Red River Rifles (Wilderness Dawning—the Texas Wyllie Brothers Series Book 1)

by Dorothy Wiley

  And Samuel was proud to be among them.

  Chapter 2

  North side of the Red River, above Pecan Point

  Louisa Pate’s sweaty palms gripped the stock of her father’s heavy rifle.

  John R. Pate, her father, was a man of iron will and indomitable force. Once he’d resolved to claim land in the Province of Texas, or maybe it was the Arkansas Territory—no one was sure what this place was called—their destiny was fixed. They’d arrived at the Pecan Point settlement a week ago and her father had purchased, on the other side of the Red River, a log cabin and acreage from a settler who was in a hurry to leave.

  And so it was that she found herself hiding in the settler’s cornfield with her little brother. Summer rains must have come at the right time for the sweet-smelling corn stalks stood thick and tall. In addition to the corn they would harvest next month, the stalks provided a place to hide. For that she gave thanks.

  Beside her crouched her wide-eyed, eight-year-old brother, Adam. They’d heard barking and when she peered out into the darkness, she’d seen their dog’s alert stance and movement in the bushes. At once, she’d grabbed the loaded rifle her father had left with her and snuck out the back window with her brother. With Adam’s small hand in hers, she’d run with all her might toward the cornfield. Unable to keep up, she’d had to carry him on her side the last few yards.

  “Pa should be here,” her brother said.

  “Hush, Adam!” she whispered into his ear.

  Their father had left that morning for Jonesboro, a larger settlement about thirty miles away. He said he planned to buy supplies for their new home and an evening’s ‘entertainment’ as he called it. So, since that morning, she had been left alone with her brother. Louisa’s mother and Adam’s mother had both died long before they came here.

  Her father also wanted to find someone willing to rent a slave. He didn’t have the money to buy a slave, but he could rent one for a while from someone else. Apparently renting a slave for labor was a common practice amongst settlers who couldn’t afford to buy one to work their farm and fields. She found both owning and renting another human being disgraceful and wanted to tell him so.

  But she didn’t. The one time she’d stood up to him, by simply calling him old-fashioned, she received a slap to her cheek so hard it knocked her off her feet. Glaring down at her with narrowed, dark eyes, he’d shouted, “I’ll teach you to respect me.” Then, her father jerked her up by her hair and shoved her across the room. Her punishments were occasionally even more severe. Every so often, he would throw things at her or rip up her clothes. She would sometimes cry out, sometimes silently curse. But most of the time she would just tremble deep inside herself.

  She never fought back.

  Whenever her father hurt her, it always made Adam cry. And every time her brother cried, her father would whip him with a belt. “Men don’t cry,” he would yell as he snapped the leather across her brother’s small back at least once and, if he were really angry, two or three times.

  For her, witnessing Adam’s rough treatment was her father’s cruelest punishment. The sight wounded her more than anything else he could do to her.

  So, for the last several years, to protect her brother, she avoided doing or saying anything to set their father off. She would also feign respect for her father. That helped, but her tenuous harmony with him was as fragile as butterfly wings. Her life was an uneasy charade with only a pretense of happiness.

  That morning, her father had made sure she was well armed before he left and told her she was responsible for protecting their home. But when the Indians showed up, her first thought was to protect Adam, so she chose to hide him rather than fight. She hadn’t had time to grab the pistols, shot sack, and powder horn. Only the rifle. And the single shot it held was all that stood between her and her brother’s certain captivity if they were discovered. And for her, capture meant…

  God be merciful, she prayed.

  Her heart beat so hard it hurt as she peered through the corn stalks. By the silver-sheen of the moon, she saw the slinking braves surround her home. They appeared to be Comanche because straight-up eagle feathers and weasel tails decorated their hair worn in two long braids, the style of Comanche braves. She’d read newspaper accounts of Comanche attacks and remembered the writers’ frightening descriptions. Comanches would strike without mercy, from infants to old people. They were known to rape, pillage, torture, and even commit frightful butchery of the dead.

