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Commanche Vengeance Page 3
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CHAPTER FIVE
Sarah rode out of Lister as the first streaks of dawn were breaking the eastern barriers. She snapped the roan hard on the flanks and pointed north. She did not look back or to either side as she bent to the big trail.
She had ridden hard for several hours and was out in the wild, flat country, now dry and wasted from greenness to sand and desert. It was hard country and the sun was hot. She dropped from the roan near a little stream that was still high from the heavy spring thaws, and refilled her canteen. It was then that she saw the lone rider coming up after her.
She pulled the carbine down from the roan’s flap and settled herself behind a small clump of brush. When the rider was within range, she pulled down once and saw the dust kick high before the black animal’s forelegs. The rider pulled up sharply.
“It’s me, ma’am—” a voice carried to her. “Gibson Duke!”
Sarah recognized the rider then. She came up behind the bush and held the carbine high. She waved him in, but did not let him get from her sights. Duke moved in slowly and cautiously. “Ma’am, I remembered something about them Comanche that I forgot to tell you—”
“What is it?” she demanded. The carbine had him dead-center.
“Well, if you’d let me get off and rest a bit, and get some water for my animal, I’d tell you. Gladly.”
“Tell me from there,” Sarah said coldly.
“Don’t be unfriendly, ma’am,” he said. “You could drop me the minute I made a wrong move. But you set a mighty pace. I’m tuckered.”
Sarah hesitated. “All right,” she said moving away from the stream. She whistled for the roan, and mounted the animal when he came to her. Sitting in the saddle, she nodded. “You can git down now, mister.”
"You shore don’t take no chances, do you?” Duke grinned easily. He let the black go to the water, and ducked his own head beneath the surface. He came up dripping. “Ma’am, them Comanche I told you about— they just come back from a little fight they had with some other Injuns—Apache I think—leastwise the hair they had on the scalp sticks looked full and black. And from the looks of the village, when I passed, they didn’t want no company. They musta lost a few of their braves, and they ain’t got over worrying about it yet. It might be dangerous for you to just ride in—”
“You said all that last night,” Sarah said, bringing up the carbine. “Now look, Mr. Duke, I’ve got something I have to do, and you nor anyone else is going to stop me. I don’t need help—don’t want any—” She paused and her voice grated. “And I don’t want no man.”
Duke shook his head. “I understand, ma’am,” he said. “But I sure hate to see you—”
“Why!” demanded Sarah. She nudged the roan closer to the man. “Why do you hate to see me go?”
“I took a shine to you,” Duke said. “And that’s no lie, I’m telling you. I don’t know what you’ve got on for them Comanche, or what—”
“Didn’t you see the wedding ring?” Sarah said, extending her hand.
“Yessum. I sure did. But then I figured there wasn’t no more husband, leastwise not much of one if he let you roam around looking like a saddlebum hunting down Injuns.”
“That’s what you figured?”
“Yessum.”
“All right, you’ve said your piece. Now climb back on the black and git. If I see you again, mister, I’ll shoot you down like a rattlesnake. There was only one man—and he’s dead. I ain’t after no other.”
Duke nodded. He looked her straight in the eye. “All right, Miss Sarah.”
“How did you know my name?” she demanded. “Boardinghouse lady told me.” Duke climbed back into the saddle of the black. “I hope you took everything I said to you right, Miss Sarah. I mean it. What ever your trouble, I’d like to help you with it.”
“Nobody can help,” Sarah said, turning to look over the stream. She lowered the carbine and slipped it into the,sheath. “I understand and appreciate what you said to me, but there’s something I’ve got a calling to do alone.”
She snapped the pony around and sent the roan splashing through the stream. She did not look back at the rider who sat watching her, tall in the saddle.
“Horse,” Duke said to the animal, “we been traveling together come six years soon. That there woman is in deep trouble, down in her innards. And she’s a hell of a woman for any man. Now, I just ain’t lucky enough to run across two women like that in one lifetime. We ain’t never backed down from a fight before, and this’n looks as good as I’ve seen.”
