Hank Gannon grew up on a Florida plantation. He fought alongside his brothers-in-arms in the Civil War. Then he joined the Texas Special Police to help build a more peaceful union—and a future for his beloved Constance. That was the plan. But when a prisoner dies in his custody, Gannon is forced to leave Austin and head into Comanche territory. Alone but undaunted, he meets up with Roving Wolf—who has just slain a former soldier from his unit. Gannon can’t let the killing go unpunished. Even here, in this godforsaken valley, the law must be upheld . . .
On one side is a bloodthirsty war party of Indians, heading for the white man’s capital. On the other side is a makeshift army of Texas Special Police and the Texas State Guard, ready to meet the threat head-on. In the middle are Hank Gannon and Roving Wolf, waging their own blood feud. Two men trapped in a war. Fighting to survive their mutual hate. Killing to get out alive . . .
CHAPTER 1
October 16, 1871
It was a sky dark as a coal mine and sprayed with stars, each one proudly brilliant in the still night. A pair of Appaloosas stood obediently beyond the glow of a campfire. Grease from the two spitted hares caused the blaze to crackle and sputter, the aroma enticing the youth to lean farther out from under his woven blanket and into the cloudy gray smoke.
“Treasure all, not just some,” said the older man sitting cross-legged behind him.
Puzzled, the younger man looked over. “What have I missed?”
“It is not just the cooking meat you celebrate,” the brave informed him. “It is the spirit of the rabbits you inhale. Just as, in battle, you take the heart or hair or eyes of the fallen, so it is with the death of every living thing.” He thumped his bare chest. “We become stronger with every deed.”
His name was Roving Wolf. His long black hair was braided, he wore a long white neckerchief damp with sweat, and he sat in his own blanket with his sister’s son Soon to Be a Man at the bottom of Cedar Valley. His knee boots sat beside him, drying from an earlier creek crossing. On the back of his right forearm was a blue cactus ink tattoo of a knife, warning all of the strength in his arm. The hair of both men was worn in braids, and around the older man’s head was a beaded band with an eagle feather at back; below it was the tail of a wolf. Around the ankles of both men were leather bindings that were used to rub the sides of horses, for control, without abrading the skin of the ride.
The slope was gentle here, almost like a river that had gone dry. It was where Roving Wolf used to hunt as a boy, a place he knew well. The insects, the birds, the rodents were all known to him. The trees were larger, but the stones were familiar. It had been easy making his way through here, even in the dark. It was safer to travel, then; there was a war against the Comanche and the soldiers who made that war preferred the sun. Not so their Tonkawa scouts, who knew the territory well and had lifetimes of hate for the Comanche. But there was a saying, “Unknown dangers are as harmful as known dangers—and more plentiful.” One could not prepare for everything, and Roving Wolf was not one to live his life in hiding. The young man beside him must learn that, as Roving Wolf did when he was young.
The name Soon to Be a Man had caused the young man some embarrassment over his twelve years. Roving Wolf had brought him here to tell of the past week’s events, to present him with a special gift, and to explain why even the elder Comanche, at more than thirty years, was still becoming a man.
The gift was first, something the boy’s mother had expressly wished. Before he and the boy sat, Roving Wolf had gone to his horse and removed a bear hide that had been carefully bound in sinew from the animal. The elder Comanche held the parcel respectfully in both hands. The boy had not been expecting anything and seemed unsure what to do.
“This is yours,” Roving Wolf explained. “It belonged to Great Bear and now it is yours.”
“My father?” the youth said reverently.
“It was his dying wish that you have this,” Roving Wolf told him. “And as the white man may come to our teepees for blood, you must be able to protect your mother, your people.”
The boy accepted the package. Eager fingers tugged at the lacings. He collected them carefully and set them aside before he lifted the flaps of the skin. The light of the campfire revealed the most magnificent weapon he had ever seen. It was a bone the size of his own forearm. It was sharpened, at the end, to a knife point. At the other end, set in the base of the knobby hilt, were three large claws.
“Your father earned his name at your age,” Roving Wolf said. “Tell his story as your mother told it to you.”
