| |
Jobe woke to Zed poking him in the ribs with the toe of his boot. Zed held a finger to his mouth. Jobe’s eyes fluttered open, took in the growing dim light of the sky. Dawn. He tossed his blanket off and got to his feet. He’d slept with his boots on. No coffee smell helped him wake clearly after a fitful sleep, but the rush of eagerness for what today held did. They were going to put an end to Bent Feather’s horse-stealing days.
Bo sat with his back against a tree’s wide trunk, his .45-70 Springfield sporting rifle on his lap. He wiped a handkerchief across its barrel and grip and had a dreamy, ready-to-do-battle look on his face. Always good to see.
Jobe followed the path he’d used before and picked each step with care until he was beside Clyde Wilson. He eased up over the rocky ridge Clyde crouched behind and looked down on Talfourt’s camp.
“They’re just beginning to stir,” Clyde whispered. He scratched at his gray beard, reminding Jobe that the other oldest Ranger, Butch Lyndon, had been hauled off to town on a travois. At least Jobe hadn’t had a single Ranger killed. But they weren’t out of that woods yet.
One person below poked up the fire and sat a coffee pot at its edge. Jobe felt a pang of envy since he and his men couldn’t light a fire. That could be Talfourt himself. The man favored his left arm as he got a skillet out of one of the packs that had been on the two mules. Yep, that was Talfourt, alright. Jobe had shot the man in the elbow in a dust-up over near the New Mexico border. The Comanchero probably harbored a grudge about that.
“You shot him once, didn’t you?” Clyde whispered.
“Yeah, but I’ll aim better this time.”
Jobe heard a soft rustle of leaves. He turned his head, saw one of the men coming far enough to wave him back toward where they’d camped. He left Clyde to keep an eye on Talfourt and picked his steps carefully going back. The others were all up, their bedrolls tied to their saddled horses, and each was either holding a carbine or had a hand near his pistol.
“The Injuns are coming in from the right and they have the stolen horses,” Bo whispered. He raised the globe sight at the back of the rifle, ready to line up with the front buckhorn sight. He rarely missed what he aimed at.
Jobe nodded and three of them went on foot behind him to be above the camp, while the others mounted, ready to ride.
They eased into place behind the ridge that looked down on Talfourt’s camp below. Bo switched places with Clyde so only one of them peered downward at a time. The Indians would scan the hills around as they always do. Them seeing a row of waiting faces wasn’t what Jobe wanted. Bo had already pulled the hammer back on his rifle, so they were as ready as they could be.
Jobe glanced up at the sky through a gap in the branches of trees overhead. The sky was blue and getting bluer though he could still see the moon. Years ago he’d had a pocket watch, the only remnant of what had been his father’s things. He’d loaned it to Rowdie Haynes who’d been shot off his horse midstream in the Rio Grande. Yet another Ranger who’d never had a proper burial. That made him wonder if he’d ever once seen the proper churchyard grave of a Texas Ranger. He decided he hadn’t.
Bo held up a finger with his left hand and Jobe could hear the soft plodding of unshod hooves approaching.
Sleeping Bear watched the men below stir into activity of cooking a breakfast. He heard the approaching band of fellow Comanches as well. But his focus stayed fixed on the small group of men he’d seen sneak into place on the far hill. They’d been silent, but not invisible. One of them still had just enough of his head stuck up as well as the barrel of his long gun for Sleeping Bear to know what they intended. Bent Feather and the others would be to Talfourt’s camp in a moment. Sleeping Bear went to his pinto mare, hopped on, and dug in his heels as he charged down the hill. Halfway down he began to scream as loud as he could. “Hi, yi, yi, hi!”
Jobe heard an Indian’s cry at the same second he heard Bo mutter, “What’s that tomfool up to?”
Bo took aim and fired into the camp below.
Jobe and the others leaped to their feet. Jobe was just in time to see Honoré Talfourt fall face first into the campfire below.
The other Rangers opened fire, some at the campsite and others at the lone Comanche galloping down the hill, still screaming as loud as he could.
The Comanche’s horse stumbled, then fell as a bullet downed it. Perhaps more than one bullet. It sounded like the Rangers around him were emptying their carbines, not the most accurate rifle at this range, but Bo had fired again and he was very accurate from this distance. They could have been twice as far away for him.
The Comanche, who looked small enough to be a youngster, leaped from his horse as it fell. The boy tumbled across the open and into a bush. Bullets ricocheted around him and threw up puffs of reddish-brown dirt. The boy pulled himself loose from the stickers of the bush that had entangled him. He began to run in a zig-zag that made him a difficult target for the Rangers who sent a fusillade of bullets headed his way.
Jobe looked for the Comanche band that had been approaching. No sight of them. They’d turned and had headed away, all except for one of them. The lone warrior galloped through the hail of bullets and leaned down, with one arm swept up the boy, dropped him behind him on his horse, and galloped off again.
The mounted Rangers headed down the hill. Jobe and the others on the ridge rose and ran back toward their horses.
As they rode down the hill Jobe waved for Zed to go to the campsite, make sure the three men laying there were dead, and to corral the three horses and two mules loaded with trade goods. Talfourt wasn’t going to slip through Jobe’s fingers this time, but he couldn’t say the same for Bent Feather and those blamed Comanches.
He turned his horse and headed off in the direction the Comanche band had gone. A short ways into the wooded area that had surrounded the camp he found the other Rangers getting the herd of stolen horses together. That crafty Indian had set them free and scattered them, knowing the Rangers would have to stop and round them up since that would be their mission, to recover the stolen horses first and fight the Indians some other time.
As Jobe rode up to those rounding up the horse, two other Rangers rode back through the woods and shook their heads. When a Comanche band lights out with escape in mind the chances are darned good they’ll make that escape. They are hard to out-ride at the best of times, but with the crack of bullets on their heels they can be greased lightning.
Well, Jobe figured, they’d recovered the stolen horses and stopped the gun-trading Comanchero days of Honoré Talfourt. He’d had worse days. He turned his horse and rode back toward Talfourt’s camp. Maybe they could settle in and make a breakfast. He wouldn’t say no to that.
The Comanche band rode hard for several miles until their trailing scouts who were erasing the tracks of the group caught up and said they weren’t being followed.
Bent Feather, with Sleeping Bear behind him on the horse, waved them on without rest. They began to seek stretches of hard rock and streams where they could water the horses and switch back to change directions. One or two of those white men had proven to be pretty fair trackers. Bent Feather did not intend to make their task easy.
He led his band in a circuitous path back to one of the ranches that had been abandoned for a while. There would still be beeves ranging on the land and his men needed to eat. They needed to steal a horse for Sleeping Bear as well.
As Bent Feather crested the hill he waved those who followed him back. They stopped their horses, each well-trained enough to make no sound, not a knicker or whinny from any of them. He could feel Sleeping Bear lean out to look around him, see what he was seeing. Below them a group of white men were working in what was already a hot sun at midday. They drove wooden posts into the ground in a row, an activity that made no sense to Bent Feather. He backed his horse until he was out of sight from the men below.
The others followed as he led them out and around the working crew. They would find a calf and a place to cook its meat before dark. The boy behind hadn’t said a word, though he had to be empty-belly hungry.
“I believe the curse of the buffalo skull has lifted,” Sleeping Bear said softly in the language of The People without turning his head. “You showed yourself to be brave. You saved men this time instead of letting them be harmed. And you ran very fast. You will no longer be called Sleeping Bear, but you will be known now to all other warriors as Road Runner.”
He didn’t need to glance back to know that the boy was probably smiling.