Frontier Fires

by Rosanne Bittner

  The girl swallowed and her eyes teared. “You’re never home, Father. I get so lonely and bored. I just wanted to talk to another woman. I know now it was wrong, but I felt like I was going crazy, sitting around day after day without even you to talk to. Stu Clements rode by and I got the idea all of a sudden to go visiting. I knew you wouldn’t be back till this morning. And I knew you’d never let me go—”

  “There are Mexican women around here for companionship,” he interrupted.

  “That’s not the same as somebody like Mrs. Sax. I can’t even understand them when they talk. Mrs. Sax is more like … like a mother … somebody I can really talk to. And Lynda Sax is only a year older than I.”

  The man sighed deeply, visibly shaken. “If you ever do a thing like this again, you’ll go back to St. Louis. Is that understood?”

  She blinked back tears, glad that he at least talked as though he wouldn’t send her back immediately. Apparently he believed it was just for the women. But then came the disappointing words.

  “And you are to stay away from the Saxes,” he added. “Is that understood!”

  She reddened. “Father! Mister Sax saved my life! You can’t blame them for what happened back in Missouri.”

  He glowered at her. “Don’t bring your brother into this. I am grateful Sax helped you, but that doesn’t give you license to be friendly with Indians. Mister Sax has my gratitude—” He turned to Caleb. “If this whole story is true.”

  “Father! How can you be so mean and ungrateful—”

  “Be still and get to the house,” he ordered.

  The girl jerked in a sob and looked at Sarah, who reached out and took her hand. “It’s all right, Bess. We understand. Do as your father tells you.”

  The girl broke into tears and rode off, and Sarah looked angrily at Charles Hafer. “Your daughter is very lonely, Mister Hafer. She needs a mother and a friend. Surely you can let her come and see me occasionally. After all, I am white.” She sneered the word. “Or do you think I will contaminate her because I am married to an Indian?”

  The man reddened, moving his eyes to Caleb, who met his look challengingly. He looked back at Sarah Sax, figuring it would be wise not to insult her in front of her husband. “I appreciate your concern for my daughter, Mrs. Sax. But you have to understand my own concern. She is very young and as you can see sometimes foolish. We both know your oldest son has eyes for her. It would be very unfortunate if out of pure loneliness my Bess allowed herself to become friends with him. I cannot believe that you and your daughter are the only reasons Bess tried to come and see you.” He turned to Caleb, riding closer. “I’ll be blunt, Sax. I don’t ever want to see your son skulking around my land and my daughter.”

  “My son doesn’t ‘skulk,’” Caleb sneered. “If he came around here he’d ride straight in like the man that he is. And in spite of your ungratefulness, your daughter is still welcome at our place any time she needs a woman’s company. My son had nothing to do with this. He doesn’t even know yet that any of this happened.”

  Hafer’s eyes narrowed. “Maybe not. But you warn him anyway.”

  “I’m sorry about what happened to your son, Hafer. I have lost a son, too, and by violence, just like yours. White men killed him. That makes our experiences pretty even. But I don’t hate all white men for what happened to my son.”

  “I don’t need your sympathy, Sax, or your sage advice!” Hafer reddened. “I’ll let this one go, Sax, because you apparently helped my daughter. It wouldn’t take much for me to turn this on you and get you hung for killing a white man, and you know it! I could have you sitting and rotting in a Mexican prison, or hanging in the main street of San Felipe. You took a great chance killing Stu Clements.”

  “I saved your daughter from being raped, you bastard,” Caleb sneered. “I don’t know what your problem is, Hafer, but this is more than what happened to your son or to Bess. And whatever it is, you shouldn’t bring your daughter in on it.”

  Hafer stiffened. “You don’t fool me, Caleb Sax. Your son had something to do with this. He came for her, didn’t he? He came for her and Stu Clements tried to stop them. Stu would never let her ride off with an Indian.”

  “My son had nothing to do with it,” Caleb growled. “Your daughter came to our place of her own accord. You try to lay this on my son and you’ll regret the day you were born!”