“It . . . it was a time of drought and my father . . . he and a friend were fishing,” Soon to Be a Man said. “They were attacked by a starving bear for their fish. The friend was mauled . . . and my father came between them, with a torch from their campfire.” His eyes drifted almost reverently to their own campfire. The wood they had used was barely the size of his foot. “Was it a large torch?” the young man asked. “Was he very close to the bear?”
“Only the Big Father knows,” Roving Wolf said. “But he protected his friend, who was thereafter called the Ugly One, and your father was no longer Running Fox but Great Bear.” The brave pointed to the weapon. “With but one eye, Ugly One made this from the leg of the bear. He became a maker of totems, and your father fell in battle with the Tonkawa. It was his dying wish that you possess this weapon . . . and, with it, earn his name. When you have spilled blood, you shall be known as Great Bear.”
The boy was overwhelmed—by the weapon, by the honor. He took a moment to raise the weapon in both hands, utter words of thanks to the spirit of his father. The flickering of the fire cast a shadow of the weapon on the rock behind them, made the bear seem to live once more. The spirit of the animal was present. To Roving Wolf, the young man seemed older, stronger, greater when his arms came back to his lap.
“The bear is very powerful,” Soon to Be a Man remarked.
“He is.”
“But my father defeated it,” the boy said.
“That day,” Roving Wolf said. He raised a cautioning finger. “Each bear is a new challenge. It may not behave as its kin.”
“And the wolf? Tell me of your name.”
“A she-wolf let a babe live while he was yet in the belly of his mother,” Roving Wolf replied.
“You?”
Roving Wolf nodded. “My mother was gathering nuts, and the wolf met her eyes from the brush. My mother did not flee but met the eyes of the wolf, equal to equal.” The brave held his hands palms down, fingertips to fingertips. “The wolf came forward and walked by. Her spirit remained.”
“Is the wolf more powerful than the bear?”
“It is different, like the eagle is different from the crow or the snake from the toad.”
“But in a pack, the wolf is more powerful?”
“In some ways,” Roving Wolf answered. “When you rely on others, your strength is wider but that is not the same as greater. In some ways, the pack diminishes the one because the hunting and killing are shared.”
“A war party is the same?”
“In very many ways it is,” the elder brave said. “My father, Swift Hawk, once sat where I sit and told me of the day he went to the ancient lands to find his spirit.” Roving Wolf held his hand, palm up, toward the lowlands unseen in the dark. “There had been a sickness, and the tribe had suffered greatly. Even the medicine man was unable to help.”
“Your father?” the youth asked eagerly.
Roving Wolf smiled. “No. His father. Swift Hawk wished to help him. So he went to the place where, tradition tells us, fire once belched from the earth and smoke covered the land and death touched all things. He sat on a hard, hard ridge and prayed to the Big Father to speak to him through that place”—Roving Wolf grinned—“but with a quieter voice, if the god would not mind.”
The young man laughed at that.
“Sitting there, at night, Fire Hawk had a vision. Our people in a field with no teepees. The sun caring for them. He went back to the settlement and told his father what he had seen. Comanche helped Comanche, old helped young, mother helped father, and the vision was made real. The tribe recovered. There was a thing that was done in part by one, in part by the many.”
“I like tradition,” Soon to Be a Man decided. “I understand what it says.”
Roving Wolf lay a hand on the boy’s forearm and added, “But it is not to be decided as being ‘good’ or ‘bad.’ A woman and a man are different, each does different things, yet each is essential in their own way. Ask yourself if a baby is good or bad. It cannot hunt but it can suckle. There is a place for all things in the tribe.”
“Did Blanco Canyon make you stronger?” the lanky youth asked, sitting back and pulling the blanket tighter. His voice was wary, tentative. He knew what had happened there.
Roving Wolf peered through the smoke as though he were looking directly into the past. A past that was just six days old, not yet shadow, still vivid and alive. He watched as the images of horses, riders, guns, arrows became increasingly vivid. So did the sounds: the crack of firearms, the cries of men and horses, the dull, dead whump of bodies dropping.
