War Valley

by Lancaster Hill

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  October 21, 1871

  Passing through the cloud of dust, Gannon saw a battlefield that was bloodier than the scale and close quarters would have suggested. There were no cannonballs, no snipers, just bullets and blades—but they had wreaked destruction on horse and man both.

  The Comanche were retreating to the valley, seven men in all, the war chief at the rear. There appeared to be blood on his right arm. Calvin held up pursuit, which was roughly organizing under one of the guardsmen. The sergeant was still on his horse, his gun raised toward the sky. Like the others, his face was covered with a layer of dirt.

  “We should pursue, Sergeant!” one of the mounted guardsman was saying with some urgency. “They’re on the run!”

  “Not until we count the dead and I talk with Gannon,” Calvin said.

  “Gannon?” said Long. “Last I saw he was running—”

  The police officer stopped talking as Gannon rode up. The men exchanged a heated look.

  “He was running to try and save horses in the event of a chase,” Gannon said.

  Calvin ignored Long, trotted over to Gannon. “I count seven in flight, eleven dead,” the sergeant said. “Is that all of them?”

  “No,” Gannon said. “There were at least twenty braves at the camp and there’s one more I know of in the valley.”

  “So the war chief left people behind,” Calvin said. “Either to harass our flank or pick us off if they couldn’t break through and had to retreat.”

  “That would fit their arrogance.”

  Calvin asked, “How so?”

  “We had greater numbers and they still thought they could beat us,” Gannon said. “But it was also smart. With all the shots flying, chances were better they would hit white men.” His eyes were scanning the ground. “They got seven of ours and double that in horses.”

  “And they’re still out there,” Calvin said, peering into the valley.

  Gannon pulled the horse around and saw the ambulance wagon. The Indians were technically not his problem, save one, and they could wait. Biting down on his teeth to fight the pain, he rode forward.

  As Gannon approached, he saw a rip in the canvas at the rear, a diagonal slash in the solid sheet. He turned sideways so he was athwart the back of the wagon. His heart was beating faster as he spoke.

  “Constance?”

  The canvas was rolled up noisily, clattering on its ropes. She was behind the cot, which had been turned on its side and wedged on the floor at an angle. The doctor in front of it with a surgical scalpel. There was blood on the scalpel and a fierce, desperate look on the medic’s face.

  “They’ve left,” Gannon said. He extended his left hand into the wagon, took the knife. “You can relax.”

  Gannons’s eyes returned to Constance, who climbed over the cot, shouldered around Dr. Zachary, and hugged his neck. He crushed his teeth harder so he didn’t cry out.

  Constance stepped back quickly. “You’re hurt,” she said, remembering. “I’m sorry.”

  “Best embrace I ever got,” he assured her. He looked down at the scalpel, then up at Zachary. “That was the war chief you cut.”

  “I was defending my patient,” he said defensively, almost apologetically. “Is he here? I—I would like to bind the wound.”

  “He’s gone, they’re all gone,” Gannon replied. “You’d better see to the field, though. There was a lot of shooting, probably some wounded.”

  “Of course, yes,” Zachary said, turning and looking for where his medical bag had gone in all the upheaval. He found it and hopped over the lip, landing unsteadily but rushing ahead.

  Gannon looked up at Constance. “I thank God you are all right,” he said.

  “And you,” she said. Her formality, in public, did not conceal the joy in her eyes. “I was . . . so worried.”

  Gannon looked down.

  “What is it?” Constance asked.

  “I have to go back,” he said, lightly cocking his head toward the valley.

  It took her a moment to understand what he was saying. “For that Indian?”

  “If I don’t finish what we started, he will come again,” Gannon said.

  “He was not in a healthy way,” she pointed out. “He might not survive.”

  “I have to know that,” Gannon told her.

  “Then I have a suggestion,” she said. “Come in and at least let me bind your side.”

  He hesitated. “You won’t try to put me to sleep then cart me away?” he said, looking over at the bottles on a shelf.

