The Texians 1

by Zack Wyatt

  “Some of the womenfolk found you on the beach while they were gathering shellfish this evening,” Arlan continued. “Your horse had broken its left shin. Had to shoot it, but we kept the bridle and saddle.” He patted a pile of tack at his side.

  “Marion? I saw two braves dragging her from the warehouse.”

  “Last I saw she was alive. Mrs. Watts, too ... they took her from the customs office,” Arlan said. “They didn’t kill her like they did the others—three whites and two slaves—which I take to be a good sign.”

  “It is ... it is,” Sands slowly nodded, suddenly aware that he had lost Marion for a second time. The Comanches, what they had done with her, how they now used her, didn’t matter. God willing, if he were given a third chance, he wouldn’t lose her again! “What time is it? I need a horse ... I’ve got to go after her ... after Buffalo Hump!”

  “‘Bout midnight the way I make. You’ve had yourself a nice, long rest while my men’ve ridden their butts off.”

  Sands’ head jerked around to find the voice’s owner—Ben McCulloch. The ranger captain from Gonzales grinned.

  “Horses are in short supply. We ride one per man,” this from Will Brown standing at McCulloch’s side. “However, we did pick up a mule that seems to be saddle broke.”

  Sands grinned up at his friend. “If I can ride it, a mule will be just fine.”

  “Better be, ‘cause Will’s right. Horses are the one thing we don’t have,” McCulloch said, explaining he now rode with a troop of a hundred twenty men. “Most of them joined up in Victoria. They’re bone tired and so are their horses, but we’re on Buffalo Hump’s red ass and we’re going to stay there. If he’s about to do what I think he is, then all we need is a few more days and we’ll have all of Texas waiting for him.”

  McCulloch paused and stretched his arms high above his head. “Which is neither here nor there right now. We’ll know better in the morning. At the moment what I need is a few hours sleep. We’ll head out at sun up. S’pect you’d better grab some more shut-eye, too. Soon as Owens’ troop joins up with us, the only sleep anyone’s going to get is in the saddle.”

  “At sun up, then,” Sands answered, and watched McCulloch and Will leave the makeshift tent. He turned back to Arlan. “Is Jamie all right?”

  “Best as can be expected,” the white-haired man answered. “Misses his mother, but he’s unharmed. Tye Hawkins and his missus are looking after him tonight.”

  “Good,” Sands said with another nod as his thoughts returned to Marion and the Comanches who attended her this night.

  A few more days, McCulloch says, Sands thought, only a few days and ... he pushed the speculation from his mind. Anything could happen in a few days, especially when Comanches were involved. Whether Marion survived now rested in more powerful hands than his own. All he could do was pray to those hands, asking them to shelter her.

  “I suspect Captain McCulloch was right. You need to rest,” Arlan said as he walked to the open end of the sailcloth tent. “I’ll see you in the morning ‘fore you ride out.”

  “In the morning,” Sands repeated as the man left. Laying back in the darkness, he closed his eyes and fought his way through a barrage of visions—all focused on Marion and the braves dragging her from the warehouse—to eventually find his way to a restless sleep.

  Mid-morning of August tenth, McCulloch found the Owens’ troop waiting along a willow-lined creek that ran into the Colorado River a few miles to the south. The new men and horses were far from being fresh in Sands’ eyes. They had ridden as long and as hard as McCulloch’s men.

  If Ben McCulloch was disappointed by their condition, Sands couldn’t find it in his expression. His smile was one of relief: the sixty additional men swelled his original twenty-four to a troop of a hundred eighty. Texas was beginning to answer the call his riders carried forth four days ago.

  While the horses were watered and were given a breather, McCulloch called the men together: “I’m not certain why he’s doing it, but Buffalo Hump is acting contrary to everything I know about the Comanches ... ”

  Sands silently agreed. After such a bountiful raid as the one on Linnville, the Pehnahterkuh ordinarily would have split their war party into a myriad of small bands, then ridden hard and fast back to the relative security of the prairie. Each of those bands would have taken a different trail to confuse any pursuers.

