Milt leaned toward Jason and said, “I’ll be a badger’s butt. He’s sent ’em to wake the others, in case anybody wants to make side bets.”
“You have dice?” a smiling Quanah asked, as if he were under the impression that all white people carried them by the bushel basket.
Most whites of Quanah’s acquaintance probably did, Jason realized. The Comancheros, whites who were known to trade with and raid along with the Comanche, were a pretty rough bunch.
“You could be holding your horses for a minute?” said Saul’s voice.
Chapter 10
Jason looked down the line. Ward shrugged. Milt shook his head. Saul rooted in his pockets.
“Saul?” said Jason.
“No. I have no dice,” he answered. “But maybe I have something almost as good.” And with that, he produced three sugar cubes from his pocket. “These will do, no?”
“Aw, there ain’t no dots on ’em!” Milt sneered.
“There can be,” Saul said, inspecting the cubes and discarding the one with the most wear on the edges. He held the remaining two out to Ward. “You’ll hold, please? Lightly, so they shouldn’t melt?”
Ward reluctantly took the cubes, and Saul went back to patting his pockets—this time, the ones on his vest. He finally came up with a few toothpicks, and smiled. He took the sugar back from Ward, and proceeded to go to work, drilling shallow, precise holes in the cubes with the end of a toothpick, then gathering a tiny bit of ash from the edge of the fire, and inserting some in each hole. Not much. Just enough to darken it.
When he was finished with the first, Jason held out his hand. “Can I see it?” he asked, and then turned it over in his hand, inspecting it closely. “Saul, this is a work of art.”
Saul, working intently on the second cube, simply shrugged and said, “My Uncle Amos, he was a jeweler,” as if that explained everything.
By that time, there was quite a crowd gathered outside the tent’s flap. Jason heard muted voices muttering in Comanche, and an occasional chuckle. His gut tightened. He’d already lost his father this night. Now, he was gambling his sister and Megan MacDonald on the roll of a couple of sugar cubes.
Someone had brought the girls, too. They were shoved into the tent behind Jason and his three companions. Jenny, true to the Fury family temperament, looked mad as hell, but that didn’t stop her from giving him a quick hug and whispering, “I knew you’d come. Where’s Papa?”
He said, “Later, Jenny,” and chanced a glance at Megan. She looked confused and a little teary, but not beaten. Good girl, he thought. The third captive was Deborah Jameson, youngest daughter of the widowed Eulaylee Jameson, and Deborah was the next thing to hysterical.
“These three are my first wager,” said Quanah Parker, now deadly serious. “What do you have to match it?”
“All our firearms,” said Jason.
“You forget, Jason Fury. We have already taken your firearms.”
Jason acknowledged that with a brief nod. He didn’t have a single thing on him worth trading. He looked at the men. Even Saul, who he was beginning to count on to get him out of rough patches, held his hands to the side, palms up. Nothing.
And then he had something akin to a stroke of genius. “We rode here on four horses, and one of them is a palomino mare. Only four years old, top stock. Will they do?”
Quanah nodded. “Is good enough. I would like to see this mare.”
Jason shook his head. “Not unless you win them.”
Quanah laughed, surprising Jason. “You are smart, like your father,” he said at last. “You roll first.”
Saul handed Jason the sugar cubes, saying, “They’re not ivory, you know. Don’t toss them too hard.”
Jason nodded.
He took the homemade dice and shook them gently in his cupped hands. Then he closed his eyes, said a short prayer, and tossed them down in front of him.
He heard a shout go up outside before he was able to pry his eyelids open. Quanah sat, shaking his head slowly, while Saul and the others grinned from ear to ear, and Jenny suddenly hugged him from behind. One die read six, the other five. He’d won.
Thank God.
He whispered, “Jenny, is there anyone else?”
“No, just us three,” replied his demolisher of kitchens and ruiner of meals. “Jason, you’re wonderful, even if you’re my brother!”
“And now I shoot,” Quanah said, collecting the sugar cubes. He looked frustrated, and a little angry. It was not a handsome expression on one so young. “This time, it is the . . . stolen horses against your women.”
