War Valley

by Lancaster Hill

“None. The brave acted very much as if he were alone.”

  “How does a man act when he is alone, Officer?”

  It took a second for Bosley to figure out what he had actually meant by that. “He was only interested in Gannon. He did not look around for approval or ask for anyone’s opinion.”

  “Gannon was still in this subterranean cavern.”

  “Yes.”

  “Your impression being—?”

  “The Indian wants him,” Bosley said. “He told him to stay down there until we were gone.”

  “Did you see any other weapons?”

  “It was very dark, Sergeant.”

  Calvin considered this. Gannon had no standing with the Texas Special Police. He was a citizen who had put himself at risk. The hostage had been recovered. Bosley had returned. Their mission was to protect, not attack. A defensive position, where the only means of attack was through a bottleneck valley, from a high mesa, or coming around rock walls that afforded very little cover, was a strong tactical advantage.

  There is no good, sane reason to enter that valley.

  Calvin turned from Bosley. The men were very still. The only sounds coming from the ambulance were sporadic whimpering and the indecipherable but softly consoling words of the doctor.

  They tortured an innocent girl, Calvin thought. If the Comanche left now, the army in the west might or might not intercept them. If the Comanche scrubbed off their war paint, there would be no justification to assume they were a war party.

  Would they leave now? Calvin wondered. Could they return to their land, regroup—now that they knew the size of the force and tactics that would be fielded against them—and return?

  Anything was possible. That was the weakness of defense: reacting instead of making something happen. Calvin looked to the east. Simply reacting to this, with the sun falling flush upon them, was a bad idea.

  Keel would wait for an attack. Calvin ached to launch one.

  “Garcia!” he said.

  The Tejano ran over from his position nearer the valley. “Yes, Sergeant?”

  “Have our men muster on the western side of the outer wall,” he said. “I’m going to have Nightingale’s men set up a picket just northeast.” He looked at the hint of glow to the east. “You got about ten minutes. I want to push those redskin bastards right into the sun—and a line of guardsmen.”

  Garcia was off with a sharp salute and Calvin walked to where the bulk of Nightingale’s men were stationed. Official or not, Gannon had distinguished himself like a Texas Special Police officer should. Whatever that Comanche had in mind wasn’t good. No man with a backbone could do less than try to stop it, whatever the cost.

  * * *

  Buffalo Eyes breathed the foul smell of the burnt paint, seared metal, and blackened wood. There was a sense of satisfaction in that stench. Though they had lost their prize, the party had been reminded of what the destruction of white things smelled like. Like the smell of blood, the smoke had whetted their taste for more. They would take fire to the white men and make all of their settlements like this wagon.

  The war chief called a council of his eldest braves, who sat in a circle on the ground as the last of the night hours began to fade. Buffalo Eyes explained that they must ride through the valley, along both sides, and use crossfire to pick off any of the enemy who came near while using the stone for protection. By this means, he believed that at least half the force he saw the day before would be killed before a counterattack could be mounted. He also believed that the steep walls would prevent the rising sun from revealing them or blinding them.

  Buffalo Eyes also ordered two of the twenty-two braves to ascend the mesa, one on each side. They were to kill any white men who might be up there and set up covering fire if necessary.

  There had been thirty-four whites when they met in the plains. There would be fewer now. And by the time the sun rose, there would be fewer still.

  When this day was done, there would be nothing to stop the Comanche from riding through Austin and burning both the city and its people.

  * * *

  Neither Albert nor Martha Breen had slept. They left the bedroom shortly before sunup, made coffee, and sat on the front porch looking expectantly toward the south. The air was warm and still, tinged with the hint of dust kicked up by the railroad workers who were already at work by torchlight, moving iron and tools and crates of ties. Albert did not rock in his rocker nor Martha move on the swing bench. The streets were nearly empty, and the familiar clatter of their horse and wagon was defiantly absent. Albert would have done any penance the Lord asked just to hear it coming toward them.