“It did,” the brave replied. “The force of soldiers was greater than the number of us defending it. And a heroic death, protecting your lands and families, serves your life. Your spirit and those who follow grow greater in honor and in power.”
“Can a victory be a loss?” Soon to Be a Man asked.
The elder man smiled. “That is very wise. Yes,” he said. “The soldiers lost in the way a thunderstorm loses. It is here, fierce and great, but it passes. A force so large as the soldiers cannot be sustained. But the land remains. The Kotsoteka and Quahadi tribes who perished live on.” He fell silent. “They were an offense to our people, the first white force to enter the Sookobit,” he continued thoughtfully, using the word for the Comancheria, the “Comanche land.” “We came for them in the dark. Only a few of us, led by Wild Buck.”
“He is very brave.”
“We were brothers in blood,” Roving Wolf said.
“We drove off their horses and the soldiers, roused, gave pursuit. They followed us to the top of the canyon where our party was waiting. The encounter was a victory for our people—but the only one, as the white men would not be fooled again. We divided in all directions of the wind. The soldiers,” he said with a hint of sadness, “they are still out there, hunting us. Before long, they will be here. I tell you this because you must be ready.”
Soon to Be a Man leaned forward again to put his face in the smoke, closing his eyes and inhaling deeply to accept the full gift of the rabbits.
“I will learn to—”
He had stopped speaking before the echoing crack of the weapon reached the ears of his companion. The youth was knocked back, his arms pinwheeling, his head turning slightly as the bullet pierced his forehead just off center. The weapon of his father flew, clattered, vanished in the dark. Blood fountained from the brow of his dead body as Roving Wolf simultaneously flung himself across the young man and away from the light of the campfire.
“Soon to Be a Man!” he said, more in mourning than in an effort to rouse the boy. Even in the dark he could see the small wound, feel the blood. With a guttural sound that was more vulpine than human, the Comanche simultaneously drew his bowie knife from its sheath and scuttled farther into the dark, leaving the boy to commune with their ancestors as his own spirit rose like clear smoke.
The shot had come from the north. The gunman was not far, since the initial sound had been quite loud and the shot precise. The Comanche had no way of knowing if the man were alone, or how long he had been there. He and the boy—a boy, never to become a man—had arrived after dark. They would not have seen clouds of dust or the glint of the setting sun on metal, heard the sounds of horses or men. But it did not matter to Roving Wolf how many there were. Tonight, all would die.
He moved from the fire and, shrouded in dark, knelt to feel around. He knifed the ground, tucked something in his belt, and when he was well clear of the campsite he began padding in the direction from which the sound had come. He asked the Great Spirit to use fang and claw to protect the remains of the boy until he could return. He promised the land that the coyote and the gray wolf would soon have bones on which to gnaw.
* * *
“Bang-up job,” the young black man said mockingly. “First cabin. Now the Injun is comin’ fer sure.”
The other man, Joseph Williams, a Tonkawa scout from the Oklahoma Territory, lay stretched out behind a large, flat boulder. The air still smelled faintly of gunpowder from the single shot of the lever-action “Yellow Boy” Winchester.
“Good he comes,” Williams grunted. “Save me trouble of going after him.”
“Just make sure that when you hear someone, you make sure it ain’t Ahrens and Hawthorne,” the black man said.
“They not near,” Williams said, touching his nose. “And they never travel alone. Four feet sound different than two. Horse sound different than man.”
“I’m not an idiot, Joseph,” the other said.
“Nor I, Rufus.”
The other man, Rufus Long, an officer of the Texas Special Police, had been referring to the other party that had left Austin the night before, Kurt Ahrens and his scout Moses Hawthorne, a former fur trapper. Worse than killing a pair of Comanche would be shooting two of their own men. Especially Ahrens, who regarded the Texas State Police as the only sanity on this frontier. It was a responsibility he took so seriously that he had packed Gannon’s grip and set it on the stoop rather than let a careless, undisciplined officer set foot among them ever again.
