Commanche Vengeance Read online

  “I said git out of there.” The man pulled a Colt and cocked it. “Now you coming, or do I drag you out?” Sarah moved slowly toward the fence and stepped outside. The man stepped in close, gun still high, and examined Sarah closely in the darkening light. “You got business with them cattle, you talk to me first.”

  “They belong to you?” Sarah asked.

  The man stared. “You look like a man, but you sound like a woman. Which is it?”

  Several hands moved in around the fence and listened, watching Sarah and the man who still held his gun high. “Where did you get those cattle?” Sarah demanded.

  No sooner had the man’s gun slipped into the holster than Sarah drew the heavy Colt fast and sure and rammed it into the man’s gut. Her jaw was hard. “Mister,” she said, “them cows belonged to me and my husband last week. They grazed just west of here on the headlands grass. Now you tell me where you got ’em or I’ll blow your guts out right here.”

  “My. My, I believe we are a woman!” The man pulled at the wide-brimmed hat and Sarah’s hair, though cropped short, easily identified her as a woman.

  “It's Sarah Phelps,” someone said.

  “What’s she done to herself!”

  The man laughed and put his gun away. “I’m sorry, lady, if I scared you, but any time I see a pistol-toting man looking over my cows, I just naturally get skittish.”

  The man paled. The voices around Sarah murmured. The man looked wildly around him. “Stop her, somebody, she’s gone loco.”

  “Where did you get them cows!”

  “I bought ’em,” the man said. “I paid over twenty dollars a head for ’em last Tuesday.”

  “Who from?”

  “An Indian.”

  “What Indian?” Sarah demanded.

  “Lady, I don’t know what Indian,” the man said, his eyes on the Colt. “I was riding up from Dade when I seen high dust below the river line. I crossed over, thinking it might be a freighter coming into the post and I could rest from the saddle. It turns out that it was a village of Indians, and they had these cattle. I tried to avoid them, but they sent out a rider and asked me if I was interested in buying them. I was suspicious, but I bought ’em anyway.”

  “Can you prove that?”

  “Well—hell, Lady, why do I have to prove anything to you?”

  “Because I got a Colt shoved in your gut, that’s why,” Sarah said. “Where’s your proof?”

  “I didn’t get no receipt, or nothing—lady. Goddam, don’t you know how it is with Indians?”

  “These cattle were stolen from me,” Sarah said, her voice hard. “And my daughter and son and husband were all killed.”

  The crowd around them murmured at this news. Sarah ignored them. She still had the gun pressed tightly into the man’s belly. “I’m going to count ten, mister, and you better come up with some proof.” Sarah began to count.

  The man looked around at the others. “You folks don’t know me, but—I—you can’t let her shoot a man down in cold blood—”

  “—five—six—” Sarah counted slowly.

  “I ain’t got no proof!”

  A figure moved in from the darkness and the outer edges of the crowd. “Drop that gun, miss,” a harsh voice said. There was the unmistakable click of a Colt being cocked.

  Sarah jerked the man before her with her free hand and spun around to the back of him. She fired once. A man screamed. The Colt fell to the ground. The cattle owner, in the movement’s respite, tried to pull his own gun. Sarah backhanded him across the face with the barrel of her own Colt and sent the man down against the cattle pen.

  “Get back!” Sarah said, backing up against the pen and raising the Colt against the crowd. “This is for everybody. And listen good. My daughter was violated, and she wasn’t but six years old. My son was scalped and he wasn’t but three and a half. My husband was scalped and had his stomach ripped open and sand poured into his innards. I had to bury them all with my own hands. Do any of you want to protect this man—or try and stop me?”

  The crowd did not move. They stared in openmouthed stupefaction at the short hair and grime streaked face of Sarah Phelps, and they were silent. The Colt of the intruding man still lay on the ground. The man held his wrist where Sarah’s bullet had shattered the bone.

  She kicked the cattle owner in the side. “Git up.” she commanded. “I’m still counting.”