  It wasn’t just the absence of their daughter that kept them awake, though that was the largest part of it. Their night was filled with Martha Breen verbally moving between anger and disappointment, and Albert Breen silently regretting his action and also inaction toward Hank Gannon. He did not entirely trust the man and his motivations. Constance was a pretty girl, intelligent, but inclined to swoon for a tall man in a vest and gun. He should have taken a more forceful hand early on.

  “I should go to the stable and hire a horse,” Albert said after a long, dismal silence.

  “You don’t know where she went,” Martha said, her voice as harsh as the expression he could just make out in the lamplight glowing just inside the window. “And what would you do, drag her back?”

  “Talk to her,” Albert said quietly. “That’s all.”

  “She hasn’t listened to us since she met that man,” Martha complained. “What makes you think she would listen now?”

  “Because I wouldn’t tell her what we’ve—what you’ve—told her before,” he said.

  “To be sensible? To be prudent? To heed her elders who have been where she is?”

  “That,” Albert began, “is as dead as the Confederacy.”

  The hard face snapped toward him. “There is something blasphemous about that remark, Albert Breen. Our daughter is not—”

  “What?” her husband interrupted. “Rebellious? Seeking to assert her own rights?”

  “There is nothing in Constance that aligns with wretched slaveholders, and I won’t have you comparing them,” Martha said.

  “It’s just conversation,” Albert said, sipping the now-warm coffee.

  “Well, it’s rude,” his wife replied. “We have always fought to better others, whether slave or poor or even ourselves. We built a life here so that our daughter could have a new world, a better world, a cleaner world. Something of refinement.”

  “As you say, ‘we’ did that,” Albert replied. “Then she found Hank and turned her eyes westward, as we did when we looked to Texas. What might she want for her own children?” He set the chipped china cup on a small wooden table he had built. “I wonder, Martha.”

  When he did not finish the thought, his wife said, “Wonder what?”

  “How much she was running toward Hank and how much she was running away from here?”

  The words set Martha back, moved her so hard that her husband heard the bench squeak, the cup rattle.

  “She would not do that,” the woman decided after a moment.

  “I don’t see her,” he said.

  “You’re just being impertinent,” Martha said.

  “No,” Albert replied. “Just asking questions. Sometimes, when I’m assembling something I worked out on paper, it mysteriously, spitefully, rigidly will not go together. It usually turns out to be a mistake in more than one piece. Moisture, sevens that I misread as ones, or even—I did this the other day, with that loft in the Masons’ barn—I cut pieces from two separate plans.”

  “Our daughter is not a mute, inflexible piece of wood.”

  “Which is why you can’t ‘fix’ whatever is wrong by sawing or hammering,” Albert said. “And that’s just what we’ve been doing. Do that enough and the plank splits.”

  Martha shook her head slowly. “I talk to the women who come for pies,” she said. “Their daughters accept the guidance an
d wisdom of their mothers. They want to live better lives, finer lives, be a part of a decent and respected family.”

  “Are you talking about the daughters . . . or the mothers?”

  “You really are trying me, Albert,” she said. “You talk as if there is something wrong with raising yourself up. Back in Ireland—what if Hank Gannon had been a Londoner? Or a seaman out of Plymouth? What if his birthright had been the oppression of our countrymen? Would you have been so insinuating then? So ready to forgive a daughter’s infatuation?”

  “If I cared more for what my neighbors thought than for what my daughter felt, then no,” Albert said.

  “Another impiety,” she said.

  Albert shrugged. “Maybe so.” He looked down the street, saw the new day just beginning to arrive. “I should really consider a pipe,” he said.

  “You’d burn the lumber, like that fool who sold hay. Why would you do something so reckless?”

  “It would give me something useful to do with my mouth,” he replied.

  Martha huffed, raised herself awkwardly, in parts, due to a back stiffened by years of bending over pies, and took the coffee cups inside. Albert remained where he was, looking down the street, his eyes damp, quietly telling the Lord that he would do whatever the Almighty required to have his daughter return—or at least to know that somewhere out there she was happy.