“Cattle and horses,” Jason said, “against our horses. Just our horses.”
“No.” Quanah’s cold, gray eyes narrowed. “The women, too.”
Nothing was more important to Jason than getting those girls safely back to camp. Not even Hamish MacDonald’s fancy Morgan mares. “I guess we’re done, then,” he said, and started to get to his feet.
But the point of a spear against his shoulder sat him back down again. He didn’t know who was holding it, but it didn’t matter.
“This time, I roll,” Quanah said, and Jason prayed fervently for a two, three, or twelve. You lost automatically if you rolled one of those.
The dice stopped rolling on the buffalo hide. A four and a two: six.
Quanah Parker shouted something in Comanche, and there was a lot of noise outside. Milt leaned toward Jason and muttered, “He said, the point is six. Or somethin’ like that.”
Quanah waited for the noise, presumably of side bets being made and covered, to die down, then gently shook the sugar cubes again. Jason heard Saul mumbling, “Seven, seven, seven, seven . . .” as though praying. Seven would be the only automatic loser Quanah could roll.
But Quanah heard it too. “Quiet!” he roared, and the spear point that had been pressing against Jason’s shoulder suddenly arced overhead and landed next to Saul’s throat. He gulped audibly and his eyes grew round, but he shut up.
Quanah threw the dice again.
Ten.
The warrior with the spear called the news outside, and again there was a noisy roil of voices.
Finally, Quanah called for silence, and rolled the dice again.
Eight.
This went on for some time, with Quanah trying to roll his “point” of another six, and failing each time, between bursts of activity outside the tent flap, while Jason and his men all silently prayed he’d roll a seven.
After rolling his third ten, Quanah threw the dice down and leapt to his feet. “These are loaded! You try to cheat me!”
Jason, to whom he’d made the accusation, forgot about the brave with the spear, and jumped to his feet, too. Once he was standing, though, he felt its tip press hard into his back. But one shouted, angry word from Quanah, and it pulled away. From the corner of his eye, Jason saw the spear-holder back out of the tent.
“Back with the women!” he said, and the men rose and began to back up. “All except you!” He pointed to Jason.
“You think I loaded sugar cubes?” Jason asked. “How the heck could I do that? They weren’t mine, and playing craps was your cockamamy idea in the first place!”
From across the tent’s tiny fire, Quanah launched himself at Jason. He landed with the force of a charging bull, and Jason was knocked to the ground, narrowly missing Megan, who scrambled aside and sent Milt sprawling into Saul.
Quanah’s hands were round Jason’s throat, throttling him, and Jason did the only thing he could think of: He brought up one knee, hard, between Quanah’s legs. The pressure of Quanah’s fingers immediately left Jason’s throat as Quanah doubled up with pain.
Still gasping for breath, Jason took advantage of the situation and pulled Quanah back down by his beaded neck-piece, rolling atop him at the same time. Then he hauled off and punched him in the face, just as hard as he could.
“Jason, don’t!” he heard Jenny cry out, but he hit Quanah again.
Quanah wasn’t out, though, and when Jason came in to del
iver the third punch, Quanah blocked it with a massive forearm, which then drove upward to clip Jason under the chin. It hurt like hell.
The blow knocked Jason upward and halfway out of the teepee, and when he looked up, he found himself surrounded by at least twenty angry braves.
From inside, he heard Quanah bark a command, and the crowd stepped back. Jason barely had time to make a sigh of relief before the gray-eyed brave was on him again. The two rolled about in the dust of the camp, slugging, slapping, kicking, and generally trying their best to murder each other, when Jason caught a glimpse of the opening of Quanah’s teepee.
What he saw only made him madder.
Here he was, getting beaten to a bloody pulp and creating the world’s greatest distraction, and there stood his entire party, girls included, watching the fight and cheering him on, when they could have been sneaking off to the horses.