Long was sprawled on his belly beside but slightly behind the scout. His last smoke had been just before sundown, at least six hours before, and he wanted one badly. He also wanted to wring some of the stiff-necked, baked-in, rooster-proud arrogance out of the redskin. No matter how many times Captain Keel gave them instructions, no matter what the situation in the field, if Williams saw a way to bend an order to “bring the smile of his ancestors upon him” through some Tonkawa deed, he did it.
“The orders were to find them and report back, not to engage,” Long said. “The word the captain used was ‘reconnoiter.’”
Long’s tone was not frightened but angry. A veteran of the Underground Railroad and the narrow survivor of a lynching by Rebels retreating from Gettysburg—which was interrupted when a Union spy put life above mission—Long did not scare easily. But he believed in following orders. Without them, organization crumbled and lives were lost.
Williams half-turned and thrust an index finger toward Long, who recoiled slightly. “Find now, engage later,” the Tonkawa brave hissed, then turned the index finger toward himself. “Find now, engage now.” The warrior’s dark eyes seemed to pull his head around, back to the rocky field ahead. Even sharper than his eyes were his ears. Even in the dark, Williams could tell the footfall of a field mouse from a chipmunk. And though he couldn’t know for sure, he believed his nose just might be as good as that of any dog. He could tell if a buffalo or bear was sick at a half-mile downwind. That was why they were out here now, he and his green partner who was supposed to be watching and learning as they listened for Comanche warriors who preferred to move about in the dark.
“Dammit, this was not in the mission talk,” Long muttered on, seeing in his mind the big face of Captain Keel as he told the force what they were to do. He had rallied them from across the state specifically to observe the Comanche. “A two-man nighttime huntin’ party was not part of his plan.”
The Indian hushed him with a gesture. That was the problem with many of the scouts Keel engaged. They had jobs for which they accepted pay, but they also had blood feuds. Most of the time, the two complemented each other. But not tonight.
The brave continued to face forward. He emptied himself of all but the present. He also knew when the creatures of the night were still, as they were now. It meant that danger was near—for them but also most likely for the two men. Williams did not like assuming a defensive posture, but after spilling Comanche blood that was the wisest course.
There was a whiff of something musky on the wind. It preceded by an instant an animal flying toward them. At first Williams thought it was a squirrel that had fallen from a nearby tree. It wasn’t. The rabbit pelt landed on the Tonkawa, who flinched but did not fire. Long yelped as the Indian swatted it aside with his left arm. The bloody fur landed between them, and Williams raised the rifle barrel from the rock, listened. He heard nothing.
The skin hadn’t flown far; the Comanche had to be near. Williams could smell him now but he couldn’t see him.
“Jesus!”
Long screamed involuntarily as scorpions began to sting him. Williams felt a bite too, in his neck, where the pelt had landed. He swore like a white man as he involuntarily slapped at the creature and knew that he was as good as dead.
* * *
After hurling the rabbit pelt with an arcing swing, Roving Wolf had dug his toes into a layer of rock to give himself purchase. As soon as he heard the officer’s cry, the slap of hand on flesh, he vaulted through the air like a human puma. He had smelled the remains of the shot that had killed his companion, heard the two men speak, knew where they were and how low to the ground. His right arm was raised, and his mouth was filled with a silent war cry as he landed flat on the other side of the boulder. Only when the blade pierced sinew in the back of the gunman did the Comanche give voice to a raging scream. That was as much to freeze the white man as it was to vent his fury.
The blade struck bone before sliding into a lung. The Tonkawa wheezed and tried to turn over but Roving Wolf held tight to the sleeve of his victim’s police jacket. His weight was too much. The knife came down again, this time into the man’s side. Then again in the same bloody spot. The death rattle in the man’s throat began to fade.
The Comanche scrabbled off to the man’s right, ducking behind his moaning body, using it as a shield in case the other man came for him or fired into the dark. He did neither. Though Roving Wolf heard movement, saw shadows shift in the darkness nearby, the man was backing away—and also, if he had a raindrop of sense, afraid of hitting his partner.
Except for the bubbling wheeze in the throat of the brave whose blood was rising, there was suddenly no sound. Until a shot cracked from not far behind the two Indians, striking nothing. It was followed by a low, sonorous voice.
