Comanche Moon (3 page)

‘‘Fill the bucket again, would ya?’’ Amy ran the tip of her tongue across her upper lip. ‘‘I’m dry as jerked venison.’’

Loretta hefted the bucket onto the edge of the well and, wetting her fingers, flicked the little girl in the face and flashed her a smile.

‘‘That feels good. If that bucket was big enough, I’d jump right in. If it weren’t for those durned Indians, I’d be goin’ swimmin’.’’ Lifting the ladle, Amy gulped, her throat making plunking sounds until she stopped to get some air. ‘‘Want some?’’

Shaking her head, Loretta leaned against the well and swiped her forehead with her sleeve. Amy was right; a swim would be nice. In her homespun dress, she felt like a hen simmering in a pot, but it would be too risky to venture far from the house. A few days ago she and Amy had seen Comanches down by the river. One of the Indians had grabbed Loretta’s braid and hacked off some of her hair. She could have been scalped; no telling why the Indian had spared her, but she wasn’t about to tempt fate again. Uncle Henry had seen sign that unshod horses had been on his land several times since, so the Comanches might still be in the area.

Glancing down at Amy’s flushed cheeks, Loretta was surprised to see the girl dipping more water. Instead of drinking from it, though, Amy upended the ladle over her honey-gold head. Water spiked her dark lashes and ran in rivulets down her lightly freckled nose. Loretta was reminded of herself at that age, all legs and arms, so skinny her blue eyes looked big as flapjacks.

Amy sighed and tossed the ladle into the bucket. ‘‘You goin’ back in? Or are you gonna stay put here so old toad-face can’t stare at ya?’’ She squinted against the sun, trying to see Loretta’s face. ‘‘I’m sure glad I’m not twenty yet. Pa don’t know squat about pickin’ husbands. That Bartlett fella with the big nose would be better than Tom Weaver.’’

Loretta glanced at the log house. A string of smoke drifted from the catted chimney, trailing along the peak of the barkslabbed roof. Rachel was probably stirring the stew right this moment, wondering if their neighbor would be staying for supper. Just the thought knotted Loretta’s stomach. She didn’t blame Uncle Henry for wanting to find her a husband. Providing for a wife and stepdaughter was burden enough. But Tom Weaver? Amy was right; he made the Bartlett boy look like a prince. A constant dribble of tobacco juice ran from the corner of Weaver’s mouth into his beard, and his unwashed body stank up the whole house. The thought of kissing him made her want to retch.

‘‘You don’t have to marry him,’’ Amy said. ‘‘You earn your keep. Sometimes when ya ain’t lookin’, Pa eyes ya with downright fondness. Really! He never seemed to mind havin’ ya here before. You’re so pretty. Some handsome rancher’ll come callin’ soon.’’

What handsome rancher?
Loretta glanced at the endless stretch of open country beyond the farm, lifting a dubious brow.

A twinkle of devilment crept into Amy’s eyes. ‘‘We could up and run off.’’ She leaned forward, her small face aglow. ‘‘Back to Virginia, just you and me. Hire on as cooks on a wagon train! Once we got there, we could find jobs and save to send for Ma.

‘‘Just imagine! You and me, in Virginia. Socials, barn dances, and church on Sunday, just like Ma tells about. We could sew pretty dresses and look so fine! You’d be married quicker’n a flea can jump. To somebody grand. Tall and handsome with a beaver hat and spit-shined shoes.’’

She twirled once more and then dipped low in a graceful curtsy. ‘‘Come on, Loretta, it’s just for pretend. Show me how to dance. You recollect what Virginia was like, and I don’t.’’

Images flashed in Loretta’s mind of Virginia’s thick forests and velvety green hills. She was too old for make-believe, but sometimes at night, she lay awake remembering, wishing. . . .

Doing a jig across the dirt, Amy cried, ‘‘Well? You gonna play or not?’’

Unable to resist, Loretta snatched up her skirts and did a waltz step, imagining she had a partner. She tried to picture what he’d look like and decided his being tall or handsome wouldn’t matter if only she felt happy when she was with him. Someone like her pa, strong yet gentle, assertive but thoughtful, a man who’d see beyond her silence and love her in spite of it.

Warming to the game, Amy stopped dancing to clasp her hands. ‘‘Let’s make him rich, shall we? Rich enough to buy you a great big slate so you could write notes whenever you wanted. He wouldn’t be ornery about it like Pa.’’

Loretta’s feet dragged to a stop. Mention of Henry brought reality crashing around her. She stared at the dust covering Amy’s pantalets to midshin, at the faded, worn folds of her skirts. They weren’t in Virginia, never would be again, and even if they were, a man who could afford a beaver hat wouldn’t give a mute woman in homespun more than a cursory glance.