He slammed Quanah with a hard right to the ear, and Quanah rolled him farther, catching him in the temple at the same time. One of the braves threw a knife down to Quanah, who snatched it up and held it at Jason’s throat. Jason felt it break the skin, felt rivulets of blood flow down the sides of his neck.
He did the only thing he could think of. He smiled and said, “Your point was a six, Quanah?”
Suddenly, the blade eased away and Quanah barked out a laugh. He sat up, still holding the knife—which was, at least, now pointed to the side—then slowly stood up. “You are right, Jason Fury. It was a six.”
He tossed the blade to the side, then held a hand down to Jason, who gratefully took it. When both men were on their feet, they dusted themselves off and checked their body parts for serious injury, and Quanah was still laughing. Jason couldn’t help himself from joining in, although in his case, it was the sheer ridiculousness of the thing. Why Quanah was laughing was anybody’s guess.
Maybe he was thinking of all the good, clean fun his boys would have later on, torturing them.
But instead of throwing Jason on the fire, he escorted him back to the teepee they’d tumbled out of, and resumed his former position. Jason and his people did the same.
“Jason, are you hurt?” Jenny asked.
“Are you all right?” Megan echoed.
Deborah Jameson didn’t speak to him. She was too busy weeping.
“I’m fine,” he replied, even though his throat stung like the devil and it felt like his jaw was broken.
After a few moments, Quanah found the dice again and inspected them for serious damage. Fortunately, they were the only things in the teepee that had escaped it.
With a grunt, he threw them again.
An eight.
He frowned, then gathered them again. Jason noticed that all this tossing and the friction with hands and the buffalo hide had worn the sharp edges of the sugar cubes away. There weren’t many more rolls left in them.
Quanah muttered something, then threw the dice.
Jason held his breath.
“Seven!” shouted Saul, then clamped a hand over his own mouth.
“Seven it is,” muttered Jason, who couldn’t believe his luck. Now, of course, he had to be even luckier to get everybody, along with the livestock, out of the village and home safely.
It wasn’t difficult at all, though. Quanah was a man of his word. They gathered the horses and cattle, including Saul’s bullock, which his kids had named Mr. Cow—and which Saul greeted with a happy hug—and MacDonald’s Morgans, and Jason left three of their meat steers behind. In the end, they had about fifteen horses and cattle to drive back to camp.
They rode out of the Comanche enclave fully armed and with no problem, gathered up the horses they’d ridden in on, and started back to the camp. It was coming dawn by then, and Jason was discovering new bumps and bruises every minute.
The girls were asleep on their horses by the time they came in sight of the circled wagons, but the drifting scent of roasting beef brought Megan around first.
“Food?” she asked, her pretty face soft and fresh with sleep.
“Likely more of it than you’ll ever want to see again,” Jason replied. He saw kids and women turning four steers on long spits over roasting fires in the center of camp, and men hitching a team to a dead horse, presumably to drag the corpse out of the camp, where they’d already dragged three others.
Dr. Morelli was still hard at work. He looked to be setting one of the Milcher kids’ legs. Jason also saw Reverend Milcher out south of the wagons, presiding over the burials of the butchered whites.
Milcher was good for something, anyway.
Chapter 11
In the privacy of their wagon, Jason held Jenny tightly against his chest. She wept as if her heart was broken, which it most probably was.
“Hush,” Jason soothed. “Shh, shh, baby girl.”
“But why!” she cried. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because I thought it was best, honey,” he whispered. He had been exhausted last night, and they’d never have made it back to the wagons if he’d told her about Pa. He was exhausted now, but didn’t have any further to go. He just had to comfort her the best way he knew how.
“Jenny, you’ve got to be brave,” he said, although he didn’t alter his embrace. “We’ve all got to be.”
“Why?” she beseeched him. “Papa’s dead, Jason! Papa’s dead. . . .”
She fell into another fit of weeping, and still Jason held her, trying by his actions to let her know that she still had somebody, even if it was only her lousy older brother.
Megan MacDonald, red-eyed and looking overly hugged and squeezed after her reunion with her father and brother, poked her head over the tailgate’s edge.
“Excuse me, Jason,” she said softly, “but you should come.”
