“Dropping the horses, Captain?” asked Wig Danville. “Shoot ’em?”
“Yes.”
“But, sir—I say ride. And ride hard. We fort up, them Comanche gonna swallow us up for sure.”
“Danville, there’s a lot of old frontiersmen who can tell you chapter and verse of their own history where the few held out against the many—and held the day.”
“You run, Wig,” Coffee added, “the Comanche got us separated. Chase us down one at a time.”
“What the sergeant says is the gospel according to Lamar Lockhart,” the captain added. “We stay together.”
“We all live,” Deacon Johns bellowed in that brimstone-laced voice of his, “or we all go to the bosom of the Lord our God together.”
“Together,” Lockhart reminded them. “Likely, it will be fighting these red-bellies to the last ditch and victory to the strongest.”
“That ol’ sulfur-belly of Satan’s son is about to get his due from a jealous God!” Deacon Johns bellowed.
Then they all fell silent again as Lockhart’s eyes went up and down the long line. Only when he had done so did the captain gently nudge his horse about. “Let’s move out, Sergeant Coffee.”
“You heard the captain!” Coffee bawled. “Move out!”
They closed on a mile of the village within a few heartbeats. Was no problem for any man to make out the village by then. A smudge of oily brown haze hung over the lodges. Morning cook fires. In the midst of the lodges there was the flicker of movement. Off to the right and beyond, Jonah could make out what extra animals the tribe could claim. Those that had not been brought into camp and readied. The warriors were already easing out of the village, disappearing for a moment as they led their ponies down the far slope of a wide arroyo, before reappearing on the near side where they halted. Waiting as more, and ever more came up.
Lockhart raised himself in the stirrups and twisted about to the left. Then the right, assuring himself of the readiness of his line spread out from him like great, undulating wings. Jonah sat two away from the end of the right flank. Behind them, riding center on Lockhart’s tail root, came the Shoshone with those two pack mules strung out at a walk behind him.
The captain raised his left hand and made a quick circle with it, then brought the arm down.
Not a one of them uttered a word but as a body urged their mounts into a lope behind Lockhart as he settled back to his saddle.
They crossed that first quarter of a mile as the Comanche themselves began to spread out, milling a bit, but spreading left and right as the Rangers had formed. Within a moment the center of that line began to surge forward at a walk, away from the side of the arroyo.
All Jonah had to do was break through the Comanche and get across that arroyo. Into the village and find the boys. Before he figured the Comanche could escape with their prisoners.
There was a lot of dust coming from the north now, hung like a faint smudge against the blue of the midday sky. Far and beyond the pony herd.
Jonah figured some of the Comanche were already skedaddling. Retreating north. Fleeing as soon as the first cry had gone out that white men were coming. Damn, but that dust lay a long way off to the north. Far enough away that Hook prayed his boys were not already among those first to escape. To have that kind of head start.
“Good Lord!” exclaimed the man beside him.
Jonah’s attention was yanked back to the warriors ahead of them as they passed the half-mile point. The Comanche horsemen still moved forward at no more than a walk, the heads of their ponies bobbing, a’flutter with scalp locks lashed to hackamores and shields and the muzzles of rifles and just back of the foot-long iron points on their buffalo lances. It seemed the number of riders doubled, then doubled again of a sudden as more and more appeared on the near side of that dusty arroyo. As if sprung from the ground itself.
“Quiet in the ranks!” Coffee snarled as more of the Rangers uttered surprise at getting their first good view of the numbers they were now facing.
But they held, and not one turned back nor slowed his gait. Jonah’s heart swelled to be among these men who had helped bring him here to get his boys. These, the cold, cast-iron, double-riveted sort who now showed what they were made of, showed that they possessed the nerve few men are ever pressed to dig deep enough to find within themselves.
Then Lockhart was standing again in his stirrups, twisting about to give his command. “For Texas and our families! Charge!”
