Chapter 4

Carrying his shotgun in one hand, Clay McAlester crawled on his stomach, silently cursing the rising moon that vied with the setting sun to light the sparse scrub on the rocky hillside. He stopped to listen, hearing the murmured Spanish on the other side of the hill, and he felt a grim satisfaction. Now he could wait until they were settled in to surprise them.

The gang that had tried to spring free had split to throw him off their trail, but it hadn’t worked. Once he’d discovered the missing nail in a horseshoe, and the odd gait of an animal going lame, he’d tracked two of them for a day and a half—until he’d gotten close enough to identify Little Pedro and Julio Javier through his spyglass. Now he was in luck, and he was going to bag both in a matter of minutes. Then he’d go after the others, even if it meant going into the Comancheria.

They were looking for Quanah Parker and his Quahadi Comanches—Garcia had told him that during interrogation. It seemed like every Comanchero coming in from New Mexico was looking for Quanah these days. And with good reason—Ishatai, the band’s medicine man, had called the Cheyennes and the Kiowa to join the Comanches in a Sun Dance, promising to make medicine powerful enough to drive the whites from the plains, to stop the slaughter of the buffalo.

Army scouts had carried the tale back—and by fall Colonel Ranald S. Mackenzie and his Negro cavalry would be ready to punish every Comanche who failed to move onto the reservation north of the Canadian River. Whether Quanah knew it or not, his band faced that grimmest of choices—civilization or destruction. Clay had no illusions about which path the half-breed war chief would take. With rifles provided by men like Garcia, Javier, and the rest of the Comancheros, Quanah would go down fighting.

Clay crawled closer, gaining the top of the hill just as they were making camp. While Little Pedro tended the mesquite fire, Julio Javier unsaddled the half-lame mare. The other horse, still saddled, threw back its head and caught Clay’s scent. It whinnied, making the jumpy Javier reach for his gun. Little Pedro ridiculed him, saying that “el Diablo McAlester” was probably already in Fort Stockton, claiming his reward for Garcia’s capture, while the foolish Javier saw him in every bush.

In turn, Javier roundly cursed Clay’s name, wishing the Comanches would rid Texas of him. Instead, he complained indignantly, they let the hated tejano cross the Comancheria unmolested. Surely they could not still consider such a traitor one of them, not after McAlester had become a ranger.

In the distance a coyote howled, and the hairs on Clay’s neck prickled. He knew that sound well. With the enthusiasm of youth, he’d practiced it, perfecting it before Many Feathers had taken him down his first war trail. He listened, hearing the eerie, lonesome sound again, and his heart raced, blood pounding through his veins. He waited, and when another howl cut through the air, he used it to cover the noise of loading both barrels of his shotgun. At the third call, he locked the lever and cocked one hammer.

He crouched, ready to move in an instant, watching Little Pedro pour whiskey from a bottle into a cup and offer it to the jumpy Javier. As the larger Comanchero reached to take it, McAlester stood and threw down on them.

“Put up your hands!” he shouted.

Javier dropped the cup and went for the pistol in his belt, while Little Pedro made a run for his horse. Without hesitation, Clay pulled the trigger. The first shotgun blast shattered the air, blowing Javier backward, where he fell into the campfire. Turning, the ranger cocked the other hammer and pulled the trigger, firing the other barrel, striking the second Comanchero as he swung into his saddle. Little Pedro’s horse reared, dislodging the Mexican as it fled in terror.

Javier was dead—there was no doubt about that. But Little Pedro was still kicking and writhing in the dirt, screaming that he’d been hit, that he was dying. Before he approached either of them, Clay cupped his mouth and gave his own coyote call, followed by two hoots of a desert owl. From a distance there came an answer, then only silence. At least now they knew he was there.

Clay walked to the fire and pulled Julio Javier out of it, turning him over with his foot. The man’s shirt was singed, but the blood spilling from the chest wound had soaked it too much to burn. If he’d been ten feet closer, the blast would have cut him in half. Turning his attention to the other Comanchero, he could see where he’d caught Little Pedro’s lungs from the back. Pink froth foamed from his mouth, and there was a distinctive death rattle coming from his chest.