  Buffalo Hump and his army hadn’t done that. From all indications the war chief was now trying to avoid confrontation with his Tejanos enemies, preferring to keep his warriors in a tight ring about the immense herd of stolen horses and mules.

  “… perhaps Buffalo Hump feels his medicine’s great, or maybe he doesn’t want to cast away all the loot he stole from Linn’s warehouse. Whatever, he’s decided to make a retreat along the Colorado River. And that’s where he’s made his mistake. He doesn’t know it yet, but we’ve got him now, boys. By damn, I do believe, we’ve got him!” McCulloch reached up and broke a twig from an overhanging willow, then squatted on the heels of his boots in the creek’s moist soil. He drew a rough serpentine line in the dirt to represent the Colorado.

  “This here’s the San Marcos River,” he said while he drew another line then added a smaller line that he dubbed Plum Creek, a tributary of the San Marcos. Next he scratched a “X” in the dirt. “Right here, near Plum Creek, Buffalo Hump’s got to cross Big Prairie. And that’s where we’ll get him.”

  Sands saw the simplicity of McCulloch’s strategy. If Buffalo Hump had retreated along the path he had taken into settled Texas, there would have been no way to stop the Pehnahterkuh army. But the war chief now led his column through the most heavily populated region of the republic. That meant a Texian force could meet the Comanches head-on at Plum Creek ... if enough men could be raised in time.

  “I don’t know if the fights gone out of Buffalo Hump’s bucks or if he’s losing control of his warriors, but they ain’t raiding like they were on the way to the coast. They’re staying in close to all the horses they’ve stolen,” McCulloch continued. “Which means it’s time for us to start nipping at their heels. Letting him know we’re here.” McCulloch quickly outlined his plans for his men. They would constantly harass the Comanche column, day and night.

  “You’ll keep Buffalo Hump on the move that way. Never give him a chance to make camp and rest,” McCulloch continued. “Ride in, fire a few shots, then get the hell out. Wait a bit and another group will do the same. I want him to know you’re here. Make him think that if he stops to scratch his butt, you’ll run over that red ass.”

  “You keep saying ‘you,’ Ben,” one of the men from Victoria said. “You ain’t thinkin’ of lightin’ out and leaving us, are you?”

  “Not exactly,” McCulloch answered with a shake of his head. “But I am leaving. I plan to ride around the Pehnahterkuh. There’s a passel of settlements through the area above Plum Creek—enough to raise the men for a small army. I intend to have them waiting at Big Prairie.” McCulloch stood and let his gaze wander over the faces of his men. “Any questions?”

  Every man stood silently.

  “Good! Now let’s give them a dose of their own medicine!”

  Chapter Eighteen

  The dawn of August twelfth rose hot and muggy over Big Prairie on Plum Creek. In spite of two days’ hard riding on the back of a black mule with no more than catnaps stolen between the constant harassing raids on Buffalo Hump’s flank, Sands felt wide awake and alert.

  Adrenaline pumped through his veins and his heart pounded in his chest to echo up to his ears like a runaway bass drum. The reason—battle lay but minutes away.

  His head turned to the right and then the left. For as far as he could see in both directions stood a line of mounted Texians. Their rifles stood primed and ready with hammers cocked.

  Across the grassy expanse of Big Prairie, hidden in the underbrush and trees, was another line of buckskin-clad men with loaded weapons in hand, awaiting their commanders’ signals. On those si
gnals the two parallel lines of riders would move from the dense vegetation onto the clearing known as Big Prairie—and there face the Pehnahterkuh.

  McCulloch had promised that Texas would answer the call to arms, and it had. John Moore, Edward Burleson, and Big Foot Wallace were there and with them their ranger commands. Here, too, was the Bastrop Militia.

  Even Matthew Caldwell, who had been wounded in the leg during the Council House Fight, was here, fully recovered from his rifle wound, with his patrol beside him. Caldwell and McCulloch were now positioned beside Brigadier General Felix Huston, who was nominally in command of the amassed army, three riders from Sands. He could hear the three whispering their last minute plans and speculations for the forthcoming battle.

