Frontier Woman (8 page)

“For that matter, it doesn’t make sense for Antonio, either,” Luke said. “Unless his father is involved, as well. There’s a lot of money to be made selling land in Texas— and collecting taxes, too, for that matter. And Juan Carlos has the manpower to back him up. He’s probably got more vaqueros working that cattle empire of his than we’ve got Texas Rangers to patrol the border.”

Creed rubbed the back of his neck to ease the tension there. “You may be closer to the truth than you know. Rip suggested this morning that Juan Carlos may not be happy with his decision to side with the Texans against the Mexicans in thirty-six. Seems he’s had some problems with Anglos grabbing at what’s his. At least it looks like the information Captain Hays got from that informant was on the mark. There’s something going on here, and I intend to get to the bottom of it. I just can’t picture Sloan Stewart working with Antonio Guerrero.”

“Heaven help Sloan if she is a part of that band of traitors,” Luke said. “The planters around here aren’t likely to be sympathetic just because she’s a woman. Too many of them lost friends and relatives to Mexican musketballs and bloody bayonets during the war.”

Creed knew Luke spoke the truth. Last year, when the Rangers had discovered the Mexican government’s plan to invade Texas from the south with a large army while the Cherokee Indians kept the Texans busy with brush fights to the north, the citizens of Texas had demanded and gotten swift and sure retaliation against the Cherokees. But President Mirabeau Lamar was taking no more chances. Ranger Captain Jack Hays had orders to investigate any suspicious activities that might be connected to another Mexican plan to invade Texas. And so Jarrett Creed had been assigned to follow Sloan Stewart and discover the truth of the accusations against her.

Creed didn’t want to think Sloan was guilty, but the evidence against her was damning. Captain Hays trusted him to find out the truth, and Creed hadn’t failed on a mission yet. It was all the more reason he had no business getting involved with Creighton Stewart. What would she think of him when he arrested her sister for treason?

“Thinking about the girl again?” Luke asked.

“Hmmm?”

“That frown on your face . . . I thought maybe you were thinking about the girl again.”

Creed snorted.
Still
thinking about the girl would be more accurate, but he didn’t care to admit that to the young man who sat on the ground across from him. Luke had a way of knowing exactly what a person was thinking. While that perception was part of what made the young man such a good Texas Ranger, it was disconcerting for Creed to be on the receiving end of it.

“She got under your skin, huh?”

“I never said that,” Creed protested.

“You didn’t have to. It shows.”

Creed swore under his breath. “I suppose you could have handled the situation better.”

“Not better. Different.”

“How different?”

“I’d have bedded her when I had the chance. Then I wouldn’t have had to wonder.”

“Wonder what?”

“What I was missing,” Luke said with a grin.

Creed chuckled despite his irritation. “According to my sources, you haven’t missed anything wearing a skirt in San Antonio.”

Luke shrugged. It was the gesture of a much older, almost world-weary man. “I like women. They like me. Why not please each other?”

Creed started to argue but shut his mouth. In all the time they’d spent together over the past year Creed had learned little more about Luke Summers than the information Captain Hays had given him the day he’d assigned Luke to Creed’s command.

“He looks too young to be a Ranger,” Creed had protested that first morning when he’d seen Luke up close through the window of Hays’s office.

“He’s lived his share of life,” Hays had responded. “He’s a dead shot with a Paterson. He can ride any horse you stand under him. And he uses a rope like a third arm. Never saw a woman he didn’t love or a woman who didn’t love him. Never heard of him gettin’ riled, either, ’cept for once, oh, ’bout a year ago.”

“What happened?”

“Man called him a bastard. Called his ma a two-bit whore.”

“Was it true?”

“Don’t know. He shot the sonofabitch dead.”

Luke had proved the truth of every kind word Jack Hays had said about him that day. Creed had never seen Luke riled. But then, he’d never heard the dead man’s accusations repeated, either. The young man had proved his merit as a Ranger, and Creed had been willing to let Luke keep his secrets to himself. Creed brought his attention back to the business at hand.

“Who’s our contact in the rebel camp?” he asked the young Ranger.

“Teddy Perkins made friends with some of Antonio’s vaqueros. Haven’t seen him for two days, so I guess he’s gone with them to their hideaway. I’m sure once he can get some word to us where they are, he’ll let us know. Are you going to the Guerreros’
fandango
?”

“I’ve been invited. Guess I will.”

“Maybe you can catch Sloan Stewart and Antonio Guerrero together. I’d give a lot to know whether the whole Guerrero family’s involved,” Luke said.