“Anybody move, he gets shot.” After allowing a moment for that to register, the speaker said, “’Cept Long, if that’s you.”
Rufus Long didn’t answer immediately. The man’s confusion was evident in his silence.
“Are you Rufus Long?” the voice repeated. “Munitions man for the Texas Special Police? Who smokes that armpit-grown tobacco from Canada because it’s cheap?”
“I am,” he said after a moment. “Hey, who’n hell are you?”
“Someone who could smell that tobacco stink on your uniform from a good distance away,” the speaker said. “Strike one o’ your police-issue matches. Let’s put some light on what’s what. And you with the knife?” he added. “My gun’s on you, Comanche. Flinch and you die.”
Long turned and fumbled in his saddlebag, which sat against a cactus a few paces behind him. The horses were several yards beyond that, standing in a clearing amidst the bunchgrasses, tied to what was left of a lightning-struck elm. The officer scratched a match and extended it arm’s length. There was no wind, no need to cup it in his hands. All he saw were the two tangled forms of the Indians and the silhouette of a man standing several yards distant. Long took a rolled cigarette from the pocket of his black shirt, used the match to light it. The move was practical as well as satisfying: the lighted cigarette would save him having to light another match.
The flame died, but the officer had already spotted dry tufts of blackseed needlegrass. He uprooted several with a fist, pressed the soil together as a common base, and ignited the clumps with the smoke. They burned bright enough for him to find and toss several twigs on the fire, washed into the valley by a June rain. The gurgling of the man beside him was impetus to move quickly, but as the Texas Special Police officer had told every runaway slave he had ever met, “Hound dogs love careless men.” Like breaking a wild horse, he had to stay on top of the human instinct to bolt in the opposite direction from danger.
One way to stay calm was to stay focused on a task. Long avoided looking up until the fire was not only lit but sustained. On his knees now, he turned his eyes and perspiring brow toward the most recent arrival.
“Shit me a large stone,” was all he said, but it was heartfelt.
Hank Gannon looked at Long from the other side of the entangled Indians. The young growth of scruffy beard made the former officer look ten years older. Over what was left of his vest and white shirt he wore what looked like a patchwork cloak of pelts that reached to his knees. A pocket on the inside held flint for a fire and several dried tendons from deer he’d eaten. These tough lengths of string were used to attach pelts or food to the horse or to tie off wounds, if it came to that. His dirty hat was behind his neck, held there by the loosely knotted string; his light brown hair, slicked back from a river-water washing, was no longer carefully parted in the middle. The dark eyes looked a little hollow but no less alert for that.
Those eyes shifted from the black man to the Indians.
“You on top,” Gannon said. “Comanche!”
Roving Wolf turned his head slightly without lifting it. His expression, what Gannon could see of it, was locked and feral, like a totem. He was lying flat on his victim, his torso athwart the man’s waist, at an angle. The knife was still in Joseph Williams’s side, blood running around the blade. The wheeze had dwindled to a whisper.
“You understand me, Indian?” Gannon asked.
The Comanche grunted through his teeth, which were like glistening little opals in the match light. Gannon was not surprised that the Comanche could speak English. Whatever the tribe, braves found the skill useful in dealing with traders, especially gun dealers.
“What’s your name?” Gannon asked.
The Indian was defiantly silent.
Gannon shrugged, the flints in his pocket clattering. “I’ll just call you Pale Rabbit,” he said, thinking of two insults he did not think the Indian would allow to stand.
The Comanche spoke up proudly. “Roving Wolf.”
“Fitting,” Gannon said, looking at the man’s teeth. “Roving Wolf, leave the knife on the ground and make your way to the fire,” the man went on. “Slow. I won’t ask you to crawl, but if you move too fast you die. Understand?”
The Comanche’s expression seemed to relax in the honor that was shown to him—not to be made a creature of the dirt. Even so, in response to the command, Roving Wolf moved forward in a way that was surprisingly like a reptile, his toes pushing, fingers flat at his sides and also pushing, his entire body moving without apparent effort. While that was going on, Rufus Long knee-walked back several paces, reached for his sidearm.
