Texas Rifles (6 page)

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Authors: Elmer Kelton

BOOK: Texas Rifles
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Barcroft shook his head. “Never a trace. The federal government had an Indian reservation in Young County then. I trailed my wife's killers back onto the reservation. The Indian agent and Yankee troops turned me back at
the line. They said I was wrong, that none of their Indians had been out. I tried to slip in, to hunt for my little girl. One of those Yankees shot me.” Hatred colored his voice as he spoke. “A little later a bunch of the Comanches jumped the reservation and headed for the high plains to join the wild tribes. If my little girl was still alive, they had her with them.”
He paused a little, remembering. “She's six now, if she's living. She was so little she probably wouldn't even remember anything about me, or about her mother. She probably wouldn't look the same. Maybe I wouldn't even know her.” He clenched his fist, then let it go. “Sure, she's probably dead. Most likely they killed her early and left her somewhere. In a way, I guess I hope they did. But I don't
know,
Cloud, that's what drives me crazy, I don't know. I keep thinking to myself,
maybe
she's still out there. I wake up in the middle of the night seeing her face.
Maybe
if I look long enough I'll find her.”
With his thumb and forefinger he rubbed the bridge of his nose, his eyes closed tight. “I've got Miguel down there now, questioning those squaws. Someday perhaps we'll find someone who knows something. Someday …”
He broke off and looked away, down the creek.
Cloud stood up. Uncomfortable, he started to say something more, reconsidered and backed off, leaving the captain there alone.
 
Cloud caught the slight movement beyond a fringe of brush, far out in the grass. He didn't believe it at first. He tried to find it again, and it had disappeared. The wind, he thought, a glimpse of shadow as the grass bent aside. Then he spotted it again, just for an instant.
A squaw? A buck who had gotten away? It didn't seem reasonable. The Texans had made a good search of the whole camp.
The third time he knew it was more than a shadow, more than just the play of the wind. He caught his horse and moved out that way for a closer look. Whatever it was, it was a good three hundred yards from the village.
Tensing, he drew his six-shooter, holding it high and ready. At first, it was hard to tell where the thing had been. Then he caught it—something light brown—out there in the sun-cured grass. An animal—a dog, perhaps?
Suddenly it leaped up and began to run. A woman—a squaw with a bundle in her arms—a baby.
“How in the …” Cloud choked off the question and touched spurs to the horse.
Rapidly overtaking the woman, he shouted, “Stop there!” He didn't know how to say it in Comanche, but he figured she would know well enough what he meant. She kept running. He put the horse in beside her and slowed it down. “Now looky here, woman … .”
She jerked away from him and suddenly headed off at an angle, fleet as a deer.
“Whoa there,” he shouted. “There ain't nobody goin' to hurt you.” He reined after her. For an instant she looked back over her shoulder at him. That was her undoing, for she tripped and sprawled in the grass. The bundle went rolling, and Cloud heard a baby's plaintive cry.
He slid his horse to a stop and jumped down. He reached the baby before the mother could get up. He unrolled the blanket for a quick look. He carefully examined the small brown head, the arms, the legs.
“Don't seem like he's hurt none, 'cept his feelin's,” he said, knowing as he spoke that the woman couldn't understand him. She dropped to her knees and examined the baby for herself. She grabbed it up then, wrapping the blanket around it and smothering its cries. She turned her blazing eyes on Cloud.
Cloud gasped. They were blue eyes!
For a moment he just stood and stared at her, struck dumb. Then he said haltingly, “Why, you're … you're a
white
woman!”
She drew back from him as if she understood nothing. She held the baby tighter against her breasts and looked at him with defiance flaming in her eyes.
“L-look, ma'am,” Cloud stammered, “d-don't you understand? You're a white woman, like I'm a white man. You're not no Indian.”
He took a step forward, and she stepped backward, her eyes wide.
Crazy woman.
Cloud thought then.
That's what she must be, a crazy woman. She's forgotten about her own kind.
“Look, lady,” he tried again, “I just want to help you. Help you. Can't you understand?”
She trembled, but she held her ground. A question formed in her eyes. She tried once to speak, but nothing came. Then she said haltingly, “Help? … Help me?”
