All of that flashed through his tortured brain within the space of several heartbeats. He looked away, not wanting to witness what came next. But it was different from what came before. The Indian had let her free so she would struggle and make more noise. It was time to turn up the heat on the men at the other end of the valley.
Gannon bit until his arm bled. He cried into his sleeve, heaving as he could not escape the horror of what was transpiring. And then, without thought, without care, more animal than man, he drew the knife and turned toward the mouth of the valley and stalked forward.
* * *
The brown mustang had to be restrained by two men as the naked body was lashed to its back. The corpse lay faceup, tied on the bare animal with the billet strap from the saddle and additional lengths of rope. His neck was tied to the neck of the horse so that his face was looking backward. Defiling Comanche tradition, the man had not been bundled for interment but exposed to the world like carrion.
Nor did the insult stop there. In that face were two dark, bloody holes where the eyes had been. The Comanche believed in dying bravely and enjoying the rewards of smoking a pipe with ancestors and warriors in the presence of the Big Father. Sightless, the spirit of a dead Comanche could not find his way to this eternal tribe. As much as the suffering of the captive woman was meant to unnerve the white men, this would shock the Comanche. At least, it would tell them that their enemy was not new to the ways of the plain. As Governor Davis understood, drawing on different nationalities, different ethnicities, different tribes of many to create a new one, an American tribe, was the way to defeat these large pockets of resistance.
When everything was ready, Garcia walked the horse to the valley entrance and gave it a swat that started it running. Unhappy with its burden, it would venture in far enough so that the Indians would hear it and likely send another scout to the mesa, if they hadn’t already. The cries of the woman, growing louder as the horse went along, would also cause it to run. Soon enough, the message would be received.
“Do we want to send another man up there?” the Tejano asked Calvin when he rejoined the camp.
“I don’t know what happened up there with Whitestraw, but I don’t want to lose another man,” Calvin told him.
“Sergeant!”
It was Dr. Zachary. Calvin hurried over. The doctor was standing beside his patient, who was covered in a heavy wool blanket. Just beyond the lantern light, Nightingale had been covered with a white sheet.
“I know what the captain said, and I know what you said,” Zachary drawled, “but his body temperature is very low. As risky as moving him in the wagon might be, leaving him out here, in the nighttime cold, and without proper surgical facilities, is almost certainly going to kill him.”
“I’m . . . staying,” Keel rasped.
Calvin put his hands on his hips, studied the ground. “You can’t go at night,” he said after considering the matter. “Comanche may have circled round, set up an ambush—and I can’t spare any men. If we get that girl, she will need the wagon.” He shook his head. “I have to go with the captain on this.”
“Fine, fine,” Zachary said. “I have done my best here and I leave it in God’s hands now.”
Calvin looked down at the officer, whose eyes were shut, his breathing strained. The sergeant decided not to tell him about Whitestraw. He lay a big, comforting hand on the man’s shoulder and walked back to the men.
“What do we do if they do nothing?” Garcia asked.
“I’ve been considering that m’self,” the sergeant replied. “Neither of us can afford to leave the other camped here. I’ve been thinkin’ about maybe a small squad going around one side or the other, trying to pick off a few in the dark, draw ’em into a larger force waiting behind.”
“I volunteer for that,” Garcia said, adding, “It will have to be done, sometime. And before dawn.”
“What if the Comanche had the same idea ten minutes ago?” Calvin asked.
Before the sergeant could decide, something unexpected draw the attention of every man to the valley.
* * *
Except for hate, there was not a human thought or feeling in the mind or body of Hank Gannon. Any pain he felt before was gone now, consumed by the flame that filled him from toe to skull. He did not care if his life ended, for it could never be the same. The stench of this deed would remain in his nostrils every minute he lived. Even as he moved toward the wagon, he was not sure what he would do, whether save Constance by trying to get her away or by killing her. This would never leave her, awake or asleep, even thousands of miles from here where once they had dreamt of being.
Just a few yards from the valley opening, there was enough of a military man and police officer still functioning in Gannon’s mind and muscles to form a plan: stab the Indian, stab the girl, stab himself. He did not know where the rest of the war party was, but they would be nearby and they would see him in—
The fire.
They had given him the means to do more than stop the suffering of an innocent girl. The brake was not on; he could see that by the way it shifted as the brave moved.
Gannon pulled his fur cloak around his right shoulder to cushion the blow and ran forward. He hit the cart hard, driving it forward. It stopped on top of the fire the Comanche had lit. The Indian in the back got up on his straightened arms and looked back as Gannon tore down the back of the wagon and pulled himself in. He remained on his knees; the Indian only had time to turn his body as the knife was driven into the small of his back, then again. Gannon crawled forward, put the blade under his chin, and cut so hard and deep that the man’s head listed to the right before the rest of him did. With his left hand, Gannon grabbed the brave’s free-flowing hair, dragged him off the girl, and thrust him against the right side of the wagon.
The underside of the wagon was beginning to smolder as Gannon loomed over Constance. He saw the outline of her face, a shape he had seen and lightly touched so often in the dark, and he knew in that same instant that he could not kill her.
