The Texans (3 page)

“Lord, no, you ornery devil. Even if I was in a pinch and down to my last bullet, I wouldn't use it on myself. I'd shoot me a Comanche to get a little even for what they've done to some good people I've known.”

“Mama Wilson, if those Comanches knew half of what I know about you they wouldn't come within a day's ride of this old place,” Israel Wilson said, but it was plain that he was a little nervous himself and trying to soothe her.

“What about your grandfather, Odell? Is he by himself?” Mrs. Ida asked, and the accusation in her voice was plain.

“You'd better get back home,” Israel said sternly. “He might need your help.”

Odell wished he'd never seen that Comanche, or at least had kept his mouth shut about it. He had nothing left but a long walk back in the dark while the Prussian got to stay with Red Wing. He picked up his rifle and started home. The last thing he heard before he was out of earshot was the sound of a piano and Red Wing singing.

His pace was much slower on his return, and he made the journey in a brooding daze. Red Wing would soon be of marrying age, and he could see no way to compete with a fancy, foreign gentleman like the Prussian. Folks said the man was a baron or something back where he came from. Odell thought if his foolish Pappy would just give him another horse he could at least look more the part of an eligible suitor.

He had just sworn to himself to get out from under Pappy's thumb when he rounded the bend in the river and saw his house lit up with flames. He stood gut shot in his tracks and watched the embers and sparks floating all the way up and across the face of the moon.

Chapter 3

H
is home was a burning hell, and he could do nothing until morning light. Daybreak finally came and the sun showed over the horizon like a raw wound, soaking through and saturating the dark clouds until the sky was bloody red. He sat on a stump under the blood bay sky, staring into the smoldering pile of coals and ashes until the heat scorched his face. Pappy wasn't to be found, the stock was all gone, and their good dog, Blue, lay at Odell's feet with his throat cut and an arrow wound in his guts. Odell ran the poor, blind old mutt's fur through his fingers and thought about Indians and Texas. He knew he was to blame for it all.

Come full daylight, he found Pappy not in the charred ruins of the house, but in the woods along the river. They had drug him there and tied him to a little piss elm sapling. Odell couldn't tell if they had shot his belly full of arrows before or after they tied him there. Pappy's empty eye sockets stared at him, and he turned away and fell to his knees, crying.

He was digging a grave under Pappy's favorite cypress tree when a party of men rode up with the Prussian leading them. One of the men started to get down and help him dig, but Israel Wilson stopped him.

“We've no time for that. Those Comanches are putting miles on us while we sit here,” he said.

“Help me bury Pappy and I'll ride with you,” Odell said.

“What are you going to ride? The Comanches have taken all your stock,” the Prussian said.

“Somebody can go back and fetch me a horse.”

There were five men in the party, and all of them looked at Odell with hard, cold eyes. He knew they blamed him for Pappy's death just as much as he did himself.

“No, we can't wait. Those Comanches hit the Youngs' place and ran off with their baby girl before they came here,” Israel said.

“What about the rest of the Youngs?” Odell asked.

The men passed a look between them before Israel answered. “They killed them all right inside their house, except for that oldest girl. We found her about halfway between their place and yours.”

Odell didn't need an explanation, and none of those who had seen her body were ever going to give one. People want to forget those kinds of things.

“I'm coming with you. I'm going to kill them for what they did to Pappy.”

“Boy . . .” the Prussian started to say.

“I ain't a boy.” All the hurt and anger began to well up in Odell, and he was ready to fight somebody, anybody. He needed to hurt another like he'd been hurt. He cocked his right fist and started for the Prussian.

Israel shoved his horse in the way and looked down at Odell with a contemptuous smile. “Odell, this is a job for men.”

Israel wheeled his horse and charged off before Odell could take a swing at him. The others followed, leaving Odell alone with the Prussian.

“Odell, maybe you are still a boy. A man wouldn't have left his grandfather alone with Comanches about,” the Prussian said.

Odell leapt at him with both fists swinging wildly, but the Prussian shoved him down with a booted foot and spurred his big Kentucky gelding after the rest of them. Odell lay on his back and watched them all ride away. Dust, soot, and ashes caked his face, and he felt dirty outside and in—the kind of filth that he could never wash away. He would rather have died with Pappy than feel like he did right then.

