Winter Rain (47 page)

“Tough on the Injuns?”

“President Lamar tough on Injuns!” Coffee hooted.

“These Comanche bands, yes,” Lockhart replied. “Lamar wasn’t in office a little over a year when three Comanche chiefs come riding into the village of San Antonio, saying they were sent by the rest of the chiefs to make arrangement for some treaty talks with the Texans.
Tehannos
they called us—probably from the Mexican tongue.”

“Comancheros?” Jonah asked, his interest growing more piqued as Lockhart went on with the story.

“Likely that’s where the Comanche learned the word,” the captain answered. “Seeing a chance to free some of the white captives held by the Comanches suddenly dropped in their lap, the Texans agreed to treaty-talks to be held at the Council House there in San Antonio—if … if the Comanche would bring in all their white captives to sell to the peace commissioners.”

“But them Texans weren’t about to buy the captives back, were they?”

Lockhart shook his head. “Plan was to capture all the chiefs and hold them prisoner. Exchange ’em for the white captives even up.”

“What came of it?”

“That meeting come to be—but the sixty-five Comanche chiefs, with all their women and kids that come in, brought only one white prisoner with them.”

“It was Matilda Lockhart,” Deacon Johns broke in.

Hook brought his eyes back to the captain. “She kin to you?”

He nodded. “My father’s sister-in-law. My uncle had been killed in a raid on the Trinity. Folks who watched her brought in said she had been starved down to hide and bone. Bruised and cut up something bad.” And the captain swallowed hard in its telling, the cold-banked fires glowing behind the man’s eyes. “When Matilda was brought into the Council House, she told the others there were several others at the big camp only three days away. The bastards brought her in to see if they could get a high price for her—planning to ransom each prisoner separately to get the most they could for each one.”

“But them God-fearing folk at San Antone took up
the sword of the righteous!” exclaimed the deacon. “Rangers, they was. The ones closed the trap on those Comanch’.”

“Colonel William Cooke, our republic’s secretary of war, got his Rangers spread out around the walls inside that Council House while the peace-talkers tried to find out about the other prisoners. Red bastards claimed the other captives were with bands far, far off. So Cooke told the chiefs they were prisoners of the Texans and would be exchanged, one for one, for the whites.”

“That’s when the hoedown was called!” said Niles Coffee, his red hair lit with life in the fire’s glow.

Lockhart nodded. “When the chiefs and their women pulled out knives and bows, rushing the doors, Cooke gave his order and the Rangers opened fire.”

“Damn—but that would have been a sight!” marveled Johns, with a big smile dancing across the war-map wrinkles of his face.

“What come of it? How many dead?” Jonah asked.

“Half the Comanche were killed on the spot: thirty-five, including three women and two children.”

“The seed of the devil will suffer the gall and wormwood!” growled Johns.

“Twenty-seven women and children—plus two old men—were captured when the shooting stopped.”

“And the Rangers—what of them?”

“Seven died,” Harley Pettis said, the veins in his neck bulging like a river boatman’s hemp rope. He was a cliptongued sort with a dark broom of burr-length hair sprouting from the top of his head. “Another eight was wounded.”

Jonah shook his head in wonder. “Can’t believe there wasn’t more Rangers killed in all that gunplay.”

“The deacon here might tell you it was God’s own hand helping the Rangers against the devil’s children,” Lockhart said. “Whatever we are, Jonah—this is a flinthard
bunch you’ve sworn allegiance to and joined, my friend.”

Hook squirmed anxiously on the stump where he sat. “So tell me—they ever get them other prisoners back?”

“Colonel Hugh McLeod of the Rangers sent one of the squaws out on a pony to tell the rest what bargain they could strike.”

Jonah looked sour at that, saying, “They didn’t come in, did they?”

Lockhart gazed at Hook a moment. “No. Not these Comanche. Maybe Lipans or Caddos or Tonkawas would’ve seen the writing on the wall. But not these Comanche.”

“Them heathens gathered up and marched south to the gulf coast,” Deacon Johns took up the story now. “Made their famous raid on Linnville, a tiny port village of Christians!”

“Looted all they could,” Sergeant Coffee added. “Burned everything to the ground.”

“But McLeod’s Rangers went after ’em,” Lockhart continued, staring into the fire. “Four days later they caught those Comanche moving north. At a place called Plum Creek. First and only time we know of those red sonsabitches fighting a pitched battle.”