He still cradled his sister’s head. “What is it, Megan?”
She climbed up into the wagon and made her way to him and Jenny. “Go see Dr. Morelli,” she said, taking a sobbing Jenny into her own arms. “Now.”
* * *
Once she’d given Jason time to get well clear of the Conestoga, Megan held Jenny away, at arm’s length. “Jenny, listen to me,” she began. When Jenny, lost in sorrow, paid her no mind, Megan shook her roughly, then slapped her across the face.
This finally got her attention.
“Ow!” Jenny exclaimed, holding a hand to her damp cheek. “Why did you do that? How can you be so mean to me?”
“Jenny, you’re not the only one,” Megan said, her voice soft. “We all lost someone, be it friends or family. And Jason, who was in here comforting you? Well, he lost his daddy when you did. Did you stop to think of that? Did you stop to think that he might miss him even more than you do? That the weight of being in charge and the responsibility of all of us is on his shoulders, now?”
Jenny slowly blinked.
“I don’t mean to scold, Jenny,” Megan went on gently. “I just think you should look at things from, well, a broader perspective, that’s all.”
“I-if I’d stayed in Kansas City, like Papa wanted, I wouldn’t know about this. I wouldn’t have had to know until Jason came home.”
Jenny’s voice was getting a little too floaty and far away, just like Mrs. Halliday, back home, right before she went crazy and took an ax handle to the family cat.
Megan said, “Don’t you go getting ax-handle crazy on me, Jenny.”
Jenny squinted at her curiously.
“I need you to get your grieving over with. Jason needs you to be done with it, or at least put it aside for a while, and come help up clean up after those blasted Comanche. The horses and cattle kicked everything to pieces last night. And the Comanches will be riding in here in a couple of hours to pick up their dead. Jason’s going to need all the help he can get.”
“But I’m so tired,” Jenny croaked.
“Me, too.”
Slowly, Jenny nodded.
“I’m going to leave you alone now, all right?”
Jenny whispered, “Yes. Thank you, Meg.”
“You’re welcome, honey,” Megan said, and brushed a kiss over Jenny’s forehead before she climbed over the seat and back down to earth. She heard Jenny’s renewed weeping from inside the wagon, but at least it was more controlled, less wild, than it had been before.
It was true that Megan had lost friends in the raid, but no family, thank the Lord. But then, it was also true that Mr. Fury had been like a kind and good father to them all.
She looked across the circle to see Jason, Dr. Morelli, and the Reverend Milcher engaged in discussion, and set out at a brisk clip to join them. Or at least get within eavesdropping distance.
This ought to be a scrap worth hearing.
* * *
“You know, Milcher,” Jason said in a conversational tone, “I’ve been trying to be nice to you on account of your losing Tommy, who I had a high regard for, myself, and your two younger boys getting hurt. But I’m just about ready to haul off and slug you.”
Milcher had the audacity to look both surprised and offended. “Whatever for, sir?”
“You know damn well what for. You are not going to pile up those dead Comanches like so much kindling and set fire to them!”
“They’re heathen,” Milcher said firmly. “Murdering, thieving heathen at that. It’s all they deserve.”
Jason paused for a moment, his jaw muscles working overtime.
“Now, Reverend,” interjected Dr. Morelli, “Jason said that the other Comanche were coming to pick up their bodies. We can’t have them find a pile of ashes, now can we? Why, there’s likely to be another massacre!”
“We’re all shook out of shape, Milcher,” Jason said, under control again. “We don’t want to do anything that we’ll be sorry for later. Quanah showed himself to be a fair man, last night, and I—”
“A fair man?” Milcher shouted. “Since when are any godless redskins fair men? Since when do those who murder and steal qualify as men at all? They killed my son. Do you hear me? My son! The one who did it could be right out there!” He swept his arm around the circled wagons, to where the corpses of the Comanche lay.
“When you find the one who did it, do you want to carve him up a little?” Jason asked. “Maybe take his scalp? Maybe hack off his balls?”
A Town Called Fury Page 7