War Valley

by Lancaster Hill

  The horse continued to stare. Gannon patted its neck.

  “You’re right,” he said thoughtfully. “You’re always a horse. You do horse things. I’m still a man. To hold onto that, I have to do man things.”

  As he broke camp—which consisted of putting the saddle on the horse and checking the map he made to keep track of water—Gannon noticed an odd double dust storm in the distance, to the south. It was moving from west to east, and he could not make out what was causing it. That alone was reason to investigate. But there was another reason to go, one that stirred him to something bordering on haste.

  The sky was beginning to fill with buzzards, which joined the shrikes that hunted the early-morning skies. That meant someone was dying—or already meat.

  * * *

  Constance dressed quickly and entered the small sitting room of the modest Breen home. She made a point not to rush; as anxious as she was for word about Hank, she did not want to appear in a hurry. Her mother was already displeased that she refused to allow other men to call, and eagerness in this instance would only increase the tension.

  So she walked. Heart thumping, breath short, but her feet moving just-so like a proper lady. Her slippered feet shuffled quietly under her blue cotton morning dress, with a darker blue ribbon attached to the low neckline and a larger matching bow at the back of her waist.

  Officer Rufus Long rose from one of two armchairs when she entered the room. Her parents were Philadelphia-born and had been Union loyalists during the War. Their stand on the rights of Negroes was a large part of that. So Constance was not surprised to see the black man being treated as a welcome guest by Martha, with coffee poured from the breakfast table. The man stood incongruously with his china cup and saucer, not knowing whether to keep it or set it on the coffee table.

  Martha Breen graciously took it from him, set it down, and also rose. She simultaneously excused herself. That she did not feel the need to chaperone spoke of her racial advocacy, which trumped her social attitudes. Had the caller been Hank Gannon, the older woman would have left, but not at once and not with a smile.

  “Officer Long,” Constance said with a melodious voice and a little incline of the head.

  “Miss Breen,” he replied.

  “Please sit,” she said as she tucked herself into the other armchair, at the opposite end of the oblong coffee table.

  Long waited until she was settled before resuming his seat. There was a faint smell of gunpowder about the arms maintenance man, residue on even his cleanly laundered uniform.

  “My mother tells me you have been with Hank Gannon,” she said in what was also a pointedly unhurried manner.

  “Out on the plain, miss, yes,” he said. “East of Cedar Valley.”

  “Is he well?”

  “He’s all right, I think,” Long said. “He’s been living out there since he left here.”

  “In the wild?”

  “Yes’m,” Long said. “North of the arroyo—Snake Water. He even made himself a kind of officer’s cloak out of animal skins.”

  The idea was alarming to her, but Constance said, “I’m sure it gets cold at night.”

  Long smiled. “Yes, miss. I was out there. It does.” His smile become something else, something reflective. His eyes looked past his outwardly serene hostess, whose small white hands were folded tightly in her lap. “In fact, I was out last night and the only reason I’m alive is because of Hank Gannon.”

  “You were in some danger?” she asked to break the silence that followed.

  Long nodded. “Mad Indian. Killed my partner. Was aimin’ to kill me, I suspect. Hank showed up an’ took him away.”

  Her heart fluttered with expectation. “He arrested the redskin?”

  “No, Miss Breen.” Long’s eyes dropped. “He went off with him.”

  Constance had to struggle not to show her surprise. “With a murdering renegade?” she said.

  Now Constance was confused, and it registered openly on her face. “Let me understand. The redskin killed a police officer and Hank did nothing?”

  “The dead man was a scout, but that is exactly so,” Long replied. “As I said, miss, he has been livin’ out there in sort of a renegade way himself.” His eyes came back up. “But not so much that he failed to bid me tell you that he would be back.”

  Constance was touched and not surprised by that. Hank loved her, and she loved him. But there was another more urgent matter as she eyed the man’s clean shirt, trousers, and jacket. He had already come back, made his report, washed his face, and come here.

  “What—” she started, breathed to open her throat, started again. “What does Captain Keel intend?”

