Comanche Rose (2 page)

"And maybe if it was to snow in July, hell would freeze," Hap retorted. "What if it was your daughter they got?"

"I'd pray for her," Jackson declared. "But I wouldn't ask nobody to kill hisself going after her."

"Hap, there ain't but six of us, and more'n twenty of them—and they're a good day ahead of us, ain't they? Hell, afore we catch up to 'em, we'll be right smack dab in the middle of the Comancheria! There'll probably be a hunnerd more a-waitin' fer us! I don't know about you, but I got a real hankerin' to keep my hair, Cap'n," Harris argued.

Hap's gaze rested on Rios. "How bad's the horse?"

"If she had an hour, Lucy could go on, Cap'n."

"Well, at least that's something. Guess you're the only one that's not yellow-bellied," Hap muttered under his breath.

"Captain, that ain't right to say no such thing," Harris complained. "I been doing my damnedest to keep up—we all have. You can't fight Comanches with dead men."

Maybe Hap wasn't being fair, but he had promised the girl's dying mother he'd get Gretchen Halser or her body back. And every time he had to stop, his odds of keeping that promise went down. But looking at Rios' black mare, he could see she was nearly spent. "All right," he decided. "We'll stop in here, try to eat a bite, and see if we can buy some fresh horses."

"Sure could use some home cooking," Harris said. "I'm downright sick of wet biscuits and cold coffee."

"All I want to do is dry out and sleep for a week," Becker decided. "My butt's so tired I can't think."

"I knowed there was something wrong with your brain, Johnny," Jackson declared, "but danged if I knew it was in the wrong place. You hear that, Cap'n? He's sitting on it!"

"Yeah, I heard."

On approach, the rain had obscured the fact there was something wrong, but as they reached the muddy field, Hap could feel the hairs on his neck prickle. A big draft horse still hitched to a plow lay dead, its body bristling with arrows. And when he looked toward the house, he could see laundry sagging heavily on the line.

At first none of the men spoke, then finally Jackson said it: "Looks like they been through, don't it?"

"Yeah. Sure as hell looks like it, all right."

The house itself appeared untouched, and the laundry basket still had some clothes in it, giving an eerie unreality to the scene. Hap's eyes moved back to the field, scanning the rows until he saw a mound of clothing about a hundred feet from the animal. Easing his exhausted body from the saddle, he slowly walked down the muddly furrow, then dropped to his knees to examine the dead man. Turning him over, he found a gun underneath. It was still fully loaded. The poor devil hadn't even gotten off a shot. But there was something even more ominous about the body—aside from the missing scalp, it hadn't been mutilated.

"Damn," Rios muttered, coming up behind him.

"Yeah, they went after something else." Rising, Hap wiped muddy hands on his buckskin pants. "Guess we'd better take a look at the house."

But Rios stood there for a moment, his lips moving silently. When finished, he leaned over and closed the dead man's eyes, making the sign of the cross over his face.

"He was probably a Baptist," Hap muttered.

"I know," Romero responded simply. "But I didn't figure it'd hurt to put in a word for him."

As they passed the laundry line and the soaked clothes basket, Hap noticed a small, soggy blanket lying beside it. And a china-faced doll with yellow hair was staring up from the wet grass. He stooped to pick up the little girl's toy. The cloth body dripped muddy water from beneath a blue checked dress covered with a little pinafore. A loose black lace dangled from a little high-topped doll shoe. He stood there, staring at it, his big hand smoothing the dirty hair back from that painted face. If he'd had anything in his stomach, it would have come up. Mastering himself, he managed to look at Rios.

"Guess they got a little kid."

The other man's toe lifted what looked like a hanky with a knot tied in it. "Your mother ever fix you one of these?"

"I don't know—what is it?"

"Your people call it a sugar titty," Romero responded soberly. "Must've been a baby here, too."

"Jesus." Wiping rain from his face, Hap looked around. "No sign of them or the mother," he said wearily. "Damn."

"Not unless she's in the house."

"The door's wide open."

The other three men were watching from the porch, and it wasn't until Hap and Rios reached them that they reported, "Nobody inside, Cap'n."

"Yeah."

