The Texans

by Brett Cogburn

  He made it to one knee just as Red Wing rode past him down the wash. He heard her pull up behind him, but he didn’t take the time to look her way. The boy had cleared the wash, and there was nothing left between Odell and the warrior except sixty feet of open ground.

  The Comanche managed to rise to his knees, and his eyes locked onto Odell. He snarled like the wolf he was and tugged at the long-handled war club at his belt with his good arm. Odell dug his feet into the sand, drew his other pistol, and lunged forward with a gun in each hand. He cocked and fired, cocked and fired, alternating his shots from one hand to the other at a dead run. The crack of the pistols roared in his ears as he charged forward, and he was blind to the rest of the world. He saw only the Comanche’s body jerking with the impact of his bullets. Five times he shot, and his pistol barrel was almost touching that hateful, black-painted face when he squeezed off the fifth. He staggered over the fallen Comanche and fell hard.

  The Comanche lay lifeless and shot to doll rags when Odell got back to his feet. He stood over the body with his breath coming in ragged gasps and the pistols in his big fists trembling with fury. He stared long into his enemy’s face until all the hate and hurt slowly ebbed from him and was carried away on the wind. The violent satisfaction he had felt moments before was gone, and he only felt hollow and spent.

  His mind finally registered the sound of hooves behind him, and he turned to see Red Wing ride up beside him. Of all the ways he had imagined meeting her again, he was in no way prepared for the look on her face as she stared past him at the Comanche lying on the ground. Her tears weren’t those of joy at being rescued, and he realized that she wept for the warrior dead at his own hands. He wanted to speak to her, but something heavy and silent settled between them that he had no words to breach.

  “Would you bury him?” she finally asked.

  He wanted to hug away the pain and the hurt of her and wipe away her tears, but couldn’t fathom what cruel trick he suspected fate had wrought. “Who was he?”

  “Comanches do not speak the names of the dead, but once he was my brother.”

  “I didn’t know.” Odell was at a loss as to how the world could have tilted so.

  “No, you couldn’t have.” There was no accusation in her voice, but she looked at him as if she could see right into his soul.

  “He was one of those that killed Pappy and your father.” Odell cut the rope that bound her feet.

  “I know, but it doesn’t make it any easier.”

  The Comanche boy appeared on the bank above them with his bow in his hand and an arrow nocked. Odell lifted one pistol, but Red Wing rode her horse in front of him. She said something in Comanche and the boy shouted something back. Odell stepped around her horse just in time to see the boy shake his little bow at him and whirl his horse away. He listened to the sound of hoofbeats until they faded in the distance.

  “What’d you tell him?” Odell asked.

  Red Wing was still looking in the direction the boy had fled, even though she could see nothing of the plains around them from the bottom of the wash. “I told him to ride on to his people, and that his father’s body would be here should he return one day.”

  “What did he say?” It dawned on Odell that not only had he killed her brother, but he had perhaps orphaned her nephew in the process.

  She looked at him sadly. “He said that one day he’ll be a man, and he will kill you. He swore that his wrath will never die, and the Tejanos will know this is true and never know a day’s peace so long as he lives.”

  “Will he be all right until he finds the rest of his tribe?”

  “He’ll find his way. He is Comanche.”

  Odell knew nothing to say to her that would make it better. Killing the Comanche had felt like justice, but it was also breaking her heart. He dragged her brother’s body to an undercut in the sandy bank, and left it lying there while he climbed up out of the wash. He waited for Red Wing to say something, or to instruct him in some burial ceremony, but she just sat her horse and stared at him. He stomped on the lip of the bank until it began to give way, working his way backward until he had caved in enough of it to cover the body well with the little avalanche he created.

