“Captain Taylor is a grown man, Charm. He knows what he’s doing. He knows what you were, but he can also see the woman you have become. He sees what I see when I look at you, someone with so much love to give, someone who deserves a second chance. If you love him, you should be with him.” Kate saw the shining gold locket on a fine chain around Charm’s neck. She glanced toward the back door.
“Did he leave?”
Charm wiped her face on the backs of her wrists and hiccupped another sob. Daniel thumped over to the kitchen table and slipped a cookie off a platter.
Charm sniffed. “He’s gone. He—said he knew he was too old for me. He thinks that’s why—I said no— because he’s too old. I tried to tell him that wasn’t true, but he didn’t believe me.”
Kate grabbed the dish towel and used it to mop Charm’s streaming tears.
“Oh, Kate. You should have seen his face. I know I hurt him, but I had to do it. I—can’t be—responsible for ruining his life. He’s so good. So honorable. What would folks say if they found out that he married a whore?”
Another woman might have tried to dissuade Charm from thinking the worst, might even have offered platitudes, but Kate knew exactly what people would say.
The insults that sprang from the tongues of the righteous and narrow-minded were as sharp and deadly as the mightiest of swords.
28
Day had already dawned when a party of settlers rode into the Ranger camp, three men dazed and shocked, one wounded. Their outpost on the Brazos had been attacked by a raiding party, their cabins burned to the ground. Female captives were stolen along with all the outpost’s horses.
As second in command, Reed had readied the men and ordered a supply mule loaded, then he had stalled, waiting for Jonah to get back. For some reason the man had insisted on accompanying the sutler into Lone Star for supplies. At first Reed thought maybe government money allocated to the Rangers had been reduced again and that Jonah had gone in to haggle over prices. Then he remembered Charm was out at the ranch, less than an hour’s ride from town.
It was nearly nine in the morning now, and there was still no sign of Jonah.
New recruit Tommy Harlan, the youngest of eight strapping Harlan boys and the only one to leave the family farm and join the Rangers, left the picket line where the other men were sober as they tied gear and weapons to their mounts.
“The men are ready to ride, sir. Any sign of Captain Taylor yet?” Overenthusiastic, young Harlan did everything but salute.
Reed wanted to give Jonah another ten minutes. He would have led the men out long before now if they weren’t tracking a party of fifteen warriors and twice as many horses. With so many tracks cutting a wide swath across the prairie, the trail would be impossible to miss.
“Tell the men to mount up. We can’t wait any longer.” Reed slapped his hat against his thigh then shoved it on and tapped it down. His gut was knotted tighter than a short belt around a fat man’s belly by the time he saddled up.
The men were silent, intent on what they had to do. He gave orders, told them that captives had been taken, warned them to stay together and wait for his commands. Then he sent two scouts on ahead. Just as he was about to issue the order to ride, the sutler’s supply wagon came rumbling over the rise with Jonah riding beside it.
When the captain saw his troops mounted, he spurred his horse and quickly rode up to Reed, who gave the signal for the column of riders to head out. He and Jonah rode side by side.
“Comanche war band hit south of the Brazos before sunup,” Reed explained. “The settlers tried to hold them off. They sent for help, but the rider didn’t make it through. Three of them came in this morning for help. Two farmers were killed, four captives taken along with about twenty head of horses. I sent the men back to their families. The raiders slaughtered a few head of beef and left them to rot. They weren’t after food.”
“How much time do they have on us?”
“Three, maybe four hours.”
They rode in silence for a quarter of a mile before Reed decided Jonah wasn’t going to tell him voluntarily why he had suddenly taken it upon himself to go into town with the sutler.
“Mind telling me why
you
had to go for supplies?” The minute the question was hanging on the air Reed wished he hadn’t asked it.
Jonah’s mouth hardened into a tight line. When he turned to Reed there was a bottomless ache in his eyes. “I stopped by the ranch to see Charm.”
Reed’s gut cinched another notch. They rode on a piece, Jonah’s silence eating at him until he was raw. “Everything all right there?” Reed finally asked.
“Oh, yeah. Just fine. Better than fine from what I could tell.” Jonah went stone silent again.
“Mind telling me what ‘better than fine’ means?”