  The man began to cry. “Lady—what do I have to do to prove it? I got letters from folks back in Dade that sent me up here to see about a business proposition. I got a spread of my own down south of Brazos—”

  “What did this Indian that you bought the cattle look like?” Sarah said, cutting him off. “That’s a way of proving it There ain’t but one Indian that coulda done it’

  “He was just an Indian!”

  “Was he short?’

  The man hesitated and bit his lip. “No, ma’am, he was tall.”

  “Did he wear a pigtail?” Sarah prompted.

  The man glanced around at the crowd.

  Sarah rammed the gun in his neck. “Did he wear a pigtail!”

  “No, ma’am. His hair was in a fan around his shoulders.”

  “What else?”

  “He had large hands—”

  Sarah nodded. “All right, mister. I guess you did buy them.” She turned and spoke to the roan. The animal came toward her and she swung into the saddle. “I could go to court and take them critters back from you,” she said. “But courts don’t mean much to me now.”

  She slapped hard on the roan’s haunch and broke through the crowd and headed out of the post. She would have to backtrack and find out where the trail separated, where One Nest had gone on with his village and where the cattle had been brought into the post.

  She left the settlement moving fast and hard into the night.

  Back at the stream where she had first picked up the trail, Sarah began scouting the edges. She rode far to the south and north, of the banks, scanning the shore line for any sign of tracks or travois ruts. She worked the banks all day, slipping in and out of the water when any overhang or brush made it impossible for her to continue at the shore line.

  By nightfall she had not found a single track, except where the cattle had come up on the opposite bank.

  They came up the river, she concluded. They worked their way up the river after driving them from the trace and off the graze. They coulda made their bargaining right back there in the water, she thought, sitting with one leg up on the pommel of her saddle. And the village coulda moved on up the river itself.

  It was full dark before she decided to head up the Brazos, but in her heart she knew the trail would be lost. The headwaters had hundreds of little streams in the watershed area, any number of them large enough to protect the trails of a whole village.

  She rode north in the water, talking low to the roan, not feeling the tired ache that ran up her spine or the heavy strain of spending too much time in the saddle.

  When she woke up from a catnap she had fallen into while riding, she knew it was useless to continue that night. She pulled the roan off the edge of the stream and into a brush-covered area.

  She made herself some coffee and ate leather-tough deer jerky taken from the earthen cellar of their cabin, and stretched out to sleep on the hard ground. It did not even occur to Sarah Phelps to unroll the blanket. . . .

  For five days Sarah searched the streams of the headwaters of the Brazos without finding the trail. She stopped looking in the middle of one hot sunny afternoon and broke away from the area completely. If the Comanche chief had sold the cattle for twenty dollars a head, there was every possibility that he might eventually stop at some trading post. And since the village had to have been along the way, there was a good chance they would follow the buffalo track taken by the few remaining herds of the once great Texas herd.

  She would start, she decided, by following the buffalo trail herself. She headed the roan north, slanting a little toward the Nort
h Wichita and the little town of Lister.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Gibson Duke rode his black wearily. He had been moving too long for one stretch. All the way down from the Montana highlands and through the jagged country of Wyoming into Nebraska and the North Platte, leaving it and heading straight south for the Kansas flats and the Texas Panhandle. He was a thick set man, with black hair and a hard face. He wore his Colt tied low. A carbine in the leather at his knee was old and well oiled and kept that way by a leather cover across the butt stock.

  He rode into Lister, Texas, and hoped there would be a decent hotel and restaurant. As it turned out, there was neither. A rooming house, the sheriff had told him, offered the best there was in the town. He had dropped the black off at the livery and walked down to the end of the store fronts carrying his saddlebags and carbine.

  “You going to be in town long, Mr. Duke?” asked the flat-nosed girl who took his seven dollars advance for one week.

  “Never can tell,” he said. “If I like the smell of your place, I might do that.”

  “You a cattleman or a digger, Mr. Duke?” the young girl asked, a pretty smile on her lips.

  “My, you’re about the nosiest thing to be so pretty I ever saw.” Gibson Duke smiled, patted her on the head and climbed wearily to the upper floor and stripped for a hot bath.

