The Texians 1

by Zack Wyatt

  Amid all were the Pehnahterkuh. Those on foot went down beneath sharp hooves, their death cries drowned by the rolling reports of the Texians’ guns. Braves, squaws, and children were caught in the deadly tide of horseflesh.

  The mounted warriors were no better prepared to meet the unexpected stampede. Unable to rein their ponies free of the panicked animals, they fell: some thrown from their mounts, others cut down by the hail of bullets that showered the struggling mass of man and animal.

  And still Sands and the rest of the Texian army charged, pressing the terror-panicked animals into a fevered frenzy as they sought to escape the thundering guns.

  Warriors who somehow managed to remain astride their mounts, now abandoned the mustangs and ran—leaping from back to lathered back across the great herd of stolen animals. Immediately companies of rangers broke from the charge and pursued the fleeing Comanches into the heavy woods surrounding Big Prairie.

  “Josh! There!” Will called out.

  Sands’ head twisted around. His young friend pointed across the boiling mass of man and animal. Marion!

  There, slung across a dappled gray like a sack of potatoes, was the woman he loved. With her on the bolting horse was a Comanche brave, his dark, braided hair streaming in the air behind him. As Sands watched in mute agony, the brave, the horse, and Marion disappeared into the coastal forest.

  Without another glance to the now dispersed column of Comanches, Sands reined the mule he still rode toward the trees, and dug his spurs into its dark flanks.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Silence—unnatural silence pressed around Sands as he eased back on the reins and drew the mule to a halt. Big Prairie was but a quarter of a mile behind him, yet the battle sounds no longer penetrated the dense vegetation.

  Nor did any other sound.

  He cocked his head, listening. Nothing touched his ears, not even the hum of insects buzzing in the summer heat.

  Cautiously, he pulled back the hammer to his Colt. The two metallic clicks as it cocked resounded through the preternatural stillness. Still there was no answer from the wood—no bird on fluttering wings, no startled jackrabbit fleeing at his approach—only silence.

  Sands nudged the mule forward in a slow walk. The brave was here waiting—he could feel him. His steel-blue eyes rolled to the branches overhead for an instant. Nothing. Was he behind the oak ahead? Sands’ gaze shifted to the right as the mule lumbered by the ancient bole. Nothing. That dense canebreak to the left? Nothing.

  A glint of sunlight on metal! He saw it out of the corner of his eye amid a bushy growth of honeysuckle just beyond the oak on his right.

  Sands reacted rather than thought. He lunged to the left, throwing himself from the saddle. He felt the swish of air on the back of his neck as a razor-honed war lance speared empty air.

  Then he hit the ground—hard. Harder than he had anticipated. His roll came a fraction of a second too late. He struck the grassy forest floor and just lay there, his shoulder throbbing in pain. And his Colt?

  He didn’t know. The impact jarred it from his grip; his hand now surrounded hot, muggy air.

  The sound of rushing footsteps brought him to life. Sands flipped to his back and stared up into a war-painted face and the wicked head of a lance meant to impale his chest.

  Again the ranger reacted. Both his arms flew up, hands grasping the lance shaft behind the feather and ribbon decorated head. He jerked to the left, then down.

  The lance thrusted deep into the loamy soil a fraction of an inch from Sands’ side. The warrior, holding tight to his weapon, vaulted through the air and hit the ground in a somersaulting roll.

  The moment of confusion was all that was needed for Sands to scramble to his feet. A hasty glance told him what he already knew, the Colt was lost in the high grass and there wasn’t time to find it. His hand dropped to the sheath slung on his belt; steel on leather hissed as he yanked his hunting knife free.

  Before he could take advantage of the brave’s tumbling spill, the Comanche warrior sprang to his feet. In his hand—his own deadly blade.

  “I will cut away your shriveled manhood and feed it to the ants!” the brave spat in his native tongue as his jet black eyes coolly glared at Sands. “Your scalp will hang from my war lance!”

  “And I’ll piss on your grave!” Sands said as he lunged forward, his blade slicing upward toward the brave’s naked belly.

