“Huh?” Nate glanced at the ripped and blood-soaked side of his shirt. Suddenly, with the fear and excitement of the fight over, he felt a burning along his ribs. He’d never even realized he’d been wounded.
“Lean back against that rock, so I can check you over,” Percy ordered. When Nate complied, Percy opened his shirt, then whistled.
“No wonder you got sick to your stomach, kid. That brave nearly sliced open your brisket. You wait here. I’ll get bandages from the saddlebags.”
“You really think I’m goin’ anywhere?” Nate answered, with a thin smile.
“No, I reckon not,” Percy said. “You take it easy. I’m gonna gather some willow shoots and bark for a poultice to put on that wound. Be back quick as I can.”
“Percy?”
“Yeah, Nate?”
“It ain’t the cut which made me sick. It was that Comanche’s insides splatterin’ all over me.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Percy said. “That’d be enough to make any man sick, even a hardened veteran. You’ll get over it.”
“Thanks, Percy. I appreciate that.”
“Never mind. Like I said, you just take it easy while I boil up those shoots and bark.”
Exhausted, Nate dozed off while Percy gathered the willow shoots, as well as some moss, and the bandages.
“Sorry to wake you up, kid,” Percy said, when he returned, “But that cut is still bleedin’ some. I’ve got to get that stopped. This moss’ll due the trick.” He wadded a good portion of the moss, and packed it into the slice along Nate’s rib. “There. That’ll hold you while I make the poultice.”
“Good thing my name ain’t Stone, and I ain’t movin’ much, rollin’ around,” Nate said.
“What d’ya mean by that?” Percy asked.
“Because we all know a rolling stone gathers no moss. You wouldn’t be able to keep that stuff in there,” Nate deadpanned.
“You’re hurt worse’n I thought, Nate,” Percy retorted, chuckling despite himself. “Be back in a few minutes.”
“Wait, before you go…”
“What is it, Nate?”
“You ain’t gonna eat any of those Comanches in front of me, are you, Percy?”
“No, I sure ain’t,” Percy assured him. “Unlike some of my ancestors, I never had any desire to sample human flesh.”
“That’s good,” Nate said. “Because I could see handlin’ a turkey drumstick, but a man’s leg as a drumstick? That’d be one big hunk of meat. Way too much for me to finish.”
“Now I know you’re hallucinatin’,” Percy said, laughing. “Just try’n rest.”
Besides making the poultice, Percy boiled up a medicinal tea from the willow shoots. “This’ll help with the pain, a little,” he said, as he gave a tin mug full of the brew to Nate. While Nate sipped at the tea, Percy plastered the poultice over his wound, then tied a bandage around his middle, to hold it in place. He had just finished when three evenly spaced gunshots rang out, followed by a shout.
“Percy! Nate! Where are you two?”
Percy clambered to the top of a boulder and waved his arms over his head.
“We’re back here, Cap’n. It’s sure a relief to see you boys. Ride on in.”
A few minutes later, the entire company splashed their horses through the water and rode up.
“About time you showed up,” Percy said. “We could have used a little help around here.”
“I can see that,” Quincy answered. “Looks like you had a bit of trouble. Nate, how bad you hurt?”
“He’ll be okay, Cap’n,” Percy replied. “Just got a knife slice across his ribs. The Comanch’ who tried to stick him is in far worse shape. Nate gutted him clean. As far as us havin’ a bit of trouble, that’s an understatement, to say the least. There was six of those Comanch’, and two of us.”
“You killed ’em all?” Jeb Rollins asked.
“I believe so, Jeb. Only one rode away, but he had my bullet in his stomach. I doubt he got far. Where in the world were you boys?”
“We got sent on a wild goose chase by some rancher who waved us down, claimin’ a bunch of his cattle had been rustled,” Quincy explained. “Turns out they’d just wandered off into a draw. But it cost us some time, and apparently, almost cost yours and Nate’s lives.”
“Nothin’ to be done for it now, Cap’n,” Percy said.
“Joe, Dakota, Carl, Lee. Take the bodies of those Comanches and drag ’em into the brush. There should be six,” Quincy ordered.
