War Valley

by Lancaster Hill

  Roving Wolf lay a hand on the boy’s forearm and added, “But it is not to be decided as being ‘good’ or ‘bad.’ A woman and a man are different, each does different things, yet each is essential in their own way. Ask yourself if a baby is good or bad. It cannot hunt but it can suckle. There is a place for all things in the tribe.”

  “Did Blanco Canyon make you stronger?” the lanky youth asked, sitting back and pulling the blanket tighter. His voice was wary, tentative. He knew what had happened there.

  Roving Wolf peered through the smoke as though he were looking directly into the past. A past that was just six days old, not yet shadow, still vivid and alive. He watched as the images of horses, riders, guns, arrows became increasingly vivid. So did the sounds: the crack of firearms, the cries of men and horses, the dull, dead whump of bodies dropping.

  “It did,” the brave replied. “The force of soldiers was greater than the number of us defending it. And a heroic death, protecting your lands and families, serves your life. Your spirit and those who follow grow greater in honor and in power.”

  “Can a victory be a loss?” Soon to Be a Man asked.

  The elder man smiled. “That is very wise. Yes,” he said. “The soldiers lost in the way a thunderstorm loses. It is here, fierce and great, but it passes. A force so large as the soldiers cannot be sustained. But the land remains. The Kotsoteka and Quahadi tribes who perished live on.” He fell silent. “They were an offense to our people, the first white force to enter the Sookobit,” he continued thoughtfully, using the word for the Comancheria, the “Comanche land.” “We came for them in the dark. Only a few of us, led by Wild Buck.”

  “He is very brave.”

  “We were brothers in blood,” Roving Wolf said. “We drove off their horses and the soldiers, roused, gave pursuit. They followed us to the top of the canyon where our party was waiting. The encounter was a victory for our people—but the only one, as the white men would not be fooled again. We divided in all directions of the wind. The soldiers,” he said with a hint of sadness, “they are still out there, hunting us. Before long, they will be here. I tell you this because you must be ready.”

  Soon to Be a Man leaned forward again to put his face in the smoke, closing his eyes and inhaling deeply to accept the full gift of the rabbits.

  “I will learn to—”

  He had stopped speaking before the echoing crack of the weapon reached the ears of his companion. The youth was knocked back, his arms pinwheeling, his head turning slightly as the bullet pierced his forehead just off center. The weapon of his father flew, clattered, vanished in the dark. Blood fountained from the brow of his dead body as Roving Wolf simultaneously flung himself across the young man and away from the light of the campfire.

  “Soon to Be a Man!” he said, more in mourning than in an effort to rouse the boy. Even in the dark he could see the small wound, feel the blood. With a guttural sound that was more vulpine than human, the Comanche simultaneously drew his bowie knife from its sheath and scuttled farther into the dark, leaving the boy to commune with their ancestors as his own spirit rose like clear smoke.

  The shot had come from the north. The gunman was not far, since the initial sound had been quite loud and the shot precise. The Comanche had no way of knowing if the man were alone, or how long he had been there. He and the boy—a boy, never to become a man—had arrived after dark. They would not have seen clouds of dust or the glint of the setting sun on metal, heard the sounds of horses or men. But it did not matter to Roving Wolf how many there were. Tonight, all would die.

  He moved from the fire and, shrouded in dark, knelt to feel around. He knifed the ground, tucked something in his belt, and when he was well clear of the campsite he began padding in the direction from which the sound had come. He asked the Great Spirit to use fang and claw to protect the remains of the boy until he could return. He promised the land that the coyote and the gray wolf would soon have bones on which to gnaw.

  * * *

  “Bang-up job,” the young black man said mockingly. “First cabin. Now the Injun is comin’ fer sure.”

  The other man, Joseph Williams, a Tonkawa scout from the Oklahoma Territory, lay stretched out behind a large, flat boulder. The air still smelled faintly of gunpowder from the single shot of the lever action “Yellow Boy” Winchester.

  “Good he comes,” Williams grunted. “Save me trouble of going after him.”

  “Just make sure that when you hear someone, you make sure it ain’t Ahrens and Hawthorne,” the black man said.