  The Comanche didn’t back-step as he had anticipated. Instead his arm whipped out, a powerful grip encircling the ranger’s wrist. Simultaneously, the warrior lashed out, his blade meant to open Sands’ throat from ear to ear.

  Sands ducked beneath the whistling knife, and launched himself forward. With the full weight of his body behind it, his head rammed into the Comanche’s solar plexus. Air rushed from the warrior’s lungs in an astonished “oouuff!”

  In that moment of surprise, Sands felt the vise-tight fingers about his wrist slacken. The warrior’s single heartbeat of disorientation provided the opening he needed.

  As ranger and Comanche tumbled to the ground, Sands wrenched his hand from the confining grip. In a fluid follow through, he thrusted the long knife inward. He felt the brief resistance as the steel tip met bone, then slipped upward a quarter of an inch to slide easily between two ribs and drive straight to the heart.

  The brave’s dark eyes flew wide to stare with incomprehension into the face of the ranger laying on top of him. A throaty, moist rattle gurgled from his quivering lips just before his body went totally flaccid as the last delicate threads of life frayed and snapped.

  Temples around and knees watery weak, Sands shoved himself from the still body. He lay on his back staring at the leafy canopy of boughs above while he gulped down breath after breath. That had been closer than he liked. If he hadn’t caught the glint of sunlight on the lance head ...

  He pushed the thought away. There was no sense in dwelling on what might have been. What mattered was that he had seen the glint and his blade had been surer than the brave’s. He was alive and the enemy he had faced was dead. It was a harsh and cruel judgment of what had transpired here in the heart of this coastal forest, but it was all that carried any weight in an untamed land such as Texas. Perhaps one day men would be able to live their lives by loftier codes: this day survival and survival alone ruled.

  Sands pushed to his elbows and glanced around. His black mule stood twenty feet away idly munching grass around the bit in its mouth. A humorless irony touched the ranger’s lips as he started to rise. There in the grass, no more than an inch from his fingertips lay his lost Colt. He shook his head as he retrieved the weapon, carefully uncocked it, and tucked the barrel into his belt.

  Turning to the dead brave, he reached down, pulled his blade from the Comanche’s unmoving chest, and wiped away the blood on the grass before slipping it back into its leather sheath.

  A rustle of underbrush brought the Colt from Sands’ belt. His thumb jerked back the hammer as he swirled. Nothing! There was no Comanche to face him, no lance or knife poised to rob his life.

  The rustle came again—from beyond the vining honeysuckle that had concealed the brave.

  Picking his way around the thick, dangled growth, he entered a tiny clearing. There, tightly bound to the trunk of a sweetgum tree, with a swath of red cloth gagging her mouth, was Marion. The rustling sound came from a dead branch she nudged with the toe or her foot.

  Her emerald green eyes rose to meet his with a mingled gaze of exhaustion, relief, and joy.

  Once again, Sands returned his pistol to his belt and freed the hunting knife. In two long strides, he was at the tree, the sharp blade severing the cords that bound Marion’s body to the bole.

  “He was going to kill me!” Marion said as she pulled the red cloth from her mouth. “He had the lance raised when he heard you approach. He ... ”

  Sands’ mouth covered hers, muffling the rest of her words. He pulled her to him and held her there tightly. Too many months had passed since he
had last savored the feel of this magnificent woman—months lost because of his own stupidity and prejudice. Now, he had been given a third chance—this time he intended to keep her just where she was!

  Chapter Twenty

  Blood Moon, the sound of it in Sands’ mind was strange and alien here and now. The rugged hill country seemed as far away from the Gulf of Mexico as did the full moon that hung overhead. How a month can change things!

  Sands stretched out in the cool grass skirting the white beach, and let the gentle night breeze dry the drops of water clinging to his naked body. The sound of banjo, guitar, and fiddle playing a lively rendition of “Cumberland Gap” drifted up from Indianola on the warm southerly breeze, barely audible above the breaking surf of Lavaca Bay.