“Well, they’ve got a preacher coming for Sunday suppers. He was there when I arrived. It wasn’t the first time, either. Both women were gussied up in matching blue dresses. Even the boy was cleaned up, sitting at the table.”
Reed strained for a scrap of memory that would help him recall what the Lone Star preacher looked like. He remembered hearing about a church starting up a couple of years back and something about the man being a war hero. The church building was being framed on one of his infrequent trips into town, and he had seen the preacher, but just now he couldn’t put a face to a name.
Jonah smoothly guided his bay around a prairie dog hole. “Nice and cozy.”
“What did you say?” Reed thought he had heard right. Heard plenty of resentment in the tone, too.
“I said, they looked nice and cozy. Laughing and talking at the dinner table. Charm’s been teaching Kate to cook. The boy’s using a crutch to get around. Still looks wild around the eyes, to me, but it appears he listens some to Kate now.” A flash of a smile flickered across Jonah’s mouth but didn’t come near to touching his eyes. “Still eats like a Comanche, though.”
Reed wished his imagination wasn’t working overtime but with credible ease he remembered Kate, all prim and proper, seated at the dining table presiding over a fine meal. Now she could smile at some whey-faced preacher with soft hands and a kindly, practiced smile.
It was harder to imagine Charm breaking bread with a preacher, but any man in his right mind would be hard-pressed to turn down an invitation from not one, but two such good-looking women. The ranch house was far enough from town for the preacher to avoid gossip, too. Anything could go on out there, and no one would be the wiser.
“You all right?” Jonah was watching him closely.
“About as right as you.” None of it sat well with Reed. He could see that it didn’t with Jonah, either.
As he let his friend mull things over, he soon spotted their scouts high on a swell on the open prairie. One of the men raised his rifle in the air. They had picked up the trail.
The women forgotten for the time being, Reed and Jonah urged their horses on, and the column followed. Once they reached the knoll, the wide-open prairie spread out in every direction. There was no sign of the raiding party, but that didn’t mean a hell of a lot. Comanche could be anywhere, below a rise or riding along a creek bottom. Everyone was quiet, the teasing banter, the jovial exchanges that usually filled the campground had been left there.
Hunting down Comanche was a cold and dangerous business. Young or old, there was not a man among them who didn’t know that. One wrong move, one misjudgment, and a man would be making the ride back slung across a saddle and carried home to be buried.
The sun was slinking across the afternoon sky, and tensions were as high as the temperature. The Rangers were trying to circle ahead of the Comanche trail in order to head them off in a narrow river bottom.
Jonah called a halt on a ridge and sent a scout out.
Reed shifted in the saddle, heard the familiar creak of leather beneath him. “Sundown is going to catch us out here in the open,” he told Jonah.
Reed’s concentration had been scattered all day, plagued by what Jonah had told him about Kate, Daniel, and the minister dancing attendance on the women at Lone Star.
Kate had sent no message, not even word of Daniel. A woman like her, someone as conscientious as Kate surely would have thought to send some news—unless maybe she had gone starry-eyed over the preacher.
All worry over what Kate might be doing fled as Reed watched Tommy Harlan come streaking across the landscape riding low over his horse’s neck. Not so much as a whisper whipped through the ranks as Harlan galloped up and reined in.
“Small Indian encampment, sir.” The young recruit reported to Jonah. “This side of the river, out in the open. Got close enough to see women and young’ins moving around.”
Jonah squinted. “Looks to be a ravine cutting across the open plain following the creek bed. The raiders would be able to hide the horses there, and they would be easy enough to collect when they are ready to move on. Any sign yet?”
Harlan shook his head. His freckled cheeks glowed pink with sunburn. “None. Although there’s a small stand of trees along the riverbank. Could be working their way back through there, but I didn’t see or hear any sign.”
Reed shoved his hat to the back of his head. “How many in the camp?”
“It’s a fairly small number. Just a few tepees spread out along the river. Cook fires lit.”
“Any sign of captives?” Jonah raised his hand to shield his eyes against the sun.
Tommy shook his head. “None that I could make out. That’s not to say there aren’t any down there.”