Gannon half-turned on him. “Uh-uh, Long,” he said. “Hands up and open.”
“Hank? Dammit, he killed—”
“Yeah, I know. Hands. Show ’em.”
The Texas Special Police officer raised them as slow as a sunrise, palms out. The cigarette was still between his lips, smoke curling up his nose. When he seemed disinclined to move again, Gannon turned his attention back on the Indian.
“You, Roving Wolf—that’s far enough.”
The Indian stopped. He did not put his face down but rested on his chin, peering into the darkness. Like his namesake, lying in wait behind a bush.
“Now what you can do,” Gannon said to Long, “is get some more sticks for the fire. Then come and see if there’s anything to be done for poor Joe. Sounds like there’s still some breath left.”
Long nodded, scuttling for kindling then moving around the fire and kneeling beside the wounded scout. He was within body-heat range of the Comanche. He could feel the radiant hate. The officer’s head ducked around as he looked at the wound. His knees were soaking with blood and he noticed, now, how far the pool had spread. Almost at the same time, Williams stopped breathing. Long exhaled with him. The officer did not realize how taut his shoulders were until they relaxed.
“Cover him with something that ain’t another Indian,” Gannon said.
“Can I get up?” Long asked.
“Sure. I won’t kill you if you don’t give me cause. That was my horse.”
“What? What was your horse?” Long asked, confused.
“Whatever else you heard from my brothers-in-arms, my loyal friends, my commander, it’s my horse kills people, not me,” Gannon told him. “An’ said animal is a good quarter mile elsewhere.” He took a step forward. “I’m assumin’ the captain did tell people what happened with Sketch Lively, yes?”
“He did,” Long said. “But he didn’t tell us why you chose to run instead of tellin’ your side at an inquiry.”
“Did anyone ask him?”
“No.”
“Why not?” Gannon asked.
“You had orientation,” Long said. “You know commanders can’t discuss legal matters that pertain to others.”
Gannon shook his head. Keel could have told them, unofficially. He probably did not want to create factions of white versus black, Northerner versus Southerner, by revealing just how flimsy the evidence was against the man.
“I did not ‘run,’” Gannon said.
“What do you call clearin’ out of town like it was a whorehouse raid?”
“I call it bein’ pushed out the window. There wasn’t gonna be any ‘inquiry,’” Gannon said, practically spitting the word.
“Why? If you had a case—”
“I had a corpse instead of a prisoner,” Gannon said. “Keel made it clear there was no way I got out of this clean. He probably thought he was being generous, letting me avoid dismissal and jail time.” He shook his head, the matter as raw as if he were still standing in the stable. “You know that railroad they’re buildin’? Brother, I took that ride, straight into exile.”
Long considered this. “I don’t care anything about politics, but you been a good man to me. I woulda said so.”
“I’m gratified,” Gannon replied insincerely.
Long got up, feeling the soaked blood run down the inside of his trousers. He yipped. There was a scorpion in the pant leg too, crawling on the inside of his right thigh. He shook it out as he walked to Williams’s horse. Recovering the bundled blanket, he returned and lay it over him. “I assume you came here on account o’ the shot?”
“Long-range rifle at night? Yeah, I wanted to know about that.”
“That was Williams,” Long said. “He fired.”
“At boy,” Roving Wolf said hotly. He jabbed a finger at his own forehead. “Shot kill him.”
“I’m sorry,” Gannon said sincerely. “Bastard always was a good shot.” He looked at Long, who was just rising from the body. “By what authority did he shoot?”
The officer finally drew on his cigarette. He knew he was in trouble here; Negroes ranked higher than Indians. In the field, the command was his.
“Joe did this on his own cussed authority,” Long said. “I—I didn’t tell him to. He just did it. We were only s’posed to watch for Comanche.”
“Why?”
“Battle out west,” Long said. “Army all tied up there. Captain Keel figgered some’d come this way, so he sent a pair of teams out.”
“Soldiers came to our land, many soldiers,” the Indian said. He thumped his chest. “We defend.”
“I thought something like that when I heard horses movin’ through the other day,” Gannon said. His eyes dropped to Williams. “Williams here had his own feud, yeah?”