“They made a real stand-up fight of it,” Wig Danville said, speaking for the first time. He had a high forehead that said something of his great even-mindedness and ready sense of humor. “Not like usual: hit and then run off when things get tight for ’em.”

“Eighty warriors killed that day,” Lockhart said, that slash of his mouth beneath the bushy black mustache. “Stock recovered, along with three more white captives abandoned when the fight turned bad.”

“An amazing miracle from the Lord!” Johns cheered, dribbling the front of his old ticking shirt with some tobacco juice. “Most normal the Comanche kill
their prisoners if they can’t take ’em along with the fleeing village.”

“Was the tribe whipped for a while?” Jonah asked.

“Not by a long chalk,” Deacon Johns grumbled.

“Those what got away went right back to raiding the small settlements, same as always,” said Coffee. “Stealing, burning, killing, and kidnapping.”

“Ranger Captain John Moore caught another bunch down on the Red Fork of the Colorado later that fall,” Lockhart explained. “Caught them asleep. One hundred thirty Comanche killed, and one more white person freed from terror.”

Jonah leaned back, studying the faces of these men gathered around the embers left by the evening cook fire. Nearby, two other mess fires had gone to a red glow, circled by other Rangers.

“This the way it’s been ever since?” Hook asked. “They raid—you go try to even the score. They raid again—you ride out again to kill more of ’em.”

Lockhart only nodded.

“They strike when and where they choose—especially that bunch of Kwahadis with the half-breed,” Coffee said, scratching at his red whiskers.

“In their hearts still burns a rage against white folk for what those red fornicators suffered at the Council House all these decades gone,” Johns added, his steely eyes aglow in the dying flames.

“Things got no better during the war, Jonah,” Lockhart said. “Especially afterward, when we all figured that since we were part of the Union, that the goddamned federal government would now take care of the Injun problem for us.”

“Instead, the carpetbaggers come in to run our government for us,” Coffee snarled.

“A carpetbagger governor named Davis sat on his
thumbs while the Injuns just got all the bolder too,” June Callicott added.

“That scalawag disbanded the Rangers for nine ever-loving years!” Johns bellowed.

“Not until seventy-one did the army finally get the idea that there was a serious problem down here,” Lockhart continued. “Back in Washington someone finally got some ears and started to believe that the Comanche were actually raiding. That spring the Sixth Cavalry was moved to Kansas, and Mackenzie’s Fourth Cavalry was assigned to Texas—anticipating a bloody spring.”

“Gotta give ’em credit,” Coffee said. “Mackenzie kept his boys in the saddle for the better part of seventy-one and seventy-two, chasing them red bastards.”

Lockhart scratched his crop of three-day whiskers, saying, “An uneasy peace came of things last year, so that scalawag Governor Davis cut back the money, meaning Ranger companies dropped from a thousand to just over three hundred men. And now this year Davis has gone and pardoned a couple of Kiowa chiefs who have the blood of white folks on their hands—why, the whole southern plains has took fire all over again.”

“Less’n three hundred Rangers—with all this ground to cover?” Hook looked at Lockhart, wagging his head.

“That’s why we had us another revolution here in Texas this past spring, Jonah,” Lockhart said, a wry smile below that bushy black mustache. “Bunch of Rangers went in and threw that copper-backed Davis right out of office—put in a good man, Richard Coke.”

“First Democrat since the war,” Johns declared.

“If there’s only about three hundred of us—what’s the army doing now?” Jonah asked.

Pettis shrugged, his jaw muscles working like the current of a river, and said, “Mackenzie’s down on the border, told to chase the Kickapoos back into Mexico.”

“And all the while—up here the devil goes on the prowl!” added Deacon Johns.

Lockhart gazed steadily at Hook. “Isn’t that the reason you joined us, Jonah? Instead of signing up with the army?”

“The army chases Injuns a lot. They don’t always find what they go after,” Jonah admitted. “I’ve seen enough of that with my own eyes to know it’s the truth.”

“The Gospel, that is!” Johns exclaimed.

“So you took the oath because you know the Rangers find what they go after,” Coffee said.