With a snarl, Gannon tore off his cloak and forced it on top of her. The camp was already stirring as war cries pierced the silent night. He rose as fire began to crawl up the sides of the wagon. It wouldn’t be long before they were overcome with smoke or dropped through the weakened floorboards.
The pain was catching up to Gannon as he bent and scooped up the cloak with its precious cargo. She was panting, sobbing, confused. He had a choice: to run uncertainly into the valley or to rush blindly out into the night.
He chose the shortest distance to armed support. But not on foot.
Gannon stepped onto the toeboard below the seat just as the floorboards gave way. He dropped Constance onto the back of the horse then bent to slash the straps that held the animal to the hitch rail just as a pair of Indians rounded the burning wagon. They charged toward him. In that moment, Gannon saw the entire camp, lit and exposed. What he saw concerned him. More accurately, it was what he did not see that worried him.
The animal bucked and whinnied as the fire crawled up the neck of the wagon but wasn’t able to get away.
He and the woman were not going to get away in time. If Gannon turned to face them, he would never get away. And Constance was in no condition to sit the horse, let alone guide it by herself. But that is exactly what they were going to have to try.
Wincing from the pain in his side, the exertion, Gannon jumped to the ground to cut the straps and free the horse.
“Constance, hold on to the reins!” Gannon cried. He was able to cut one strap, the one on the far side of the blaze, then turned to the nearer length of leather. His sleeve was on fire and he had to take a moment to slap it out.
The Indians had separated, one of them clearly intending to circle around the white man and pull the woman from the horse. Gannon had to stop him. Leaving the second strap half-cut, he rose, the knife across his chest, ready to slash the man to bloody ribbons.
Two shots banged out over the crackling
fire and the two Indians fell in succession. Gannon looked in the direction from which the shots had come. He saw Constance standing on the other side of the horse, his cloak still hanging from her back, shouldering the rifle that her attacker had left against a cactus. There was no time to admire her courage or to chastise himself for having forgotten the weapon. The rest of the camp had been roused and was in motion, whooping.
Grabbing the hip strap above the intended cut, Gannon slashed down to free the animal from the burning wagon. The horse tried to get away, but Gannon was able to hold it long enough to pull himself to the side. Constance was standing on the other side, breathing hard, hunched like a woman four times her age. Swinging into the saddle, Gannon held the checkrein at the animal’s neck and backed it up several paces.
He reached over to Constance. “Come!” he said urgently.
She stood frozen.
“Constance, take my hand!”
The woman looked at him. She threw the rifle down as if it were a viper, then took his extended arm with both hands. He swung her into the saddle, wheeled the draft horse around, and rode from the cone of light cast by the fire. Shots cracked, missing him in the dark. The Indians must have thought he was headed into the plains because they were spreading out in that direction, grabbing burning planks to use as makeshift torches. Only at the last possible moment did Gannon swing back around, briefly entering the outer extremities of the glow before galloping into the valley. The Comanche saw him and fired into the mouth of the valley, but their shots did nothing more than spark and ricochet wide of his position. He slowed only slightly so he could hear if the Indians would pursue. They did not; they could not be sure this rescue was not part of a larger ambush. More likely, they would send a scout to watch and see if the white men left or peeled off a small party to send the girl home. Gannon did not think they would do either. The men were here to stop a Comanche war party and would need to be at full strength.
The sudden, urgent desire to survive was a strange sensation for a man who had wanted only swift death for himself and his loved one just a few minutes before. He was too focused on escape to consider the matter, but he was not unaware of her slender arms holding his waist and, more than that, her cool poise saving their lives just moments before. He did not, could not, know what she was thinking and feeling or what the future might hold for them. But right now, he knew that he had never felt closer to a person in his entire life. The hope rooted in that feeling was as powerful and new as anything he had ever experienced.
He did not bother Constance as they rode. She would speak if and when it suited her. Gannon imagined that, right now, what she wanted was to feel safe and pray—for her deliverance and for her soul, should she be forced to surrender it this night.
CHAPTER NINE
October 20, 1871
Gannon’s mind was drawn back to the moment by the sounds of rustling in some scrub ahead. Whoever it was made no effort to conceal himself. Gannon didn’t think it could be an Indian, but he couldn’t imagine why one of the soldiers would be moseying around the valley in the dark. From his experiences during the afternoon, he was relatively sure no one else was down here. Roving Wolf? If he were awake, he would not likely be rummaging around in the dark but resting from the loss of blood.
Gannon remained in the center of the valley; too far to either side, he would not be able to make out anyone or anything in the dark. Nearly abreast the sound, he finally saw the shape of a man spread on the ground.
“Look away, Constance,” he said softly as he moved closer.
“What is it?” she asked.
“A dead Comanche,” he replied.
She answered, “I will see it.”
Gannon did not argue. He had not expected her to speak at all. His own mind was numb and he needed to focus on immediate matters.