“That’s a likelihood,” Long said, then added, “or maybe he was bored or itchy or he just got stupid. People get that way out here, Gannon.”
Gannon got the point, right in his windpipe. He spit. “Talk less, Long. You may make me get stupid.”
Roving Wolf was looking down at the dead man, shaking his head. “Northern tribes—hate. Kill Comanche. They always want here.” He lifted an arm, made a large, horizontal, smearing gesture with one hand. “Great water.”
“Right,” Gannon said. The sea offered a ready supply of food and access to trade. Oklahoma tribes with historic rivalries to the south had only one route to the Gulf of Mexico: war.
“Long, me and this fella are gonna leave you,” Gannon said. “You stay put, smoke all your butts till morning, and then take Williams back to the cap’n.”
“Hank, this man murdered a scout,” Long said. “He has to answer for that.”
“He just did,” Gannon said. The former officer came forward now, stopping beside the Comanche. His personal .12-gauge scattergun tucked under his right arm, he toed Roving Wolf gently in the side. “You may get up.”
The Comanche rose, dead grass and leaves falling from him as if from a ghoul departing his grave.
“You cannot do this,” Long warned.
“It’s done.”
Long shook his head firmly, casting big shadows on the ground behind him. “You got away once. This time the captain will come after you.”
“For what? Saving your skin?”
Long’s eyes drifted to the Comanche. In the firelight, his tattoo seemed to writhe. His shadow also seemed alive. “This Indian is a murdering renegade. He killed my partner, flung a pelt fulla scorpions at us—he is dirt and he must be brought in. Listen, Hank,” he added with a whisper of softness. “Maybe if you do it, Captain Keel will rethink what he did. You can see Miss Constance.”
The mention of her name seemed to harden the man unexpectedly. “Don’t you remind me what I’ve lost,” he warned. “I’ve been livin’ off snake and quail out here, thinkin’ of very little except Keel an’ what he did. It was wrong, to think first about appeasin’ the gov’nor and his fellow roosters . . . just like bringin’ in this Comanche would be wrong. You already took from him—his lands and his travelin’ companion.”
“You’re mixing things up,” Long said. “I didn’t do anything. We didn’t. The action in Blanco Canyon was military. It was ordered by the Indian agent—”
“Long, just shut your mouth up. We’re leavin’.”
The officer did not move and then, suddenly, he did, reaching for his holstered Remington. A loud report from the rifle, fired from the hip, chewed up the earth a foot to Long’s right. Dirt landed on the fire, dulling it.
“Next one is in your arm,” Gannon threatened.
He took a step forward. Long retreated very slightly but enough to let him know the warning was taken seriously. “Do not test me. Don’t even talk. Keel took my life from me, an’ I don’t want t’hear his name again.” Gannon stood quietly, everyone remained still for a long moment. “But you can do something for me, man-to-man. You can tell Constance I will see her again.”
Long nodded once but otherwise remained frozen, praying that there were no more scorpions under his clothes to make him jump. He had always liked Gannon and wished they had met in some other fashion. He wanted to know where Gannon had been, what he was planning. But his lips were pressed shut. Smoke trailed up his nostrils from the dying fire and from the cigarette. He coughed inside his mouth.
“Hank?” the Indian said, and pointed to the knife that was still on the ground.
“Okay,” Gannon said.
“You just armed the enemy,” Long said with open disbelief.
“Yeah,” Gannon agreed. “But you’re the one gave him reason to kill.”
The Comanche bent and recovered his knife. He did not wipe the blade on the blanket but on the grasses. It was a show of respect to Gannon, not to further defile the dead man.
Slipping the blade into its doeskin sheath, Roving Wolf led the way into the darkness, Gannon following. Their footsteps faded before the small, dim fire had died. Only then did Rufus Long consider what he would have to do next: sit up with the dead man until morning, making sure his remains were not defiled. Come the dawn, he would put him on his horse and they would ride into Austin. He was not eager for those labors—or to face Captain Keel with the news that it might not have been the best idea to let Hank Gannon simply ride out of town . . .