Though the gunfire around them continued, Constance stepped over the cot and left the ambulance, jumping down to the commander’s side. He was gasping for breath, bleeding again through the bandages, and staring wide-eyed at the sky.
Constance gently untied the wrappings around his wounds, removed the swabs that had been placed on them, saw the blood running. She went back to get fresh gauze to pack against the bullet holes, oblivious to the tumult and dust around her. The fighting all seemed so far away. She looked away from the broken, marionette-like figure of Dr. Zachary, who was sprawled with his legs over the cot, his back on the floorboards, his arms akimbo, head twisted to the right. She opened the cabinet with the surgical supplies and retrieved a roll and scissors.
Captain Keel was barely breathing when she reached his side. His eyes were moist and red and still staring. She set the supplies aside and took his left hand between both of hers. That seemed more important, more relevant somehow. Her own eyes began to tear.
“You saved my life, Captain,” she said.
His jaw moved slightly and his brow wrinkled, as though he were frustrated by his inability to reply.
“It’s all right,” she said, forcing a smile. “Please . . . just rest.”
His mouth struggled to form a word.
“For . . . forg . . .”
The rest of the word never came, only a long exhale and his eyes drifting shut.
“Forgive?” she asked the dead man. It took her a moment to wonder whether he meant Gannon. There was no one else to forgive.
On her knees beside him, Constance bent low and prayed.
The gunfire faded, the voices of officers and guardsmen were heard—relatively calm tones, organizational voices, voices that were victorious but not unaware of what victory had cost.
Laying Keel’s hand on his chest, Constance went to the still form of Rufus Long and prayed over him as well. And when she was done she remained on her knees to pray for the doctor . . . and for the safe return of her beloved.
* * *
The charge across the plains was as much about staying on the backs of the horses as it was about pursuing the three Comanche. The Indians had become aware of them, and the five animals were charging at a gallop. At this pace, none of them would get anywhere near Austin.
The Indians must have realized this and one of the riders peeled off to face the two officers. Mounted but not moving, he shouldered his rifle and took aim.
The rifle was pointed at Calvin, who pulled the mane hard to the right and, despite the strength in his thighs, slid off. The Indian’s shot hit nothing as the riderless horse swung away from the fallen rider, shook its head, and just stood there catching his breath.
Calvin drew his gun, got to his feet, and ran as fast as he was able at the Indian as Garcia continued to charge. The Tejano fired twice at the Indian, missed, and the Comanche returned fire. His shot hit Garcia’s painted and the animal’s four legs went dead. Garcia flew over its head, bracing himself with his hands, and snapping his left wrist.
The Indian had to reload and Calvin ran until he knew he had a good shot. He stopped, aimed, and put a bullet through the red man’s throat. Then the sergeant continued running.
“Get my horse, Garcia!” he shouted over his shoulder as he jumped over the dead Indian and vaulted onto the back of his horse. He took the reins, cracked the animal’s ribs with his heels, and raced ahead.
The other two Indians were in sight. Once again, a Comanche stopped, wheeled his horse around, and prepared to fire at Calvin. This time the sergeant didn’t stop. He had five shots and let them all fly in the direction of the target while silently praying he hit something.
He did. A single bullet grazed the Comanche, whose rifle discharged down and wide. Unarmed, Calvin drove his horse into the other, causing both animals to bolt and buck before going down. Both men were disoriented after the fall, the Indian partly beneath his horse, which was struggling to get up, Calvin with his leg bent beneath him and apparently broken. His own horse, the one he had stolen from the Indian, got up and ran away.
The battle was still not over, the bitter enemies down but still moving.
“Shit!” Calvin said, repeating it several times as he looked for something to use against the trapped Comanche. There was nothing around him but sand, nothing on his person but clothes. The sergeant didn’t know what the Indian might bring to bear if he got free. A moment later it didn’t matter, as there was a loud crack. The Comanche’s head jerked and then went utterly still with a single bullet wound in the forehead.
Calvin turned and saw Garcia, on foot, bent over and panting. The sergeant thanked him with a nod and looked ahead at the retreating cloud that was the last Comanche.
“I—I couldn’t ride and shoot,” Garcia apologized, pointing broadly toward the horse with a muscle-weary arm.
“I understand,” Calvin said in a dry, hoarse voice.
As Calvin looked back at the animal, which was still standing where he’d left it, he saw a cloud approaching. After a moment he could make out two horsemen coming rapidly in their direction. A few moments more and he could see Sgt. May and one of the guardsman who had obviously set out in pursuit of the escaped Comanche. He saw the two dead Indians and when he passed Calvin and Garcia he threw them a salute without stopping. The police officers didn’t bother returning the courtesy; May and his man were already past them, headed east.
“I guess we won back there,” Garcia remarked.
Calvin nodded, thinking about how many more men lay dead just outside the valley, and whether trading life for life constituted “winning.” Especially when the army still had to fight Comanche in western Texas and beyond and would continue to do so for God knew how many years.
“I could sure use a drink,” Garcia said, flopping on his seat. “Even water.”