“Right away, Cap’n,” Dakota answered.
“Cap’n, we never did come across any pronghorns, so there won’t be any fresh meat for supper,” Percy said. “I apologize for that. But we did find you a right nice campsite.”
“And just where might that be, Percy?”
“Right here, Cap’n. We’re gonna spend the night right here.”
****
After supper, Percy and Jim rechecked Nate’s wound. Jim decided against stitching it. Both men declared he would be fit to ride come morning. He would be sore, but he’d be able to stay on a horse.
Nate drifted off to sleep with Hoot sitting alongside him, keeping vigil over his injured friend and partner. The other Rangers, except for Larry and Shorty, who were on the first watch, had gathered around the campfire while Percy regaled them with the tale of the pitched battle with the Comanches.
“Boys,” he concluded, “I know Nate’s still too young to be taken into the Rangers as a regular. And he still makes rookie mistakes. Gets scared, too, as any man with half a brain would, let alone a kid like Nate. But he’s as brave a man as I’ve ever fought alongside, and has more guts than most. He even sampled a rattlesnake I shot… one which came closer to sinkin’ its fangs into Nate’s leg than he realized. I’d take him as my pardner any day of the week.”
4
The next morning, despite his injury, Nate was back in the saddle again. He was offered the chance to ride in the back of the chuck wagon by Captain Quincy, but declined. If he was going to make it as a Ranger, he’d have to tough out even worse wounds than the knife cut along his side.
Once he settled on Big Red’s back, the pulling and soreness of the wound didn’t bother him all that badly. Percy’s willow shoot and bark poultice had clearly done its work well. By the time the Rangers had ridden an hour, Nate’s pain had subsided to a dull ache, not much worse than a bad sprain or bruise.
As Captain Quincy and his men worked their way westward over the next three days, the terrain steadily got more rugged. The level plain gradually became more rolling, broken more often by canyons, arroyos, and draws.
Flat-topped mesas and low hills also became more frequent. The vegetation became more sparse, even the few trees which had previously dotted the land virtually disappearing, to be replaced by tough grasses, mesquite, thick, thorny brush, oily creosote bushes, and all sorts of cacti.
The elevation steadily increased, too, so that no matter how blistering hot the temperature became during the day, it often plunged forty degrees or more at night.
After having roasted under the desert sun all day long, the men had to slide under their blankets at night to keep warm.
What was hardest on the men, horses, and mules, however, wasn’t the blazing hot sun, the harsh chill at night, the lack of shade, or the shortage of water. It was the omnipresent dust.
The soil became sandier the further west they rode. It was dry as powder, so the horses’ and mules’ hooves and chuck wagon’s wheels kicked up clouds of thick, blinding, choking dust; dust that found its way into every opening in a man’s clothing, alkali dust that burned a man’s eyes, that clogged his nose and ears, that filled his mouth like cotton.
Dust, that seemed to seep deep into every pore. Dust that coated the horses and mules, so that even the darkest bay or black soon resembled a light brown pony.
And even the slightest breeze, which ordinarily would have provided welcome relief from the heat, instead added to the Rangers’ misery, as it st
irred up even more dust, stinging every bit of exposed flesh, making it even more difficult to breathe. The men had lifted their bandannas to cover their mouths and noses, so that they looked more like a band of outlaws than a company of Texas Rangers.
They had taken spare bandannas and tied them around their horses’ and mules’ muzzles, in a futile attempt to provide them some relief from the constant dust. However, those bandannas helped men and mounts but little. The fine dust managed to filter its way through even the most thickly doubled fabric, to settle deep in throats and lungs.
They slapped dust from their clothes, beat their hats against their legs to knock dust from them, and, when they attempted to drink from their canteens, swallowed as much dust as they did water.
“This dust botherin’ you, Nate?” Jeb asked him, one afternoon.
“It ain’t the dust so much as it is all this sand,” Nate answered. “With this much sand, there’s gotta be a beach around here somewhere.”
“This ain’t Delaware,” Jeb answered, laughing. “All you’ll find in these parts is more sand. The only Beach around here is Shorty.”