‘‘What’s that?’’

Alarmed by the brittle tension in Amy’s tone, Loretta glanced over her shoulder. A red cloud rose against the powder blue sky. She shaded her eyes against the sun. Horses, judging by the dust, a number of them. It might be the border patrol from Fort Belknap, but she doubted it. The war had taken its toll. There were no troops in Palo Pinto County, so the border regiment was stretched mighty thin trying to control the Indians.

Amy stiffened, clutching Loretta’s blue skirt. ‘‘What is it? Oh, Loretta, you don’t think it’s Indians, do you?’’

Loretta hugged the girl’s shoulders with a protective arm. Indians had been the first possibility to cross her mind, too.

‘‘What if it’s them? Maybe they liked our yellow hair, and they’re comin’ back to get it. . . . It is Indians,’’ Amy cried. ‘‘I can see ’em.’’

Giving the girl a push, Loretta lifted her skirts to run.
Pray God it isn’t a war party.
Her heart slammed with every step as she shooed Amy to the house. She could hear the muffled thrumming of horses’ hooves. She longed to call a warning to Uncle Henry and Tom Weaver. Her throat strained, her lungs ached. Never had her muteness frustrated her so. Though she tried to block them out, pictures of the Samuelsons’ farm flashed through her mind, old Bart nailed to his barn with Indian lances, his grown sons scattered across the yard like lifeless rag dolls.

Amy started to scream. ‘‘Indians! Indians comin’!’’

A frenzy of motion erupted in the cabin, boots resounding on the puncheon floor, furniture scraping on the planks, Rachel yelling. Loretta hit the steps in a leap, grabbing Amy’s arm to haul her up. Surely they moved in a dream, each leaden second stretching into eternity. She butted her shoulder against the door, throwing it open and jerking Amy inside. Slamming the door behind them, she whirled to drop the bar into its niche.

‘‘Tom, take the left window,’’ Henry barked. ‘‘Rachel, let Loretta tend Amy. You git the spare rifle and cover the back.’’

Herding Amy across the room, Loretta seized hold of the bed to move it. Beneath it was a trapdoor. Barring fire, Amy would be safe under the house. She lifted the hatch. A damp, musty smell assailed their nostrils.

‘‘I don’t wanna,’’ Amy sobbed. ‘‘Please, Loretta, come with me.’’

For a frozen instant, Loretta was swept back in time. She was thirteen again, straining against her father’s arm as he shoved her into the storm cellar to hide her from the Comanches.
Please, Papa. Let me stay with you and Ma. Please, Papa.

Her father had slammed the door closed, yelling at her through the cracks:
You shush, girl, and mind what I say. Don’t you make a sound, you hear? No matter what happens, don’t you make a sound.

Loretta, eyes riveted to the cracks in the cellar door, teeth embedded in her lip to keep from screaming, had witnessed the atrocities. But she had obeyed her father and uttered not a sound. Seven years later, she was still silent.

The thundering approach of horses brought Loretta back to the present. Catching Amy’s arm, she pulled her to the opening and forced her down the steps. Amy looked over her shoulder, her small face pinched and white. Loretta slammed the trap closed and repositioned the bed. If this was an attack, God forbid that those animals should get their hands on a twelve-year-old.

Visions of her mother’s violated body spun in her head.

Dust filtered through the windows, burning Loretta’s throat. The Comanches were all around the house. She could feel them, smell them.
Not Amy. Please, God, not sweet little Amy.

‘‘Holy Mother,’’ Henry exclaimed, ‘‘must be a hundred of ’em!’’

Weaver agreed with a grim nod, kneeling at the other window. He tugged the collar of his brown shirt, stretching his neck for air, and steadied his rifle. ‘‘Don’t git jumpy and shoot.’’

‘‘Oh, mercy,’’ Rachel screeched from the back window, ‘‘there are so many! We don’t have a prayer.’’

Loretta stood motionless in the center of the room. The aroma of venison stew floated to her. Everything looked so normal, the lid half-off the salt barrel, the flour sack loosened, two mugs on the planked table where the men had been sitting. Aunt Rachel’s patchwork lay on the rocker seat. How could things be fine one moment and smell like death the next?