He stood and took up his pick again. He swung the tool with hard, fast licks, liking the feel of the impact jarring through his arms and shoulders. The packed earth gave way in big, pleasing chunks as he found a temporary victim for his wrath. It was slow work, picking some and then stopping to shovel out what he had broken loose. By the time he'd managed to dig down three feet he was heaving, and he sat down with his feet inside the grave. His labor had milked him of whatever feeling he had left, and he could once more think with some clarity. A cold, vicious seed of vengeance began to sprout within him.

Once his strength had returned to him he rose and went to his grandfather. He tried not to see the man as he was, but instead as he had been. The slashed and hacked body was not the man that he loved. He wrestled the tortured, bloody hull to the grave and laid it there. The sound of the first shovelfuls of earth falling on Pappy's body quickened his heart like cold water hurts your teeth.

He took up his Bishop rifle and stood long over the fresh mound of earth, studying the wagon seat spring he'd driven at the head of the grave to mark it. It might be a long time before he came back, and he didn't want to forget where it was. The man lying underneath that Texas sod had taken him in and finished raising him when there was nobody else left that an orphan boy could call his own, and he knew nothing was ever going to be the same again.

He said his good-byes and headed west along the river in a steady jog with his rifle clutched in his right hand. His meager supplies consisted of a half-f powder horn and enough bullets and shot to load his gun a few more times. He'd salvaged some dried ears of corn from the charred remains of the crib, and he carried them in a burlap tow sack slung over his shoulder.

Odell was a traveling man, but even his long legs were no match for a Comanche on horseback. Nobody ever had much luck riding down a raiding party when it knew it was being followed. The Comanches traveled light, and when unencumbered by plundered stock or a village in tow, they could sometimes make better than eighty miles in a day. His only chance was to borrow a horse, and a good one at that. He had no money and could only think of one place where he might beg himself a mount.

The Wilson place came into view as the trail he was on entered a clearing where Massacre Creek emptied into the river. Red Wing was stirring hominy in a lye pot in front of the house, and she shaded her eyes with one hand and watched him come. He stopped before her, not quite sure what to say. Something about the look on his face must have told her all she needed to know. She stepped forward and wrapped him in a hug. She squeezed him tight while he let his arms hang at his sides, feeling startled and surprised at her actions. He'd often thought about what it would be like hugging her, and now that it had happened he wasn't sure what to do about it. Tenatively, he placed his left hand on the small of her back and pulled her tight into him. He could feel the quiver of her body beneath his palm, and warm tears soaked through his shirt where her face rested against his chest. They stood like that for a long moment, and he felt strength return to him, as if he fed from her concern.

She finally pulled away from him and held him by his shoulders at arm's length. She made no attempt to hide the tears that ran down her cheeks. “We saw the smoke coming from your place this morning.”

“If I'd been there, Pappy might still be alive,” he said.

“Or you might be dead.”

“I almost wish I was.” Odell was looking over her head at someplace far, far away. “I still remember when he showed up to get me in San Augustine. He didn't ask about my mama or my daddy, or try to pump me for information. He just said, ‘I'm your grandfather. Come on, boy, let's go home.' Now that I think about it, he never asked near as much from me as I thought he did.”

She knew how great his loss was. His family ties had been almost as shifting and traumatic as her own. His parents had started west from Georgia with everything they owned in a single wagon. They had stopped in Louisiana to resupply before crossing the Sabine River, but they never made it into Texas. His father had gotten trapped in a crooked card game and stabbed to death with some tinhorn gambler's Arkansas toothpick. His mother, weakened by the loss of her husband and ready to quit, fell victim to the typhoid fever epidemic that was sweeping the settlements. At thirteen Odell was stranded in a strange land, and the only family he had left was a man he didn't know and had never seen before.

“The men left here at daylight,” she said.

“I saw them.”

“What about the Youngs?”

Odell couldn't meet her eyes. “They're all dead.”

“Is Father on the Comanches' trail?”

“He is.”