Clay rested the shotgun beneath Little Pedro’s chin. The man’s eyes cast about wildly, as though he looked for help, as though he didn’t know that in a few moments he wouldn’t need any. But his words gave the lie to that. “A padre,” he gasped.

“Where are the others?”

“A padre, por favor—”

Clay jammed the shotgun harder, pushing the Mexican’s head back. “The others—where are they?” he asked harshly. “If you don’t answer, I’ll send you the rest of the way to hell.”

Little Pedro coughed, spitting more blood. “A padre,” he repeated desperately.

“Who was with you? If you want any prayers, you’ll tell me now.”

The Mexican closed his eyes and tried to swallow the foam. “Mendoza … Velez …”

“Hernan Mendoza?”

“Sí.”

There was no use asking about the others. By the looks of it, Little Pedro was checking out. Clay laid down the shotgun and knelt beside him. He wasn’t a Catholic, so he knew he couldn’t say the right words, but he felt he’d made some kind of bargain with the Mexican.

“Saint Mary, pray for God’s mercy on Pedro. He was a sinner, but so are we all.” He looked up at the darkening sky. “Lord, this man is in your hands now—do with him what you will.” With that, he stood up and brushed the dust from his worn buckskin leggings.

It probably wasn’t going to make any difference. He doubted that Little Pedro was going to make it through any pearly gates. If there was in truth a heaven and hell, the Mexican was probably on his way down rather than up. He leaned over, listening to the man’s chest. The rale he’d heard was gone, and so was Pedro.

I’ve always believed that every death in this world diminishes it. Amanda Ross’s words echoed in his mind, seeming to condemn him as he looked down at the dead man. She might believe it, but he didn’t. She just didn’t know any men like Garcia, Javier, and Little Pedro. No, the world was a better place without them.

Straightening up, Clay whistled, and within seconds his paint pony came over the hill, his mule following by a lead tied to the pony’s saddle horn. Both animals passed the dead men and came to a stop beside him.

Briefly, he considered loading the two bodies onto the mule, then decided against it. Given the heat, by the time he reached Fort Stockton, the flies and the stench would be overwhelming. Besides, if it didn’t take too long, he’d like to find Hernan Mendoza. Having made up his mind, he rummaged through Javier’s and Pedro’s pockets for some identification he could use to prove he’d gotten the two Comancheros. When he found what he wanted, he dragged both bodies about fifteen feet away from the campsite.

That done, he removed his saddle bags, loosened the cinch, then pulled his saddle and blanket off the paint. Slinging the bags over his shoulder, he dragged the rest closer to the campfire, where he folded the blanket for a bed, then placed the saddle at the end.

Picking up the shotgun again, he listened for another coyote howl, but all was quiet. He flipped the locking lever, broke open the barrels, and shook out the spent shells into his hand. Tossing them away, he reloaded, then locked the barrels in place again. While he expected no trouble, he couldn’t afford to make any mistakes in a place where the nearest help was a hundred miles away.

Tired from nearly twenty hours in the saddle, he dropped down to sit on the blanket. Reaching into his frock coat pocket, he drew out a worn, leather-covered book, a stubby pencil, and his knife. Leaning against the saddle, he sharpened the pencil point, then he began writing his report to Hap Walker.

Night of June 25, 1873. Found Little Pedro and Julio Javier. Both resisted arrest. Bringing in personal effects without bodies. Please apply for one hundred dollar bounty on Javier. See if anything posted on other one. Am going to look for Hernan Mendoza now. If I find him, I’ll bring him in, one way or the other.

That just about said it. Hap would write it up, no doubt embellishing it suitably before sending it on with his own recommendation for payment. And hopefully the editor of the Daily Austin Republican wouldn’t make too much of the incident, at least not the way he’d done with the State Police.

The trouble with newspapers, he reflected bitterly, was that while they cried for protection of the Texas frontier, they refused to sanction the necessary means of achieving it. And he was tired of listening to them whine that too few outlaws lived long enough to make it to the hangman’s noose. The fools writing their articles never seemed to understand the problem of transporting hostile thieves and murderers hundreds of miles across a barren, waterless land.

On the Comanche war trail, the Indians killed Anglo men for just such a reason, taking mostly women and children too young to pose a threat. An occasional Mexican they’d keep for a slave, but the captor was responsible for seeing that his prisoner behaved and kept up. That made a lot of sense to Clay.