A long breath went out of Cloud, and he smiled thinly. “Well, you do know English after all.”
“English.” She studied the word a moment. “Yes, I know English.”
The words came hard for her, as if she were reaching somewhere far back to find them, somewhere back in distant memory.
“How long have you been with the Comanches?” Cloud asked.
“How long? Very long. Very long.”
Cloud reached out to grasp her arm, to start her toward the village. She pulled away again, frightened. Patiently he said, “Look, ma'am, I told you I ain't a-goin' to hurt you. We're goin' to take you back—back to your own people.”
“People?” Again the question in her eyes. “My people? My people here.”
“No, I don't mean the Indians. I mean white folks—your folks.”
“No white people mine. I am Nocona. Nocona.”
Nocona, Cloud thought. Sure, that's one of the Comanche bands. He shook his head, pitying her. He studied her face. She was so brown from the sun that she could pass for an Indian unless a person looked closely. But there were the blue eyes, and her hair was only brown—not Indian black. She did not have the typical round face one usually found in the Comanche. Hers was oval, a white woman's face. Very likely an attractive face, if it had had the chance. But a silent tale of hardship lay in her eyes, the sun-parched skin, the work-rough hands.
“Come on,” he said gently, “let's go back to the village.”
Plain enough that English was hard for her. He had heard it was that way with people who were in an alien land and never used their own language. With time, they lost it.
Miguel can talk to her in Comanche,
he thought.
Then maybe we can find out something. Maybe she'll understand what we're going to do for her.
“Come on,” he said again. “Don't be afraid.”
No one paid much attention as they first came in. Just a stray squaw Cloud had found. Then the word spread like wildfire. White woman!
Captain Barcroft came on the run. He shouldered roughly through the crowding circle of curious men. “Where is she?”
Cloud said, “This is her, Captain.” He motioned toward the pitiable little figure who stood fear-stricken in the center of this group of staring men. Afraid of the other Texans, she somehow moved toward Cloud for protection.
The captain saw the fear in her eyes. He removed his hat, bowed from the waist in the old Texan style and said quietly, “You've got nothing to be worried about from now on, ma'am. You're with your own kind now.” When she made no reply, Barcroft glanced at Cloud. “Who is she?”
“I don't know, sir.”
“Who are you, ma'am?” the captain asked.
Hesitantly she said something in Comanche. The captain looked puzzled. Miguel Soto spoke up. “She use a Comanche name,
Capitán.
It mean Little Doe.”
“But I want her
white
name, her real name.”
Cloud spoke up. “Maybe she doesn't remember it, sir.”
Incredulous, the captain demanded, “What do you mean she doesn't remember it? How long has she been with these Indians, anyway?”
He reached out and uncovered the baby's face. He stepped back in shock. “That's not her baby. It's an Indian baby.”
Cloud said, “I reckon it's her baby, all right. She's been with these Comanches a long time.”
Slowly the shock in the captain's face turned to revulsion. “My God,” he breathed. “A white woman, an Indian baby. My God!” He stepped back again, shaking his head. “Why didn't they kill her when they took her? She'd have been a lot better off.”
Cloud said, “She's bound to have people somewhere. They'll be glad to get her back.”
“Will they?” the captain asked, bitterness in his voice. “Will they?”
The men parted to make way for him as he walked off. He strode out to the creek and stood a while looking down into its clear water. Cloud watched him, wondering what Barcroft was going to do. Then he watched the woman, watched how she tenderly rocked the baby in her arms to
quiet its crying. He remembered how he had seen Mrs. Moseley doing the same.
Presently the captain came back, his head bowed. “I've decided what has to be done,” he said huskily. “It's hard, but it's the only way. Miguel, she seems to know Comanche better than English. Tell her we're taking her back to her people. But tell her she'll have to leave the baby here.”
Miguel hesitated. “
Capitán
, she is the mother.”
Sharply Barcroft said, “I gave you an order, Miguel! Tell her!”
Miguel spoke quickly, plainly hating what he had to say. The woman cried out and clutched the baby tightly. She tried to break away, but stopped at sight of the Texans standing behind her. She broke into English. “No, no. My baby! My baby!”
Barcroft could not bring himself to look at the woman. “Cloud, take the baby and give it to one of the squaws.”