She bit her lower lip and tried not to start crying again. The fear of losing another family was so great in her that she almost couldn't bear it. She took a deep breath and tugged at Odell's sleeve. “Come on up to the house, and I'll feed you. I feel better with you here to watch over me and Mama.”

Odell didn't budge out of his tracks. “I need a horse.”

“You need to stay here. Those Comanches are probably long gone, and even if you could catch up to them, you'd just get yourself killed.”

“I have to try.”

“If there's any chance of catching them, Father and Karl will get it done.”

“You mean we should leave it to the men while I stay here and tend to the butter churning,” Odell said bitterly.

“I meant nothing of the kind. I just don't want to lose anybody else I love.”

It took a moment for what she said to register with him. He could have sworn she said she loved him. “I thought you were falling for that Prussian.”

She smiled at him the way parents smile at foolish children. “No, it's not Karl that I love.”

“I'm glad to hear you say that.” His words sounded foolish and inadequate to his own ears.

“Are you?”

He was torn by the need for revenge seething inside him and the desire he felt for Red Wing. He tried to ignore that soft, sweet face lit up by the sunshine and seeming to stare into his very soul. That was the one and only thing about her that disturbed him. She never seemed to lose focus, and when she wanted something from him her attention could be quietly intense and a little discomforting. Odell knew his own mind never stayed on one thing too long. Most days, it flitted around like a grasshopper jumping from one blade of grass to another.

“I need to borrow a horse,” he said.

Over the course of the three years he'd lived close to her, he'd told her things he told no others. They were both orphans in a way, and bonded by those scars of loss they shared. They had walked the riverbank and made each other laugh long before she could even speak good English. She knew his stubborn nature, and that her words would hold no sway with him once he set his mind to something.

“You can take Crow, but you'd better bring him back.” She turned away from him, more hurt by the lack of effect her admission of love had on him than she was willing to let him see.

Crow was her good black gelding, and she babied and petted the horse like a spoiled child. Colonel Moore had bought the Comanche buffalo runner from a Mexican trader days after the fight in which he captured her, and used it to carry her to the Wilsons. Odell knew that the horse was more to her than just a pet. It was a last link to her former self and the people that she no longer called her own.

The two of them went to the corral gate and she whistled to Crow. The horse came to her in a trot, and put his head over the gate for her. She rubbed his face and played with his forelock. “Crow is the fastest, toughest pony in Texas, but Father won't agree. He thinks nothing can match Karl's Kentucky horse, but he's wrong.”

“I can't take your horse,” Odell said.

“He's the only one left on the place, and if the Comanches are raiding, he may be the only horse left in the settlements for miles and miles.”

“You'd never forgive me if I let something happen to him.”

“No, I wouldn't. But you'll take him anyway, won't you?”

“I have to go. Can't you understand that?”

“I understand you think you can make up for some bad thing you think you've done by killing others, or maybe getting yourself killed. Maybe you think a few Comanche scalps will make you forget Pappy's death.”

“You don't know how I feel.”

“You're wrong, I know that much. I was basically already an orphan before Colonel Moore captured me, and I know about loss. That was the one thing I already knew when I came here to the Wilsons. Death doesn't fix anything for the living. We just have to patch up our lives and try to forget the bad things.”

“It ain't about bringing Pappy back or me making up for failing him. Those Comanches need to pay for what they've done.”

She started to reply but got hung up. She was proud of her English, but sometimes when she was upset or excited the words wouldn't come. At times like that she couldn't seem to speak at all. She couldn't find the proper English words she needed, nor could her mind grab hold of the Comanche she still dreamed in but hadn't spoken aloud in years.

“They need to pay, or you need them to pay?” she finally managed to ask.

“You don't know what they did to Nellie Young.”

“I was a Comanche once and know more than you ever will about just how cruel they can be.”

Odell went through the gate and caught Crow. He saddled the horse with the spare rig that was resting on top of the fence. It was a bare-bones Mexican saddle with huge tapaderos covering the stirrups, a fat saddle horn, and a hair-on, tanned deer hide to cover the seat. He unlaced the stirrup leathers and adjusted their length to fit him. He cinched up and climbed on and off a few times to readjust the stirrups. She handed him a hitched horsehair bridle and he slipped the Spanish bit into Crow's mouth.