Moving to the window, she looked out over her uncle’s shoulder at the scores of warriors on nervous horses. The face of her mother’s murderer had been dark and angular, the nose long, the forehead sloped sharply to a high hairline. She never saw Indians that she didn’t search for that face. Was he out there? There were far too many faces, all dark, all with high foreheads. Brown, oiled skin gleamed. Lean muscles flexed. Feathers floated from deadly, poised lances. She closed her eyes, then opened them. A pall of silence covered everything, broken only by the musical tinkling of brass bells that dangled from the Comanches’ moccasins. The loosened doeskin membranes that usually covered the windows flapped in the sudden breeze.

‘‘Don’t shoot,’’ Tom cautioned again. ‘‘That brave in the lead has a crooked lance with a white flag. Whatever it is they’re wantin’, it ain’t a fight. You speak any Comanch’?’’

‘‘Not a word,’’ Henry replied.

‘‘I don’t know much. If they do a lot of tradin’, they can probably talk English, but if they don’t—all we can do is hope my Injun will get us by.’’ Tom spat a glob of chew onto Rachel’s bleached floor. Then he bellowed, ‘‘What do you want?’’

Loretta’s nerves were strung so taut, she leaped. Nausea surged into her throat as the brown tobacco juice soaked into the floor. Was she losing her mind? Who cared if the puncheon got stained? Before this was over, the house might be burned to the ground. She heard Rachel crying, a soft, irregular whimpering.
Terror.
The metallic taste of it shriveled her tongue.

‘‘What brings you here?’’ Tom cried again.

‘‘Hites!’’
a deep voice called back. ‘‘We come as friends, White-Eyes.’’

The lead warrior moved some twenty feet in front of his comrades, holding the crooked lance high so the dusty white rag was clearly visible. He sat proudly on his black stallion, gleaming brown shoulders straight, leather-sheathed legs pressed snugly to his mount. A rush of wind lifted his mahogany hair, wisping it across his bronzed, sharply chiseled face.

Loretta’s first thought when she saw him was that he seemed different from the others. A closer look told her why. He was unquestionably a half-breed, taller on horseback than the rest, lighter-skinned. If not for his sun-darkened complexion and long hair, he might have passed for a white man. Everything else about him was savage, though, from the cruel sneer on his mouth to the expert way he balanced on his horse, as if he and the animal were one entity.

Tom Weaver stiffened. ‘‘Son of a— Henry, you know who that is?’’

‘‘I was hopin’ I was wrong.’’

Loretta inched closer to get a better look. Then it hit her.
Hunter.
She had heard his name whispered with dread, heard tales. But until this moment she hadn’t believed he existed. A blue-eyed half-breed, one of the most cunning and treacherous adversaries the U.S. Army had run across. Now that the war had pitted North against South, the homesteaders had no cavalry to keep Hunter and his marauders at bay, and his raiders struck ever deeper into settled country, advancing east. Some claimed he was far more dangerous than a full-blooded Comanche because he had a white man’s intelligence. As vicious as he was, there were stories that he spared women and children. Whether that was coincidence, design, or a lie some Indian lover had dreamed up, no one knew. Loretta opted for the latter. Indians were little better than animals, killers, one and all.

‘‘What do you want?’’ Henry cried. ‘‘The cow’s a good milcher. There’s two mules and a horse out back.’’

A stench of fear rose from Uncle Henry’s sweaty shirt, the smell sharp and sticky. The Indian reached to his belt and pulled something loose. Lifting it high, he stared straight at the window where Loretta stood. She had the uncanny feeling he could see her. Something golden streamed from his fingers, shimmering in the slanting sunlight.
‘‘Pe-nan-de,’’
he yelled. ‘‘Honey, you call it. Send me the woman whose hair I hold.’’

‘‘Oh, sweet Jesus,’’ Tom whispered.

Unable to drag her eyes from the strands of gold trailing from the half-breed’s brown fingers, Loretta pressed a trembling hand to her throat. This isn’t really happening, she thought fuzzily. In a minute I’ll wake up. It’s just a bad dream.

‘‘We’re outnumbered fifty to one,’’ Henry said. ‘‘What in hell we gonna do?’’

Tom shifted at the window. ‘‘Ain’t no matter if it’s a hundred to one, you can’t send him the girl.’’

‘‘Better just her than all of us.’’ A trickle of moisture dripped off Henry’s nose, and he made a quick swipe with his white sleeve. ‘‘I got Amy and Rachel to think of. You know what those savages would do to Amy, Tom.’’

‘‘And what about Loretta?’’

Loretta reached to the wall for support. He wanted
her?
Fear turned her legs to water. No, I won’t go, she thought. Then she remembered Amy’s white face as the trapdoor closed. A hundred Comanches against three rifles? Everyone in the house would die, including Amy. And she knew beyond a doubt that the girl’s death would not be swift. Uncle Henry was right; better one life than five.