Cloud stood with his fists tight, anger swelling in him. He didn't move.
Barcroft's voice lashed at him as it had at Miguel. “Doesn't anybody here understand an order?”
“She's the baby's mother,” Cloud argued, his face darkening. “You don't just pull a mother away from her own child that way.”
“It's for her own good, don't you see? How will she be treated when she goes back to civilization with an Indian baby in her arms? She'll be cast out like a leper.”
“She might prefer that to losin' her baby. You ought to know how it is, Captain, to lose a baby.”
That hurt. Cloud could see the pain of it in Barcroft's dark eyes. Some of the anger went out of the man's voice, but the resolve was still there. “Yes, I know. I know better than any man here what it's going to cost this woman. But in the end, she'll know it was for the best.
When she's back with her own, she'll forget all this. Perhaps she'll marry a good man and have more children, and she'll forget this one was ever born.”
Cloud argued, “No woman ever forgets a baby.”
Seeing no one else would do it, the captain stepped up to her and said, “Let me have the child.”
She cried out, but he took the baby from her arms and turned away. He walked between the silent men, pausing long enough to say, “Get ready, men. We'll be riding in a minute.”
A wrinkled old squaw walked forward to meet the captain. She took the baby and folded it tenderly to her bosom.
Cloud saw the woman's eyes pleading with him.
Stop him!
a voice cried in Cloud.
Stop this thing now, before it's too late!
“Ma‘am,” he said, “there's nothin' I can do.”
She fell to her knees, sobbing in anguish, and the heart went out of him. He said it again, for his own benefit rather than hers:
“There's nothin' I can do.”
T
HE WIND HAD COOLED AND THE EDGE WAS WELL gone from the day's heat when the Rifles swung onto their horses and splashed out across the hoof-muddied creek, driving with them the whole horse band taken from the Indians. Gone was their weariness, swept away by the eruption of violence and the taste of victory.
Riding an Indian saddle, the white woman twisted sideways and looked back. On the hoof-pocked bank of the creek, the old squaw stood shoulder-slumped, the infant in her arms. Tears glistened on the white woman's cheeks. She forced herself to turn forward in the saddle again, straightening, her chin high, her face stony. There were no more tears. It was as if she saw nothing, felt nothing.
They rode a long time that way, heading south and a little east, the cooling north wind to their backs. Covertly, Cloud watched the woman, and he knew the other men were watching her too. She held herself rigidly aloof.
Whatever turmoil might have boiled within her, she gave no outward sign of it.
Captain Barcroft called no supper halt. The men had wolfed food in the Indian camp, and he figured they needed no more. It was a long way home. He wanted to put all the miles he could between them and the Comanche village before they quit for the night.
The time of the full moon had passed. Now a thin slice of moon, fragile as a pine shaving, provided the only light by the time Barcroft decided he had pushed horses and men as far as they would go. He held up his hand to halt the men in front. In the darkness, some of the riders bumped their horses against those in front of them before they knew of the halt.
“Far enough,” the captain called. “Picket your horses. Elkin will assign guard duty.”
Picketing was out of the question for the Indian horse band. Elkin had to set up an extra guard to take care of it. Cloud drew first guard. Before going out, he untied the blanket from behind his saddle and took it down, bending the roll over his arm. He sought out the woman. Barcroft had assigned her a place inside the circle of men to discourage her from trying to get away.
“Ma'am,” Cloud said, “that old blanket you got don't look like much. Thought maybe you might like to use mine. I won't be in need of it noway.”
She gave no sign that she had heard him. He tried to hand her the blanket, but she put her hands behind her back, her eyes defiantly avoiding him.
Cloud swallowed. He stood waiting uncertainly a moment, wondering if she might relent. Then he knew she wouldn't. This was how it would remain. “Sorry, ma'am. Reckon I can't blame you none.” He spread out the blanket anyway and walked off, leaving it for her. He didn't look back, but he felt she was watching him.
He stood his tour of duty. It was difficult because of the near-darkness and a tendency of the horses to drift. His time done, he stretched out on the ground, leaning his head against his saddle. It was a hard, ungiving pillow, but better than the brittle grass tickling the back of his neck.