  * * *

  The Comanche entered the valley in two divided rows, Buffalo Eyes leading the men on the west, Strong Elk in front on the east. The odor of horse was in the air, but not strong; the horses—Buffalo Eyes detected two scents—were no longer present.

  With vision as sharp as the knife in his belt, Buffalo Eyes spotted Roving Wolf before any of the others. The brave was upright and leaning against the western wall of the valley, edged in orange-edged sunlight. Buffalo Eyes passed by him and raised his hand for both rows of riders to stop.

  “The gunshot?” the war chief asked.

  “A white officer,” Roving Wolf rasped. “He is of no consequence. Three of our party . . . dead below. The officer, the girl, and the man Gannon have all moved on to the white camp.” He indicated the other end of the valley.

  “Gannon. He who attacked our camp?”

  Roving Wolf nodded slightly, painfully.

  Buffalo Eyes had no pony to spare for Roving Wolf, nor would he have been much help in his current state. “You will join us when you are able,” the war chief said.

  The wounded Comanche nodded again.

  Buffalo Eyes indicated for the braves to resume their passage through the valley, and the horses continued at their slow, careful pace.

  This white man, Gannon, was formidable. He had rescued the captive and then bested Roving Wolf. Buffalo Eyes was keen to find the man and kill him. His death would not just remove a powerful enemy, it would be great medicine. The war chief desired that privilege for himself. And he would have it soon, he hoped. He had never believed the white men had returned to their city, as the leader had said. He had not expected him to. He had known they would block the other end of the valley—and, so doing, would leave themselves open to being cut down like rabbits in a warren.

  The first birds of morning were in motion overhead, along with the larger birds that hunted them. The breeds, the patterns, were known to Buffalo Eyes, who missed his lands and his family to the west. He wondered if he should ever see them again. The ways of war were uncertain, however great the resolve and courage of the braves. With his own eyes he had seen the skins of his namesake piled higher than a small hill—and they, too, once owned this land.

  As the Big Father opens his eyes on a new day, and the spirits of the birds and bucks and buffalo move among us, only he knows who shall prevail this day, and who shall end it as ghosts in his great teepee.

  So long as he acted without fear, Buffalo Eyes would be content with his fate.

  The war chief suddenly raised his hand again and stopped. A few horses snorted and were silenced by their riders. Buffalo Eyes listened. There were sounds of movement in the distance, at the other end of the valley.

  He motioned for Strong Elk to dismount and learn what the white men were doing. The big Comanche dropped from his horse, drew tomahawk and knife from his belt, and eased ahead. He stayed hidden from the fresh colors of the rising sun, blending with the crags as he moved among them. He vanished beyond a gentle turn in the valley. But the noise was clear, not echoing. They were not far from the end.

  The sounds of men and horses in motion continued—but then there was another sound.

  A gunshot.

  * * *

  “What the hell is that now?”

  Sgt. Calvin spoke in a loud whisper through locked teeth as he was about to mount his horse. The men had organized into two groups, were preparing to ride out, when the shot popped loudly just to the south.

  Almost immediately, and much louder, Calvin gave the order to dismount. Then he asked if anyone had been hit.

  No one had been. There was no second shot. It could be Bosley’s Colt, which meant it could be the Indian. The Comanche might have been firing at the nearest officer to see if he was in range. If he was willing to waste a shot, it meant he had four more.

  “Garcia, spread the men out,” Calvin ordered, drawing his own weapon and getting back on his horse.

  “Yes, Sergeant? But where—?”

  “Watch for an attack from the outside,” the sergeant interrupted, “do not advance without my signal, and Garcia?”

  “Yes?”

  “Don’t give me a pain!” With that, Calvin reined his horse around and galloped toward the valley.