With places ideal for a drygulching becoming more frequent, all the Rangers were constantly on alert. Percy and one or two other men rode ahead of the rest every day, searching out possible trouble.
Without even realizing it, Nate had begun to develop the skills and survival instincts crucial to staying alive as a lawman in the vast, lonely, lawless expanses of Texas. Under the brim of his Stetson, his eyes were constantly moving, looking for something out of place, seeking out anything which didn’t seem quite right. His hearing also became more attuned to his surroundings, especially at night.
Percy had taught him it wasn’t when you heard the sounds of the night creatures, the chirping of the crickets, the rough call of the cicadas, the rustling of a mouse, the hooting of an owl, the howl of the wolf or the cry of the cougar that you had to worry. It was when those creatures went silent you had to be concerned.
Percy had explained you could even follow a man creeping up on you in the dark by listening to the night critters. As a man passed by their hiding places, they would go silent, then start up again once he had moved on. Follow the rising and falling of the night creatures’ voices, and you could track, fairly accurately, anyone attempting to sneak up on you in the night.
As the days passed, Nate also noticed subtle changes in his body. He’d grown a couple of inches, making him appear even lankier. What little fat he’d had was now gone, to be replaced by muscle; muscle that hardened with each mile of riding. Except for the pain of the knife slash along his ribs, he no longer ached at the end of the day, and wasn’t stiff and sore the next morning.
He could stand his turn at watch without becoming drowsy, was handling the remuda with more and more ease, and was even able to snatch a few minutes of sleep while he rode.
Thirst and hunger, while constant companions, no longer tormented him as they once had. He could go for hours without taking a swallow from his canteen, ride all day on only a few bites of jerky and hardtack.
Despite the protection of his wide-brimmed hat, his face was no longer white and pale, but tanned, and becoming tough as leather from constant exposure to the sun and wind, as was the back of his neck and the backs of his hands. The only light skin above his shoulders at all was a clearly defined white ring across the top of his forehead, where the sweatband of his hat rested.
His palms, once soft, easily blistered, were now thick and calloused. Fine wrinkles were developing around his eyes, from constantly squinting in the harsh light of the desert. He sometimes wondered if his mother, father, or brother would even recognize him, had they still been alive.
This third day after Nate and Percy’s fight with the Comanches, the Rangers had come across a fairly good-sized spring, issuing from the base of a low mesa, so Captain Quincy called an early halt for the night, two hours before sundown.
The spring formed a small pond, just large enough for washing, which was drained by a small creek that disappeared into the sinks less than a quarter-mile away.
After making sure the horses had drunk their fills, then themselves, and George had obtained sufficient water for cooking and brewing coffee, the men took turns cleaning up; some just their faces, hands, hair, and necks, others stripping out of their shirts to scrub dust, grit, and grime from their upper torsos.
Even Shorty Beach, who usually avoided water as if he had hydrophobia, cleaned up. When Nate’s turn came, he shrugged out of his shirt, dunked his head into the water, then began scrubbing his face. When he ran his hands over his cheeks and chin, some of what he thought was dirt refused to wash away. He scrubbed harder, with the same results. When the dirt still remained, he uttered a mild curse.
“What’s the matter, Nate?” Hoot asked. He had just finished washing.
“I know cactus needles can stick to a man…” Nate began.
“Yeah, you sure found that out durin’ your horse race with Andy,” Hoot interrupted, laughing at the memory of Nate and Andy Pratt, who had been killed in the ambush on the Ranger camp, flying from their horses and landing on their rumps in cactus patches. Jim Kelly had taken quite a few cactus spines out of their butts, much to Nate and Andy’s chagrin, and the rest of the Rangers’ amusement.
“You ain’t ever gonna let me live that down, are you, Hoot?” Nate asked. He’d slid into using “ain’t”, like the rest of the men, instead of the proper “aren’t” he’d been taught in school back in Wilmington. He was sounding more and more like a native Texan every day.
“No, pard, I certainly ain’t,” Hoot replied. “Now, what are you carryin’ on about?”
“This dirt stuck to my face. I can’t seem to get rid of it, no matter how hard I try.”