  “Miss Constance, you can imagine the captain was not pleased by this,” Long said. “He said—and I’d told Hank this—he said that if he’d come in with the renegade things might’ve been fixed for him. But he chose otherwise. I believe he will be pursued and arrested. Tried.”

  “What was he thinking?” she asked, wondering that herself but not expecting an answer.

  “Miss, like I was saying, there was something different about him,” Long told her. “Sometimes, three, four days out there, a man’s mind loses a little polish. A couple weeks? A month?” He didn’t have to finish.

  Constance was angry, though the only sign of it was a hardening in her voice. “Did Mr. Gannon indicate anything else of his plans? Anything specific?” Her soul, her heart, had already begun to shift. The sudden wall of formality was the first step; he was no longer “Hank.” How could a red man mean more to him than she did?

  “There was no specifics,” Long said, “nor when he would be back. But honestly, I don’t see how that’s possible unless in irons. He ‘abetted an enemy,’ is how the captain worded it.”

  “Of course.” Constance felt that inner wall fall when she pictured Hank in chains, in a police cart. She rose, forced a tight smile. “Thank you for bringing this news to me, Officer.”

  Long shot to his feet, as if coming to attention. “I’m sorry it wasn’t happier, Miss Constance.”

  She smiled tightly. “News is what it is. You have reported it fairly.”

  “I’ve tried to, ma’am. He—he was my friend, too.”

  Long did not see the tears in her eyes as she turned to go back to her room. He showed himself out, passing Martha, who was outside talking with her husband, who was repairing a loose runner on the patio rocker.

  Constance shut the door to her room and leaned against it, her slender shoulders heaving with a mix of sadness and rage. She composed herself quickly, not wishing her mother to see her like this. But her mind was anything but free. Hank had saved this man’s life. He had also spared the life of an Indian. He had said he would return. All of those were good and honorable things, yet she was angry!

  Though she had forced herself to swallow her tears, the young woman’s belly burned with upset. There was a throbbing behind her eyes, and her throat was once again tight. She prayed her mother did not come in now. The older woman had never liked Hank because of his strong Southern leanings, and this news would only validate her beliefs.

  What does it do to mine? Constance asked herself.

  The answer was in the struggle itself. She still loved him. She still wanted to love him. What she did not know was how that fit with his status, his life, as a fugitive plainsman.

  There was nothing in the young woman’s heart but agony, and there were only two ways she knew to settle that. One was unthinkable. The other—

  “Snake Water Valley,” she ruminated.

  Without hesitation, she ran to her small wardrobe, pulled open the door her father had just re-hinged and trued, and went digging through the contents.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  October 19, 1871

  The dust clouds had a strange, flattened shape. It wasn’t until Gannon closed in on the moving target that he realized why. They were rising from below ground level, from an arroyo that wound its way toward the ancient volcano, Pilot Knob
. The arroyo was Kwasinabóo Paa to the Comanche, literally “snake water” from the way the seasonal river wound sinuously through a mesa that unofficially marked the end of Comanche lands in the west and the Austin lowlands to the east. It was distinguished by limestone escarpments that looked like God had stacked jagged slabs one atop the other when He was trying to figure out just what to do with Texas. Unlike the other creeks that ran through the region—Williamson, Slaughter, Bear—Snake Water Creek was now dry bed populated only by the hardiest plants and critters. The mesa itself was cut in two by the north-south-ranging Roche Valley, named for the Austin surveyor who found out that rattlesnakes lived there in plenitude. Locals had argued that it wasn’t so much a valley as a half-mile-long cleft in the mesa, one that was shaped like an S, but no one particularly liked the appellation Roche Cleft.

  Before the drought—which had become more permanent than seasonal for reasons no one understood, but the Indians blamed on the spirit that lived beneath the plains—the creeks as well as the tributary of the Pedernales River, itself formed by the mighty Colorado, were more or less neutral territory shared by Indian and white hunters. When the Comanche moved on, patrols from Austin moved in to keep the region Indian-free. Though the Texas Special Police were spread throughout the state, with rarely more than a handful in Austin, the area was viewed by the governor and others as a source of revenue growth by allowing access to the entire Southwest and, thus, was of singular interest to Captain Keel. The governor also regarded the capital as a model city for racial harmony—which included Indians as long as they were not Comanche.