Calvin nodded again, his mouth too dry to form words. He just sat and tried not to move his leg while Garcia cradled his left hand in his right. The Comanche’s horse finally managed to gain its feet. The Indian’s lower half was disfigured; his pelvis had been crushed. Calvin felt detached from the brave’s dead and broken body. His war was over.
The men made no effort to get on either horse. It wouldn’t have been possible to ride, let alone mount. As they sat in the dirt, they heard a pair of shots in the distance ahead of them, like twigs snapping.
The two men exchanged looks, but even Garcia was too parched to speak. They just waited until the two guardsmen appeared in the wavering heat above the plain. They were like fallen branches on a river that was rolling toward them, finally taking shape when they were just a few dozen yards away.
Sgt. May stopped beside Calvin, dismounted, and handed him his canteen.
“There will be no Comanche in Austin,” the guardsman reported.
Calvin took a long swallow, washed it around his mouth, and passed the canteen to Garcia. He looked up at the sergeant, who was blotting out the sun.
“How bad is it at the campsite?” Calvin asked.
May’s voice was somber as he replied, “Captain Keel . . . the doctor . . . too many, friend. Just too many.”
“The captain?”
“Died saving the girl,” May said.
Calvin did not bother responding. There was nothing to say. He feared the worst for Rufus Long.
“Keep the water,” May said. “It’s bound to get pretty hot out here before I can get some men out here to help you. Sorry I don’t have anything for a makeshift tent.” The mounted sergeant looked around in the dirt, saw no weapons. He handed Calvin his revolver. “For buzzards,” he said.
“Thanks,” Calvin said.
The two guardsmen gathered up the other horses, roping them together, and rode off. Without the animals here, there was no shade and no sense of life beyond the two spots where they sat helplessly. Garcia returned the canteen and capped it for the one-handed man. Then Calvin shifted off his sleeping good leg and cried out as he moved the broken one slightly. The injury r
eminded him about Dr. Zachary, who would not be setting or splinting the breaks . . . and about Captain Keel. For all the sergeant had found to complain about in the officer’s kowtowing to politicians, Keel was first, foremost, and at the last a great soldier.
Garcia’s voice snapped him from his reflection.
“My father used to say that pain is God’s fire and death is His ice,” the Tejano said, frowning. “But my wrist is numb—I do not know what to think of that.”
“Be glad you’re a police officer and not a guitar serenader,” Calvin told him.
It took Garcia a moment to realize that Sgt. Calvin had made a joke, and he chuckled at it, though there was probably more relief behind his laughter than there was wit in the remark.
Exhaustion quickly caught up with both men. They stopped speaking, let their chins fall to their chests, and caught brief snatches of sleep as they sat facing one another on the hard, hot ground.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
October 23, 1871
Hank Gannon had expected to come around the mesa, enter the abandoned Comanche camp, and find Roving Wolf where he had left him. It had been his intention, then, to negotiate their showdown.
But the Comanche would not be in the valley. He appeared to be ahead, crossing the lowlands on foot. Gannon could not imagine where he was going or why, but there was nothing to do except follow him.
The distant reports of gunfire alarmed Gannon, but he was helpless to do anything about it. Sgt. Calvin was a good and very capable man, and he would handle whatever came up. That didn’t make it any easier for Gannon not to be with Constance, but as he had been reminded time after time since the start of the war, fate did not work at his convenience.
Gannon’s side didn’t hurt as much as his hips did. His life had been one of riding, not walking, and this last day had been little else. His feet were swollen inside boots he had intended for weeks to replace with moccasins, though he had never gotten around to doing so. It wasn’t just the strain on body and soul, he was also plagued with the awareness that he could not afford to let any of that stop him. Not now. Not until this was done.
Un-Christian as it was, he could only hope that Roving Wolf was suffering no less. Given what the Indian had been through, he could not believe the man was willingly on the move.
The terrain became less even, hillier, with more tangling scrub underfoot as he followed the Comanche. There was no relief from the heat and Gannon rationed his water, since he knew from having traveled in this region the past month that there was no water for miles around.
And then, Gannon realized where they were . . . and where they were going.
To the southeast, roughly a quarter-mile distant, was the spot where Gannon had first encountered the grave, right after Roving Wolf murdered Joseph Williams. That was not where they were headed. They were going northwest.
To the spot where his companion was shot, Gannon thought.
So much of Indian thinking was circular. It was how they measured their lives. The movement of the sun and moon, the cycles of the seasons, even the lazy circles of birds of prey, which were used to pinpoint rabbit warrens and other sources of food. It would make sense that he would want to live or die in the place where this all began for him.
Gannon followed with an increased spirit in his step, a call to this final reckoning.
* * *
The campsite was carnage and blood, though the only gunfire was occasional shots at birds and varmints that came to pick at the dead.
Constance had been to a carnival, as a girl, and this felt like that: grotesque bodies, distorted faces, fire, and noise. People moving this way and that with individual purpose, no sense of community or order. Nothing sane to hold onto, except the hand of her father.
In her mind, she held on to Hank. And she was suddenly, then, very afraid for him and for herself. He had to come back to her. They were now whole and inseparable. Until this day, she had only understood what courtship was. She did not understand what a bond was between two souls.