“Teddy should be some help finding that out. You hang around at the rendezvous and wait for him to show up. I’ve got someone else I’m going to talk with who may be able to give us some information.”

“You planning to meet with that half-breed?”

Creed tensed at the harshness in Luke’s voice. Luke hadn’t even pretended to understand how Creed could swear a Ranger oath to protect the citizens of the Republic from the threat of Comanche attacks and still have one of the fierce savages for a friend.

“Whatever else he is, Long Quiet is my friend,” he said, to make his position plain to Luke. “Remember that when you pin a label on him.”

“He lives as a Comanche, doesn’t he?” Luke persisted. “He makes his home amongst those Red Devils, doesn’t he?”

“Yes, he does.”

“And you trust him not to lift your hair?”

“I’d trust him with my life. He’ll be working with us some, so I suggest if you have any problems with that, you air them now.”

Luke raked his hand through his shoulder-length hair. “The Comanches killed my ma.”

Creed frowned. “I’m sorry, Luke.”

“No need to be sorry. After I thought about it a while, I figured they did me a favor.”

“What?”

“If they hadn’t killed her, I’d have had to do it myself.”

“You want to explain that?”

“No. I sure as hell don’t. Go on and see your Comanche friend, Creed. If you trust Long Quiet, I’ll work with him. Don’t worry about me.”

Creed didn’t press the young Ranger. He knew too many men like Luke, with problems that wore on them like hair shirts. As he mounted his horse and rode away from the troubled young man, Creed was reminded of his own painful past. The Texas frontier wasn’t kind. It wasn’t even merciful. If you survived, it was because you didn’t make mistakes. You kept your gun handy. You never rode far from water. You treated your horse like family. And you didn’t trust strangers.

Luke was right to be careful of Long Quiet. The “half-breed” was a dangerous man. Creed ought to know. He and Long Quiet had taken enough scalps together to decorate two Comanche war shields.

Chapter 6

CREED ARRIVED AT THE SPOT WHERE HE’D agreed to meet Long Quiet at dusk. He searched the faces of the Comanche warriors huddled around the campfire at the edge of the slow-moving stream, but didn’t find the one he sought.

“Your friend is not here, Wolf.”

The venomous voice sliced through the shadows, piercing Creed’s consciousness.

“We meet again, Tall Bear. It’s been a long time.” The Comanche words flowed easily from Creed. He waited to see whether Tall Bear still bore the animosity that had characterized their relationship. Their rivalry had begun long ago when he was a boy of eight and he and his mother had first arrived among the Penateka band of Comanches as captives.

From the beginning, Creed’s adoptive father, Crooked Trail, had left him to the mercy of the other Indian youths. Only one boy, Long Quiet, who understood what it meant to be preyed upon, had befriended him. Together, he and Long Quiet had stood against the others and defeated them.

Long Quiet wasn’t here tonight, but several of those they’d defeated were. Over the years Creed had spent among them, his peers had come to respect his prowess as a fierce warrior and a cunning horse thief and no longer challenged him. Only Tall Bear had never let his hatred of the white boy die. Creed conceded there was good reason for that.

Tall Bear remained squatted where he was and did not rise to greet the man who had been husband to Summer Wind, thinking
I will do him no honor who stole from me the
woman I loved and then abandoned her.

“
Hihites.
Sit, Wolf. Tell us why you have come among us,” one of the other Comanches said, attempting to allay the insult to Creed.

Creed returned the Comanche greeting and dropped cross-legged to the ground. The familiar, pungent odor of bear grease and buffalo wool embraced him, though the Indians did not. “I came seeking my friend, Long Quiet.”

“He has not returned from hunting,” Two Foxes said.

“Have the buffalo strayed that you must hunt so many suns from the land of the Penateka?” Creed asked.

“This land is best for what we are hunting,” Tall Bear replied.

“And what is that?”

“The scalp of the White-eyes.”

Creed hid his surprise at Tall Bear’s response.

“All Comanches must greet the treachery of the white man with lances and arrows,” Tall Bear continued as he rose.

“What treachery?” Creed demanded, leaping up to confront him.

Two Foxes felt the bristling tension between the two men and intervened to prevent one from attacking the other. “Muk-war-rah, the Spirit Talker, traveled to San Antonio de Béxar, to talk with the White-eyes, to bargain for the release of white captives in exchange for blankets and food. He went into the Council House of the White-eyes, along with twelve chiefs of the Comanche nation, but they were am-bushed, and all were killed. Then the White-eyes attacked the Comanche women and children camped nearby. Many are dead.”

Creed’s chest constricted until he could hardly breathe. He wondered who could have been so stupid as to order such an attack. “How many were killed?”