Duke rolled a cigarette and raised one leg over the pommel of his saddle. He smoked slowly, and when he was finished, he wheeled the black into the stream and began slowly trotting after Sarah Phelps.
The spread of tipi was snug down tight against a full stream that had backwatered up onto the grass—a dozen skin tents. Like a mirror, in the backwater’s smooth surface reflected the colors and the triangles of the lodges. Down near the water, Sarah could see the horses, several younger bucks attending them. The squaws moved in and out of their tipi and worked over fires. There was no sign of the other braves, but she knew they were not far away. She counted more than thirty horses nuzzling the sweetwater grass and drinking the clear water.
She waited, head down in the grass, with just a few blades parted for her to see, for One Nest to appear. She wanted to learn which tent was his, she wanted to find out if he had children, she wanted to find out as much about the Comanche chief as possible before she decided what she would do.
Night fell slowly, enveloping the sky in the fold of a midnight blue blanket. She did not move. She had left the roan a mile behind her in a stand of cottonwood trees and worked her way up to the village slowly and carefully.
She sipped the water from her canteen and waited.
There were only the lights from inside the tipi and the dying fires before the lodges now. She had seen no one that resembled One Nest, but she knew he was there. Well after the last of the fires before the tipi had gone out, she moved out slowly. She had spotted the chief's lodge from the size of it and the activity around it. The bucks entered slowly and came out fast. There was no other lodge that could be the chief’s. She pulled the carbine up close to her side and worked her way silently down to the edge of the village, ears straining for the slightest noise. She made the opposite side of the tipi and waited.
There was a cry from the area where the horses were and she froze, but settled down when she realized it was only the young bucks cavorting around. Someone inside of the tipi she had decided belonged to One Nest spoke loudly and harshly.
Sarah waited, forcing herself to wait a full five minutes, counting off the time slowly to make sure, and then she moved. Quickly, bent over low, she made the side of the tipi and listened. There were sounds inside, strange sounds of half-talk, half-chant. She clenched her teeth and worked her way around to the front of the tent, took a deep breath and leaped in.
The carbine up, she stopped short. She saw three very old Indians, dressed in fine skins, scraped and bleached to whiteness, with beautiful feathered head-works and painted faces. They looked up at her, startled.
They all began to shout at once. Sarah became confused. Neither of the men before her was One Nest She backed up—and then felt the steel grip of an arm around her neck. She dropped the carbine and began tearing at the arm.
There was an explosion, the arm relaxed and she knew she had been saved.
The three old men were reaching for her. There was another explosion—then another and a third.
“Grab your gun and let’s get outa here,” Duke said to her.
Still confused, Sarah grabbed the carbine and raced after the tall cowboy blindly. Behind her she could hear the shouts and cries of the entire village, but she did not stop to look around. Stumbling, falling, she followed the retreating figure of Gibson Duke into the cottonwood trees below the village and into the water. “I’ve got our horses on the other side of the stream.” Duke said. “Sarah, I ho
pe to God you know how to swim.”
Sarah plunged into the icy stream without answering, struggling with the carbine, thrashing her way across to the other side. She pulled herself up out of the water a few yards ahead of Duke.
“This way!” he said and sloshed past her into a thicket. Sarah stumbled and dove headlong into a clump of brush. Duke’s hands went around her thin waist and lifted her up bodily and ran through the thicket The black and the roan waited silently.
“Quick!” he said. “They still don’t know what hit ’em.”
They climbed into the saddles and beat their way out of the thicket and began pounding hard across the flats.
They broke around the corner of a small butte and suddenly Duke pulled up on the black and pointed to what apparently was a sheer height of wall. He posted his black hard up the dry ledges of the butte with Sarah on the roan a few yards behind him.
“In here!” he shouted. He moved through a thin narrow pass that was not visible from below, rounded the inner walls and came out into a huge hollow. “Well see which way they go from here,” Duke said to her. “Then if they go on ahead across the plains after us, we can sneak out the back way, double in back of the village and make it the hell out of the whole district.”