Hoot looked closer at Nate’s face, then chortled.
“Nate, I don’t know how to tell you this, but that ain’t exactly dirt you’re tryin’ to get rid of.”
“It ain’t? Then what the heck is it?”
“Them’s whiskers, pal.”
“Whiskers?”
“Yeah. Whiskers,” Hoot confirmed. “Appears to me you’re startin’ to grow yourself a beard.”
“Whiskers?” Nate repeated. He ran a hand over his face once again. Sure enough, he was sprouting a beard. The whiskers were fine in texture and light in color, little more than peach fuzz, but they were there, nonetheless.
Whiskers. He hadn’t really noticed before, but now that Hoot pointed out he was growing whiskers, he realized hair was starting to show on other parts of his body, under his arms, a bit on his chest, even on some other, more private areas.
Evidently, along with everything else that had happened over the past few weeks, his body had decided it was time to leave boyhood behind, and start becoming a full-grown man. He shook his head. “Whiskers.”
“Yeah, whiskers,” Hoot said. “You can find yourself a lookin’ glass and admire ’em when we get to Fort Stockton,” he said. “Meanwhile, I’m plumb starved. Let’s help George get set up, so he can start supper.”
“All right.” Nate pulled his shirt back on, then he and Hoot headed to the chuck wagon. They gathered downed mesquite branches for the fire, then helped George unload his pots, utensils, and dishes.
****
After supper, as usual, most of the men, except those on sentry duty, hung around the campfire, working on final cups of coffee, smoking, and swapping stories and tall tales. Joe Duffy usually broke out his harmonica to play a few tunes.
After helping George clean up the dishes, Nate took his sketch pad and pencils from his saddlebags, then found a quiet corner, away from the rest of the men. He leaned back against a rock, then opened the pad and began to draw. He worked, undisturbed, for nearly an hour, until Tom Tomlinson wandered over. Nate glanced up from his work.
“Hey there, Tom. I didn’t see you sneakin’ up on me,” he said. “You look awful tired. You feelin’ all right?”
“Sorry, Nate. I didn’t realiz
e you were concentratin’ so hard you didn’t notice me comin’ over. I’m all right, I guess. Just kinda missin’ Tim a bit more’n usual tonight.”
Tom’s twin brother, Tim, had been killed by a duplicitous deputy sheriff, who had been working hand-in-hand with the outlaw gang which had ambushed the Rangers—the same gang which had attacked Nate’s home and murdered his family. Tim had managed to kill the traitorous deputy before he died.
“I can understand that,” Nate said. “Some days I miss Jonathan really fierce, more even than my ma and pa.”
“Same here. I hadn’t seen my ma or pa in over three years, but me’n Tim rode side by side as Rangers for nearly two years, until he got killed. I sure miss him. Along with bein’ my brother, he was my best friend.”
Tom sighed, then glanced down at the pad Nate held.
“What’cha up to, Nate?” he asked.
“Just doin’ a little drawin’,” Nate answered. “I used to do a lot of it back in Delaware, but this is the first chance I’ve had to try it again, since my family moved to Texas.”
“Do you mind if I take a look?” Tom asked.
“No, not at all.” Nate turned the pad so Tom could see his drawing.
“Nate, that’s real pretty,” he said. “Looks like you’ve got all of us in there, mostly.”
Nate had sketched a picture of the company, while they sat around the fire.
“I’m not all that good,” Nate said, with a shrug. “Drawin’s just somethin’ I like to do.”
“I dunno, Nate. That picture looks real nice, at least to me,” Tom answered. “You mind if the rest of the fellers take a look?”
Before Nate could reply, he shouted. “Hey, Cap’n Dan. Lieutenant Bob, and the rest of you fellers. C’mon over here and take a gander at what our pal Nate’s been doin’.”
“Tom, I ain’t all that good,” Nate repeated.
“We’ll let the rest of the fellers decide that,” Tom answered.
“What’s goin’ on, Tom?” Captain Quincy asked, when he reached him. The others were right behind, their curiosity piqued.
Lone Star Ranger #3 Page 8