His words were barely uttered, driven on across that line by the cold breeze when Company C hammered their horses into a gallop behind their captain: the ringing of bit and spur chains, the clinking of stirrup irons, of buckles against cinches, the tinkling of bridle snaps and linkings, the groans of saddle leather and the squeak of fenders and skirts, the rubbing of the tall boots … then the air above the thirty blistered with their shouts and yells and profane vows. Hook’s own throat ached with his ki-yi-yi-ing rebel wolf-cry as they galloped thigh by thigh.
As if that were the very cue for their own action, the Comanche burst into a ragged charge, closing the last quarter of a mile left to that arroyo in the space of a half-dozen heartbeats. Only enough time for Jonah to fire one shot with the Winchester before he booted it and yanked out his first belt gun.
He fired it once, then a second time as they closed on the fluttering line of half-naked horsemen glistening copper and wild-eyed in the midday winter sun. Hook stuffed the two thick latigo reins between his browned teeth and slid the second pistol from its holster.
There was time to fire one shot with it and a third from his right hand before the two lines collided in a crash of dust and stinging, swinging, swirling confusion. To his right he watched one of the Rangers go down, hurled from his saddle at the end of a warrior’s lance. Jonah reined up savagely, his tired mount fighting the bit as he sawed about, firing at the warrior who had toppled the Ranger.
For the most part, the Comanche line had charged on through the Ranger flanks without great damage. Two more of Lockhart’s men had been spilled, but they had clambered back to their knees, continuing to fire at the backs of the Comanche as the great warrior front came about, screeching and singing out their death songs.
He looked for Two Sleep, found the Shoshone just this side of the arroyo, struggling with the frightened mules near Lockhart. Barking his orders in that loose-shouldered way of his in the dust, noise, and confusion, the captain’s mouth was no more than a black O in his shadowy face. No telling what he was ordering. But he was pointing, waving his pistol hand as his horse pranced high-headed, round and round in a tight circle.
Then Jonah saw what Lockhart was hollering about. More warriors were swarming out of the village now, plunging down into the arroyo, catching the Rangers between the two groups of painted horsemen.
Hook really didn’t need to hear the captain’s voice to sense what order was being given. He saw those who were closest to Lockhart whirl about and retreat, falling back on Two Sleep. Come the time to fort up.
There in some of the brush by the lip of that snow-crusted arroyo smeared darkly with a narrow trickle of runoff against its far side.
“Throw them down!” they were yelling at each other. “Throws ’em down!”
The first of the horses were falling as Hook slid his mount to a halt near Two Sleep and stuffed one of the pistols away. He snugged the animal’s muzzle down tight, struggling to shoulder the animal up beside Callicott’s horse already down and kicking its last. He fought him, fought the smell of blood and gunpowder strung in thick layers in the air. Stuffing the gun’s barrel in front of the ear, he pulled the trigger. The big roan yanked its head away, thrashing as its legs went to water beneath its great weight. He barely had time to leap out of the way as it crashed onto the thin, icy crust of snow and lay there at Hook’s feet heaving its head, as if willing itself to stand. Then, as its life seemed to ebb before his eyes, the roan lay almost still in a matter of moments, still except for the last wheezing cries
coming from that heaving chest. In a shudder it was done.
“Awright, boys!” Niles Coffee was yelling. “In a matter of minutes there’s gonna be lead smacking around here, thicker’n smoked bees!”
Jonah dropped behind it as the new line of warriors came splashing across the narrow creek and flung sand from a couple hundred hooves in great golden cascades like roosters’ tails. To his left came one of the men running for the barricade on foot. Slade Rule slid behind the carcass of horse, his chin whiskers and the front of his dirty shirt smeared with blood. The man rolled onto his side, wheezing, trying to speak, his back and chest pocked with uncounted bullet holes.
“You made it,” Jonah said, kneeling over him. Gazing into the fear-drenched, teary eyes of that youngster beneath him. “You hang on for now—you’re gonna make it rest of the way.”