His first thought was that Roving Wolf had come to, began making his way toward the Comanche camp, and passed out. But it was not Roving Wolf. In the dim light of the fire burning at the Comanche camp, he saw a relatively small man who had no clothing, no body hair—a brave. He appeared to have been shot in the chest and there was blood on the side of his face. There were ropes strewn about—none of it made sense.
Coyotes were pulling at the flesh of his thighs and a pair of rodents had their mouths in one of the chest wounds. His eyes had been cut out, but not by any of these; the blood around them was dried.
The eye-gouging was done by a man, a show of contempt for the enemy. It did not seem like something Captain Keel would do, give the Indians an earthbound spirit to assist and guide them. He knew from the captain’s briefings that their belief in the power of the dead was strong and it made them a more aggressive, cohesive fighting force.
But then what is he doing out here? Gannon wondered. And who brought him?
“What is it?” Constance asked.
“An Indian,” he said. “Dead.”
“I’m glad,” she replied.
There was clearly a reason for this mutilation, but Gannon had no mortal notion what it could possibly be. There was nothing he could do, save to ride over and use the horse to chase away the animals. It was a gesture, nothing more; as soon as he had gone, they would be back.
Shifting his attention from the Indians behind him, Gannon began to think about the one before him. He was angry he had left him free, yet his priorities had been so different a short time before.
You expected to die there, he reminded himself.
Come what may, Roving Wolf was a creature of honor. He might not care about the lady, but he would not take any action that might harm her.
The deeds done, the fire in the blood subsiding, Gannon’s posture on horseback began taxing his ribs. There was no saddle, just a back pad, and the pain began to return.
“H-hold on to the checkreins,” he said. Gannon stopped the horse and slid from its back. He landed with a jolt that caused him to gasp.
“How are you hurt?” Constance asked.
“Explosion knocked me back,” he said. “I’ll be okay. Horse took most of it.” He gestured toward the other side of the valley. “We can’t stop—Captain Keel is on the other side.” Since they were talking now, he added apologetically, “I’m sorry I don’t have any water—anything.”
“Washing cannot help,” she said.
He had been thinking about her being thirsty, not about her body or how she felt. Her remark cut like a scythe.
Gannon grabbed the throat latch with his right hand, as much for support as to guide the animal. He began to feel miserable again, stupidly helpless. If Constance were to have a child, it would be a half-breed. If she were to see a physician, she could suffer organ damage from the tansy oil, pennyroyal, and opium mix such doctors prescribed—or hemorrhage to death at worst, or give up forever her ability to have children, if the “female syringe” or a surgery were used. Gannon had seen it all in Florida, where slaves were routinely abused by their masters.
The question was not just for Constance, however. It was for him. What would he do if she gave birth to the child of a Comanche or were rendered sterile? He did not like any of the answers he gave himself.
But what man would, who is not a saint—and for whom the question would not, thus, be relevant?
As they neared the spot where Gannon had blown out the side wall of the valley, they were forced to move to the opposite side to avoid the extensive debris. Gannon did not realize he had done so much damage. He could not see if Roving Wolf were still there; if he had not bled to death, then he would be looking for a way to bind his wound. Either way, Gannon continued on.
“Hank—”
There was slight urgency in her voice. Gannon looked from Constance to where she was pointing.
Before him stood the brown pony of Officer Lincoln Leon Ames, one of the newest police recruits. On its back, however, was not the diminutive young man.
It was Roving Wolf.
* * *
Roving Wolf had awakened when he felt a
horse nuzzle him. He wasn’t sure which of them was more startled when he bolted upright and gagged. The horse backed off, and the Comanche immediately reached for his throat. He felt the blood, winced at the narrow wound, remembered what had happened.
Not every warrior had red skin. He had underestimated the white man and had paid the price.
Roving Wolf used the ropes strung strangely around the horse to help him get to his feet, and only then did he notice its cargo. He could not see it clearly but he saw enough to stagger back, fall over some of the rocks blown from the wall, and scrabble back in horror. He had recognized Wild Buck, his friend. This was another black day, and the white men had added to their bleak destiny with each murder.
The Comanche went to the wall of the valley, retrieved his blanket from the ledge, and used what was left of the harness of the dead horse to extend its reach. Then he felt his way to the opening in the wall, careful not to tumble in. He lowered the blanket, allowed it to soak up water, then retrieved it. He used one hand to wring it out, the other to wash his throat. The wound stung, and it was deeper than he had first thought. He could feel the soreness inside as well as out.
When he was finished, he tore the blanket at the edge and wrapped a length of it like a scarf around the bloody wound. Then he returned to the pony. He felt for and found the knots that held Wild Buck in place. Quickly undoing them, he gently cradled the dead man and carried him to the center of the valley. He would bind and bury him when there was light. For now, all he could do was cover him with rocks—
There was a flash to his right, at the mouth of the valley. Noise, followed by war whoops. Gunfire. Then more gunfire and a larger blaze.
The white man is dead, he thought bitterly.
The Comanche was still crouching on the ground when he heard the crack of the hooves on stone: one horse, headed into the valley, riding heavy—likely two on its back and not one of the Indian horses. There was no pursuit.
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