  “They not near,” Williams said, touching his nose. “And they never travel alone. Four feet sound different than two. Horse sound different than man.”

  “I’m not an idiot, Joseph,” the other said.

  “Nor I, Rufus.”

  The other man, Rufus Long, an officer of the Texas Special Police, had been referring to the other party that had left Austin the night before, Kurt Ahrens and his scout Moses Hawthorne, a former fur trapper. Worse than killing a pair of Comanche would be shooting two of their own men. Especially Ahrens, who regarded the Texas State Police as the only sanity on this frontier. It was a responsibility he took so seriously that he had packed Gannon’s grip and set it on the stoop rather than let a careless, undisciplined officer set foot among them ever again.

  Long was sprawled on his belly beside but slightly behind the scout. His last smoke had been just before sundown, at least six hours before, and he wanted one badly. He also wanted to wring some of the stiff-necked, baked-in, rooster-proud arrogance out of the redskin. No matter how many times Captain Keel gave them instructions, no matter what the situation in the field, if Williams saw a way to bend an order to “bring the smile of his ancestors upon him” through some Tonkawa deed, he did it.

  “The orders were to find them and report back, not to engage,” Long said. “The word the captain used was ‘reconnoiter.’”

  Long’s tone was not frightened but angry. A veteran of the Underground Railroad and the narrow survivor of a lynching by Rebels retreating from Gettysburg—which was interrupted when a Union spy put life above mission—Long did not scare easily. But he believed in following orders. Without them, organization crumbled and lives were lost.

  Williams half-turned and thrust an index finger toward Long, who recoiled slightly. “Find now, engage later,” the Tonkawa brave hissed, then turned the index finger toward himself. “Find now, engage now.” The warrior’s dark eyes seemed to pull his head around, back to the rocky field ahead. Even sharper than his eyes were his ears. Even in the dark, Williams could tell the footfall of a field mouse from a chipmunk. And though he couldn’t know for sure, he believed his nose just might be as good as that of any dog. He could tell if a buffalo or bear was sick at a half-mile downwind. That was why they were out here now, he and his green partner who was supposed to be watching and learning as they listened for Comanche warriors who preferred to move about in the dark.

  “Dammit, this was not in the mission talk,” Long muttered on, seeing in his mind the big face of Captain Keel as he told the force what they were to do. He had rallied them from across the state specifically to observe the Comanche. “A two-man nighttime huntin’ party was not part of his plan.”

  The Indian hushed him with a gesture. That was the problem with many of the scouts Keel engaged. They had jobs for which they accepted pay, but they also had blood feuds. Most of the time, the two complemented each other. But not tonight.

  The brave continued to face forward. He emptied himself of all but the present. He also knew when the creatures of the night were still, as they were now. It meant that danger was near—for them but also most likely for the two men. Williams did not like assuming a defensive posture, but after spilling Comanche blood that was the wisest course.

  There was a whiff of something musky on the wind. It preceded by an instant an animal flying toward them. At first Williams thought it was a squirrel that had fallen from a nearby tree. It wasn’t. The rabbit pe
lt landed on the Tonkawa, who flinched but did not fire. Long yelped as the Indian swatted it aside with his left arm. The bloody fur landed between them, and Williams raised the rifle barrel from the rock, listened. He heard nothing.

  The skin hadn’t flown far; the Comanche had to be near. Williams could smell him now but he couldn’t see him.

  “Jesus!”

  Long screamed involuntarily as scorpions began to sting him. Williams felt a bite too, in his neck, where the pelt had landed. He swore like a white man as he involuntarily slapped at the creature and knew that he was as good as dead.

  * * *

  After hurling the rabbit pelt with an arcing swing, Roving Wolf had dug his toes into a layer of rock to give himself purchase. As soon as he heard the officer’s cry, the slap of hand on flesh, he vaulted through the air like a human puma. He had smelled the remains of the shot that had killed his companion, heard the two men speak, knew where they were and how low to the ground. His right arm was raised and his mouth was filled with a silent war cry as he landed flat on the other side of the boulder. Only when the blade pierced sinew in the back of the gunman did the Comanche give voice to a raging scream. That was as much to freeze the white man as it was to vent his fury.