  He left her alone with her thoughts at the grave and went to where Crow lay on his side at the bottom of the wash. He knelt in front of the horse and laid a hand on his neck. Crow seemed unaware that Odell was even there and groaned and made a halfhearted attempt to rise. The horse only managed to slightly lift its head, and his lungs rattled with every slow rise and fall of his side. Odell saw the blood in Crow’s nostrils and the broken bone showing through the torn hide of the right knee.

  “Lord Almighty,” he whispered.

  He thought of all the long miles they had come together and all the one-sided conversations the horse had endured. He remembered how when turned loose hobbled, Crow would sometimes come to the campfire at night to stand by him, as if the black horse too needed the company.

  He laid his pistol against Crow’s forehead and ran his hands along the horse’s neck. He closed his eyes and squeezed the trigger, and felt Crow shudder and grow still beneath his hand. Red Wing rode up and waited quietly.

  “He never let me down, not once,” Odell said.

  “I knew he wouldn’t.”

  “I know you loved him just like I did, and I almost wish you’d never given him to me.”

  She smiled for the first time, although it was small and faded from her mouth as quickly as it had formed. “He was the only thing I could think of that might bring you back to me.”

  He thought her more beautiful than he remembered. “I wish . . .”

  She cut him off with a lifted hand. “Don’t say anything. Just take me home.”

  He stripped the saddle from Crow and put it on her horse after cutting loose her bound ankles so she could dismount. The animal wasn’t used to the rigging or Odell’s bit, but was too tired to put up much of a fight. While Odell tightened his cinch, he studied the Comanche’s gray gelding standing ground-tied just down the wash. He was a magnificent looking horse, but seemed to be favoring one leg.

  “He has a bad hoof that’s not quite healed, but when healthy I think he might have even outrun Crow,” Red Wing said.

  “I don’t know what I’d do with a crippled Comanche horse,” Odell said lamely, although he had to admit that he was going to need a horse.

  “Why, you’d ride him,” Red Wing said. “And if you didn’t like him you could sell him to someone in the settlements for a good price.”

  “Well, it might take a while to heal him up, but I never thought of selling him.”

  “Mama says that most men never even think a day ahead,” Red Wing said.

  Odell eased up and caught the rein trailing from the gray’s rope war bridle. The horse didn’t seem too lame, and when Odell picked up his front right hoof he could see where somebody had whittled a hole to drain an abscess. The infection seemed to be gone, but the hole was deep enough that it acted much like a stone bruise. A leather pad nailed between the hoof and a shoe might cushion him enough for easy travel until he could heal. The more he looked at the horse, the more he decided he would have been a fool to leave him behind. But then again, Red Wing’s ideas usually made sense.

  He looked out over the lip of the wash and saw more Comanches coming across the plains. The sound of the Texans’ gunfire had ceased, and it was a large group of warriors retreating from the camp. He helped Red Wing into the saddle and led the two horses to where the wash was the deepest. He parked them as close to the high bank as he could and waited. He listened for the sound of hoofbeats while he looked up at Red Wing on her horse.

  “You run if I tell you to,” he said.

  She seemed to be paying no attention to the coming Comanches or his instructions. She was looking at him in a way he couldn’t get a handle on, and he thought the silence be
tween them was worse than not knowing what she was thinking.

  “I don’t know how I could have made things any different,” he said.

  “Odie, I wish there was someone to blame for all of this, but it isn’t you,” she said.

  The Comanches veered south to avoid crossing the wash, but still came so close that Odell could see their dust. He climbed up in front of Red Wing and started back to the Comanche camp with the gray horse led behind. They hadn’t ridden far when Odell felt her arms go around his waist and her cheek settle against his back. His heart felt too big for his chest, and the feel of her against him was more right than anything in long, long time.

  They rode up on the Prussian leading his Kentucky horse a half mile outside the Comanche camp. He watched them come with a hand shading his eyes.

  “Hello, Frau Red Wing,” the Prussian said. “I thought we had lost you for good.”

  “I brought her back,” Odell said.

  The Prussian studied how Red Wing hugged close to Odell. “Ah, the spoils of war.”