  Sands hadn’t believed the reports that the messenger brought last night with orders for McCulloch’s men to circle the Comanche and regroup around Big Prairie. He even had found it hard to accept when he saw the steady stream of men who had flowed into the bushy bottom lands through the night. Only now did he truly accept what his eyes perceived.

  In a mere six days, Texas had raised an army—an army of every able-bodied man who could sit a saddle and wield a rifle. From Gonzales, Victoria, Austin, Lavaca, Cuero, and score upon score of small communities and settlements, they had rallied to the call.

  Sands’ chest swelled with pride. To be certain there were men who had faced the Comanches before, but for the most part the men gathered here had never lifted a gun in battle. Today they would face a trial by fire.

  Even the Tonkawa chief Placido, with fourteen warriors, had run thirty miles to join the Texians in their battle against the Comanche. Placido and his braves—still on foot because of the shortage of horses and with white rags tied to their arms so that their white allies could distinguish them from Comanches when the fighting began—now served as scouts for General Huston.

  Sands’ head turned from the line of mounted men, and he stared at the cloud of dust that billowed in the air to the south. The Pehnahterkuh approached, unaware of the mounted force awaiting them.

  Once Buffalo Hump had committed himself to a route along the Colorado River, McCulloch had outguessed the war chief every step of the way. And with each of those steps, McCulloch’s men had harassed the Comanche column, driving them northward toward Plum Creek. When the men’s horses collapsed and died from exhaustion, they continued on foot or on mustangs stolen from the Nermernuh, never stopping as they nipped at Buffalo Hump’s heels.

  And now the rewards of those two days of ceaseless hit-and-run fighting was about to pay off. Within minutes the Comanche would be on Big Prairie.

  As Sands stared at the approaching column he could see the effects of McCulloch’s strategy. The Comanche were totally unprepared for combat. Except for a few braves positioned as outriders along the massive band of Pehnahterkuh, the warriors were scattered through the herd of stolen horses and mules. Their full attention was on the livestock—animals grown cantankerous and tired from the constant press.

  “Check your weapons,” a rider whispered beside Sands..

  Sands did as ordered and passed the command to Will on his left. He then looked back at Buffalo Hump’s army as it moved onto Big Prairie.

  “Forward!” this from General Huston.

  A similar command echoed from across the grassy flatlands.

  There was no chaotic charge, no mad scramble out of the heavy foliage. Nor was there the blaring chorus of trumpeted bugles to announce the attack. Deadly silent and with faces set in cool determination the two parallel lines of mounted Texians walked their mounts onto Big Prairie in an almost leisurely pace and converged on the marching Pehnahterkuh.

  Had his mind not been set with the grim task before him, Sands would have laughed at the ludicrous scene that met the Texian army. Many of the Nermernuh still wore the spoils of the Linnville raid. Black stovepipe hats adorned countless warriors’ heads. Here and there braves, many in buffalo-horned headdress, had spread umbrellas and parasols to shade them from the harsh August sun, presenting a grotesque mingling of savage ferocity and the ridiculous. Even their ponies’ tails and manes were tied with long ribbons of red cloth.

  Secure in the belief that Buffalo Hump’s powerful medicine had made the band invulnerable, the Comanche outriders galloped up and down the column, almost prancing and preening. Without the slightest hint of fear, they taunted the line of Tejanos, while performing riding tricks on the backs of their mustangs that reminded Sands of circus acrobats and their daring stunts. The challenges for the whites to ride forth and face them in hand-to-hand combat were wasted on the Texians; the majority had never heard Comanche before.

  Sands strained, trying to find Marion amid the motley column of Indians. All he saw was Comanches, horses, mules, Comanches, and more Comanches. His heart quickened its pace. Have they killed her?

  No! he answered himself. Marion was still alive. McCulloch’s men had pressed the horde too hard for two days. Buffalo Hump’s followers hadn’t been given the time to torture prisoners. And if the Comanches had killed her quickly with an arrow or a rifle ball, the body would have been found. Marion’s still alive. All I have to do is find her! Somehow. Somehow!