  These braves were even more fearsome than she had imagined.

  When the braves discovered that the house was empty, they whooped and yelped. Their shrill cries made her skin crawl and she snuggled deeper into the earth and rubbed dirt on her brother’s face and her cheeks and forehead.

  She wanted to run into the night as far away as their legs would carry them. But if she moved, she risked disturbing the corn stalks and alerting the Indians to their presence. Best to stay put.

  She tried desperately to push the heartrending stories she’d heard of Indian atrocities from her mind. For Adam’s sake, she could not afford to panic. She forbade herself to tremble and clenched her jaw to block the sob that wanted to escape her throat.

  For nearly a half-hour she observed the braves loading their horses with her family’s belongings. With every minute, she despaired more. They would be left with nothing.

  Even when she heard them ride off, she still couldn’t move. She kept her hands frozen around the rifle and her body burrowed into the earth.

  After Adam saw them leave, he soon fell asleep beside her in the corn row.

  She snuggled closer to him and covered his little back with her arm to keep him warm. She loved him so much. Her brother was the only good part of her life.

  She would do anything to protect him.

  After a sleepless and shivering all-night vigil, dawn finally came, casting an orange glow over the land. But a heavy mist creeping up from the river would soon reach them. She woke Adam and they staggered back to the house, hand in hand, to survey the damage. Her old mare was dead, drilled through with the shaft of a Comanche arrow. Her throat tightened with sorrow. She’d loved that mare. They’d been through many miles together. The horse was an old gal but still a trusty mount. Sadness gripped her, but Louisa would not let herself cry.

  “Why did they kill her?” she asked.

  “Maybe the Indians knew how much you loved her,” Adam said.

  Then, in the same spot he’d been standing in the night before, they found Adam’s dog, Buddy. His neck was covered in blood. Her brother dropped to his knees beside the dog and wailed.

  Louisa’s heart broke as she tried to comfort him.

  The Indians must have also known how much Adam loved Buddy.

  For a long time, they just sat there in the dirt beside each other.

  When Adam recovered enough to stop crying, Louisa led him toward the cabin. With her heart beating hard, she took a cautious step inside the dim interior. Their dismal cabin was even gloomier now. All their food was gone. The flour, the smoked wild hog, even their salt. The table with her stew pot, frying pan, and a cooking knife sat empty. Their meager bedding and winter blankets were also taken. Worse, all their clothing and shoes were stolen. She had precious few clothes anyway. Just two threadbare gowns. Now, all she had was the shift she’d slept in. It was the same for Adam. The nightshirt he wore was all he had left. Worst of all, their two pistols, shot, and powder were gone.

  Father would be furious.

  Frantically, she searched for the family Bible. Everything was in disarray and her eyes darted here and there. She righted a small table and spotted the Bible underneath. Grasping it against her chest, she whispered, “Thank you.” The Bible was all she had left of her mother. In the front, in her mother’s beautiful hand was Louisa’s name and her birthdate. Her father’s second wife, Adam’s mother, had also written her brother’s name and birthdate under hers. She ran her fingertip over the writing, feeling the love t
heir mothers must have felt as they’d written the names of their babies.

  When she glanced up, she saw Adam sitting on the floor silently crying.

  “We’re goin’ to die. We’ll starve or freeze to death,” he sobbed.

  “No, Adam, no,” she said as she crouched next to him. “Pa will buy us more food and clothing.” At least she hoped he would.

  “But he doesn’t have much money,” Adam wailed.

  “Then I’ll go to work and make some,” she said. She wondered just what she would do, but she didn’t wonder about her willingness to do it. She would do anything for her little brother. Well, almost anything. She wouldn’t sell herself, although she suspected that for enough money, her father would sell her.

  “When will Pa be back?” Adam asked.