“Maybe thirty. Maybe forty.”

Creed never blinked an eye, but inwardly he cursed whatever idiot was responsible for the massacre. That number of dead Indians was more than enough to start a war between the white man and the Comanches, and certainly enough for the Comanches to seek white scalps for revenge. It was hard to believe a slaughter of that magnitude could occur right in the middle of San Antonio. “Has there been any reason given for the white man’s actions?”

“All within the Council House were killed. We have heard nothing.”

“Would it not be better to wait until an explanation can be made before attacking innocent white men?” Creed questioned.

Another of the Indians rose from beside the campfire and demanded, “What excuse will serve when the Comanche came to the White-eyes under a flag of truce?”

“What?”

Two more Comanches joined the first, so Creed was surrounded by a semicircle of angry Indians crying,
“Pei-da
tabeboh!”
—“Death to the white man!”—a promise of the bloody justice they intended to extract from the deceitful White-eyes.

Tall Bear crossed his arms, his shoulder muscles rippling beneath buckskin as he did so. “I expected you to ask pardon for the soldiers who killed The People. Your white blood speaks loudly and drowns out the Comanche in you. But then, that has long been true. You made your choice when you left . . . us.”

Tall Bear couldn’t name Summer Wind aloud, but Creed knew it was their rivalry over the Indian maiden that had caused the greatest conflict between them. Creed had known Tall Bear loved Summer Wind and wanted her for his wife, so when he’d stolen enough ponies, he’d presented them to Summer Wind’s father and requested the maiden simply to thwart Tall Bear. He’d taken Summer Wind as his wife without loving her, but he’d discovered, to his surprise, that Summer Wind loved him, and in a very short time he’d returned that love.

Tall Bear had never forgiven Wolf for taking Summer Wind from under his nose. But no one else had condemned him. Among the Comanches only the strongest survived and took mates. Wolf had been the stealthier horse thief. He had earned the right to have Summer Wind.

The boy, Jarrett Creed, had thrived among the savage Comanches, all right. But the young man, Wolf, had never been truly happy living among The People, The True Human Beings, until he’d fallen in love with Summer Wind. She was the reason he’d stayed when he was free to go. It was only a quirk of fate,
and fatherly love
, he thought cynically, that had taken him away from Summer Wind and turned his life back to the path of the
tabeboh
, the white man.

He’d been among the Comanches for nine years, from his eighth to his seventeenth birthday, before Simon Creed found his son one day, quite by accident. Creed had made a habit of going off by himself to hunt, and Summer Wind sometimes accompanied him to dress the kill. Simon Creed had come upon them unexpectedly, and it was a miracle that neither killed the other before they recognized themselves as father and son.

“Jarrett! Son!”

Creed hadn’t said anything for a moment, just stared dispassionately. Then he’d responded, “I am Wolf, of the Penateka. My
ap’
is Crooked Trail. I am not your
tua.
”

“The hell you say! The Comanches stole you from me, boy. You’re my son, all right. Where’s your mother?”

“The woman who bore me is
paraibo
, chief wife, to Buffalo Man, a war chief of the Quohadi.”

He’d watched Simon Creed’s face blanch white, then flush red with rage. “I suppose every one of those goddamned Red Devils raped her first.”

“It is the way of The People to rape women captives,” he’d replied matter-of-factly.

“Who is that with you?” Simon asked, finally acknowledging the young woman who rode beside Creed.

He’d smiled proudly. “This is my wife, Summer Wind, soon to be mother of my child.”

“Your wife?” Simon Creed observed the very pregnant woman with disgust and disbelief. “No son of mine is going to sire a bastard half-breed brat.” Then Simon had raised his musket to shoot Summer Wind.

Creed had responded instantly, an arrow nocked in his bow in the time it had taken Simon to aim. “You will be dead before the sound of your bullet echoes in the wind,” he’d promised.

His father had believed him, but Creed had inadvertently given Simon a weapon against him much better than a gun. “I don’t care whether you shoot me or not,” Simon had said. “But if you want your squaw and her brat to live, you’ll come along home with me.”

“I will kill you and come back here again,” Creed had replied.

It was then that Creed’s older brother had spoken for the first time. “You’ll have to kill me, too.”

“Tom?”

“Why don’t you come back with us, Jarrett? I’ve missed you.”

Creed had missed Tom, too. As a child he’d shared his thoughts with Tom, who’d been a buffer between him and his father. Creed could have killed the
tabeboh
, Simon Creed, and never looked back, but he could never have killed Tom.