  “You’d only wake up and have farther to travel,” she said.

  He smiled. He couldn’t remember the last time he felt a connection like that. Gannon dismounted and entered the ambulance while Constance relit the lantern and fingered through a stack of linens and selected one that was long and narrow enough to go around Gannon’s torso. He bent to try and right the cot, thought better of it as he felt a knife pain in his side.

  “Just stand there,” Constance said. “It will be easier that way.”

  “Upper ribs,” he said as she stepped over the cot.

  The touch and proximity of the woman was a tonic for them both. Gannon closed his eyes and connected with each finger; she savored the gentleness of his presence. The horrors of the previous day and night did not go away, but there was a feeling that everything—the Indians, the valley, the officers—was very far from the two of them. She was firm but careful in the placement and tightness of the binding, and she tied a small knot with the ends in a spot where there was no injury. Gannon took a trial breath which was as much a reaction to the woman’s proximity as it was to the bandage.

  She did not have to ask to be held. It happened. They were together like that for only a few seconds before a cavalry detachment seemed to arrive next to the wagon.

  “Gannon, are you in there?”

  The couple separated, their eyes lingering a little longer, as Gannon went to the torn back flap and leaned through. It was Garcia with the three horses.

  “Did we win?” the Tejano asked.

  “We stopped them, for now,” Gannon replied.

  Garcia nodded with understanding as he looked across the field at the casualties. Then he looked up. “The buzzards. They always win.”

  * * *

  Campfires were made, coffee was served, birds were shot from the sky and cooked. Gannon slept under the shade of a tree for several hours, waking when he felt a poking about his side. He wakened with a start that wasn’t as painful as it might have been three hours before. Since he had left the farm in Florida, Gannon had become accustomed to waking in unfamiliar places. He was instantly alert.

  Dr. Zachary was bending over him. The man smelled of blood, and his checkered vest was spotted with it.

  “Sorry to wake you,” Zachary said, “Now that I’m done with the major injuries, I figured I’d better check your wrapping. Lady did a real fine job. Not too tight—how’s it feel?”

  “A lot better than before,” Gannon replied.

  “No lacerations, correct?”

  “Just bruises.”

  “Fine,” the doctor said. “I’m going to leave it, then. You can breathe all right? Not too much pain?”

  “Long as I don’t breathe deep, it’s okay.”

  Zachary nodded. “Bettin’ it’s muscle, not bone, you injured.” The doctor rose and sat on a root that had gnarled up from the wind-eroded topsoil. He looked around, then said, “Can I talk to you a minute?”

  Gannon eased onto his elbows. “Of course.” He immediately looked around, saw Constance beneath another tree, curled on her side facing him, asleep.

  The doctor put himself between Constance and Gannon, spoke very low.

  “Constance Breen—I know her from Austin, met her a few times at church and at socials. I’ve seen you with her.”

  “I want to marry her.”

  Zachary nodded and smiled, though his smile didn’t last. “It’s my understanding that she was pro
bably out here trying to find you.”

  “She was.”

  “You are aware, of course, what happened out there.” He cocked his head to the valley.

  “I was there.”

  “Yes,” Zachary said. “But I’m talkin’ about—she bled some, I stopped it, but that isn’t the real injury. It’s too early for me to know much, certainly not in a field hospital that’s mostly good for busted arms and ribs. But . . .” he stopped.

  “But she could be with a Comanche child,” Gannon said in a voice that showed none of the emotion he felt.

  The doctor nodded. “I did what I could—but there are new laws and, anyway, without the proper instruments I could do grave harm.”

  “I understand,” Gannon said. “Did you talk to her?”

  “I did not,” he admitted. “I believe she is aware, though. After all these years—I don’t have to tell a patient what they already know or feel.”

  Gannon thought back to the cave. “She asked me how I did it, how I forgave old enemies. How do you live with all this?”

  Zachary patted Gannon on the shoulder; the connection was more for the doctor than it was for the patient. “Believe it or not, I lean on my patients. They are strong. Oh, scared, yeah. But I have never met a soldier or a mother or even a child who did not teach me about courage.”