  “I don’t know. It might be a day or two.” She couldn’t let Adam go that long without eating. He was already far too thin, and they would both grow weak from hunger. “We’ll have to cross the river. There are settlers on the other side. We’ve seen their cabins and cattle in the distance. We can alert the settlers to the Indian threat and maybe they’ll be kind enough to give us some food.”

  “Won’t Pa get mad if we’re not here? He’ll think the Indians carried us off.”

  “You’re right. He will.” She thought for a moment. There was a little paper, quill, and ink hidden beneath the floorboard with her father’s papers. She pried it up and scribbled a note as best she could. She could read well, but since paper was so scarce she hadn’t been able to practice her writing. So her script was crude and her spelling uncertain. She wrote akros river, drew an arrow that pointed toward the river, and signed it L & A. She positioned the note on the table so that the arrow pointed toward the Red River. Then she returned the writing materials to the hiding place and put the floorboard back in place.

  “Your mare is dead. How will we get over there?” Adam asked.

  “We’ll walk. After summer, the water level is low and there’s a buffalo trail across it.” They’d been told that Pecan Point was the only crossing place on the Red River for buffalo for many miles. If buffalo could get across, they could too.

  Adam pointed to her thin shift. “You’re goin’ to go out dressed like that?”

  “I have no choice. I don’t see any other clothing or even a blanket around here. Do you?”

  “Nope. And our boots are gone too.”

  Louisa snatched up the rifle in one hand and took Adam’s hand in the other. Clutching both, she banished the tears that wanted to fall and filled her heart with determination.

  She didn’t look back as they left. There wasn’t much to look at.

  Louisa led her brother through the grass-covered fields and under tall trees toward the river. She knew the well-trodden path well. She’d always loved to run and, since her father was a late riser, she’d sprinted to the river every morning since they moved here. Sometimes she ran in the evenings too, but she always made sure she was home before dark when coyotes and other critters came out to hunt.

  As she ran down the well-worn path, it always felt healing for her heart to pump hard and fast. The air would lift her long hair and cool her skin as her feet flew over dew-covered grass and leaves. Running gave her a sense of strength and freedom.

  But the feeling was always only temporary. As soon as she returned home, she would feel weak and trapped again. If only she could run away from her life. When would her struggles end? Would she ever know happiness? After her father’s rages, she would cry out to heaven with all she had left inside her. But her prayers and her faith were wearing as thin as she was.

  They stepped down through loose, reddish soil as they descended the steep, tree-lined bank. Fortunately, at the end of summer, the water level in the Red was low and only a foot or so deep where the water still flowed. They could easily wade through it. But there was another problem—quicksand. It had once swallowed a man and a horse in minutes, she’d been told.

  She handed the rifle to Adam. She had to find a sturdy stick to use to check for quicksand.

  “It’s heavy,” Adam said. The rifle was as tall as he was.

  “I know,” Louisa told him, “but I’ve got to check for quicksand. Just be sure you don’t shoot me with that thing. Never point it toward a person unless you intend to defend yourself. Put the barrel on your shoulder and hold it on the butt.”

  The first time she’d gone to the river to bathe and wash their clothes, her father had warned her to tread cautiously along the river’s edge because it was a common location for quicksand. She suspected his warning stemmed more from not wanting to lose his cook and laundress than it did from concern for her.

  She eyed the terrain and saw what she thought was the buffalo trail. Although the low morning fog and the mistiness of the river limited visibility and made it difficult to be sure. Water bubbled up in some spots. Those were the most dangerous places because it meant there was air underneath the soil. She spotted a long branch and snatched it up and took them a little further west where patches of the ground appeared drier.

  With quiet caution, she thumped the mud in front of her with the pole and started slowly across. “Stay right behind me,” she warned Adam.

  “Are you sure this is the buffalo crossing?” Adam asked. “What if it’s closer to the settlement?”

  She wasn’t sure. But she had to try. On foot, it would take them too long to reach the settlement. She needed to get Adam to safety now before any more Indians showed up. She took a deep breath, and stepped out onto the sand. When the ground easily gave way under the stick, she quickly took another course.

