OUTLAW RANGER #4:
THE LAST WAR CHIEF
JAMES REASONER
Outlaw Ranger #4: The Last War Chief by James Reasoner
Copyright © 2015 by James Reasoner
Cover Design by Livia Reasoner
Rough Edges Press
www.roughedgespress.com
All rights reserved.
This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogues are products of the author's imagination and are not to be construed as real.
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
Chapter 1
He remembers the screams of women, children, and horses. Especially the horses squealing in agony as they are shot down by the blue-clad soldiers who come thundering down the canyon on their own mounts, the rifles in their hands belching fire and smoke.
The Comanche are horsemen. The death of the horses means the death of the people.
That death takes longer to find those proud riders who are now a-foot. It steals over them slowly as they are rounded up and herded north and east like animals themselves, into what was known then as Indian Territory but is now called Oklahoma. Despair saps the life from them, making them a shadow of what they once were, until they might as well not be Comanche.
He was a young man then, when the cavalry brought death to the canyon of the hard wood where his people made their home. A young man, but already a leader of his people, a war chief who had ridden with Quanah at the place the white men called Adobe Walls. What times those had been, before the medicine turned bad—
"Hey. Wake up, you ol' sumbitch. You can't sleep there. Move your red ass."
He tried to lift his head from the plank sidewalk, but his strength failed him. He murmured something in his native tongue. More than half asleep, he wasn't sure himself what he was saying.
A booted foot thudded into his ribs and rocked him over onto his side. Pain flooded through him, but it was a dull, distant ache, as if his senses were too old and feeble for him to really feel it. He managed to lift a gnarled hand and tried to wave away his tormentor.
"Damn it, I done told you before about gettin' drunk and sleepin' on the sidewalk, Pete. You're gonna make me drag you down to the jailhouse and lock you up, ain't you?"
"Pahitti Puuku," the old man said. Greasy gray hair straggled in front of his watery eyes as he finally succeeded in lifting his head. He peered through that screen at the lanky figure of Deputy Hal Vickery.
The deputy leaned closer and asked, "What'd you say?"
"Pahitti Puuku."
"You know I don't understand that redskin lingo."
"It means...Three Horses. It is...my name."
"Yeah, well, I'm gonna keep on callin' you Old Pete like ever'body else in Dinsmore. Now, can you get on your feet and stumble outta here? Because if I have to pick you up, you're goin' to a cell, I can promise you that."
Three Horses was a little more awake and alert now. His head pounded from the whiskey, and his side ached from the deputy's kick. But he was a war chief. He had suffered much worse in battle. He put his hands on the planks and pushed.
Deputy Vickery watched impatiently as Three Horses struggled to stand up. After what seemed like a long time and probably was, the old man was on his feet. He was considerably shorter than the lawman. The width of his shoulders testified to the fact that once he had been a powerful man, but the years had stolen much of his strength and caused his flesh to waste away.
At first glance it seemed that not a single inch of his face was free of wrinkles. He wore denim trousers and a faded blue cotton shirt, and the worst indignity of all, white man's shoes on his feet. Even after all this time, he longed for the supple hide of a good pair of moccasins.
"I am...up," he said.
"Good. Stay that way until you can stumble back to that shack o' yours. Can't have you clutterin' up the boardwalk that way. Hell, it's the Twentieth Century now, although I reckon a dumb redskin like you wouldn't know anything about that. Dinsmore's a modern town now."
It was true. The settlement, originally nothing more than a wide place in the trail, now boasted a two-story stone jail and an even bigger courthouse, along with a couple of blocks of businesses along the north side of the street, one of them the drugstore in front of which Three Horses had laid down and gone to sleep. Up at the end of the block was an impressive red-brick building that housed the bank that had been organized a couple of years earlier. Perched at the edge of the South Plains, with the rugged escarpment of the Caprock dropping away just east of town, Dinsmore was poised to grow into the biggest town between Fort Worth and Lubbock.
It wasn't the sort of place where a pathetic old drunken Indian was welcome anymore...not that the man everybody called Old Pete had been that welcome to start with. Nobody had ever summoned up the energy to run him off permanently, though.
Three Horses took a stumbling step. Deputy Vickery reached out and took hold of his shoulders to turn him around.
"Your shack's that way," the deputy said. "Now skedaddle. I got things to do."
With the work shoes shuffling along the planks, Three Horses started along the sidewalk.
He saw the men riding in from the direction of the Caprock but didn't really pay attention to them until they brought their horses to a stop in the street close to where Three Horses was making his laborious way.
"Look at that, Clete," one of the men said. "That's an old Indian, ain't it?"
"Really old," replied the rider whose name, evidently, was Clete. "Must be a hundred years old."
That showed how much the foolish white man knew. This was Three Horses' fifty-fourth summer. Or his fifty-third. He wasn't sure anymore. White man counted time in odd ways.
"I'm gonna talk to him," the first man said, grinning.
"Jawing with some old redskin isn't why we're here, Riggs."
"Won't take but a minute." Riggs swung a leg over his saddle and dropped lithely to the ground. He stepped up onto the sidewalk and went on, "Hey, chief, how you doin'?"