  Chapter 35

  The first thing Odell saw when he came into camp was Son Ballard sitting on a stack of buffalo hides with a rag tied over one eye.

  “Well, kiss my ass. You’re the only Texan I know that can find a pretty woman in an Injun scrap,” Son said. “And that gray horse ain’t too shabby either.”

  “I thought you were dead.” Odell couldn’t believe what he was seeing.

  Son lifted up the rag to reveal the mangled socket of his left eye and the hoop-iron arrowhead still buried in his brow. “No, but I’m glad to see you back. Nobody’s been stout enough to pull this damned thing out of my head.”

  “That must have smarted some,” Odell said.

  “It disturbed the hell out of my aim for a while, but I think I’ll live,” Son chuckled, and then pointed to Red Wing. “Ma’am, won’t you step down and have a cup of coffee with me? I ain’t as pretty as I was this morning, but I can only stare at you half as much as the rest of these hairy-legged womanizers.”

  There was a little man with a freckled face and a bad sunburn sitting beside the old scout, and he squinted at the new arrivals as if he wasn’t sure they were real. He reached out a hand to Red Wing, even though she was on her horse ten feet away.

  “Is that you, Red Wing?” he asked.

  “Why, Agent Torrey, I think you are going to have to find you a new hat before you’re burned to a crisp,” she said.

  “I thought you were dead. I thought we were all dead,” Agent Torrey muttered.

  “We’ve been through a lot, but we’re very much alive,” she said.

  “Poor Commissioner Anderson and Captain Jones. Mr. Ballard here tells me that they were used terribly, and I can’t quite understand why I’m still here.” He scratched at the wet blisters on his red cheeks and studied where his bare feet stuck out of the long, buckskin hunting shirt that somebody had given him. Whatever Comanche the shirt had been made for was bigger than the agent, and the sleeves hung past his hands and made him look like some kind of sad puppet when he moved his arms.

  Placido was sitting nearby and rubbing some pasty tanning concoction into the raw flesh of a fresh scalp. He smiled a greeting at Odell, and then went back to his work.

  Son noticed Odell staring at the scalp. “Placido chased a fat Waco out of camp that none of us saw. He never has liked Wacos, and he’s especially proud of himself.”

  “I wish he would put that scalp up while Red Wing is around,” Odell said.

  Son cocked his head and considered the scalp in Placido’s hands. “Just be glad you don’t have to see what’s in that bag beside him. I have a sneaking suspicion that he thought that fat Waco was fed out too well to ride off without taking a few cuts of him for snacks later.”

  Odell couldn’t tell if Son was kidding him or not. He could see what looked like blood soaking through the buckskin bag. “He better not cook his dinner in front of me.”

  As Odell was helping Red Wing down from the horse he noticed a group of about ten squaws huddled together on the ground under the guard of some of the Tonk scouts. They kept their eyes down, and clutched several small children protectively to them. Beyond them, a filthy and ragged white girl sat rocking back and forth with a blanket pulled over her shoulders in an attempt to cover her nakedness. Her blond hair had been hacked off as short as a man’s, and the one long leg Odell could see stretched out in front of her was striped with welts and the scabs of healing cuts. She mumbled strange, singsong words, and looked half crazed and even more miserable than the Comanche squaws.

  Odell expected Red Wing to sit and rest, but instead she went over to the squaws. The captive Comanche women looked at her with as much fear as they did the Tonks, who were leering at them lustily and telling rude jokes. After much effort, she finally managed to find one squaw who seemed willing to talk. She knelt beside the old woman and began to question her.

  The Prussian went straight to the captive white girl without a word to Red Wing. In fact, he hadn’t said much to her all the way back to the camp. Odell knew the Prussian had set his cap for her and couldn’t understand his complacency. He also knew that the Prussain hadn’t forgotten his promise. The man had said he was going to kill him in front of all the men, and a prideful sort like that wasn’t about to crawfish on his word and give anyone an excuse to question his bravery or his honor.