Suddenly there was the distant pounding of hoofs. It sounded like hundreds of them. Duke braced himself and climbed up the side of the hollow. He squinted down through an opening that gave him a view of the horizon and the flats for miles. The entire village of braves was strung out below the butte, heading for the plains.
He slipped down. “All right; this way.”
Leading their ponies, Duke moved through the hollow and slipped through another pass as small as the first one. They emerged from the center of the butte that overlooked the village, and, further, to the dryness of the flats north of Lister.
“Let’s go!” he said.
They climbed into the saddle and hurried their nervous horses down the steep decline to the hard-packed floor of the flats, struck straight west and well beyond the Comanche village, and disappeared into the thick brush country of the Panhandle flats.
They rode hard all night, stopping only when they knew their ponies would drop beneath them.
Duke pulled up beneath a grove of cottonwood and brush and slipped to the ground. The sun was up and their faces were smeared with sweat and grime. Sarah collapsed on the ground, sinking her head into her arms. Duke slipped the saddles off the horses and left them where they lay.
He slipped to the ground, put his head on one of the blanket rolls and was asleep in a minute.
Sarah awoke to the smell of coffee. It was close on to dark, and she rubbed her eyes. “Oh,” she said softly, not looking at Duke. “I remember now.”
“Coffee’s ready in a minute,” Duke said gently. “You wanna wash your face, Miss Sarah? There’s a canteen over there.”
Sarah nodded and poured a palmful of water into her hands. She wiped most of the grime off with her neckerchief and came back to the edge of the fire and sat down.
They drank coffee and ate bacon and sourdough bread hungrily. “What was you aiming to do in the medicine tent, ma’am?” Duke asked softly.
“Was that what it was?”
“If they’d of caught us. I reckon they’d of turned us over on a spit like a roastin’ jackrabbit on the trail.”
“I thought it was the chief’s tipi,” she said. “I saw everyone going in and out.”
“They was probably moaning over losing some of their braves in that fight they just had.”
Sarah nodded, but kept her eyes averted.
“You didn’t tell me what you was aiming to do, Miss Sarah.”
“No, I didn’t.”
Duke put a piece of wood on the fire and kicked up the falling embers. “You don’t have to tell me, ma’am?'
Sarah was silent.
“I declared myself back at the watering stream, ma’am, and I’m sticking by what I said.”
Sarah looked up. “And I told you I didn’t want, or need a man.” Her voice was cold, but not biting. “Why did you follow me?”
It was Duke’s turn to keep his eyes on the fire.
“It isn’t going to do you any good, Mr. Duke,” Sarah said, a trace of softness creeping into her voice. “There’s something I’ve got to do—and there ain’t enough time in the world for anything but my promise.”
“Promise to who, ma’am?”
“Never mind. But I want you to know I appreciate what you did back there,” Sarah said. “I thought that medicine tent was old One Nest’s tipi.”
Duke frowned. “One nest? What’s that?”
“Name of a Comanche I’m looking for.”
Duke shook his head. “I thought I told you back in Lister, Miss Sarah, this here bunch is old Kaygeesee’s tribe. Part of them anyway.” He paused. “I can’t rightly say I ever heard of a Comanche named One Nest.” Sarah sipped her coffee and did not reply.
“Are you sure he’s a chief?” Duke asked.
“Yes.”
“From around these parts?”
Sarah threw the dregs out of her cup and refilled it with the simmering coffee. “You don’t seem to know much about Comanche, Mr. Duke. Comanche don’t come from any particular part of Texas. They’re from all over, and they move around a lot.”
“I reckon I know that, ma’am,” Duke said quietly. “But old chief Kaygeesee has been in the watershed area of the Brazos for quite a few years. He was here even before I went up north.”
“It’s possible, isn’t it,” Sarah said, “that the Injun I’m looking for could be part of Kaygeesee’s tribe? Splintered off from the main nation, in a way?”