Upon his return to camp, Sergeant May had ordered the ambulance hitched and sent out for Sgt. Calvin and Officer Garcia. Captain Keel and Officer Long had already been carried to where Nightingale and the others had been laid. Now it was necessary to remove the doctor. Constance watched as he was lifted from the wagon. In a strange way, the guardsmen who removed him seemed almost as lifeless as he, their movements dull and rote.
The other cost of war, she told herself.
The dead. The wounded. And the survivors who would forever be shrouded by both—some more, some less. Maybe their curse was that the only people who would ever understand were those who had been through it, too, or something similar.
Which company will only keep it vividly alive, she thought sadly.
Whether she wanted it or not, that would forever be part of her bond with Hank. The silent nights, perhaps on a patio, perhaps by the fire, perhaps in their old age—when this day returned like a demon spirit.
With sadness, she realized that as much as her mother had never understood her desires before, Martha Breen would be openly hostile to this. Home, too, was a casualty of war.
Men had been wounded in the last attack. After conferring with the three men who were going out with the ambulance wagon—only one of whom had any experience with field dressings—Constance removed some of the bottles, tools, and bandages to see to their care. In the face of each man she sought to help, she saw a boy like those in her classroom. . . frightened, hurt, alone. She tried to patch bullet wounds, and used parts cut from saddles and the boots of the dead to fashion splints. Where the injuries were grave, she offered laudanum. But as she moved among the men, Constance found that it was her voice, her touch, her expression that was the best balm. Men who felt no pain because their wounds were too severe spoke words they wanted passed on to family. Constance was sorry she had not thought to take the pad from the ambulance so the men could write a note themselves. She vowed to remember every word.
By the time the medical wagon had returned, the battlefield had been organized into something resembling a functioning campsite. There were campfires, food and water had been distributed, horses had been corralled. The living—nine men plus Constance, a wide-eyed journalist, and then the five men on the wagon—organized for the return to Austin.
Constance helped make room in the ambulance for the transport of the injured: four men on the floor, Garcia beside the driver, Calvin on the cot, which had been set up over one of the wounded men. His leg and Garcia’s arm had been splinted with shelving from the wagon. Constance had tied the slats together herself, trying not to cry when Calvin asked if he would ever dance again. There was a knob of bone straining at his flesh, just above the knee. She wondered if he would even be able to keep the leg. The war veteran did not appear to wonder; he seemed to know.
“We’ll get him back,” the sergeant told her before she left him. “The captain was sorry for what he’d done—as soon as we get home, I’ll send men to find him.”
Constance was barely able to thank the man. So little had come from the heart these past few days that his remarks caused her to choke up.
By early afternoon, when it was time to leave, Constance rode one of the ponies, which, ironically, were greater in number than the men available to ride them. Behind her was Evan Bosley. If living man could be said to have a dead face, a missing soul, it was he. He was muttering apologies to no one in particular, and she did not believe they were merited. He had saved her life. But she did not feel he would ever find forgiveness for being taken by the Comanche.
Led by Sgt. May, it was a limping, bloodied train that set out for Austin. It seemed to Constance like that old carnival she had watched departing for another town. Behind them, the white men were beneath rocks for now, to be recovered later; the red men were in shallow graves where they would remain, and the horses lay where they had fallen. Even as they left, animals were beginning to gather, some of them feasting on the remains of their
own kind that had been shot earlier.
Constance felt no revulsion at that. She was numb save for the emotion she felt for Hank, and her only thoughts were for his safety, for Sgt. Calvin to send men to find him—alive, she prayed again. Before turning her eyes toward home, she took a last, longing look at the mesa where she had last seen him . . .
* * *
Whatever his wounds had taken from him, Roving Wolf strode to the ledge like a man who had never known infirmity or sorrow or any human emotion. He was, like his namesake, prowling toward his destiny.
He did not know what the Big Father had willed for the war party. From the distant sounds, it appeared as if the second assault had met with little success. Otherwise, weapons would have been discharged at the air in celebration, as a signal to all who could hear that the braves had triumphed. That had not happened. What Roving Wolf could be certain of was that the Comanche had fought bravely and to the last breath. More than that could be asked of no warrior.
That included himself.
The light of day could not erase the darkness of what had occurred here. But the Comanche did not allow himself to linger in that shadow. He stayed in the light, for the light would lead him to what he sought. He walked among the rocks and scant vegetation, looking down, examining large cracks in the rock, short falls into clumps of stone and shrub beyond the ledge—
It was there in a bush that had split the rock to find sunlight: Great Bear’s weapon, the hilt facing up as if clawing the sky. The Indian fell to his knees, his palms crossed on his chest and then unfolding to face the domain of the Big Father. Roving Wolf reached down carefully so as not to dislodge the bandage around his throat, which was stiff with caked blood. The cloth had dried, attached to the wound like skin. So much of the brave made him more than man: the wrapping was made from fiber of the earth; his headband was adorned with an eagle feather above, the tail of the wolf below.
He retrieved the knife that had been meant for the son of his sister. Rising, he held it aloft like the Great Spirit ready to challenge the Demon of Many Faces, showing the Big Father that he was unafraid.
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