The Dangerous Land

by Ralph Compton

  Suddenly the Comanche was less than an inch away from Paul’s face, holding Paul’s wrist as if he was about to pull his arm from its socket. “You have taken enough from us already, white man,” he said. “You will not take this place from us as well.”

  “You . . . took my daughter,” Paul said as he strained to pull free of the warrior’s grip.

  “If she is gone, then you only know a small piece of my people’s pain. Now,” the Comanche added as he pressed his blade against Paul’s ribs, “you will feel even more of it.”

  Paul’s blood went from cold to hot in an instant. His muscles burned beneath his skin, and his breath surged through his lungs as senses that had been muddled before were now sharper than ever. And still, that wasn’t enough.

  Not only was the Comanche able to force Paul’s gun hand away, but he dug the tip of his knife in through the layers of clothing wrapped around Paul’s body. Paul dropped his gun to free both of his hands. He grabbed the Comanche’s wrist to keep the knife from being driven all the way between his ribs, but even though he slowed the Indian’s deadly progress, he could not stop it.

  Paul drove a knee up into the Comanche’s body. It thumped against solid muscle and barely caused the other man to flinch. He tried stomping his bootheel against the Comanche’s feet, but the impact against the floor only caused the knife’s blade to scrape erratically against him. His wrist was still held tightly, so Paul shoved away from the Comanche to at least put some distance between himself and the blade. As soon as he thought he’d bought some time, Paul found himself in an even worse predicament.

  The Comanche let go of Paul’s wrist and lunged forward. In a heartbeat, he was behind Paul and snaking one arm around his throat. With a twist of his forearm, the warrior forced Paul’s chin upward so he could press the blade’s edge against his exposed throat.

  Any movement Paul made from there only dragged his neck against sharpened steel. His mind raced for a way out of danger even as his heart told him there was none to be found.

  When he swallowed back a breath, he felt the blade bite in deep enough to send a warm trickle of blood down the front of his neck.

  “You there!” Prescott shouted from outside the store. “Let that man go.”

  Both Paul and the Comanche looked through the front window to find the salesman standing outside with a shotgun at the ready. Prescott stepped in through what remained of the large pane of broken glass. “I said let him go. Right now.”

  “You will kill us both with that gun,” the Comanche said.

  “This ain’t loaded with buckshot. I’ve brought down a hawk while it was flying, so I can sure as hell hit a big ugly savage that’s standing right in front of me.”

  Although the Comanche wasn’t pleased with the way Prescott spoke to him, he saw some truth to the other man’s words. He eased the blade away from Paul’s neck but kept it close enough to open him up if he changed his mind. “The other hunters with me will kill you if I do not join them.”

  “That won’t matter much to you when you’re lying dead on the floor,” Prescott pointed out.

  Locking his steely gaze on Prescott, the Comanche released Paul and stepped away. Keeping his head high and his back straight, the warrior walked back to the spot where he’d left his rifle. He stared at Prescott as if he was looking at the vilest thing on earth before stooping down to pick up his weapon. When he straightened up again, the Comanche held death in each hand and looked straight down the barrel of Prescott’s shotgun as if it couldn’t harm a single black hair on his head.

  Paul stood rooted to his spot, waiting to see what would happen next.

  “Go on, now,” Prescott said. “Get out of my sight.”

  Pointing the tip of his knife at both of the other men in turn, the Comanche said, “This is not over, white man.”

  “It is if you know what’s good for you.”

  The Comanche let out a huffing, humorless laugh, walked across the room, and headed straight through the front door.

  Paul let out the breath he’d been holding and rushed to pick up his Schofield. He did his best to reload the pistol quickly, but trembling hands made the task somewhat difficult.

  “You all right?” Prescott asked.

  Paul nodded in a series of quick, up-and-down twitches. After taking a quick look up from what he was doing, he said, “I’ll feel a lot better once you stop pointing that shotgun at me.”

  Looking down as if he didn’t know what he was holding, Prescott lowered the weapon. “You sure you’re all right? You look kind of . . . bloody.”

  “Just a few scrapes and shallow cuts. Nothing serious.” Paul snapped the Schofield shut and held it at the ready. “Where are the rest of those savages?”

  “I chased them off.”

  “Just to be certain, stand guard at the door. I need to check on my young ones.”

  The fear that had been etched into Prescott’s eyes turned immediately to ferocity. “What happened to them? Are they hurt?”

  “That’s what I intend to find out. Just make sure nobody tries to come at us again.”

  “No one’s getting by me.” Even though Prescott was just a salesman, he spoke those words with the resolve of a hardened killer.

  Paul didn’t realize how shaky he still was until he started walking through the devastated store. When he got to the front window, he looked outside and only saw Prescott’s wagon near a couple of men trying to make sense of what had just happened. The front door was ajar and the restaurant portion of the store was still in disarray. Dorothy was huddled against the counter near the door to the kitchen, where a display of desserts was kept. She rose to stand and approached him with concern etched into her features.

  When she started to speak, Paul realized he didn’t want to hear what she had to say.