Jonah gazed around the group sitting with their feet to the last glowing of the low flames. Most of the rest from the other fires had come over to join the circle. “I fought in the war. Fought Injuns in Dakota Territory too. I know good men when I see ’em. I took you fellas to be good men what didn’t give up.”

“That’s why I decided to sign you on, Jonah Hook,” Lockhart replied. “From what I’ve come to know of you—you’re a good man who doesn’t give up.”

“Besides,” crowed Deacon Johns, “you’re a good southern boy!”

Lockhart nodded, waiting while some of the rest quietly hooted their approval. “There’s a lot to be said for all that Texas gave to the Confederacy during the war, Jonah. Why, when hostilities broke out back east, even General Con Terry, an old Ranger himself from the days of the revolution, organized his own damned regiment of former Rangers and frontiersmen.”

“They was called Terry’s Texas Rangers,” Coffee said with admiration.

“From Bull Run clear down to Appomattox—Rangers fought agin the Yankees,” Johns added, just as proud.

“By Appomattox, Terry’s regiment had lost nigh onto eight of every ten who had mustered into the general’s bunch,” Wig Danville said.

“God bless their souls,” Johns said, removing his hat to place it over his heart as he gazed up into the night sky.

“God bless the Texas Rangers,” Niles Coffee repeated.

Lockhart knelt by the dim glow of the embers and consulted his big turnip watch, its gold turned as red as a Spanish doubloon. Standing, he slipped it back into a vest pocket. “Time for second watch to relieve our pickets.”

Hook watched a handful of men off into the darkness without a grumble, only the faint crunch of their boots fading on the flaky ground.

“You always prefer last watch, Jonah?”

He turned back to Lockhart. “Don’t mind rising early—not at all.”

“How about when there’s snow on the ground?”

Hook smiled. “Just gets me an early start on the day.”

Lockhart nodded with a grin of his own. “That’s the sort of man we have in the Rangers.”

“I’m waiting to find some sign, a trail—track down a village … anything: that’s what I’m waiting on,” Jonah replied.

“You travel light and lean as this bunch does—you’re bound to come up with some Comanche sooner or later.”

“Can’t be soon enough for me.”

“Remember what they say about good things coming to all those who wait. Good night, Jonah.”

He watched the company commander turn and move off into the dim light toward his bedroll. “G’night, cap’n.”

The next morning after the men had wolfed down a cold breakfast and loaded the company’s two pack mules, Lockhart had Sergeant Coffee hold roll call as the Rangers stood by their mounts. June Callicott, a man as homely as blue sin and skinny as rack-bone crowbait, stood beside Jonah, waiting through inspection.

“Full moon was two nights back, men,” the captain began, striding the front of his company. “Most of you
know what that means. We can figure the savages were out in force.”

“Comanche moon,” Callicott whispered from the corner of his mouth.

Ever since last spring Jonah had heard the term mentioned enough: the full of the moon when the Kiowa and Comanche and Cheyenne, too, all timed their biggest raids to take advantage of the light while they plundered and pillaged at night, able to escape before many of their thefts were discovered, before any pursuers would take up their trail.

“With that sobering thought in mind,” Lockhart went on, “we best be about covering our assigned territory—more closely now than we have for the past three weeks. I’m doubling the outriders, hoping we can cross some sign between the headwaters of McClellan Creek and the far end of the Palo Duro.”

“With the captain’s permission?” John Corn inquired.

“What is it, Corn?”

“We gonna work down to the Palo Duro on the double, sir?”

“I figured we would,” Lockhart replied.

“Thank you, Captain. Pleased of that because we all know the red bastards cross and recross this country by the same trails they use whenever they been out raiding.”

“But this time there’s something more afoot than just plain raiding, Private Corn,” Lockhart said, coming to a stop near Corn and Hook. “This time the stories say the Comanche have gone and held a sun dance. Their first ever.”

“Godless heathen fornicators!” grumbled Deacon Johns. “Praying to the sun! The wrath of God lies barely sleeping, boys—hid from the days of Abraham himself, and them red-baked sinners got the power to awake the wrath of the Almighty, they do. Hell ain’t half-f yet!”

“I say let hell open up and swallow all them red bastards!” growled Harley Pettis.

When they were done, Lockhart looked back at Private Corn. “This time the bands are gathering up. That tells me the hostiles in our assigned territory aren’t going to be content with raiding for a handful of horses here or a dozen cows there.”