  “What if we fall into the quicksand?” her brother asked as he yanked a bare foot out of the sandy slurry.

  “Pa said to lean back and wait for your legs to float up, even if it takes an hour.”

  “What if they don’t? What if my head goes under too?”

  “Adam, let me concentrate.” Taking slow, measured steps, she couldn’t wait to reach the far bank. The distance seemed to stretch forever. From inside the riverbed, the river’s width seemed far wider than it had when they were standing on the riverbank. If she’d known it was this far across, she would never have attempted the crossing.

  Step by careful step she moved them forward. The river bank seemed close now. She glanced back at Adam whose look of trust and hope made her even more determined to get him to safety.

  As the sun rose, the morning air grew humid on the marshy riverbed and mosquitos started to buzz. First a few, then what seemed like hundreds hummed around them. Wearing only their thin nightclothes, they would soon be covered in bites. In her panic, she swatted at the swarming mosquitos with her stick and accidentally flung it.

  “I’ll get it,” Adam said.

  “No,” she said, but he’d already stepped toward it.

  Her eyes widened in horror as her brother sunk to his calves.

  “Oh, Lord, no!” she cried. “Adam, quick, toss me the rifle. Its weight will make you sink further.”

  He tried to toss the rifle to her, but its weight was too heavy for his small arms, and it landed between them. They both stared down with widened eyes as it sank into the mire.

  “Help me!” he cried.

  “Raise your knees!”

  He tried but his legs, surrounded by heavy sand, didn’t budge. “I can’t.” His sweet little face twisted with fear.

  Her mind raced. If she could just reach the rifle, if it hadn’t sunk too far, she could use it to tug him out. “Adam, don’t be afraid. I’ll get you out.”

  On the verge of tears, Adam merely nodded.

  Slowly, she shifted toward him.

  Chapter 3

  Samuel stood and wiped his hands on his pants, finished with the grim task of burying two of the braves. He left some of the rocks, deposited by the Red River over centuries along the bank when its waters ran high, in a pile. He would use them later for the third brave who was at the moment advancing medical science.

  The ri
sing sun revealed that the river was now only a peaceful, shimmering, thin blue ribbon. But heavy spring and fall floods often made the currents run so strong the river would create numerous cut banks, oxbow lakes, and bayous. The cut banks, or river cliffs, formed as the river’s strong currents collided with the soil on the river bank, often exposing tree roots and rocks.

  When they’d arrived here in early spring, the river flowed strong and its sparkling surface soon bewitched him. He yearned for it to run wild and free again and reflect the color of the sky and the trees. But not too wild because floods caused the river to clog with debris and teem with danger. And when overfull, the river always appeared rusty red, at least that’s what the old-timers told him. The color came from the red soil to the north that seeped into it as the water snakes south over hundreds of miles. The river’s long path ran south through the high plains and then east through the valley of north Texas before it turned south again and headed down through the mossy gloominess of Louisiana.

  Here, though, no gray moss hangs like old men’s beards from the trees. Their land was fresh-faced—a land with creation’s dew still on it. Samuel wondered though if it would stay that way for long. Farmers were trekking to the West from the stony fields of New England and southern families were drifting in from the crowded lands of Virginia and the two Carolinas. Still other pioneers—English, Scots, Welsh, and German—were newly arrived immigrants from clear across the Atlantic.

  Samuel climbed onto the wagon seat and gazed at the landscape, now covered in both shadow and light. The river and the wilderness stretched in both directions as far as he could see. Both were full of allure for a man who sought their bounty. But they were also full of perils and even terror for anyone who plunged into them unprepared or unwary.

  His family was more prepared than most. Before they left Kentucky, his father had the foresight to amass considerable savings. And before they left Louisiana for Texas, they also acquired a sizable arsenal of rifles and ammunition as well as building tools.