  Hafer backed his horse. “I’ll get the truth out of my daughter. She’s covering for him. He came for her like the sneaking Indian he is and rode off with her. If that’s the way it happened, you and he will both hang!”

  Caleb jerked his horse’s reins, moving tile restless animal closer to Hafer. “Why don’t you and I settle this right now,” he said boldly. “Man to man, Hafer! I don’t need other men around me to be brave. How about you? We’ll go someplace and have it over with.”

  Sarah’s heart pounded as Hafer’s men moved closer to Caleb and Caleb’s own men pulled guns and knives.

  Hafer just grinned then. “Oh, no, Sax, it won’t be that easy. I’m not fool enough to fight hand to hand with the likes of you. But I owe you one for helping my daughter, if your story is true. I’m paying you back by letting you go free even though you killed one of my men; besides, your woman is along. I wouldn’t want any females getting hurt. But I think you’re covering for your son.”

  “How about physical proof your man tried to kill me,” Caleb hissed through gritted teeth. He pulled off his buckskin jacket, then raised his shirt, showing Charles Hafer an ugly gash across his stomach. “That’s from Stu Clements’s knife,” he snarled. “That proof enough?”

  Hafer’s men gasped, and Sarah looked away, her heart aching at the sacrifice Caleb was making for his son. He had deliberately slashed his own skin the night before to make his story more authentic, and to explain the blood on Bess’s torn dress.

  Even Charles Hafer looked shocked, and some of the animosity left his eyes. “All right, Sax. You’ve made your point. But this doesn’t change the fact that your son took an interest in my daughter at the barn raising. I’ll not have my Bess gossiped about and looked down on. So keep Tom Sax off my land.”

  “My son makes his own decisions,” Caleb sneered, putting his jacket back on. “Thank you for your hospitality and gratefulness, Hafer. It tells me all I need to know.”

  Caleb whirled his horse and signaled his men to follow. He rode on the left beside Sarah and John rode on her other side. Sax men followed behind for a couple of miles, then rode ahead, leaving Caleb and Sarah to themselves.

  “Oh, Caleb, I hate to leave her there,” Sarah said sadly.

  “Right now it’s her or Tom. You see what would have happened if we’d tried to keep her with us, or if Tom had tried to go back with us and told them the truth. It was just as I thought. And there’s more to this than that man not wanting his daughter to get interested in Tom, or that he’s lost a son. He’s here for another purpose, and Bess has messed up his plans, I can’t put it all together yet. It’s just something that eats at me. I don’t like any of this.”

  He gave her a reassuring smile then. “I don’t want you fretting over it, though. Thank you for today, Sarah,” he told her. “You were right. I think it helped having you mere. I’m sorry about the insults.”

  “It doesn’t matter. All that matters is that you got out of there safety and Tom is all right.”

  “Nevertheless I wish you were home. You tell me the minute you need to stop and rest,” he told her. “We’ll hurry back, but only at a pace you can handle. I’m afraid we’ll have to camp somewhere overnight before we make it all the way home.” He looked back toward the Hafer home, small now on the horizon. How was he going to keep Tom Sax away from this place? He smelled trouble, lots of trouble.

  Caleb and Tom herded the horses toward Blue Valley. The air had the cold snap of December to it now. But their lips and skin felt dry, dry as everything else in the Valley. All they could hope for was some winter rains to bring life back to the parched l
and for spring. There had been barely any rainfall all summer. Most of the decent grazing land was eaten bare and grass was not growing back for lack of water. The only good grazing land left was Blue Valley. Now Caleb had to worry about over-grazing there. But at least the stream that still filtered in from the Brazos kept the Valley alive.

  The horses before them were some of Caleb’s finest. In the spring he would get good money for these horses when he sold them on the coast for shipment to the States. But they had to be kept well fed in the meantime, and winter feed was in short supply. Caleb had sensed a very deliberate attempt to keep him from getting his own supply the last time he’d been to San Felipe. Winter feed was needed now for militia horses, let alone the tremendous influx of new settlers. And Caleb was Indian. He came last. It angered him. He was one of the first settlers in this land, had lost several family members to the elements and the Comanche and outlaws. But that didn’t seem to matter much to the outsiders and new suppliers.