  The Tejano barked out the order, though most of the men had already begun to move apart. Keel had drilled them regularly not to cluster—or to bump one into the other—under fire. As the dispersal was underway, Garcia pulled his rifle from the saddle holster, squatted behind the nearest boulder, and prepared to cover the sergeant. His Winchester would be able to reach anyone who took a shot from the valley. From here, he could also watch for an assault from around the mesa.

  El burro sabe mas que tu, he thought, repeating something his father used to say to him. The donkey knows more than you. But Garcia meant it as a show of respect for Calvin’s courage, even when he acted impulsively, as now.

  It was light enough now to see the plain, and also to be seen upon it. Calvin skillfully maneuvered the horse around the boulders that covered the field—some as large as a man, some as low and flat as a picnic blanket. He had his own .44 Colt in his hand as his eyes searched the still-dark opening. The jagged slash looked like a black lightning bolt, stuck in the earth, as though thrown there by some ancient god. Calvin felt the power of the land run through him. The Indians might have their sky gods and animal spirits, but an armed man on horseback, at full charge, was a thing of cataclysmic consequence.

  The dirty sleeves of his white shirt billowed with the speed of his approach, and his brow dipped toward the target to keep dust from his eyes. He was not an easy target, but he was a target nonetheless.

  The sun was on the plain and had not lit the lower part of the valley, so Calvin had no idea whether the Indian was there or not. Perhaps, as was their way, the Indian had fired and moved elsewhere; possibly a tactical retreat to bring him in the way Bosley had been drawn in.

  As the sergeant closed in on the opening, the horse salivating, its chest heaving, Calvin peered at a spot in the morning shadow, squinted to see more clearly, then pulled hard on the reins and stopped the horse so fast it reared. Calvin raised his left hand, signaling Garcia to hold his position. The police officer motioned over two other men to form a small skirmish line.

  Calvin settled the horse, patting it with his left hand, then took up the reins, steadied his gun, and eased forward slowly.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  October 22, 1871

  With a few choice words flung at fate, Hank Gannon had to admit that for a man who had left the Texas Special Rangers, he had faced an inordinate
amount of trouble and pain on their behalf.

  Sleep was not possible in the ragged nook, nor was it advisable with enemies on one side and tired, probably scared, restless-trigger police on the other. If he were talking this out with Constance or even with Keel—in a rare moment when he was Amos Keel and not Captain Keel—they would be telling him that this was God’s way of showing him that his work was not yet through. That anyone worthy of the designation “man” should be working in the service of family and neighbor, not roaming the lowlands or foothills like a rogue coyote.

  They would have a point. From the plantation to last month, Gannon had found merit and purpose in being part of a team. It could achieve so much more than the individual.

  But then he would think of Constance and her disapproving mother and tell himself, The individual deserves something, too, Lord.

  And there had been more value and, more important, peace these last few weeks than Gannon had ever known. Not having to think past the next meal or safe resting place. Having complete freedom of movement. Not having the cold breath of politics in his face, destroying his livelihood in Florida by starting a war, destroying lives and limbs during the war, destroying his own balanced existence in Austin.

  Right now, except for the pain in his sides, except for the suffering of his beloved Constance, the firm embrace of the rock around him was a simple damned blessing.

  So was finding the gun. It looked like the one Andrew Whitestraw carried. But it could have come from any of the men who did not leave this valley alive or ended up in desperate flight. Gannon tucked it in his belt.

  So now, Hank, he asked himself, how are you different from a field mouse with a gun? Is that what you want? That image made him chuckle, but then he was beyond exhaustion because there was nothing in his life to laugh about right now. He told himself to shut up and closed his eyes, trying to relearn how to breathe without hurting.

  Though Gannon was well-concealed, the wall of his niche, on his left, was slightly recessed; the wall to his right, on the side of the police camp, jutted a bit. He was able to hunker back and still hear everything from the Indian side of the valley. He hadn’t gotten very far with his inhaling and exhaling drills when he heard horses to the south. The man did not move his body. He only opened his eyes and drew his gun.