As Jonah tried to inch away, Rule snagged his sleeve, pulling him back, his mouth working mechanically, soundlessly against the great cacophony of battle snarling around them: bullets whining past or thudding into the bodies of their dying horses, the cursing of men, the bellows of Lockhart’s and Coffee’s and Deacon Johns’s orders, the cries of the wounded Rangers, the shrill death songs of the enemy, the wailing of the women across that arroyo … in the village where Jonah had intended to go.
“Good and kind, brother Jesus!” the deacon shrieked, half standing, firing with a pistol in each hand. “Heartily smite these heathen sinners!”
As he gazed back down at the Ranger, Rule’s eyes widened, then eased half-down the mast. His hand loosened on Jonah’s arm as the rest of his body slumped. Hook used two thumbs to ease the eyelids closed.
“What the hell are those bastards up to now?” June Callicott was hollering, half standing at the barricade of carcasses.
Hook found the greater number of warriors breaking off their attack after those first few grinding minutes. The Rangers, what was left of Company C inside that ring of carcasses, lay waiting among the sprawled and leg-flung horses for the next rush by the Comanche.
“Sonsabitches gonna work us down with their goddamned wheel,” Coffee reminded them.
Harley Pettis dropped his serious bulk to his knees. “They re-forming, Sarge?”
Coffee and the rest watched the horsemen pulling off. The second wave from the village joined up with the first, swirling about one another, working themselves up into a fighting frenzy, shrieking at one another, waving lances and shaking scalps.
“Looks like they’re ready to wear us down, boys!” Lockhart promised them.
But as the Rangers watched, breaking open the actions on their pistols to dump empty cartridges, jamming new ammunition into their heated weapons, the lords of the southern plains surprisingly did not form into that spinning, death-carrying wheel that would work itself around and around its prey, inch by inch, yard by yard, moment by moment grinding away, working ever closer to the white man until the enemy could be overrun in one great sweep of terror.
Instead, the Comanche drew off.
Stunned, slack-jawed in shock, Jonah stood, watching the horsemen drive their ponies into the arroyo, plunging across the sand and up the far side into the remnants of the village where all was of a sudden panic.
Above the screaming and wailing of the women, the barking of the dogs and the war cries of the men, above it all floated the first distant, but no less distinct, notes of a bugle.
43
February-Early April 1875
“HOOK! GET BACK here!”
Most of the Rangers had to be in shock, finding themselves between two overwhelming waves of battle-frenzied warriors in those first few minutes of panic, only to watch utterly dumbfounded as the horsemen drew off their attack.
“Hook! Goddammit—you’ll be killed!”
Jonah heard Lockhart’s voice behind him as he vaulted the horse carcass and skidded down the loose, giving sand at the icy side of the arroyo. His high-heeled riding boots felt clumsy in sand as he plowed through, heading for the narrow stream, for the far side, for the village suddenly up, screaming and on the run.
Just who the hell was that outfit?
Goddamned soldiers, he grumbled—and they’d go and chase off the Comanche before he could get into the village to find the boys.
If the boys were still alive.
Chances were if the village found itself between the attacking Rangers and some soldier outfit, they’d slaughter any prisoners they still held.
The cold water lashed up against his bare skin, assaulting face and hands—as he ran flat out for the far side of the arroyo, aware for the first time of two dozen or more warriors racing along that north lip, skidding their ponies to a halt and dismounting on the run. In a blood fury.
Jonah turned to find out he was not alone. Behind him came a half dozen, maybe more, of the others. Every one of them firing their pistols and yelling at him, some even snarling at the warriors who had set up their own howl as they fired back and began dropping over the lip to spill into the snow-crusted arroyo, ready for some close, dirty fighting of it.
If he could just break through them, Jonah knew he could claw his way up the side and get into that village before the soldiers overran it. His boys—they might be mistook for Injuns in the dust and confusion by some green-gilled, nervous soldier who would shoot a white youngster by mistake.
A bullet hissed past his ear. He dropped on instinct. Jonah whirled in a crouch to find the warrior lunging for him at the same time the Comanche and Rangers closed ranks in a clattering collision that reverberated across the bottom of that arroyo. Hook rose to meet the screaming, painted demon hurling down on him like the master of hell itself.