"Didn't see no horse in the pen, just a milch cow and some chickens. Funny, you'da thought they'da butchered it," Becker told him. "The cow, I mean."

"They were in a hurry."

"We ain't gonna catch 'em, Cap'n," Jackson declared. "Not the way that sky looks. Even if we was to have the horses, we couldn't do it."

The rain was pelting down hard, sending them ducking into the house. There, just inside the door, a number of spent cartridges were scattered over the floor. Somebody had put up a fight. Hap looked around the dim room, taking in all the little things that made it somebody's home. His gaze strayed to the piano. It was a fine piece of furniture, oddly out of place in the small room.

On top of it, a young couple stared from an oval frame. He thought he recognized the fellow in the field, but it was the woman's face that drew him. Despite the artificiality of holding that pose, she didn't look like so many folks when they had their pictures taken. She stood beside the man, her hand on his shoulder, smiling as though she meant it. There was a liveliness in those eyes that the camera hadn't missed. He picked it up, turning it over. On the back somebody had written a date in neat script.

"I found their Bible," Rios murmured. Opening it, he read, "'Married—August 27, 1865, in Austin, Anne Elizabeth Allison to Ethan Wayne Bryce.'"

Hap was holding their wedding picture. Feeling as though he'd been spying, he carefully placed it back on the piano, then stepped back. She was a pretty woman, a real pretty woman—and the damned Comanches had her.

Looking at the opposite page, Rios scanned it. "Here— it says they had two kids, Susannah Elizabeth and Joseph Ethan. Looks like one would be four, the other not yet one. Guess that's it. Nothing else written down, anyway."

"It's enough. With Gretchen Halser, that makes four captives those sons of bitches have—and there's at least six bodies they've left behind. I'm not going to wait. Those that want to, come on. Those that don't—well, I guess you'll bury Bryce." Jamming his soaked hat on his head, he turned his back on them.

"Ain't nothing but mud out there," somebody muttered.

"Fred, let me take your horse. I've got to give Lucy a rest.

"If you ain't back afore I leave, I'm taking her," Jackson threatened.

Tying his wide-brimmed hat on, Rios tried to catch up to his captain. "What do you want the rest of 'em to do? Go for help?"

"They can go to hell for all I care!" Hap snapped.

"They'll probably head back to San Angelo," the Mexican decided, swinging up on Jackson's horse.

"Thanks." Hap caught the saddle horn and stepped into the stirrup. Pulling his tired body up, he eased his sore rear back into the saddle. "Reckon I owe you."

The San Saba was already high, lapping at a stand of cottonwoods several feet out from its banks. Reining in, Hap stared grimly at it, weighing his chances of crossing it. Then he thought of the young German girl, and of the pretty blond woman with two little kids, and he knew he had to try.

"Better wait to see if I make it," he told Rios over his shoulder. Edging the big roan gelding closer to the swirling water, he leaned forward and patted its neck. "Easy, Red. Take it real easy."

The animal sidestepped skittishly, but he pulled it up short and tried again, guiding the horse with his knees. This time the roan plunged in and strained to swim against the heavy current. Cottonwood limbs torn from the bank butted Hap's leg and bobbed beside Old Red's outstretched neck. As strong as the animal was, they were being carried downriver. Hap coaxed and shouted, but the horse couldn't fight the current. Finally, at a bend in the river, he slid from the saddle into the swift water, then caught an exposed tree root and hung on. Free now, the big roan managed to catch a footing in the sand and lunge out of the water. With one last do-or-die effort, Hap pulled himself up the gnarled root far enough to brace his boots, then climb to safety. Exhausted, he collapsed on the wet ground and lay there, catching his breath. When he managed to sit up, he couldn't even see where he'd left Romero Rios.

Remounting, he walked Old Red along the water's edge for more than a mile, looking for tracks. The mud was smooth, swept clean by the water. Still determined, he rode away from the river at an angle, then came back, zigging and zagging repeatedly until he'd covered just about every place he figured the war party could have crossed. All trace of them had been washed out, making it impossible to know whether they'd gone due north or cut northwest. Either way they'd be headed for the Staked Plains, and once they got up there, there were a thousand places they could hide. And without Clay along, he'd never find them.