He put his report book back into his pocket and lay down. Rolling into the blanket, he pulled it up over his shoulder and stared into the coals of the campfire, listening to the seemingly empty desert, knowing that he was not alone. Out there somewhere there was a Comanche war party.

He turned onto his back and stared up at the bright, almost orange moon. A Comanche Moon, the settlers called it, saying whenever it was full like this, a man could always bet the Indians were going to raid. And they’d be right. Even as he thought it, Clay could feel the tug of another lifetime and remember the excitement of a warrior’s first war trail.

The sky itself was so clear that it looked as though a man could reach up and touch the stars. On nights like this, when he lay in the silence and closed his eyes, he could still remember Sees the Sun’s face, and he could still feel the comfort of her arms about a young white boy’s slender shoulders.

They were all there, permanently etched in his memory. The father who’d taught him to ride with the skill and grace of a Comanche, who’d taken such pride in teaching an adopted son the ways of The People. The round-faced little Cries Too Much, who’d gotten her name by wailing when brought to the medicine woman. Walking Woman, the wrinkled grandmother who’d had the patience to teach a frightened boy sign language, then how to speak her tongue. The fierce Buffalo Horn, who’d valued bravery over everything else, who’d honored a thirteen-year-old Stands Alone for carrying not one but two wounded warriors home. The old chief had even reported Clay’s first coup, making sure that his parents held a giveaway dance for it.

And poor old Mexican Pete. The image of Pete lying on the cold ground, his body still shielding Cries Too Much, came vividly to mind. And with it came the others—Sees the Sun, her eyes glazed, her life’s blood spilling from her neck. Walking Woman dead in his arms. He’d never forget the horror of that day. Never.

The Texans had nearly killed him with the Comanches, but a young ranger had stopped them, saying he was white. Some had wanted to shoot him, anyway, arguing he had been with the Indians too long to ever be civilized. But in the end, Hap Walker won, and he took the half-savage boy to San Angelo with him.

For months after he’d been captured and returned to so-called civilization, Clay’d tried to go back, to find what was left of his Comanche family. But each time he ran away, either soldiers or rangers caught him, until finally they managed to discover another, earlier life for him. He was Clayton Michael McAlester, they said, named for his mother, Ellen Louise Clayton, and his father, Michael James McAlester, both killed during an 1850 Indian raid near Gainsville, Texas. His unlucky parents had been on the southern trail bound for California, lured by stories of fortunes made there in gold, his aunt had later told him.

For a time he’d refused to believe any of it, but at night, tossing fitfully on a hard army cot, he began to remember a pretty blond woman who’d sung to him, and a tall, stern man who’d seldom smiled. But for whatever reason, he never had any memory of the raid that killed them. All he remembered was a long, cold ride, and a full moon’s light on frosted mesquite limbs. And finally the welcoming arms of Sees the Sun, who laughed and cried as she held him.

In the end it had been Hap Walker who located an aunt in Chicago willing to take a rebellious fourteen-year-old boy. A tall, determined woman, Jane McAlester had done her best to civilize her brother’s only son, hiring tutors rather than risking his ridicule in a public school, seeing he not only learned to read, but that he read what she considered to be the classics, sending him to a Presbyterian Sunday School, where he heard of a heaven whose streets were paved with gold and a hell where the ungodly burned forever. It was the predestination that bothered him. He figured if God already knew what was going to happen, then a man was doomed before he got started.

Aunt Jane had done her best for him, he knew and appreciated that. But despite all her efforts, there was still that within him that refused to be tamed, that refused to accept anything more than the thinnest veneer of civilization. The result was decidedly mixed, he had to admit—what she’d made of him was a reasonably literate rebel, one able to quote Shakespeare, Homer, and the Bible, who still believed more in himself than in any higher power.

Six months past his eighteenth birthday, by mutual agreement, Jane reluctantly gave up the struggle for his soul, and he left for Texas with her tearful blessing and twenty-five dollars in his pockets. He still had ten of it left when he reached New Orleans and enlisted in the Confederate army, becoming a soldier in that hopeless cause. And with the separation of time and distance, he and his aunt came to the understanding they’d lacked when he lived with her. In her loneliness she wrote often, and no matter where her letters found him, he took the time to answer as soon as he received them. She was, after all, his only living relation.