Three Horses frowned in surprise. How did this white man know he was a chief? There was a time when anyone could have told from the beadwork on his buckskins and the feathers in his headdress that he was a leader of his people, but the clothes he wore now were very different.
Still, this man recognized him for what he was, and that made Three Horses stand up a little straighter. He blinked several times, then said in the white man's tongue, "It is a good day. I am Pahitti Puuku, last war chief of the Comanche."
The man laughed, then said to his companions, "You hear that? He ain't just a dirty old redskin. We got ourselves an actual war chief here!"
"Come on, Riggs," Clete said. "Get back on your horse."
"I will, I will. I ain't never seen a real Comanche war chief, though." Riggs leaned closer and grinned at Three Horses. "Do a war dance."
"I am not at war," Three Horses said. "And it is the young warriors who dance."
"Well, you ain't young, that's for sure, but I reckon we can do something about the other part." Without warning, Riggs slapped Three Horses across the face. "How about now? Feel like lettin' out a war whoop and doin' a dance?"
Three Horses tried to step around the white man. He muttered, "Leave me alone."
Riggs put a hand on his chest and gave him a shove that made him stagger back a couple of steps. Then the white man slapped Three Horses again.
"You're gonna do a war dance, old man, whether you like it or not."
The second slap had been hard enough
to make Three Horses' head swim dizzily. He had to catch hold of one of the posts holding up the wooden awning over the boardwalk to keep himself from falling. Anger tried to well up inside him, but he couldn't bring it to the surface. That would have taken too much effort, and he was too tired.
"Damn it," Clete said. He swung down from the saddle, handed the reins to one of the other men, and stepped up onto the planks. Three Horses thought Clete might make Riggs leave him alone, but instead the man swung a fist hard into his stomach. The blow made Three Horses double over, and that was too much for him to overcome. He toppled forward onto the planks and lay curled up around the pain in his middle.
"Aw, hell!" Riggs said. "What'd you go and do that for?"
"I figured it was the fastest way to get your mind off this ancient savage," Clete said. "Now come on, unless you'd rather ride by yourself from now on."
"Shoot, I never said that. I'm comin'."
Riggs paused just long enough to kick Three Horses, on the other side from where Deputy Vickery had kicked him before. At least the pain was balanced now.
Three Horses didn't know how long he lay there, unable to get up, before the shooting started.
Chapter 2
Part of Hal Vickery's job as deputy sheriff of Dinsmore County was to keep track of the comings and goings of strangers in the settlement. The town wasn't big enough yet to have its own marshal, although some of the businessmen had started talking about it, especially Cyrus McLemore, the president of the bank. The county sheriff was responsible for keeping the peace in town, and Sheriff Thane Warner had given that job to Vickery. Warner had two other deputies who helped him take care of trouble elsewhere in the county.
So Vickery was just doing his duty when he took note of the strangers who rode into Dinsmore from the east. He did a quick head count: eight of them. You usually didn't see that many men riding together on horseback unless they all worked for the same ranch and had come into town to blow off steam on payday.
Today wasn't payday. That was still three days off. It wasn't even a Saturday, which sometimes brought more folks into town than usual. It was Tuesday morning, still fairly early.
Vickery frowned as he wondered if he ought to go meet the men and inquire as to the business that had brought them to town. But then one of them said something and the whole bunch stopped. From where he stood leaning against an awning post in the middle of the next block, the deputy couldn't make out the words.
Vickery continued watching as the man who had spoken dismounted and stepped up onto the sidewalk to talk to Old Pete. The Indian's shack was on the eastern edge of town—just out of town, really, almost on the edge of the Caprock—and he'd finally been headed in the right direction. Vickery felt a little bad about losing his temper and kicking Pete. It was just that he had told the old-timer over and over again about getting drunk and falling asleep in public. Folks didn't like that.
Most people in Dinsmore barely tolerated Pete, anyway. He was willing to do any sort of odd job, no matter how unpleasant, and he didn't charge much, so he came in handy if you needed a privy mucked out or some animal carcass removed. Because of that, people put up with his boasting.
When he was drunk, he liked to go on about how he was the last war chief of the Comanche tribe and how he'd fought with ol' Quanah and then snuck off from the reservation up in what used to be Indian Territory. He claimed that all the land hereabouts was the rightful hunting ground of his people and said that they would take it back, one of these days when the buffalo herds returned.
Vickery wasn't going to hold his breath waiting for that to happen.
The stranger who had gotten off his horse was talking to Old Pete. Suddenly, the man slapped him. That was a mean thing to do, and it made Vickery's frown deepen as he straightened from his casual stance leaning on the post. Pete might be a smelly, troublesome old fool, but he was Dinsmore's smelly, troublesome old fool. No stranger could ride into town and start pushing him around.
Then Vickery hesitated. He had hauled off and kicked Pete not that long ago, after all. He knew how annoying the old Indian could be. Maybe, if the fella would leave him alone, it would be better to just let things go.
Then the man slapped Pete again.