  He didn’t want to take another step or move any closer to the moment where he might see what terrible harm had come to his children. Before his crippling dread could overtake him, Paul rushed to Dorothy’s side and faced it head-on.

  Chapter 8

  “Where is she?” Paul asked. “Where’s Abigail? What about David? Is he all right? Where are they?” Once he started talking, Paul couldn’t stop. He didn’t even know what else he was saying until Dorothy placed a hand on his cheek and looked him straight in the eye.

  “Take a breath,” she told him, “and put the gun down.”

  Even after Paul reminded himself that he was still gripping the Schofield as if he was about to walk into a fight, he was reluctant to put it back into its holster. “Just take me to them,” he said.

  The kitchen was less than a few paces away and Paul could already hear the hushed voices of his children coming from that direction. Before he could get to them, Dorothy took hold of him and asked, “Are those men coming back?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “No,” Prescott said with certainty. “The first bunch of them rode off when I charged in with my wagon, and that last one already beat a path away from here.”

  “Good,” she sighed. “Now go into the kitchen and see those kids of yours. They’re petrified.”

  So was Paul, but he didn’t have the luxury of saying as much. Of course, he didn’t need to say it since his actions spoke for him just as well. “Are they all right?” he asked in a hushed tone. “If even one of them is . . . I just . . . I don’t think I could . . .”

  “They’re both alive and well.”

  “But you said Abigail was . . .”

  “I know,” Dorothy said. “Just get in there and see for yourself.”

  Now that he knew he wasn’t going to walk in to be confronted by the sight that was every parent’s nightmare, Paul couldn’t get to the kitchen fast enough. He charged through the doorway, calling their names while searching for any sign of them. At first, he couldn’t see anything. Then he saw his son’s head poke
up from behind one of the two iron stoves at the back of the room.

  “Are they gone?” the boy asked.

  Paul hurried over to him and scooped the boy into his arms. “They’re gone, son. Did they hurt you?”

  “No.”

  “What about your sister? Where is she?”

  Even better than hearing good news from David, Paul heard it from Abigail herself as she spoke up in a shaky but beautiful voice. “I’m here, Daddy. In the pantry.”

  Paul looked over to a wide cupboard that reached almost all the way up to the ceiling. One of its doors opened thanks to the trembling hand pushing it from the inside. After opening both doors wide, Paul kneeled down so he could place his hands on the bloody rags that had been tied around her left thigh. “What is this?” he asked while studying the wound.

  “She was shot,” David replied.

  Dorothy was in the kitchen as well and she quickly said, “He told me the same thing and I nearly lost my mind with worry.”

  Paul didn’t have to think too far back to remember the sight of her in that very state.

  “I saw the blood and her lying on the floor,” Dorothy explained, “and I thought the worst. I’m sorry for alarming you the way I did.”

  Looking at his daughter, Paul said, “Tell me what happened.”

  “The Comanches rode in and circled the trading post,” Abigail said.

  David was quick to add, “I knew they were Comanches, Pa. I read about them.”

  “Good, son.”

  “They rode around and made a lot of noise,” the girl continued. “Me and David went to the window to see what was happening and one of them shot at the store.”

  “With an arrow!” David said while holding up a pair of thin lengths of broken wood. “This arrow!”

  “Good Lord!” Paul said as he snatched the broken arrow away from his son.

  Dorothy was reaching down into the cupboard to take Abigail’s hand. “They were shooting out every window they could find. I doubt they even knew anyone was standing behind this one at the time. These two got away from me before I could stash them away, and as soon as she was hurt, I brought them in here to hide.”

  Paul set the arrow pieces on the nearest table so he could help get his daughter out from where the kitchen’s dry goods were stored. By the time they’d gotten Abigail on a chair and in a position that wouldn’t aggravate her leg, he figured she’d be more comfortable if he left her lying on a pile of flour sacks with bags of oats to use for pillows.

  “I’m gonna take a look at this,” he said while tugging at the end of the material that had been wrapped around Abigail’s upper leg. “Ready?”

  She’d always been a hearty child, but she didn’t do well at the sight of blood. Closing her eyes, she gripped her father’s arm tightly and nodded.

  Dorothy hovered nearby, wringing her hands. “It’s just one of my aprons that I tore up to use as dressing,” she said. “It’s all I could find after . . .”

  “After I took the arrow out,” David announced.

  Stopping in the middle of untying the knotted cotton strip as delicately as he could, Paul looked at his son and said, “You what?”

  “She was screaming,” David replied meekly. “I had to do something.”

  “I thought you were afraid of things like this,” Paul said while getting back to his work.

  Speaking as if he was stating the most obvious thing under the sun, the boy said, “She’s my sister.”

  The material was soaked with blood that caused it to stick to Abigail’s skin. Paul removed it with careful tugs that caused her to twitch and fret.

  “I’ll get some water,” Dorothy said. “Should make it easier to get that dressing off. Looks like that wound could use a cleaning as well.”

  “Wait!” Prescott said from the doorway.

  Paul almost went for his gun. Until that moment, he hadn’t even realized the salesman was so close.

  Beaming, Prescott announced, “I’ve got just the thing!”

