. He said Mrs. Walker—Mrs. Horace Walker. That’s you, ain’t it?”

  “Yes. Yes, it is,” Amanda said more resolutely. “He didn’t give a name, did he?”

  “No’m.”

  Mystified, she hesitated. It couldn’t be Kate—Kate didn’t even know she was there. “It’s a man, you say?”

  “Yes’m.” The girl bobbed a quick curtsy, then disappeared.

  It was probably a mistake. Nobody knew her real identity, and certainly nobody knew Hap Walker. Her hands crept to the pins in her hair, pulling them out. She was a mess, and she knew it. She was letting herself go terribly. She picked up her brush, then glanced in her mirror, and what she saw there almost made her heart stop.

  There stood Clay McAlester, hat in hand. His long blond hair was gone, cropped into unruly waves that reminded her of Alexander the Great. There were rainspots on the shoulders of his neat navy blue serge suit. He even wore a tie. Her first instinct was to hide. Then she felt the surge of anger.

  “Leave it down,” he said softly, closing the door behind him.

  He filled the whole room with his presence. She spun around to face him. “What are you doing here?” she demanded furiously. “Hap told you, didn’t he?”

  “Hap’s not even talking to me, to answer your second question. As for the first, I’ve had a devil of a time hunting you down. It was a whole lot easier finding Sandoval in Mexico than tracking you in Boston.”

  “Maybe I didn’t want to be found.”

  “I kinda figured that out. Where’d you get the Horace?”

  “If you don’t go away, I’ll be turned out of this place.”

  “Why didn’t you go to the Ryans?”

  “You didn’t tell Aunt Kate I was here, I hope,” she said, alarmed. “You had no right—no right at all! Now she’ll wonder—”

  “I didn’t tell her anything. I acted like you were still at Ybarra—like I was just a friend of yours visiting Boston. They’re real nice people.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  “Amanda—”

  “Just go, please.”

  He shook his head. “I can’t. Not until I’ve said my piece, anyway.”

  He was so close now she could reach out and touch him. She closed her eyes to hide from him. “Please.”

  “I want to marry you, Amanda.”

  “He said he wouldn’t tell you—he promised he wouldn’t tell you!”

  “I’m damned if I know what you’re talking about”

  “Why now—why come for me now? You let me throw myself at you when we were at the ranch, and you turned me away! You let me tell you I loved you, and you never said anything! You let me make a fool of myself, Clay McAlester!”

  “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry.”

  “Well, sorry doesn’t get it! Not now—not after everything else! You threw me at Hap and left! You threw me away, Clay!”

  “I know.”

  “And then you have the gall—the unmitigated gall to come here and say you want to marry me?” she demanded incredulously.

  “Yes.”

  “Well, it won’t work! I don’t know how you found me, or why you even tried, but I’m not falling twice for you—do you hear me? It hurt too much getting over you!” She ducked behind him to open the door. “Now just get out of my life forever!”

  “All right—if that’s what you want. I just want you to know that I changed my mind before I even got to the Rio Grande. I tried to write you about it, to apologize, but by the time it got to the Ybarra, you were already gone.”

  “There wasn’t much you could have said—not after the way you told me good-bye.” She held the door for him. “Now, are you going, or do I have to call for the proprietor to throw you out?”

  He was losing, and he knew it. Down to his last card, Hap would say. He reached into his pocket and gambled. “Here—all I’m asking you to do is read this. Then if you want to burn it and pretend there was nothing between us, I suppose I’ll be getting what I deserve. But I’m asking you to read it,” he said again. “If it changes your mind, you can reach me at the hotel down at the corner—I took a room there for the rest of the week.”

  “And if it doesn’t?”

  “Then I guess I’ll go back to rangering. Eventually I’ll probably go to Austin to read law.
But whatever I do, I know one thing, Amanda—I’ll always love you.” He pressed the folded papers into her hand. “If you don’t change your mind, it doesn’t make much difference to you what I do anyway, does it?”

  “No.”

  For a moment it looked as if he was going to touch her, as though he wanted to kiss her, but then he dropped his hand. “Yeah—well, as I said, if you want to talk to me about anything that’s in there, I’ll be down at the corner.”

  It was as though there was a vacuum, a void when he left. She stood there for a moment, listening to him go down the stairs, then she went inside her rented room and closed the door. He had no right to do this to her, no right at all.

  For a moment she considered throwing whatever he’d given her into the small heat stove, then curiosity got the better of her. She sat down next to the kerosene lamp and unfolded the papers. They formed a letter, a very long letter, written in a neat, even script, the sort a schoolboy would use to please his teacher. The date caught her attention. He’d written it just a few days after he left the Ybarra-Ross.

  She read the first few paragraphs skeptically, then was drawn to his words, and as she read, the man she’d thought she knew emerged once again. A proud man, one torn between two peoples, one with no place he could fit in. A man who’d blown up those wagons, yet was devastated by the ultimate consequences. A man who felt it better to lose now than later, all too sure that one day she’d look at him and be sorry. By the time he’d gotten his head straight and decided he had to take the risk, he was tracking Ramon Sandoval, making her step-cousin pay for what he’d done to her.

  I always thought I had to be free to do as I pleased, but there’s not much joy in doing something just to prove I can do it. Not since I met you, anyway. If it means waking up next to you the rest of my life, then you can put a ring around my finger and tie me down with it. Providing I can do the same with you. I’m willing to be as domesticated as you want to make me. You can drag me to Mass, and I’ll sit with you and the kids, trying to make sense of it.