  “They’re putting on a show to delay us, General,” Sands heard Matthew Caldwell call to Huston. “They want to get the horses and mules by before we attack. Now’s the time to move! Signal the charge!”

  Caldwell was right, Sands realized. The acrobatic outriders could never stop a mounted charge; their fantastic display of horsemanship was performed simply to dazzle the Tejanos. Ninety percent of Buffalo Hump’s warriors remained amid the massive herd of horses and mules, unable to maneuver their ponies, let alone help defend the band.

  Huston merely sat, watching the Pehnahterkuh column as though he hadn’t heard the ranger captain.

  The Indians grew bolder, riding closer and closer to the lines of buckskin-clad soldiers to shout their insults and challenges, A long and lanky warrior, with a streaming feathered war bonnet atop his head, rode out of the main column. The brave was too tall for a Comanche. Sands pegged him for a Kiowa, a northern tribe who often allied themselves with the stronger and more vicious Nermernuh bands.

  With only coup stick in hand, the warrior rode straight at the mounted lines and drew his chestnut pony to an abrupt halt ten yards from General Huston. In the Comanche tongue, he derided the parental lineage of his white enemies and their lack of courage. He challenged the whole army, saying he would face them one by one in single combat.

  The Kiowa brave was either extremely brave or extremely insane, Sands decided as he stared into the shouting red face with its streaks of crimson and black war paint.

  Only Caldwell reacted to the warrior’s challenge. The ranger captain turned to the man mounted beside him and simply said, “Shoot him.”

  The rider, a man Sands recognized as being among those who joined McCulloch in Victoria, lifted his long rifle, sighted, and squeezed the trigger. The report sounded as though a heavy branch had cracked in two.

  The Kiowa jerked, then his body went rigid. A dark purple hole had opened in the center of his forehead. Sands saw his eyes, wide and round, and a befuddled expression of disbelief shadowing his face just before he tumbled to the ground—dead.

  A moan, rising from deep in the chest and pushing itself hoarsely through the throat, worked its way over Comanche lips as Buffalo Hump’s warriors stared on in confusion. If they had felt the war chiefs medicine would protect them, a single rifle ball had dispelled that belief. For such a brave warrior, even one who was a lowly Kiowa, to be killed so easily was bad medicine.

  “Damnit, man! Charge!” Caldwell demanded. “Charge ‘em, General!”

  This time Huston came to life. With his rifle raised high, he shouted a single word, “Charge!”

  Every Texian answered by lifting his rifle and firing it into the Comanche column. In the next instant, a blood-chilling scream that mimicked the Nermernuh’s own war cries tore from the throats of
the white soldiers—and they charged.

  Sands yanked his Colt from his belt as he slid his now useless one-shot rifle into its holster on the saddle. He took aim at one of the nearby Comanche outriders and fired. The brave’s hands grasped at his chest as he fell from the back of his mustang.

  Without taking time to aim, Sands swung the pistol to another brave, pointed its barrel and fired. Like the first, this warrior slid from his pony, hit the ground, and lay there, as dead as the Kiowa whose death had begun the charge.

  “Son of a bitch!” Will cursed at Sands’ side.

  The ranger jerked around to see his friend break off a Comanche arrow that jutted from his thigh. Will’s sun-browned face was as white as a bleached sheet, and pain contorted his youthful features—but he rode on, his Colt once more rising to spit lead into the Comanche horde.

  When Sands’ head turned back to the outriders, they were gone—all killed by the double wave of howling Texians who crashed upon them from two sides. The few skirmish fighters Buffalo Hump had positioned about the main column of his army had died quick and clean.

  The same could not be said for the Nermernuh who died now.

  The Texian army thundered headlong into the main column of Comanches. The rifle and pistol shots and the ceaseless cries of the buckskinned riders took a natural toll—the horses and mules stampeded!

  And in that instant the battle was won.

  Mules overloaded with the spoils of John Linn’s warehouse lunged forward in a dead run, only to plunge into the boggy ground around Plum Creek. The pile up equaled that of a derailed locomotive as animal ran atop animal atop animal. And then the horses came, pounding into mules.