“Yessum, that’s a possibility. But the sheriff back in Lister knows a lot about Injun doings and especially about Kaygeesee’s outfit. Don’t you reckon he would have heard of this here One Nest?”
Sarah got up and walked to her pony, examining the animal’s hoofs and legs carefully. Duke watched her from across the fire and sipped his coffee.
“I wish I could make you see my point, Miss Sarah,” Duke said slowly. “I want to help you. I reckon, if I have to say it, I did pull you out of a terrible hole back in that medicine tipi.”
Sarah walked slowly back to the fire and stood across from the cowboy, her eyes searching his face.
Duke found it difficult to look into her face; he glanced up once, but under the steady gaze Sarah leveled at him he dropped his eyes to the fire. “How many times do I have to say my piece, ma'am?”
“How many times do I have to tell you there isn’t any room in my life for a man, or even friends or companions?” Sarah replied softly. “There’s something I have to do, Mr. Duke.”
“Get that Injun One Nest.” Duke nodded. “I know.”
“That’s right. That’s a tough enough thing to do as it is, and takes everything I’ve got to keep at it, even though I haven’t been doing it very long. But I’m going to get him, Mr. Duke. I’ll track that red-skinned heathen straight to hell and put a forty-five slug in his brain and help push him over the divide.”
“But why, Miss Sarah?” Duke asked softly.
“It isn’t important that I tell you, Mr. Duke. Only thing that’s important is that I got to do it.”
Sarah turned away from the fire and walked away into the darkness.
Duke sat alone, sipping his coffee, and when after an hour Sarah had not returned, he slipped off his boots and stretched out on his blanket roll. He did not go to sleep right away. He lay awake until he heard her return and settle down on the other side of the fire.
It was about midnight that Duke saw Sarah get up quietly and pull on her boots. She saddled the roan, speaking softly to the animal and looking back over her shoulder at the prone figure of Duke. She stood a moment, looking down at him, mounted and then whirled the pony around and slipped quietly away from the dying light of the fire.
She was out of sound and sight when Duke moved. He hurried to his horse, saddled, ga
thered his blanket and gear, kicked the fire out and trailed out after her.
Duke trailed her all night, keeping just in earshot of her softly walking roan. When the sun began to break the east, he saw the slumping figure of Sarah sleeping in the saddle.
He spurred the black and rode up beside her. Sarah did not even wake up. Duke grinned, reached over and took hold of the reins that dangled loose and led the pony, glancing now and then at Sarah to see if she was all right.
Sarah did not wake up until the sun was high. She pulled up straight and looked around, startled, and then she saw Duke.
“Ready for some coffee, Miss Sarah?” Duke said.
Sarah stared at him a long time, her face swollen just a bit from the heavy sleeping. She nodded slightly and slipped from the pony.
“Here’s plenty of water, Miss Sarah, if you’d like to wash the sleep out of your eyes.” Duke said, handing over an oversized canteen of water. “I’ll make a fire and fixing’s over there beyond that clump of brush and you’ll have all the privacy you need, ma’am.”
Duke stood holding the leather of the two horses, smiling softly at her, squinting against the morning sun.
“All right, Mr. Duke,” Sarah said. “I guess I could use a wash.”
For the first time, Sarah smiled at the sunburned Westerner. She walked a few steps, stopped suddenly and turned back to him. “Put a pinch of salt in your coffee water, Mr. Duke; it’ll make a difference in the taste.”
Duke’s face broke out into a smile. “Yes, ma’am. I’ll do that.”
They had finished eating sourdough bread and drank nearly all of the coffee when Duke turned to her and broke the silence. “Miss Sarah, if you’d tell me about this Injun, I might know something that would help us.”
“First, there’s some things that have to be straightened out between us, Mr. Duke,” Sarah said.
Duke’s face sobered. “All right, ma’am.”
“I didn’t ask for your help.”
“That’s true, right enough.”