The defeat was a bitter one. He'd pushed himself hard, giving up food and sleep, racing an enemy with every resource he could summon, and he'd lost. The damned Comanches had a young girl, a pretty widow, and two little kids, and despite his promise to Mrs. Halser, he wasn't going to get any of them back. Disgusted, he turned back, encountering an equally dispirited Romero Rios.

"Took everything I had to get Fred's horse into the water," Rios explained. "By the time I got across, all I could do was look for where you came out. When I found your tracks went east, I went west, thinking at least we'd be looking at something different."

"Anything?"

"No. Only sign I found was yours. Everything else's been washed out."

"Yeah. It's like they reached the San Saba and vanished," Hap admitted wearily. Squaring his shoulders, he sighed. "Guess that's it, isn't it?" His expression sober, he added, "Sometimes, no matter what a man does, he comes up short, but knowing he tried doesn't make it any easier."

"No. What are you going to do now, Captain?"

Hap stared at the flooding river for a long moment, then decided. "If I can get back across, I'm going to see that the Bryce fellow gets a decent burial. Then I'll file a report before heading down to Laredo to meet Clay."

"If we don't get some sleep, we won't make it."

"Yeah. Reckon I'm going to have nightmares tonight, thinking about that wife in the picture. Her and the Halser girl."

CHAPTER 2

Indian Territory November 12, 1873

Cold, weak, and hungry, Annie Bryce lay shivering between vermin-infested buffalo robes, listening to the wind beating the hide walls of the tipi, wondering how much longer she could last with no food and no fire. Her stomach was so empty that it felt as though some wild creature gnawed at her insides.

It had been a full two days since Bull Calf had brought in one scrawny rabbit to feed himself, two wives, three children, and Annie. Sun in the Morning had gamely boiled it, adding small pieces of yep, dried grass, and God only knew what else to make a thin, tasteless soup. By the time somebody left a bowl outside for Annie, there hadn't been a single piece of meat left in it.

But last night had been the worst since she'd been with Bull Calf's band. She'd lain awake in her old, discarded tipi, listening to the hungry wailing of the children coming from the other one, hearing the pitiful attempts of Sun in the Morning and Little Hand to comfort them. Remembering her own little son, Annie had wrapped her arms around herself and wept also.

This morning, after coming back empty-handed, an angry Bull Calf had stood outside her tipi. He'd been lured off the Llano to starve, he ranted, drawn by the promise of winter rations—of "plenty good meat, smoke, and blankets." But when he'd tried to collect his band's share, the agent had refused to issue anything until the Indians gave up every white captive they held. And when the Comanche chief had declared he had none, he'd been accused of lying. If anyone was lying, Bull Calf insisted, it was the "Jesus man" at the agency. And now the band couldn't go back to Texas, either, because they'd had to eat most of the horses, and if they stole animals from Fort Sill, the soldiers would come after them.

He ended up telling her through the flap that he could no longer feed her. He wanted her to walk to the Indian agency by herself and tell somebody named Haworth that he'd never held her against her will, that he'd actually saved her life. Then, recalling that she couldn't talk, he'd given vent to his frustration, raising his arms and cursing the spirits who'd guided this crazy, useless woman into his life. Now his act of mercy was going to bring the wrath of the bluecoats down on him.

She'd been stunned by his outburst. Isolated from the others in the camp, she'd had no idea where she was, that she was so close to her own people. But the discovery was a bitter one, for she no longer had the strength to gather firewood, let alone try to walk miles in a storm. For three years she'd endured, doing whatever she had to just to stay alive, sustained only by the hope of being reunited with Susannah, of somehow taking her little girl home with her to the farm on the San Saba. Now she was going to die within miles of help, and she'd never know for sure what had happened to her daughter.

Nearly every night of those three years, Annie had relived the horror of Two Trees dragging her into the brush-filled ravine, of his naked, foul-smelling body brutally invading hers, while Susannah screamed for her. She still remembered pulling her bloody dress down and crawling up from that hell pit to the awful discovery that the war party had divided, and her daughter was gone—Two Trees had traded the child to a Quahadi for a stolen horse he'd admired. Since that time Annie'd clung to the notion that because the unknown warrior had paid for Susannah, he hadn't mistreated her, that her daughter was still alive somewhere in the vast Comancheria.