  Things did not look good. Stephen Austin still languished in a Mexican prison. Texas was filling up with a lot of undesirables who came in response to a promise of free land, and there was still talk of war. There had been a bad drought that still lingered, and the Comanche were more active again. And Lynda was great with child, ready to deliver any time, overdue by her count.

  Then there was the problem of his own son, who was like a wild animal in a cage. It was not easy for him to stay away from Bess Hafer. Caleb had urged him to lay low, but staying away from her had only made the young man want her more. He was not the happy, joking Tom Sax now. He was always serious, too quiet, consumed with love. Neither of them knew quite how to resolve the situation, and Caleb worried that Tom would be foolish enough to ride right onto Hafer land and demand to see Bess.

  Tom veered to the right, yipping and calling, turning some stray mares. Caleb studied the land as he rode. He had grown to love it here. This was home, the only real home he had ever had. But he felt it being threatened from every side. To some it was barren land, but to him it was beautiful in its stark nakedness and intense quiet. No wonder the Comanche loved it. They were bred for it, and deep inside Caleb Sax was bred for it. But there was always that white blood in him that drew him to settling, to keeping one woman and having a place to call his own.

  He was a man torn between two worlds. He had lived in both of them, understood both of them. He didn’t fully blame the Comanche, in spite of what they had done to his family. In a sense they were no different from the Cherokee coming into Texas. The only difference was the Cherokee were fighting by peaceful means, and the less educated, more savage Comanche chose a more violent means to keep what was theirs.

  The white man was doing what he knew how to do best, pitting Indian against Indian. Now he did it by shoving the red men together into new lands, forcing the more advanced Eastern Indians to cohabitate with the wilder plains and mountain Indians.

  In these times of trouble the Indian side of himself would take over. It would be so simple just to leave and join his red brothers who were still wild and free, shake off all the responsibilities he had taken on. But he had a family now, and a commitment to Marie, who had given her life helping him settle this piece of land; and to Sarah, who could not live the savage life. Sarah came first. She would always come first.

  Two Cherokee rode toward them from Blue Valley, thundering up to Caleb with alarm in their eyes. “We have been waiting for you, Caleb,” Jake Highwater told him. “We were going to come and get you. The water is gone.”

  Caleb frowned. “What are you talking about?”

  “It’s gone! Yesterday the stream all of a sudden got smaller and smaller, and today it quit running all together.”

  Caleb looked at Tom. “Part of that stream runs through Hafer’s land,” the young man told his father.

  Caleb gripped the reins tighter. “Let’s get the horses down there and check things out.”

  They whistled and shouted, running the herd into the Valley, where Caleb rode to the low spot that had carried water into this place even in the worst of droughts. Now there was nothing but wet stones and mushy grass.

  “Sons of bitches,” he muttered. He looked at Jake. It had to have something to do with Hafer. “Keep a few men here. Round up the rest. We’re going to check this out, even if it means riding onto Hafer land!”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Caleb, Tom, and eight Sax men were soon riding north, looking more like a small tribe of Indians on the warpath, many of them with long hair flying and wearing buckskins, including Caleb, who also wore a wolfskin coat Sarah had made for him. Horses snorted as they moved in a rhythmic slow run, their breath coming out from their nostrils in little white clouds in the cold air. Tom said nothing to his father, whose anger was evident. He relished a chance to ride onto Hafer land. Maybe he would see Bess. He must see her soon. He had to be sure she had not been sent away. But even after riding several miles onto Hafer land, the house was still a considerable distance ahead of them, yet already they spotted Hafer men.

  They had followed the tributary out of Blue Valley, and it remained dry for a good six or seven miles into Hafer land, until they came upon a host of Hafer men digging small canals leading from the stream deep into dry land covered with parched grass—Hafer land.

  “What’s going on here?” Caleb demanded, riding hard up to one of the men.

  The man shrugged. “We’re diggin’ irrigation ditches, Indian. What’s it to you?”