  “Should I not get any water?” Dorothy asked after Prescott had run from the kitchen to bolt through the dining room.

  “Go on and get it,” Paul said. “David, tell me what you did to your sister.”

  “Don’t be mad at him,” Abigail said. “He was just trying to help me.”

  When the siblings weren’t snapping at each other with barbed comments and balled fists, they were defending each other like a couple of outlaws doing whatever it took to keep their gang out of trouble. At times, Paul couldn’t decide which irritated him more.

  “I was talking to your brother,” he said since he didn’t want to hear what Abigail thought would calm him down the quickest. “You just sit back and let him talk. Go on, David.”

  Cowed by all the raised voices, David kept his head down as he said, “After the window broke, Abby fell down. There was something stuck in her leg, so me and Miss Dorothy helped bring her back here where we could hide.”

  “I already heard that much,” Paul said while continuing to peel away the dressing wrapped around his daughter’s leg. “Tell me about the arrow.”

  “It barely got her,” the boy said. “Went all the way through. I read in that book I told you about that it’s not good to just pull an arrow out. It could rip someone up real bad inside, so I broke it in two and pulled it out. There wasn’t any mess or nothing, I swear.”

  Now that he’d removed the makeshift bandage, Paul could see the blood smeared over his daughter’s skin. Dorothy had already returned to hand him a wet rag. He took it, squeezed some of the excess water onto the wound, and asked, “Does that hurt, Dumplin’?”

  “No,” Abigail replied. “Not too much.”

  As Paul dabbed at the wound, his son continued talking at an increasingly excited pace. “After I snapped part of the arrow off, it came right out. Then Miss Dorothy came along to wrap us both up on account of the bleeding.”

  “What do you mean, both of you?” Paul asked. He looked over to his boy and saw more shredded material had been wrapped around David’s hand. “You were hurt too?”

  “It’s not so bad,” David replied. “But it still hurts.”

  “He’s probably more frightened than anything else,” Dorothy told Paul as she comforted the boy with a few pats to his shoulder. “When he pulled the arrow out, he cut himself on the point. That’s all.”

  “But . . . it still hurts,” David said.

  Relieved that his son’s grievances were still of the typical sort, Paul smiled at him and said, “I’m sure it does. Let’s see.”

  Although he’d seemed sick to mention it just a few moments before, David was more than willing to rip away the loose bandages wrapped around his hand so he could show the long red scrape to his father.

  Paul took a moment to look at his son’s hand. Apart from the scrape and a bit of dried blood, there wasn’t much to see. “This looks fine. How about you just wrap it back up again?”

  “All right.”

  Now that Abigail’s leg was clean enough for him to see the wound for what it was, Paul felt a whole lot better. It was obviously painful for her and she would need to get stitched up, but the arrow had gone through a thin layer of flesh without doing much in the way of damage. Dabbing at the gash on the top part of her thigh, he asked, “Does that hurt?”

  “Yes, it hurts!” Abigail said as she squirmed. “Leave it alone.”

  More people were filing into the store and men’s voices drifted in from several directions. Some made their way through the mess in the next room while others wandered up and down the street to survey the broken windows that the Comanche raiding party had left behind. One voice separated itself from the rest as it continually demanded people to step aside and let him pass. Finally, after a series of hurried steps, Prescott rushed into the kitchen holding a small liquor bottle in each hand. “
Here you go,” he said breathlessly. “And since you’re friends . . . free of charge!”

  “My girl ain’t drinking that,” Paul said. “She can handle the pain just fine without whiskey or the like to dull her senses.”

  “I’m still in pain,” David said anxiously. “I’ll have some.”

  “All right, then, my good boy,” Prescott said as he handed one of the bottles over. “Here you go. Drink up.”

  Paul jumped to his feet and hurried over to his son, who’d sat down nearby. Even though he reached David quickly, he wasn’t fast enough to prevent the boy from taking a long sip from the bottle. When he snatched the bottle away, a stream of dark liquid sprayed from the top of the bottle as well as the mouth it had just been tipped against. “Spit that out right now,” Paul demanded.

  Too startled to move and too confused to disobey, David simply opened his mouth and let the drink he’d taken dribble down his chin and onto the front of his shirt.

  “What is wrong with you?” Prescott asked. Judging by the look on everyone else’s face, they were all thinking along those same lines in regard to him.

  “I won’t have my son drinking whiskey or some other kind of liquor just because he scraped his hand!” Paul said.

  Prescott looked at the other bottle in his hand as if he had to check its contents for himself. “This isn’t whiskey,” he said. “Or any other liquor for that matter. Why would I hand something like that over to your boy? The least I would do is ask before taking such an action.”

  “Then what is it?”

  “It’s that healing tonic I told you about. Herbs and vitamins that strengthen the body and mind against all manner of ailments.”

  “What else is in it?” Paul asked suspiciously as he sniffed the bottle he’d plucked from his son’s hand. “Opium? Hops?”

  “It’s actually more water than anything else,” Prescott confessed. “The vitamins and such come in the form of a powder that is dissolved into it, which gives the water its enticing color.”