Cloud was deeply weary, his body aching and crying for rest. Yet he could not sleep. He kept thinking of the white woman he had found.
Who was she? Where had she come from?
He began trying to compare her with women he had known, and none seemed to fit. He found himself linking her with Lige Moseley's daughter, Samantha. There was much that was alike in them. Not town girls, either one. Yet both might be comely women if given the chance. The Comanche captive appeared to be older than Samantha by three or four years, but it was hard to tell. The harsh life of the nomadic Comanche would age a woman before her time. Still, there wasn't anything easy about the life of the Moseleys and their kind, either.
There was one big difference between the two. He had seen a wide-eyed innocence in Samantha Moseley. He knew he need not expect it in this woman. Kids grew up in a hurry around the Indian camps, for privacy was unknown, and initiation into adult life came early.
This line of thought brought him around to what worried him most—the baby. Sure, she had probably been taken by the Indians when she was too young to know much about white men's ways, white men's rules. And she was probably married, too, insofar as Indians could be married in the view of the white man. A man couldn't blame her for what had happened. Even a grown woman, taken in captivity, could not help herself.
Well, he told himself, it wouldn't happen anymore. He had found her, and she was safe now.
Safe—but at what a price!
Listening in the night, he thought once he heard her sobbing. But he finally figured out it was young Tommy Sides, tossing in fevered sleep. The woman was through sobbing now. She had that much Indian training. They would probably never hear her sobbing again.
The first flash of dawn came, and someone called for the captain. Stirring, Cloud heard a quick rise of excited talk. He arose stiffly from his bed on the grass to see what the trouble was. Sleep still clung stubbornly to him, for he had taken a long time to drop off.
“Beats me how she slipped away,” he heard someone say. “I was sleepin' no more than six feet from her, and I never heard nothin'.”
The captain was speaking angrily. “Someone must have heard her. She couldn't just slip out and not stir up somebody.”
“She's an Indian, Captain,” someone replied.
“She's white!” the captain declared emphatically. “Don't you ever forget she's a white woman!”
Calmly, Elkin said, “The men were all dog tired, Captain. Once they went to sleep, wild horses couldn't have stirred them out. I imagine you were just as tired yourself.”
Barcroft cooled a little, his face twisting wryly as he caught Elkin's subtle suggestion. Elkin added, “Might be we just ought to let her go, Captain. We all know she won't be happy with her baby stayin' back yonder.”
Evenly Barcroft said, “A white woman has no place in an Indian camp. And she has no place with an Indian baby in her arms. Cloud, Miguel, I want you two.”
Cloud sensed the mission, and he felt a sharp regret. He wanted to say,
If that's what she wants, let's just let her go.
But he said, “What'll it be, Captain?”
Barcroft's dark eyes were sharp. “You know she's gone?”
“Figured that from the conversation.”
“I want you and Miguel to go find her. She seems to have left afoot. Take her horse and bring her back.”
“What if we can't find her?”
“Out on this prairie? You can find her if you want to. If you don't find her, I'll charge you with dereliction of duty. Now get yourselves a little breakfast and start out. We'll move on at an easy pace. You should be able to overtake her and then catch us.”
Cloud started to turn away, then stopped. “Captain,” he said thoughtfully, “I was the one found her, and I thought I was doin' her a favor. But she must've wanted to go back awful bad. And after all, we don't own her. Maybe we ought to let her do what she wants to.”
Sternly Barcroft said, “Find her, Cloud!”
 
In that thick carpet of dry grass, it was hard to see an individual track. But most of the time, by taking a sweeping look across the prairie ahead of him, Cloud could make out the faint trace—an elusive pattern of shadow where the grass had bent down and had not come all the way up.
“Path's like an arrow, Miguel,” Cloud said. “She must've took a sight on a star and followed it.”
“She go straight to camp,” Miguel observed, pointing. “She don' need no compass.”
“That baby's compass enough. A mother that way, she's got an instinct.”
The sun came up and started its long rise, heating the wind. This was going to be a scorcher of a day, thought Cloud, wiping his forehead on his sleeve. The climbing sun made the trail harder to follow, for the shadow pattern was less pronounced as sunshine spilled more directly into
the bent-over grass. At times the two lost it completely. But they knew the direction and kept going. After a while they would come across a trace of the trail again.