  “You’re running off badly needed water from my land. Without this water, the only water left is along the river, where my horses are more open to Comanche attacks and where all good grazing land is used up. This water flows into my best grazing land! Where’s Charles Hafer?”

  The man nodded toward the house, which was still just a dot several miles distant but visible across the wide, clear horizon. “Up to his house.”

  Caleb turned his horse and a Hafer man standing near him raised a musket. “You’d better think twice about goin’ over there,” the man warned.

  Caleb kicked out, knocking the musket from the man’s hands. “And you’d better think twice about threatening me, white man,” he snarled. “This is between me and Hafer. Stay out of it!” He rode off, signaling his men to follow. Horses thundered across the plains and it seemed to take forever to reach the house, which remained just a dot for another hour before finally taking shape. Tom’s heart quickened. Would she be there?

  More Hafer men rode out, shouting at Caleb to stop, but he kept going. They hesitated, not sure what Hafer would want them to do. Most knew this was some kind of deliberate act against Caleb Sax, so they guessed Hafer was actually waiting for confrontation and would want his men to let the Indian ride in.

  Caleb and the others approached the house, and Charles Hafer himself came strolling out calmly, a smirk on his face when Caleb drew up his mount in front of the man. Inwardly Hafer felt very proud and happy. Clawson would love to see this. He was earning his money.

  “Well, I can’t say as I’m surprised to see you, Sax,” he spoke up. He looked up at Tom and reddened with anger. “What’s that boy doing here? I told you he’d better never set foot on my land!”

  “He’s with me,” Caleb sneered, a warning look in his eyes.

  Hafer swallowed, some of his arrogance leaving him. Caleb Sax had the look of a wild Indian in his blue eyes, and he presented a commanding appearance when angry.

  “What the hell are you doing with my water?” Caleb growled.

  “You can see what I’m doing, and it’s not your water. On this end it’s mine. It’s been a dry fall and winter, Sax. I need to get that ground worked up. I’m thinking of planting cotton. The way I see it, this territory could be one of the biggest producers of cotton in the world. Why, the ground is perfect, and we’re close to the Brazos—just ship the cotton down—”

  “You know what I’m talking about, Hafer,” Caleb interrupted. “You deliberately picked that particular stream to cut off my
water!”

  Hafer frowned. “Oh, come now, Sax, you do carry a chip on your shoulder, don’t you?”

  “I know deliberate destruction when I see it, and you’re destroying my best grazing land—which could mean destroying my best horses! Get rid of those canals, Hafer, or I’ll do it for you!”

  Hafer shook his head and clucked. “I wouldn’t try that if I were you. It could be awfully dangerous.”

  “You think I’m worried about that?”

  Tom looked toward the door as it opened. He straightened and felt a surge of desire when Bess stepped outside. Their eyes met and she smiled. Their look said it all—“I love you.” “I’ve missed you.” “I want to see you again.”

  “That part of the stream runs through my land, and I’m using it as I see fit,” Hafer told Caleb.

  “There’s another stream not much farther up from that one.”

  “It isn’t as practical,” Hafer answered.

  “Why not? Because using it wouldn’t give me problems?” Caleb dismounted, walking up to face Hafer threateningly. “I’ll go to the council at San Felipe. I’ve got first rights to that water, Hafer. I’ve been here longer—sacrificed blood for this land! You have no right to take that water.”

  “Go ahead and tell them. And I will tell them how your son tried to steal away my daughter a few weeks ago—tried to rape her, in fact. They’d love to find out you Indians are making trouble. There are any number of men in Texas now who would love an excuse to get rid of you.”

  Caleb grabbed the man’s shirt and jerked him. “You stinking liar!”

  Hafer men leveled guns at Caleb and his men.

  “Let it go, men,” Hafer told them. “He doesn’t dare hurt me.” He smiled at Caleb. “Do you, Sax?”

  Caleb gave him a shove. “I’ll get my water back, Hafer,” he hissed. “Even if I have to go over your dead body!” He turned and mounted, leaving a pale Charles Hafer to watch him back away.