Vickery wasn't going to stand for that. He started along the boardwalk. But he didn't get in too big a hurry about it. Even though it was only mid-morning, the day was already hot, and a fella didn't want to rush around too much in the West Texas heat. It wasn't good for the blood.
One of the other men dismounted. Vickery hoped he would take his companion in hand. The whole bunch might move on.
Then the second man punched Pete in the belly, an even more despicable blow than the others. Pete fell down, and the first man kicked him. Vickery really felt bad now about what he'd done, as he watched somebody else do the same thing. That was pretty sorry behavior.
"Hey!" he called as he stepped off the end of the boardwalk in this block and started across the open space between the buildings. All eight of the strangers turned toward him, and he heard the man who had kicked Pete say, "Oh, hell, Riggs, now look what you've done. A lawman."
Vickery was about to say that damn right he was a lawman and he wasn't going to stand for any of Dinsmore's citizens being treated that way, but then the second man lifted his arm and there was a gun in his hand, a gun the deputy hadn't even seen him draw. Vickery stopped short as his eyes widened and he reached for the revolver on his hip.
He had just closed his hand around the gun butt when he heard the blast of a shot at the same time as what felt like a sledgehammer struck him in the chest. He went over backward, and the act of falling helped him pull his gun from its holster. His arm sort of flew upward of its own accord, but he was conscious of pulling the trigger. He heard shots booming like thunderclaps in a spring storm.
That was the last thing he knew.
Chapter 3
The shots were so loud they seemed to shake the planks Three Horses was lying on, and somehow that jolted the pain out of him. The racket also blew away the last lingering effects of the whiskey he had stolen early that morning while he was sweeping out the Three Deuces, Dinsmore's only saloon. The place didn't have a regular swamper, but Three Horses swept and mopped there two or three times a week, and Miles Bowen, the owner, usually turned a blind eye when he snagged a bottle that still had a little booze in it and tucked it inside his shirt.
For one thing, when he let Three Horses get away with that, Bowen usually didn't bother paying him. The rotgut didn't cost much since Bowen brewed it himself in an old bathtub, throwing in some black powder, strychnine, and rattlesnake heads for flavor.
Sober now, or as close to it as he got these days, Three Horses lifted his head, pushed himself up on his elbows, and looked along Dinsmore's single street. He saw somebody lying in the open space between the two blocks of businesses, and he needed a second or two before he recognized the sprawled figure in the bloody shirt as Deputy Hal Vickery.
Despite everything that had happened earlier, Three Horses felt a pang of regret at the sight. Vickery sometimes got mad and treated him badly, but the deputy has helped him at times, too, taking pity on him and getting him back to his shack when he was too drunk to make it there under his own power.
The eight strangers—Clete, Riggs, and the other six men—were doing most of the shooting. Four of them, including Clete and Riggs, were standing in front of the bank pouring lead through the windows and the open front door.
The other four were still on their horses as they fired toward the jail. Their mounts were a little skittish, so they had to divide their efforts between controlling the animals and shooting at the stone building.
Little puffs of gunsmoke came from one of the jail's front windows. Three Horses didn't know where the sheriff and the other two deputies were, but it seemed likely at least one man was inside, putting up a fight.
Everyone else who had been on the street when the trouble started—and there hadn't been that m
any—had vanished, immediately hunting cover as the bullets began to fly.
Bill Denning, who owned the drugstore, proved to be the exception to that. He emerged from the front door of his business and stomped along the sidewalk past Three Horses carrying an old Henry rifle. He yelled, "Damn thieves!" and brought the repeater to his shoulder. It cracked once, but none of the strangers fell.
One of them on horseback yanked his mount around toward the walk, however, and the revolver in his hand let out two heavy booms. Denning flew backward to land next to Three Horses, who was lying on his belly. The front of the storekeeper's apron Denning wore over his clothes was bloody, and a good chunk of his head was blown away. His eyes were wide open as he stared sightlessly up at the awning.
If anybody else in town was thinking about fighting back against the outlaws, the sight of Denning being killed in such a grisly fashion put a stop to that.
Except for Three Horses, who looked over at the Henry the drugstore owner had dropped and felt an unexpected longing.
Years ago, Three Horses had had a rifle like that. He had taken it from a dead settler on a ranch he and some other warriors had raided up on the Double Mountain fork of the Brazos. The weapon had seemed like magic at the time, a gun that could shoot all day without having to be reloaded.
Of course there was no magic to it—the white men had no real magic—and the Comanches had figured that out and soon lost their fear of the repeaters. In fact, many warriors had become quite proficient in their use.
Three Horses had been good with a rifle. But he recalled how heavy a Henry was, and how his hands shook and the muscles in his arms trembled when he tried to lift too much these days, and he decided it wouldn't be a good idea.
Just to be sure none of the outlaws would think he had anything in mind, he let his head droop back to the planks and lay there like he was senseless.
He kept his eyes slitted open, though, and watched as Clete and Riggs and the other two men on foot rushed into the bank. They must have killed everyone inside, thought Three Horses.
The Last War Chief (Outlaw Ranger Book 4) Page 1