“If she'd walked, we‘d've caught her by now,” Cloud said. “She must've trotted along, half-runnin' most of the time. Pushin' hard.”
“She know when sunup come, we come too. She know she got to hurry. Else she don' get to camp before we catch her.”
“Rate she's goin', she'll kill herself in the heat.”
Gravely Miguel shrugged. “Maybeso that would be the best way.
Quién sabe,
she maybe want it like that, to kill herself.”
“Don't say that, Miguel, don't say it.”
Cloud tried to put the idea out of his head, but he couldn't.
She might,
he thought,
she just might. And it'll be on my shoulders, because I was the one found her.
Then another idea came to him, and he straightened. A wild idea it was, but it might work—just
might.
“Miguel,” he said, “we
could
let her go. We could tell the captain that when we caught up to her, and she saw we was fixin' to take her back, she killed herself with a knife.”
Miguel pursed his lips, considering the idea. “Not bad, my frien', only where she get the knife?”
“She could've stole it from somebody as she left camp. There wouldn't be nobody own up to it noway. The captain would believe us, I reckon, if we was good enough liars.”
Miguel shook his head. “You ever try to tell the
capitán
a lie?” Then he answered his own question. “No, you don't. Is not easy to look him in the eyes and say what is not true. But I let
you
tell him. Me, I don't say nothing.”
Cloud still wasn't sure of himself. “Trouble is, I can't
help feelin' like maybe the captain's part right. She is white. She's got no business in a heathen camp thataway. If it wasn't for that baby …” He frowned. “Miguel, you reckon a white woman really could love a baby, knowin' its daddy was an Indian—love it, I mean, like she would if it was white? Her own kind?”
Miguel was a while in answering. “My frien', in Mexico many times the parents, they say who get married. The boy, the girl, sometimes they don' know each other, don' love each other. Maybeso they both love somebody else, and they don' even want each other. But bye and bye comes the baby, and they both love it.
“With the Indians, most time a woman she is sold for wife. Man want her, he got plenty horses, he trades for her, just like that. She marry because she is squaw and has to do what the father say. Man, he marry because he want a woman. Maybe he don' even care which one, if she is pretty—just a woman. I bet my boots this is what happen to this woman. She have a foster father, and he sell her somebody for wife. The woman, she got no say. She is for work, and to have the babies,
no más.
Maybe she don't like the man, but she will love the baby. That is woman's way.”
Cloud chewed his lip, feeling the whiskers with his teeth. “Chances are her husband is dead. If we didn't get him on the trail, we likely laid him out in the camp.” A cold feeling came over him. “You reckon if we let her go back to them Indians, the same thing'll happen to her all over again?”
“Young, pretty squaw, she don' stay widow long. Another man take her.”
A knot started drawing up in Cloud. “Captain's right, then. Ain't Christian of us to let her go back to that. Come on, we better pick up some or she'll outrun us plumb to that camp.”
There was no place for her to hide in the open, rolling prairie. When they first sighted her, she was looking back over her shoulder. She must have seen them first. Already moving at a trot, she broke into a run. Cloud and Miguel touched spurs to their horses. She ran as fast as she could. She fell once, pushed onto her feet and ran again.
They came up even with her, and Cloud swung to the ground, dropping the reins. He grabbed at her. She eluded him, only to stumble and fall. She rolled over onto her side and came up onto her knees. Sun flashed on the bright blade of a knife in her hand. Getting to her feet, her eyes stabbing in anger, she desperately brandished the blade at Cloud. He parried with his hand, drawing a thrust. He grabbed her arm and twisted it sharply. She gave a quick cry of pain and dropped the knife. Still holding her wrist, Cloud reached down for the knife and shoved it into his belt.
So she
had
stolen one after all,
he thought.
He let go of her wrist then. “I didn't go to hurt you, ma'am. You made me do it.”
She dropped to her knees, gasping for breath, and Cloud saw how thoroughly worn out she was, how she had been running. Defeat lay heavy in her eyes, but she wasn't crying. She just knelt there, her back and shoulders heaving up and down as her lungs fought for air.
Cloud took off his hat and held it in both hands. “You made an awful good try,” he said with admiration. “Too bad we can't just let you go.”

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