The Comanche was young, strong. They grappled, stumbled backward. The warrior threw Jonah to the ground.
For a moment Hook stared up at the Indian’s eyes, not startled to find his enemy no more than a youth. The predictable foolishness of these young warriors—come back to cover the retreat of their village in the face of the soldier charge. The distant firing loomed closer still above the rim of the arroyo as he struggled with the warrior, who suddenly gripped a knife.
Glinting in the sun, it sailed overhead, then hung suspended there for a moment at the end of the youth’s arm. Jonah mightily lunged for that wrist with one hand, his right leaping to the Comanche’s throat, where he locked his fingers into a noose around the windpipe.
In but a moment Jonah sensed the arm weaken slightly, felt the shudder of his enemy as the Comanche fought for breath, clawing at the white man’s hand crabbed at his throat. Heaving himself up off his shoulders and hips, Hook desperately threw the strong youth to the side.
All about them men clashed and grappled in the thick of close quarters: grunting, crying out, cursing, yelling, begging for help. The smack of weapons against bone and sinew. The soggy slap of bodies pitched into the shallow, icy creek.
For that critical heartbeat the Comanche warrior lay gasping, his mouth a huge O, wheezing, coughing for breath as he rolled onto his side. Eyes wide with fury, hate, for the white man who had near killed him.
Hook threw himself atop the warrior as a war cry from beyond bit Jonah’s ears. All around him the rest of the fight faded as Hook landed on the Comanche trying to rise, wrestling his enemy back down, pinning the warrior by dropping a knee against the youth’s throat. Hook dragged the knife from the Indian’s hand.
With his left Jonah savagely yanked back on the man’s long hair, surprised to find it something other than black. He laid the edge of the blade under one ear as the wild eyes went wider, glaring into Jonah’s face.
Hook’s hand froze. He studied the hazel eyes, the sharp slash of nose, the crease of cheekbone no longer disguised beneath the war paint smeared in their combat. Hope. Fear. Desperation—
“Jere—…Jeremiah?”
As quickly the Comanche’s grunt of exertion faded. The warrior’s eyes stared back at Jonah’s face as the Indian stopped wrenching at the hand locked in his scalp, stopped yanking at the wrist an
d hand and knife pressed against his jugular. Jonah watched something like wonder, something of disbelief come into those eyes. Something almost familiar. The look he imagined Gritta would have in her eyes when at last he held her in his arms.
“P-pa?”
“Oh, dear Jesus …,” Hook whispered, his hands opening, releasing his son’s hair, letting the knife tumble into the sand. He could not take his eyes off the eyes of the one beneath him, seeing there the question, as well as the recognition, then the return of question and confusion.
Of a sudden there Jonah also saw the horror of something come to contort the face of his son.
“No-o-o-o-o-o!” Jeremiah shouted, drowning out everything else around them.
At first Jonah only sensed the dull pressure of it. No real pain. Just an instant of burning in his back, a metallic skittering along his ribs … then the cold.
A gunshot roared so close, Jonah flinched.
And the icy-hot pressure was gone, gone as quickly as he had realized it was there. For a moment he gazed back at the face of his oldest son, realizing that he was slipping, slowly releasing his grip on everything—losing consciousness.
Oh, God! his mind cried out, not sure if his lips really formed the words or not … dear God! To come this close. To hold Jeremiah so close and now to lose it all. Not this way, God. Not this way!
He had some distant recognition that men were shouting all around them now as Jeremiah heaved himself up on his knees, catching Jonah as he crumpled slowly, slowly, his lips moving wordlessly, muttering prayers … tears flooding his eyes.
As he closed them for that last time, Jonah recognized the tears in Jeremiah’s eyes, saw their tracks streaking down through the shiny, smeared, dust-furred war paint.
Tears.
Antelope had tumbled down the loose, snow-crusted side of the arroyo onto the icy sand without stopping, racing headlong for his brother as the white man spun Tall One onto his back and jammed the knife along his brother’s throat.
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