By the summer of 1865, he’d found Hap Walker again, and together they’d bummed around Texas until the carpetbag government organized the State Police, where he’d served, often with such ferocity that his superiors were appalled. But with the reinstatement of the Texas Rangers, Hap Walker had gotten himself commissioned a captain, then hired Clay, saying he needed “a man as tough and ornery as a Mexican, a Comanche, and an outlaw combined.”

So for thirty-three dollars a month and all the ammunition he could use, Clay’d signed on with the understanding that he could bring in horse thieves, rustlers, Comancheros, and any other desperadoes he found plying their trades in sparsely populated West Texas, dead or alive. All he’d had to do was furnish his horse, his mule, his guns, and his traveling gear. In the absence of any sort of ranger uniform, he’d kept the three-dollar badge from his state police days, wearing it when it suited him, which wasn’t very often. He’d never actually needed it. Most folks on the western Texas frontier knew who he was, anyway, and more than half of them were afraid of him.

His paint pony lifted its nose, then moved restlessly, breaking into his reverie. He sat up, his hand on the shotgun, listening intently. Not that he expected to hear or see anyone, not when a lone Indian could steal a regiment’s horses without so much as a sound. As the paint settled down, Clay lay back, his hands laced behind his head, staring up at the still-rising Comanche moon.

His thoughts turned to the young woman on the stage. John Ross’s daughter, all dressed up in silk, come to claim a piece of Texas someone else had fought and died for. But for all her fancy airs and high temper, she’d taken that Colt and fired it, hitting not one but two Comancheros, while the dandified Spaniard with her had quailed at her feet.

But the way she’d looked at him still irritated him. As though he were the savage, Garcia the victim. Still, she was about as pretty a girl as he’d ever seen, he’d give her that. Tall, slender, with a delicate face framed with that dark red hair, and expressive brown eyes that betrayed her thoughts. A man might not like it, but he’d know where he stood with her. If he didn’t, she wasn’t afraid to tell him.

He turned on his side again and closed his eyes. He was too tired to think anymore, and tomorrow he had a long ride back beneath a broiling sun. He just hoped she remembered to give his report to Hap. And leave his gun at the fort. He’d paid too damned much for the newest and finest pair of revolvers to lose one of them.

When he finally slept, there were no dreams, no nightmares to break his peace. But he woke up suddenly, thinking he’d heard something. Alert on the instant, he realized he’d be seen reaching for the shotgun. His body tensed, and beneath his blanket, his hand crept to the butt of his Colt. Slowly, he eased it out, and as he rotated the cylinder one chamber, he threw back the blanket, rolled away, and came up on his knees with the gun ready to fire.

A rider bolted past him, but before he could take aim, a shadowy figure jumped on Little Pedro’s nervous horse, reached down, and grabbed the half-lame mare’s bridle. Whirling, as if for a show of horsemanship, the first rider came back at full gallop, then reined in. And by the light of the moon, there was no mistaking the dark paint on his face nor the pale stripe that parted his hair. He was Comanche. And he was on the war trail.

Keeping his eyes on both Indians, McAlester laid aside his Colt and stood up, showing himself. The man on Little Pedro’s horse leaned down quickly, dropping something, then applied his rawhide thong to the animal’s rump, and raced off. His companion wheeled again, dug his moccasined foot into his pony’s sides, and disappeared into the night.

Sliding his gun back into its holster, Clay looked first to where the sturdy paint stood grazing on scrub next to the imperturbable mule. Turning around, he saw that the two Comancheros’ bodies lay where he’d left them. He walked over to where their horses had been and bent down to retrieve the broken arrow the brave had dropped.

His hand ran the length of the split mulberry shaft to the turkey feathers, and he knew why they’d given it to him. He was still one of The People, and no matter why he was there, he was safe among them.

He stood for a time, staring first at the arrow, then up at the full moon, and he felt an intense yearning for the years of his youth, a desire to belong somewhere again. Finally, he shrugged it off and lay down. But this time, as his fanciful mind wandered toward the valley of sleep, he could hear the distant, rhythmic beat of Comanche war drums calling him.