  None of the men liked drawing duty in this territory since, now and then, what Keel called “rascals” from the tribe came back to cause trouble. That wasn’t so much to keep the whites out but to keep them from pushing westward. Which was precisely what they did in Blanco Canyon after too many hunters, surveyors, and weekend riders recounted too many Comanche showing up to steal horses, provisions, and weapons. The Indians were careful not to seriously injure anyone lest they draw the wrath of the military.

  Well, they should’ve realized that was coming anyway, Gannon thought as he rode toward the dust. All the Comanche had to do to incur a war was to exist. Not that he blamed Austin or Washington either. There was too little water aboveground and thus too little arable land. A nation needed to be fed, fueled, clothed. Cattle, sheep, crops, horses—the rivers to the east were accounted for. That left only one direction.

  Gannon was still puzzled by the dust, which seemed to glow of its own as the sun was high enough to reach it. The clouds were like something caused by a horse in front, a mule in the back. But a pack animal would not be moving that fast. He had been approaching at an angle and, when he arrived at the edge, he straightened his ride to run alongside the deep gully. What he saw through the straw-colored haze made him sick and angry.

  The Indian he had met the night before, the man he had freed, was riding a police horse, marked with the intermingled TSP brand. It was a large mustang, roughly sixteen hands high at the withers. Behind it, tied to the animal by his ankle, was Moses Hawthorne. He was on his back, being dragged, the one-foot attachment causing him to swing from side to side. His buckskin jacket was still intact in front and on the arms, but ripped through beneath him, the scraps flying like tattered butterfly wings all around him. The arms danced as though he were a marionette, bobbing and jumping every time they hit a rock. A trail of blood followed his every move, painting the ground with a winding narrative of his death. There was no doubt that the former trapper was dead: somewhere along the way the back of his head had come off. Fingers of blood-dampened hair followed him, waving through the dust.

  The sun threw Gannon’s shadow behind him, and the Indian was unaware of his presence. Pacing the baleful scene, Gannon waited until there was a straightaway. Drawing his shotgun from its saddle-mounted holster, Gannon reined to a stop, held the horse firm, swung the scattergun into position, and blasted the rope that held the tracker to the animal. He aimed as far from the horse as possible so it wouldn’t be clipped by any ricochet off the stones. It was an ugly separation as the horse bolted ahead at the shot while Hawthorne bounced and flopped, front to back, spraying blood and bits of bone in all direction. He came to a stop at right angles to himself, his spine having snapped somewhere along the way.

  Roving Wolf reined hard and spun the horse around while it was still rearing in alarm. Gannon had the shotgun leveled at the Indian. Roving Wolf did not try to run.

  “I liked Moses Hawthorne,” Gannon said. “I’m sorry I let you live.”

  The brave did not explain himself. It was arrogance, Gannon suspected. Comanche pride. The former lawman nudged his horse ahead without losing his target.

  “Dismount and put your knife in the saddle sheath, then gather up the body,” Gannon said. “Put him on the horse before the buzzards light and walk ahead o’ me till the walls are low enough to climb from.”

  Gannon suspected the horse wouldn’t give him any trouble about carrying the dead man. Horses used smell to mate, to sense out upstart stallions, to recognize their own foal in a mess of young. The mustang would know Hawthorne, even with his lungs half torn out in the back.

  The Comanche went about his task without delay or complaint. That seemed strange until Gannon caught something to his left, something he had not seen before now. He allowed himself a brief look before turning back to the Indian. There was a bigger dust storm, one that seemed normal. But there was no wind, no flight of insects from that direction.

  And he realized, then, that it was not a natural occurrence. Roving Wolf was cooperating because Roving Wolf was expecting reinforcements.

  “You are one dog of a Comanche,” Gannon said.