  They’ll be dancing till sun up, Sands thought. A self-satisfied smile moved across his lips, as he remembered the hoedown Marion and he had left two hours ago.

  He still wasn’t certain why the townsfolk in the community positioned on the south shore of Lavaca Bay had been celebrating, but it didn’t matter; most people didn’t need much of an excuse for breaking out a fiddle and playing a tune. All that really mattered was that the music was good, the food bountiful, and the liquor flowing. The shindig in Indianola had provided all three. The fifteen-mile drive from Linnville had been well worth it.

  Sands’ gaze shifted back to the moonlit bay and Marion who still frolicked in the breaking waves like some mythological mermaid. They had driven only half the way back to Linnville before she had suggested the moonlight swim. Stripping away their clothes they had plunged into the gulf.

  Their swim had been brief. Within minutes they found themselves back on shore, rolling in each other’s arms. The fierce hunger of Marion’s lovemaking still lingered in Sands’ mind. There was a desperation in the rhythm of her body he had never felt before. However, when their desires had been sated, Marion had pulled him back into the sea before he could question her puzzling behavior.

  Sands’ gaze moved northward. The few flickering lights of Linnville could be seen from his position. It was hard to imagine the Comanche horde that had razed the small community a month ago. A few of Linnville’s residents had moved south to Indianola after the Comanche raid. But the majority had remained and rebuilt the town. Already fresh stores lay in John Linn’s new warehouse.

  Even the battle of Plum Creek seemed to be part of a past—centuries away. Here beside the peaceful bay with its palms and warm breeze, Sands found it difficult to remember the bloody horror of the stampeding horses and mules. Or the long pursuit as the Texian army had divided and chased the escaping bands of Comanches back to the plains.

  Only one Texian had been killed in the battle, while General Huston had estimated that Buffalo Hump had lost a quarter of his warriors at Big Prairie. As with the squaws taken after the Council House Fight, the prisoners had not been killed, but parceled out as “servants.” Already many of these “servants” had escaped back to Pehnahterkuh lands on the backs of stolen horses.

  As for the booty taken by the Comanche during their six days of terror, it had been divided among the men who fought at Plum Creek. Most of the men who answered the rangers’ call for help had gone home wealthier than when they first arrived in the marshy bottom lands.

  Sands’ share had been twenty head of horses and mules. These he had sold for a nice profit—one he intended to use to purchase a small farm outside Linnville—as soon as Marion answered the question he had proposed while they danced at Indianola this night.

  A squirming disquiet wiggled through Sands as he remembered the furrows that had briefly wrinkled Marion’s brow when he had asked her to marry him. The hugging arms and wet smacking kisses he had expected had not come in answer to that all important question. Instead, Marion had said she needed to talk with him before “committing” herself.

  Sands still waited for her answer—and that “talk.”

  He looked back to the gulf. Unashamed of her nakedness, Marion walked from the foamy surf and trotted toward him. The moonlight played on the water clinging to her sleek form, igniting the droplets like a million sparkling gems. The same drops that sprinkled coolly over his dry skin as she lowered herself to the grass beside him.

  “It’s so beautiful here,” she said as her gaze wandered over the bay. “I feel so alive and part of it, like some pagan lost in her worship of nature.”

  Sands grinned. “If the people back at the hoedown in Indianola saw you now, they’d agree!”

  The smile that touched Marion’s lips was a weak attempt at a laugh. No sound moved over her lips. She merely glanced at him, then looked back at the surf.

  “Pa told me you rejoined the rangers today,” she said softly.

  “There’s rumors of Santa Anna sending another army up from Mexico. The rangers are looking for men, just in case,” Sands answered. “Since Will’s leg’s healed, we rode into Victoria and signed up.”

  “Is that what you want, Josh? To be a ranger again?” Marion turned to him. He could see the intense expression on her delicate face through the shadows cast by the moon.

  “It’s the only thing I know,” he shrugged. Something within him went hollow and sinking. Marion was looking for an answer; what it was, he wasn’t sure. However, he sensed that his words had been the wrong ones. “I’m good at what I do.”