By taking the women and children hostage they would have leverage with the bucks when they returned and could easily barter for the release of the white captives and the horses. It would mean avoiding more bloodshed, but they would not be able to ride in without the occupants of the village retaliating. Even the women and older children would put up resistance.
The full moon was already chasing the sun, the sky still a brilliant liquid blue without a wisp of a cloud in sight.
“Harlan, pass the word that we’re going in. I want every man armed and ready. Tell them to fire in the air and don’t shoot to kill unless it’s in self-defense. I want as many taken alive as possible. Is that clear?”
“Yes, sir.” Harlan took his assignment seriously. Solemn as a judge, he began to move down the line, spreading the word. There was barely a sound as the men unsheathed their rifles.
Sweat trickled down Reed’s temple. When he swiped at it with the back of his arm, his shoulder wound gave a twinge. He took a deep breath, closed his eyes. Unbidden, Daniel’s image flashed through his mind.
Jonah was riding along the line of troops, repeating over and over, “Ride slow, stay low, and fan out until I give the signal—then we ride fast and hard and take as many prisoners as we can.” He pointed out a holding area and assigned four men to hang back and act as guards.
“I got a bad feeling about this,” Reed told him when they joined up again.
Jonah’s expression was intent. “If you aren’t feeling right about this, tell me now and stay back with the guards. No one’s gonna blame you, not after what you went through before, but I can’t risk having you with us if you aren’t up to it.”
Reed thought of the settlers who had been killed, of the terrified women who had already spent hours in Comanche hands. He wasn’t about to back out, even if his mind and heart were unsettled.
“Let’s go.”
Jonah waved the men on, and the Rangers fanned out along the upper slope of the plain, moving in a slow, single file toward the tree line along the river. Before the encampment came into view, they separated into two columns, Reed leading one, Jonah the other.
Somewhere in the camp, a baby cried but was quickly quieted. Smoke spiraled from campfires; the smell of burning mesquite did little to alleviate the stench of curing hides and rotting bones scattered around— evidence of a recent buffalo hunt. When an encampment went too sour, the Comanche simply moved on. Reed had smelled worse.
Down the line of troopers, someone’s horse whinnied and tossed its head, fighting the bit. Jonah waved the men into a charge, and, as one, thirty Rangers spurred their mounts across the shallow water of the running stream and up the slight embankment, directly into the Comanche camp.
When the firing began, startled women, children, and old men ran for cover and for weapons. Cooking paunches filled with simmering food were dumped; fires were scattered in the melee that ensued. The Rangers followed Jonah’s orders, firing over their heads, kicking away attackers when they could, knocking them out with their rifle butts instead of shooting, but in many cases there was nothing to do but kill or wound the enemy.
Within seconds the Comanche were able to get their hands on weapons—spears, war axes, knives, pistols, even rifles. Smoke filled the air as the Rangers began torching tepees and summer shelters made of boughs. Reed was dead center in the middle of the encampment when, screaming like a banshee, a woman came running through a screen of smoke. Even though an infant hung in a carrier on her back, the woman charged him with a war ax raised over her head.
His horse reared, and she dropped the ax, fell back, and rolled on the ground. At first her eyes went wide with terror then dark with resignation. She expected death, was ready to face it. Reed shouted at her in broken Comanche, ordered her to surrender.
Then came a flash of movement to his right. Reed turned in the saddle, saw a boy no older than ten years running toward him with an old percussion pistol.
Reed raised his rifle, looked down the barrel.
And imagined Daniel’s face.
29
When Reed heard Tommy Harlan holler at him to shoot, he looked away from the Comanche boy with the pistol and watched Tommy jump his horse over a low campfire, riding down on them. Detached, Reed froze, unable to move, unable to shoot the boy aiming at him as he tried to protect the woman.
Rifle at the ready, Tommy closed in, screaming, “Shoot, Reed! Kill him! He’s going to fire!”
Reed knew the Comanche boy had one shot and knew he would take it. Suddenly, without warning, the boy whirled and fired at Harlan. Tommy was nearly knocked out of the saddle as his body reacted to the impact of the bullet. A red stain flowered across his shirtfront as shock and surprise registered on his face.
The Comanche boy looked as surprised as the young Ranger when Tommy’s eyes glazed over and he fell to the ground.