  He was nearly asleep in the hot tub when there was a knock on the door. “Supper’s ready, Mr. Duke.” Duke put on his one clean shirt and pulled on the dirty pants reluctantly. He strapped on the Colt, tied it down carefully, tested it and spun it lightly on his finger. He dropped it into his leather and turned to the door. He was at the top step when he smelled the tantalizing odor of pork chops and biscuits and closed his eyes. He walked down the steps slowly, enjoying the aroma of the food, and tripped suddenly and fell headlong. He grabbed wildly for the bannister, missed it and would have fallen on his face at the bottom of the stairs if a strong pair of hands had not grabbed him.

  “Thanks, mister,” he said, straightening up. “Smell of good food just about took me out.”

  Sarah nodded and swept past him, climbing the stairs quickly. Gibson Duke examined the retreating figure carefully, noting the slightness of the shoulders, but took special note of the low-slung, tied-down Colt. He could not help but reflect on the prettiness of the face.

  “She’s a woman, not a man,” said the little girl. “Fooled you, didn’t she?”

  “A—woman!” Duke turned to look up the deserted stairway. “Well, I’ll be damned.”

  The young girl giggled at the profanity and hurried into the kitchen.

  Sarah sat at the table, head down, opposite Gibson Duke. They were the only diners and Mrs. Cotten and Josey ate with them.

  “Josey tells me you might be staying in Lister, Mr. Duke,” Mrs. Cotten, a huge, warm, happy-faced woman, said.

  “I may,” Duke said, “and I mayn’t.” He glanced at Sarah. “You don’t come from around here, I reckon, ma’am,” he said.

  Sarah shook her head.

  “This just a stopover?”

  Sarah looked up and stared him in the eye. She did not reply.

  “Tyrone Mishcorte is our sheriff,” Mrs. Cotten said to both of them. “He likes to meet strangers that come into Lister.”

  “I reckon I haven’t got anything to hide, ma’am.” he said softly. He offered Sarah the pork chops.

  “No,” Sarah said. She turned her head to Mrs. Cotten. “Have there been any Comanches through here lately?”

  “Comanche Indians?” Mrs. Cotten asked, surprised.

  Sarah nodded. ‘Indians. Have there been any in town lately with a lot of money?”

  “Well, I don’t know. But Mr. Mishcorte would surely know. You might ask him.”

  “Looking for Indians, ma’am?” Duke asked.

  “Yes. Have you seen any Comanches on your ride down from the flats?”

  “Well—a few here and there,” Duke said cautiously. “Any particular ones you interested in?”

  Sarah nodded. “I’ll ask the sheriff. Where can I find him?”

  “Down the street, last building on your right,” Mrs. Cotten said. “He'll be there now. He’s eating dinner. He takes some of his meals with me, but dinner is sent over to his office.”

  Sarah nodded and got up. When she had left the house, Duke stood up stretched and patted his belly. “Ma’am, that was as good a meal as I’ve eaten in many days.”

  He took his hat and hurried out of the house and into the street. Down the line, he could see the small lithe figure of Sarah walking quickly.

  “No ma’am, there ain’t been an Indian, Comanche or other land, in Lister for a few months—especially any with money. They usually come through here begging for one thing or another, outcasts from their village and general no-accounts.” The sheriff eyed the strange figure of Sarah Phelps. “Why you askin’, ma’am?”

  Sarah hesitated. “I got a reason, Sheriff.”

  “Yessum, I reckon you have.”

  The door opened and Gibson Duke entered. “How do, Sheriff.” He nodded to Sarah. “I just thought of something that this lady might be interested in.”

  “What’s that?” Sarah asked.

  “Well, you askin’ about Comanche. I nearly forgot about that little bunch that I rode past the other day.” He watched Sarah closely.

  “How many were there?”

  “About fifty or more, I reckon,” Duke said. “They were just north of here, moving toward Red River.”

  Sarah’s eyes glowed hotly. “North toward Red River, you say?”

  “Yessum. They were Comanche, too.”