  The doctor smiled down and Gannon smiled back. It was the second time that day the former officer had felt something to be warmed by and proud of. The doctor was about to leave when Gannon called after him.

  “How’s the captain, doctor?”

  Zachary took a few steps back. “Grave,” he said quietly. “He’s fighting, but he should be in a bed where there’s clean sheets and hot water.”

  The doctor left, and Gannon turned toward the sleeping woman. For a moment, her repose reminded him of the murdered South, of the simple, almost daily joy of being able to rest under a shade tree. He still could not think, not yet, of what the nation may have gained in integrity, decency, and international respect as he had heard it said. All he could contemplate was everything he and his family and his neighbors and his people had lost.

  And then a gunshot shattered his reverie.

  * * *

  “The Comanche are still out there,” Garcia said.

  Sgt. Calvin did not bother to comment. The shot from the edge of the valley had announced that fact, and also declared, confidently, that the police and guardsmen were going to have to come in to get them. The Indians had not attacked the previous night, preferring daylight assaults. But their plan having failed, there was no telling what maneuver they would try next.

  “We don’t have to worry about them now,” Calvin said. He pointed to the west. “Stack their dead over by those boulders. We’ll bury ours on the other side.”

  “Colonel Nightingale, too?” said Sgt. Philip May of the Texas State Guard.

  “Colonel Nightingale, too,” Calvin told him. “We can come back and get them, with proper conveyances, when this is done.”

  “My men will not abide by that,” May said. The wide, swarthy, mustachioed former cannoneer with the 1st Indiana Heavy Artillery Regiment had ceded authority to Calvin because the Texas Special Police knew this terrain. But this was the first time May had challenged his authority. “We will bring him back when this mission is completed—today, I trust.”

  Calvin walked over to face his counterpart just as Gannon arrived.

  “Sergeant,” Gannon said, inserting himself between Calvin and May and facing the latter. “Let me tell you, from experience, that you do not want to ride into Austin with a dead man without proper ceremony.”

  May took a moment to study the man’s bandage and attire. A flash of recognition spread across his dark face. “Do I have the questionable pleasure of addressing the man who the late Colonel Nightingale referred to as a ‘traitor’?”

  Calvin moved toward May, but Gannon refused to budge. To their right, Rufus Long overheard the exchange and took a few steps forward. Whatever Gannon’s differences with the man, a brawl was the last thing the men needed. He gave Long a look that told him to stay where he was.

  “You have that pleasure, Sergeant,” Gannon said. “And you can call me whatever name you please, but if you got a thimble of brain you’ll take my advice.”

  May’s mouth disappeared tightly under his woolly moustache, and several of his men gathered around him, equally ready to spit.

  “I also suggest you turn that hate on killin’ Comanche, or we’ll be buryin’ more of our people today,” Gannon added.

  The caution was not lost on May, whose glare shifted from Gannon to Calvin to the man who was holding the unit’s only two shovels. He strode toward them with his fists tight and a huff in every breath and his men followed.

  Calvin came around to look at Gannon. “I remember now why I always liked you,” the sergeant said. “You got iron.”

  Gannon shook his head. “What I got was a nap. Makes me feisty.”

  Calvin grinned. “What’re your plans—Officer?” he asked. “Number 27, wasn’t it?”

  Gannon smirked. “Yes, Sergeant, but I’m not wearin’ the badge again. If I get out of this, I’m goin’ west.”

  “If you get out of this?” Calvin asked. “Why shouldn’t you?”

  “Because I got open accounts with a redskin. They have to be closed.”

  Calvin took a small sip from the canteen he carried, offered a swallow to Gannon, who accepted. The warm mouthful brought back the entirety of the Civil War.

  The sergeant moved his hat to shield the morning sun. He looked out at the police and guardsmen moving bodies and digging graves. “No one will think the less of you for taking that gal and movin’ on. You shouldn’t either.”