  The blade struck bone before sliding into a lung. The Tonkawa wheezed and tried to turn over but Roving Wolf held tight to the sleeve of his victim’s police jacket. His weight was too much. The knife came down again, this time into the man’s side. Then again in the same bloody spot. The death rattle in the man’s throat began to fade.

  The Comanche scrabbled off to the man’s right, ducking behind his moaning body, using it as a shield in case the other man came for him or fired into the dark. He did neither. Though Roving Wolf heard movement, saw shadows shift in the darkness nearby, the man was backing away—and also, if he had a raindrop of sense, afraid of hitting his partner.

  Except for the bubbling wheeze in the throat of the brave whose blood was rising, there was suddenly no sound. Until a shot cracked from not far behind the two Indians, striking nothing. It was followed by a low, sonorous voice.

  “Anybody move, he gets shot.” After allowing a moment for that to register, the speaker said, “’Cept Long, if that’s you.”

  Rufus Long didn’t answer immediately. The man’s confusion was evident in his silence.

  “Are you Rufus Long?” the voice repeated. “Munitions man for the Texas Special Police? Who smokes that armpit-grown tobacco from Canada because it’s cheap?”

  “I am,” he said after a moment. “Hey, who’n hell are you?”

  “Someone who could smell that tobacco stink on your uniform from a good distance away,” the speaker said. “Strike one o’ your police-issue matches. Let’s put some light on what’s what. And you with the knife?” he added. “My gun’s on you, Comanche. Flinch and you die.”

  Long turned and fumbled in his saddlebag, which sat against a cactus a few paces behind him. The horses were several yards beyond that, standing in a clearing amidst the bunchgrasses, tied to what was left of a lightning-struck elm. The officer scratched a match and extended it arm’s length. There was no wind, no need to cup it in his hands. All he saw were the two tangled forms of the Indians and the silhouette of a man standing several yards distant. Long took a rolled cigarette from the pocket of his black shirt, used the match to light it. The move was practical as well as satisfying: the lighted cigarette would save him having to light another match.

  The flame died, but the officer had already spotted dry tufts of blackseed needlegrass. He uprooted several with a fist, pressed the soil together as a common base, and ignited the clumps with the smoke. They burned bright enough for him to find and toss several twigs on the fire, washed into the valley by a June rain. The gurgling of the man beside him was impetus to move quickly, but as the Texas Special Police officer had told every runaway slave he had ever met, “Hound dogs love careless men.” Like breaking a wild horse, he had to stay on top of the human instinct to bolt in the opposite direction from danger.

  One way to stay calm was to stay focused on a task. Long avoided looking up until the fire was not only lit but sustained. On his knees now, he turned his eyes and perspiring brow toward the most recent arrival.

  “Shit me a large stone,” was all he said, but it was heartfelt.

  Hank Gannon looked at Long from the other side of the entangled Indians. The young growth of scruffy beard made the former officer look ten years older. Over what was left of his vest and white shirt he wore what looked like a patchwork cloak of pelts that reached to his knees. A pocket on the inside held flint for a fire and several dried tendons from deer he’d eaten. These tough lengths of string were used to attach pelts or food to the horse or to tie off wounds, if it came to that. His dirty hat was behind his neck, held there by the loosely knotted string; his light brown hair, slicked back from a river-water washing, was no longer carefully parted in the middle. The dark eyes looked a little hollow but no less alert for that.

  Those eyes shifted from the black man to the Indians.

  “You on top,” Gannon said. “Comanche!”

  Roving Wolf turned his head slightly without lifting it. His expression, what Gannon could see of it, was locked and feral, like a totem. He was lying flat on his victim, his torso athwart the man’s waist, at an angle. The knife was still in Joseph Williams’s side, blood running around the blade. The wheeze had dwindled to a whisper.

  “You understand me, Indian?” Gannon asked.

  The Comanche grunted through his teeth, which were like glistening little opals in the match light. Gannon was not surprised that the Comanche could speak English. Whatever the tribe, braves found the skill useful in dealing with traders, especially gun dealers.