  “Some men farm the land. Some men are merchants. Others build wagons or shoe horses. And some men are rangers,” Marion’s voice grew even lower. “And everyone of them is needed—all have their jobs to be done. But ranging is more than a job to you, isn’t it?”

  Sands’ sinking feeling increased. “I guess that’s one way of looking at it. A man’s got to do what he’s cut out to do. As long as the Comanche ride and as long as there’s a threat of the Mexican Army invading the republic, there’ll be a need for rangers. One day this country will be as peaceful as it was back in Ohio, but that’s still a way off as I see it.”

  Marion sat quietly, staring back at the gulf. Sands could almost hear her thinking, but he could not sense the direction of those thoughts.

  “I’ve been trying to avoid this, hoping against hope that there would never be a need for me to face what I’ve been fearing ever since you found me,” she finally said with a sudden firmness in her voice. “But a woman’s like a man, she’s got to do what she’s got to do.”

  Marion’s head slowly turned to him and she reached out and took his hand. “After what I’m about to say you may find this hard to believe, but I love you, Josh Sands ... perhaps more than I’ve ever loved any man.”

  “Marion, I love you. I’ve told you and tried to show what I feel.” How easy the words came now to him; how right and natural they sounded.

  “I know, and that’s what makes what I have to say ... have to do ... so hard,” she continued. “And though everything within me is crying out for me to say ‘yes, I’ll marry you ... happily spend the rest of our lives together,’ I can’t.”

  “Can’t?”

  “Can’t,” she repeated. “Because I’m not certain there will be a rest of your life. Every time you would ride out on patrol, there would be the possibility that you wouldn’t return. Someday Will would come knocking at our door, holding his hat in his hands with his big eyes all sad and downcast. He’ll stutter and stammer a bit, then he’ll blurt out that you didn’t ride back from patrol this time—that you were killed by a Comanche arrow or a Mexican bullet. I couldn’t live with that—not the long sleepless nights of not knowing, always waiting for Will to come to our door. I’ve had one husband taken from me. I’m not strong enough to endure losing another.”

  Sands tried to find the words to reassure her—but there were none. She was right. There was nothing certain about a ranger’s life—especially the prospect of living to a ripe old age.

  “I could quit ranging—quit it for good. I’ve been thinking about using the money I got from selling the horses to buy us a small spread. It wouldn’t be much to start with, but I coul
d grow tobacco and maybe some cotton. It would grow, I know it would. In time ...”

  Marion’s warm lips lightly pressed to his, hushing him.

  When she eased back, her head moved sadly from side to side.

  “Another woman might believe Josh Sands could lay aside his rifle and pistol and take up farming, but I’m not another woman. I know what ranging means to you. You might work the land for a year or two, but down deep inside it would be killing you. You’d be aching for the patrols and the open country of the frontier.”

  She paused, her hand squeezing his tightly. “Like as not I’d wake up one morning, and you’d be gone. And you’d never be back. Or worse, you’d stay on out of a sense of obligation and duty, but you’d hate it. And you’d end up hating me for keeping you away from the life you love.”

  Her eyes lifted and stared into Sands’. “Josh, I couldn’t live with that either, not seeing all the love we share become some twisted ugly thing that would blacken both our hearts.”

  Again, Sands couldn’t find the words to comfort her—once more they didn’t exist. Perhaps someday in the future he might be ready to settle down and try his hand at farming. But now ranging was all he knew—all he wanted. As Marion had said there was a job to be done and he was a man who could do it.

  “I guess that leaves us out in the cold,” he finally found the heart within to speak.

  “No, it leaves us with a lot of warm, tender feelings. It leaves us with the love we feel for one another. That’s something some people never experience,” she whispered, leaning over to kiss his cheek. “And that’s something nobody, not even you or I, will ever be able to take away.”

  Sands’ gaze shifted upward to the now melancholy waves lapping against the sandy beach. A shadow had fallen over the paradise he had found among the palms and the bay. That shadow was the one he cast himself.

  “I guess, the only question left is, what happens now?” he said as he turned back to Marion.