  “Try some of this if you’re hungry.” Son pointed to the cast-iron pot over the little chip fire in front of him. “I don’t know what kind of Comanche soup that is, but it ain’t half bad.”

  Odell hunkered down and scooped a bit of the stew out of the pot with a buffalo horn spoon. He tried a slurp of the bubbling hot concoction, but he couldn’t quit thinking of what might be in Placido’s sack. His appetite left him, and he set the ladle aside. He kept watch on the Prussian, because he knew the man’s violent temper and wasn’t about to be caught unaware.

  “I don’t think that Prussian is going to be too concerned with you or your woman anymore,” Son said laconically.

  “Oh?”

  “The Prussian doesn’t know it yet, but he hit the jackpot when we stumbled on this camp.” Son jerked a thumb back over his shoulder to where the Prussian was trying to talk to the captive girl. “There are several men here who swear that pitiful little thing is Susie Smith.”

  “So?”

  “She’s Senator Smith’s daughter,” Son said. “She was stolen away over two months ago, and the senator offered Jack Hays and his Rangers a thousand dollars to go after her.”

  “How much?” Odell tried to imagine just what that much money would look like. He hadn’t seen more than twenty dollars in gold since he came to Texas.

  “There’s a standing reward out for a thousand to any man that can bring her back alive,” Son said.

  “That’s a lot, even split between so many of us.”

  Son gave him a wry look, even with only one eye showing. “The Prussian will share the reward, but he’ll make sure he’s the man who’s known for saving her.”

  “Well, it was his expedition,” Odell said.

  Son jerked his thumb over his shoulder again. “That man yonder has always had ambitions, and being a hero won’t hurt them at all.”

  Odell looked around the camp. Most of the exhausted men were eating or napping, but he noticed that several faces were missing. “How many men did we lose? I saw the Harris brothers down, but nobody else.”

  “Three men killed, twice that many wounded, and one that might not make it ’til morning,” Son said.

  “How many Comanches do you think we got?”

  Son frowned. “It’s hard to tell with Comanches. They’ll do anything to haul off their dead, and you never kill as many of them as you’d like to think. The Prussian will guess more, but Placido says from the blood on the grass and what the men say, that we did for about tw
enty of the bastards, and two squaws.”

  “That doesn’t seem like much for such a fight.”

  “Well, it would if you were one of them that bit the dust, or got your eye jabbed out by an arrow.”

  Odell noticed that the Comanches had managed to haul away very little of the camp, and some of the Texans were holding a good-sized herd of captured horses on the prairie nearby.

  “There’s a lot of plunder here,” he said.

  Son nodded his head. “The Prussian’s fought Comanches before, and he’ll know what to do. He’ll take a few of the best horses, shoot the rest, and burn down everything that the men don’t want to carry with them on their saddles.”

  “Shoot the rest of the horses?” Odell asked. The kind of Texans who had followed the Prussian thought a lot of a good horse, and he couldn’t imagine them being willing to kill an entire herd of them.

  “Don’t think we’ve seen the last of those Comanches. The odds are, they’ll follow us and try to steal back their horses. That’s a big herd to have to guard at night, and that Prussian is smart enough and hard enough not to remount his enemy if he can help it.”

  “That seems a shame. There are some good horses yonder, and I’ll be danged if I could shoot them.” Red Wing’s insistence that he keep the gray buffalo runner had gotten him to thinking. He had nothing left back on Massacre Creek but the burned ruins of a cabin. A woman was going to expect a little more than that from a possible suitor.

  Son read the way Odell was looking at those horses. “I can’t say for sure that the Prussian will do things just like I said, but me and Placido were talking about those horses. If the Prussian and most of the men would settle for all the reward for that Senator’s girl, a few of us might gather those buffler robes and the extra horses and take them up to Missouri to sell.”