Distinct within the volley of shots fired around him, Reed heard another, this one fired at close range. He saw the Comanche youth’s body arch, his thin arms flail the air. The old pistol flew out of his hand. He fell forward and hit the ground facedown. A ragged bullet hole ravaged his back.
Reed swallowed bile.
The young mother-sister-wife on the ground screamed and scrambled to her feet. She took off running for the shelter of the trees along the river as Reed looked past the fallen boy to see who the shooter was.
His eyes met and held Jonah’s. In that instant Reed saw concern, disappointment, and resignation. Then Jonah turned his horse and charged after an old man hobbling for the stream.
Reed kicked his horse, rode down the woman with the babe. He dismounted and tied her hands together, forced her to follow him as he rode over to the holding area. In the distance, sporadic firing faded into silence.
It was high summer, the time of long days. Sunlight held until the Comanche braves rode into the creek bottom with the stolen horses. When they saw the smoking remains of the camp and realized what had happened, they were more than willing to trade the four white captives—two women and two young girls under fifteen, as well as the horses, in exchange for their wives and children.
A full moon lit up the night sky as Company J set up their own camp for the night a few miles away. Doc saw to the wounded. The only life lost had been Harlan’s. Jonah ordered guards to watch the body. It was covered by a tarpaulin and draped over his saddle, the horse picketed away from where the women could see it. No one forgot it was there.
In self-imposed exile, Reed sat alone a good distance from the cook fire, staring at the moon, seeing nothing, feeling little more. Jonah had not been the only witness to Tommy’s death. Word had quickly spread that Reed was responsible. It wasn’t long before he had become a pariah.
Somewhere off in the distance, a coyote pack set up raucous howling. Seated on the ground, his legs drawn up and his rifle alongside him, Reed shoved his hat back and rested his arms on his knees.
He heard footsteps rustling the grass but did not bother to pick up his rifle. If death had come for him, he was ready.
But it was only Jonah.
The man said nothing as he lowered himself to the ground, pulled out a rolled smoke, a case of matches. Once the tobacco was lit and he had taken a drag, Jonah finally spoke. “You cost a man his life today. You could have lost your own.”
“You don’t think I know that?” Reed asked.
“What happened?”
What happened?
Daniel happened.
Daniel with his long Comanche hair, his defiant eyes. Whether Daniel was his own child, or his father’s, like Kate had said, he was a Benton. The boy was back in his life and so were the memories of what Daniel had meant to him once, long ago.
What happened today?
I stopped seeing Comanches and saw a child.
A boy like Daniel.
Someone’s son. Someone’s brother.
I saw a mother, a babe.
Not just Comanches.
He had left himself open and vulnerable and had gotten Tommy Harlan killed as sure as if he had pulled the trigger on that old percussion pistol himself.
Deep inside, he guessed Jonah was perfectly aware of what had happened out there today, but the man wanted him to admit it.
“I couldn’t have shot that boy today any more than I could shoot you,” Reed admitted.
Jonah took a long pull on the cigarette. “But I could have been killed by your inability to act in the heat of battle the same as Harlan. You’re through as a Ranger, Reed. You know that, don’t you? I can’t have you out here, a danger to yourself and the rest of the men.
“Go home, Reed, and put your life back together. You’ve been hiding out here for years, you and I both know that. Revenge and hatred can get real old.”
Jonah dropped what was left of the tobacco and snuffed it out with his boot. “This war has gone on way too long with too many lost on both sides. I don’t see an end to it without one side or the other leaving Texas altogether, and I know it won’t be us. Like I told you before, I’m doing this for the people of Texas. If you aren’t, then it’s time to get out. You know we’ll always be friends.”
Since there would be years of bloodshed to come before the Comanche either went peaceably to the reservation land or died fighting, Reed had never much thought past being a Ranger. Before this afternoon he never could have imagined having this conversation.
Once he assumed his father would live on for years to come, but now Lone Star was his. He could run it as he saw fit and live on the ranch without battling his father’s will.
In his heart, he knew where he belonged, just as he knew there was no avoiding Daniel or his responsibility to Lone Star any longer. He already had Tommy Harlan on his conscience. He didn’t need Daniel and Kate there, too.
Jonah was right. It was time to go home.