  “What’s your name?” Gannon asked.

  The Indian was defiantly silent.

  Gannon shrugged, the flints in his pocket clattering. “I’ll just call you Pale Rabbit,” he said, thinking of two insults he did not think the Indian would allow to stand.

  The Comanche spoke up proudly. “Roving Wolf.”

  “Fitting,” Gannon said, looking at the man’s teeth. “Roving Wolf, leave the knife on the ground and make your way to the fire,” the man went on. “Slow. I won’t ask you to crawl, but if you move too fast you die. Understand?”

  The Comanche’s expression seemed to relax in the honor that was shown to him—not to be made a creature of the dirt. Even so, in response to the command, Roving Wolf moved forward in a way that was surprisingly like a reptile, his toes pushing, fingers flat at his sides and also pushing, his entire body moving without apparent effort. While that was going on, Rufus Long knee-walked back several paces, reached for his sidearm.

  Gannon half-turned on him. “Uh-uh, Long,” he said. “Hands up and open.”

  “Hank? Dammit, he killed—”

  “Yeah, I know. Hands. Show ’em.”

  The Texas Special Police officer raised them as slow as a sunrise, palms out. The cigarette was still between his lips, smoke curling up his nose. When he seemed disinclined to move again, Gannon turned his attention back on the Indian.

  “You, Roving Wolf—that’s far enough.”

  The Indian stopped. He did not put his face down but rested on his chin, peering into the darkness. Like his namesake, lying in wait behind a bush.

  “Now what you can do,” Gannon said to Long, “is get some more sticks for the fire. Then come and see if there’s anything to be done for poor Joe. Sounds like there’s still some breath left.”

  Long nodded, scuttling for kindling then moving around the fire and kneeling beside the wounded scout. He was within body-heat range of the Comanche. He could feel the radiant hate. The officer’s head ducked around as he looked at the wound. His knees were soaking with blood and he noticed, now, how far the pool had spread. Almost at the same time, Williams stopped breathing. Long exhaled with him. The officer did not realize how taut his shoulders were until they relaxed.

  “Cove
r him with something that ain’t another Indian,” Gannon said.

  “Can I get up?” Long asked.

  “Sure. I won’t kill you if you don’t give me cause. That was my horse.”

  “What? What was your horse?” Long asked, confused.

  “Whatever else you heard from my brothers-in-arms, my loyal friends, my commander, it’s my horse kills people, not me,” Gannon told him. “An’ said animal is a good quarter mile elsewhere.” He took a step forward. “I’m assumin’ the captain did tell people what happened with Sketch Lively, yes?”

  “He did,” Long said. “But he didn’t tell us why you chose to run instead of tellin’ your side at an inquiry.”

  “Did anyone ask him?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?” Gannon asked.

  “You had orientation,” Long said. “You know commanders can’t discuss legal matters that pertain to others.”

  Gannon shook his head. Keel could have told them, unofficially. He probably did not want to create factions of white versus black, Northerner versus Southerner, by revealing just how flimsy the evidence was against the man.

  “I did not ‘run,’” Gannon said.

  “What do you call clearin’ out of town like it was a whorehouse raid?”

  “I call it bein’ pushed out the window. There wasn’t gonna be any ‘inquiry,’” Gannon said, practically spitting the word.

  “Why? If you had a case—”

  “I had a corpse instead of a prisoner,” Gannon said. “Keel made it clear there was no way I got out of this clean. He probably thought he was being generous, letting me avoid dismissal and jail time.” He shook his head, the matter as raw as if he were still standing in the stable. “You know that railroad they’re buildin’? Brother, I took that ride, straight into exile.”

  Long considered this. “I don’t care anything about politics, but you been a good man to me. I woulda said so.”

  “I’m gratified,” Gannon replied insincerely.

  Long got up, feeling the soaked blood run down the inside of his trousers. He yipped. There was a scorpion in the pant leg too, crawling on the inside of his right thigh. He shook it out as he walked to Williams’s horse. Recovering the bundled blanket, he returned and lay it over him. “I assume you came here on account o’ the shot?”