  Sarah turned back to the sheriff. “Thank you, sir,” she said. Facing Duke, she smiled. “Thank you, mister.” She put her hand out for the door, Duke stepped in front of her.

  “Ma’am, I wouldn’t go messing around no Comanche.” he said hurriedly. “They can’t be trusted as far as you can throw a buffalo bull. More especially since you’re a woman, ma’am.”

  Sarah dropped her hand. “Thank you for your consideration, but if you’ll let me pass, I’ll be on my way.” Her voice was hard, cold and level.

  Duke withdrew his hand and nodded. “There’s one tiling you oughtta know about this particular bunch of Comanche,” he said lightly. “They belong to old Kaygeesee’s bunch. They don’t like visitors.

  “When I visit,” Sarah said, “they won’t know anything about it until I’m gone.”

  “Yessum,” Duke said. “Good luck to you, ma’am.” Sarah passed through the door and disappeared into the darkness of the street. Duke pursed his lips. “Now what you reckon she wants to go huntin’ up Comanche for?”

  “You get me,” Mishcorte said, throwing up his hands. “That Colt looked as big as a cannon, and she don’t look strong enough to pull it out.”

  “Wonder where she’s from?” Duke said, thoughtfully, digging into a tooth with a toothpick. “She’s wearing a wedding ring. You don’t reckon she’s after some Injuns that’s kilt her husband or something, now do you?”

  “I’d stop her, if there was someway to do it.” Mishcorte said. “Cause it’s suicide for her to ride into a Comanche camp.”

  Duke nodded. There was something appealing about that woman. He grinned. “Now, you know, Sheriff, every town like this one has a town ordinance about carrying guns.”

  “Sure—but I ain’t going to enforce it I’m just here to keep drunks from shooting up the town—and I ain’t thinking about nothing else.”

  “Why, hell, man, you can save that woman’s life by taking her weapons away from her,” Duke said. “And it’s within the law. Whatever she’s got cooking inside her will wear down and shell cool off.”

  “You wanna do it?” the sheriff said with a sly grin. “If you do, I’ll deputize you right now.”

  “Sure, anything to save a lady from a scalping. Gimme a star.”

  “Raise your right hand . . ."

  Sheriff Mishcorte and Duke walked down towards the boardinghouse b
ut got no farther than the grocery store. Sarah stood before the counter buying sugar and coffee. Several men stood around looking at her, listening to her talk to the storekeeper. Duke and Mishcorte pushed in the door. Mishcorte nodded to the others and winked, indicating something was about to take place with Sarah. The room quieted down as they approached.

  “Ma’am,” Duke said.

  Sarah turned, looked at Duke and past him to the grinning sheriff. "What is it?”

  “There’s a town law that says nothing but law officers can carry guns.”

  “What about the others?” Sarah said, indicating the men standing around in back of her. “And yourself.”

  “I’m a deputy, ma’am. I’m asking you kindly for your gun.”

  “All right,” Sarah said simply. “Here it is—” She drew it out and cocked it. “Take it.” The movement to her hip had been so fast neither of the men had seen it “Aren’t you disarming me, Deputy?” Sarah said.

  Duke’s ears turned a bright red. “Ma’am, you wouldn’t shoot me, not in front of all these witnesses. And—you oughtta be careful—”

  Sarah took his hat off, then fired on the floor, fanning the gun expertly. Duke scrambled for his hat and danced wildly to escape the bullets. Sarah put the gun away. “Want to try again, Deputy?” she said coldly. “Any time.”

  She gathered her bags together, put a double eagle on the counter and waited for her change. “Those Comanches were north of here, did you say?”

  Duke nodded.

  At the door, Sarah stopped and addressed all of them. “My father was a colonel in the Confederate Army. I cut my baby teeth on the barrel of a dueling pistol.” She closed the door.

  Behind her she could hear them burst into laughter. She smiled a little to herself. She had hated to put the young cowboy to shame before the others; she knew he was only trying to help her. The corners of her mouth came down in a straight line. Nothing was going to help until she discovered a tall Indian named One Nest.