So he’d turned to Summer Wind and said in Comanche, “Go back to The People. Tell them I have gone to live among the White-eyes for a while. But I will return.” Then he’d added, “Take good care of our child.”

He’d ridden away with his white brother and his father, thinking he’d be gone for a few days, or a few weeks at most. They would see that he was no longer a
tabeboh
, and they wouldn’t wish for him to stay among them.

Simon and Tom took him to a cotton plantation on the Brazos River, called Lion’s Dare, which Simon had won from its owner as a wager on a horse race. It was Tom, though, who worked the land.

Creed had thought surely his father would feel the urge to roam and forget about his erstwhile Comanche-raised son. He hadn’t counted on the old trapper’s orneriness. Simon didn’t like having Creed around, but he couldn’t let him go, either. Simon had lost his wife, but the grizzled old man had his son back. At the same time, Simon couldn’t help punishing Creed for what the Comanches had done to Mary.

“Your mother was soiled by those Comanches, boy. I could never let that woman back in my bed after she laid herself down beneath those filthy Comanche animals. That woman should’ve killed herself and spared me the knowledge of what she’s become.”

“I am one of those filthy Comanche animals,” Creed had said. And he’d seen in his father’s eyes that, yes, he was. “I am not welcome here. I will leave.”

“You try leavin’, boy, and I’ll hunt you down and kill that squaw of yours when I find you,” Simon had threatened.

There were many things he was not, but Simon was an excellent hunter. So Creed had stayed a little longer. He allowed Tom to dress him in trousers and a shirt, but he wouldn’t cut his hair, and he slept inside the house, even though he eschewed the feather bed for the floor.

Tom was a solace to him in those days when he thought he would go mad with the waiting.

“I must leave,” he’d railed to Tom.

“He means what he says,” Tom had cautioned. “Stay a little longer, Jarrett. I enjoy having you here. It’s like old times. I know you’re satisfied working the land. I can see it when you walk the fields. I understand how you’re missing Summer Wind, because I’ve been in love myself. But if you love your wife, you have to stay here to keep her safe.”

The brotherly bond was strong, and Simon was an old man given to gasping spells. Creed convinced himself that Simon would surely die soon.

Creed had been gone five long months when Long Quiet finally tracked him down. It was a fervent reunion, albeit a quiet one, since Long Quiet had sneaked in through Creed’s second-story window.

“
Hihites
, Wolf. You have a son.”

“And Summer Wind?”

“She is well.”

Creed’s joy had bordered on euphoria. He wanted to go home. And home was with Summer Wind, not at Lion’s Dare. Long Quiet stayed secreted in the woods nearby, coming at night to keep Creed company, and planning what to do about Simon so Creed could travel back to
Comanchería.

Then, one night, Simon caught the two youths together in the barn. Even though his black curls had been straightened with bear grease, Long Quiet’s gray eyes proclaimed him white. Simon wasn’t one to leave a white boy in the clutches of the goddamned Comanches. Simon had closed off the only escape and called his burly Negroes to subdue the two boys. The fight that followed was savage and bloody.

Simon resorted to putting a bullet hole in Long Quiet, and even at that, it took more than a few Negroes to hold the two boys down so Simon could chain them hand and foot like recalcitrant slaves.

“There’s only one way to get the Comanche outta you boys, and that’s to send you where there aren’t any goddamned Red Devils for thousands of miles. If either of you causes any trouble whatsoever, I’m going to round up every planter from one end of the Brazos to the other and wipe out every one of your ‘People’ I can find, starting with Jarrett’s wife and bastard brat!”

Wolf and Long Quiet had looked at each other with wild eyes. Simon Creed made no idle threats. And while the
tabeboh
were no match for a band of Comanche warriors on horseback, what would happen to the old men and women and the children if the
tabeboh
raided a village while the warriors were gone? And so the two of them spent four long years in faraway Boston, being transformed into what the White-eyes thought were civilized men.

When they were finally graduated from school, Simon Creed granted them permission to return to Texas. Creed had spent four years hating his father. Simon had stolen his life as an Indian and given him one as a White. He felt no pity when he returned to Lion’s Dare and found Simon dying, a withered old man confined to his sickbed. The shell of humanity in the canopied four-poster was no threat to anyone.

“I did it for you, boy,” Simon explained. “You wouldn’t have been happy as a goddamned Indian. You’re blood of my blood, good Tennessee stock. In a few years there won’t be any more Comanches. They’re savages, and savages can’t survive when there’s no more wilderness. One day you’ll thank me for what I did.” Simon coughed, and the Negress with him wiped the bloody phlegm from his lips.