  Gannon half expected the Indian to stop, slap his breast, and invite the man to exact vengeance while he could. But Roving Wolf continued his labors. He was clearly not one for grand, hair-on-your-chest gestures. Gannon also didn’t think he was cooperating to stay alive. More likely he wanted to die in battle, perhaps trying to escape.

  “Mount and ride slowly,” Gannon ordered when he was done.

  Without a word or delay, the Comanche was on the back of the mustang. Gannon stayed right behind him with one eye on the Indian, the other on the canyon. He did not want to stand and fight a war party of Comanche, but he could not just ride off. Moses Hawthorne was not a hero. He had no beef with the local natives and he would not have attacked first. His death and desecration were a cruel statement of some kind. This time, the Indian had to stand trial. Leaving that undone, Gannon knew he would be riding into a future that had no moral polestar, no meaning. Even if he went back to Florida, shame would dog everything he ever did.

  With the chill night departing under the glare of the sun, Gannon felt much warmer under his cloak than he should have. It was fear. He recognized it from the war, when the body moved because the brain said so, in contradiction to its own best interests. But those were the cards, and he would play them . . . even as he turned an eye to the west and saw the dust storm surging closer.

  * * *

  Amos Keel sat on his horse in front of a stationary line of ten members of the Texas Special Police. To his right, Colonel Roger Piedmont Nightingale took his place in front of a company of twenty-four members of his own newly formed Texas State Guard.

  Keel was not especially fond of Nightingale. The feeling was no doubt mutual, though it could be said that Nightingale regarded with barely concealed impatience everyone who wasn’t a brigadier general or higher. Keel understood the man and his kind. During the war, there had been opportunities to rise through initiative and bold action. Now, the normal order of growth had been restored to its previous seasons. One put in his time and hoped to be noticed. Men like Nightingale felt some kind of urgency on the back of their neck, frustrated to be in an outfit that was widely spread across a vast state. By the time one’s deeds reached headquarters, the actions were an echo.

  The Guard was an outgrowth of
the militia the revered Stephen Austin had formed in 1823 to keep the peace throughout the land—then on behalf of the Mexican Emperor Agustín de Iturbide. In addition to maintaining order, Lt. Col. Austin was instructed to subdue hostile Indians as well as settlers who wished to make Texas independent of Mexico. When the Republic of Texas was formed in 1836, President Sam Houston merged the scattered local forces into the Army of the Republic of Texas. That was absorbed by the United States Army in 1845, though many of the companies retained their charters to help patrol the vastness of the new state. These and other newly formed militias served with the Confederacy during the War and were parceled into a State Guard in the aftermath. Within that reorganization, Keel’s team was formed expressly to fight local crime.

  If the tall, flashy Colonel Nightingale understood the purpose of the organization, it was subsumed by his quest for personal aggrandizement. His desire for glory had won many campaigns for the Confederacy during the War, but that lost cause weighed heavily on him. His battles were no longer about causes first, but about the rise and legend of the officer himself. A reporter from Houston’s Daily Telegraph accompanied him on his major excursions; that journalist, Lee Bates, who wore eyeglasses and a bowler hat imported from London, had begun his career in Beadle’s Dime Novels. Some said he still wrote for them; the heroic Colonel Archer Barrington of the West bore a substantial resemblance to Nightingale, down to his trim goatee and pale blue eyes.

  Nightingale’s company had bivouacked at the U.S. Arsenal on Street Avenue by Waller Creek on the morning of October 16 with orders to protect the city from Comanche reprisals. Their orders gave them territorial jurisdiction that would have conflicted with that of the United States Army had they been present. Nightingale’s command was not to attack; making war was the job of the army, which was already in the field doing just that. The colonel established a picket line to the south, stretching for a half-mile along the river. The leeway Col. Nightingale had—and Keel saw, in the man’s eyes, an eagerness to use it—was that he could extend the defensive perimeter “as far as he judged necessary beyond the Colorado River.” Attacks were not expected, since the Indians had their own lands to protect. Nonetheless, Nightingale had instructed Keel to field small teams to watch for them. Though the colonel had no authority to make such a command, Keel obliged because his men knew the territory and the Guard did not.