  “I’ll have to look over my shoulder all the way to California and then some,” Gannon said. “Wife, kids—I’ll never feel safe. And I’ll never feel right.” He shook his head. “It ain’t iron, ’cause Lord knows I would really rather do what you just said. It is survival and—I have to prove something to men I used to bunk with. I didn’t trample a man to get home to my girl. Careless? Tired? Maybe. I think I did right by him. But the only way to prove that to them, and to me, is by doin’ right here.”

  Calvin took another drink and capped the canteen. “I can’t argue with any of that. I wish I could, ’cause that gal needs you alive and whole.”

  “Yeah,” Gannon said. He couldn’t think of anything to add to that. “This thing is as the Good Lord willed it. I’ll stay for a bit until this feels better,” he rolled an arm painfully. “Then I’ll go find that Comanche.”

  “Will they let you pass, you think?”

  “I have no mortal notion. They just might see me as Roving Wolf’s enemy, not as a white man. You know the Comanche, Sergeant. It don’t pay to try and think like them. They have a funny set of rules.”

  “They do,” Calvin agreed. “Hell, I still have to figure out what we’re going to do. Regulations kind of went downriver.”

  “Been tellin’ Captain Keel since I arrived that they need a telegraph out here,” Gannon said. “Texas is just too damn big.”

  Calvin shook his head and looked back at the valley. “Right now, it seems too damn small.”

  Gannon couldn’t dispute that.

  The weapons that had been collected from the fallen Indians were gathered in a stack near their bodies. Gannon had not decided, yet, what exactly to do about confronting Roving Wolf, but he asked the sergeant if he could take a knife and a rifle as well as one of the buckskin tunics. Calvin told him to take whatever he wanted, except a horse.

  “They may try again for ours,” the sergeant said. Then he asked, “Something symbolic about takin’ one of their shirts? Sorta like a scalp?”

  “Nope,” Gannon told him. “It gets dreadful cold out here at night.”

  Calvin snickered but looked at him funny. “Prairie life seems t’have made you a bit of a smart-ass.”

  “Maybe so. You spend a month out here, tal
kin’ mostly to yourself, you get a little funny.”

  Calvin offered him his big hand. “Well, I hope ya don’t stay alone—and if our paths don’t cross again, best to you.”

  Gannon shook the hand. “You’ll watch out for her.”

  “With the lives of every man here,” Calvin assured him.

  Gannon thanked him and collected what he wanted from the remains of the raid. There was a bison water pouch attached to a dead palomino, and he took that as well. The officers and guardsmen both looked at him as if he were a ghoul, but Gannon didn’t care. In the wild, you learned to use every part of an animal—beast or human.

  Then, with a slight hobble, he made his way back to where Constance was still asleep. He had seen a pad and pencil in the ambulance wagon and went over to write her a note. The doctor was giving water to the captain, and Gannon had a few minutes of privacy. He left Constance a note, dressed—the tunic was a little small, which actually helped keep him from straining his sides—and then ducked under the side flap on the opposite side of Constance and the doctor. He walked about a hundred yards, toward the eastern side of the mesa where he would be out of range of any Indian sharpshooter. Then he stopped, looked back at the sleeping woman, and let his eyes drift north in the general direction of Austin.

  He felt, at that moment, what this mesa must have experienced in the distant past. A river became a torrent and then nothing was ever the same. If it had been capable of thought, the vast rock mound would probably have found itself with a big division down its center before it even realized it.

  That was Gannon’s life. An order from Keel to Calvin to Gannon to go collect a wanted man had turned into a life in which civilization would no longer play a part. Whether he remained in the wild, a trapper, a mountain man, just a rover, or whether Constance would still want to go with him to the untamed north of California, that life was dead.

  Strangely, Gannon did not feel a sense of loss. He felt free.

  But first there is a dispute to finish, he told himself, looking south. Finding a stride that would not tax his side, he resumed his journey around the side of the valley to where he expected he would find Roving Wolf.