[Texas Rangers 03] - The Way of the Coyote (4 page)

Rusty grinned. "Everybody knew it was comin', everybody but you and Clemmie." He grasped the minister's hand again, firmer this time.

Preacher Webb and Daddy Mike Shannon had found Rusty on the Plum Creek battlefield in 1840 after volunteer rangers and militia challenged a huge Comanche raiding party. Rusty had been but a toddler, frightened and confused by the gunfire, the chaos that thundered around him. Over the years he had considered Webb the best friend he had, after Mike and Mother Dora. "I'm pleased for you, Preacher, you and Clemmie both."

Clemmie was the mother of James and Geneva and of the younger sisters Josie and Alice. Rusty could see her standing ramrod-straight in the open dog run between the two main sections of the larger house. She was a small woman tough as rawhide. Though the war's hatreds had cost her a husband and son, she remained unbroken, fiercely defensive of the family that remained to her. Rusty thought it good that she and the minister had married. They were strong-willed people, and together their individual strengths were doubled.

Webb turned his attention toward Andy. "You couldn't find his people?"

"We found them."

Webb's eyes indicated that he guessed much of the story. "At least the boy's among friends here."

"He's feelin' kind of low. He needs you to talk to him the way you talked to me that time at Plum Creek."

"You were younger and easier to comfort. He's been in purgatory longer than you were."

"He never looked at it as purgatory. Livin' the Indian way came natural because he couldn't remember much else. Now he's lost that. He's got no solid ground to plant his feet on."

"You'll be takin' him south with you, I suppose."

"In a few days. He's got kind of used to things down there, and the people. I hope you haven't given his clothes to somebody." Andy had shed his white-boy clothing for breechcloth and moccasins when he had left here to go back to Comancheria.

"They're still here, just like he left them." Webb suggested, "If you'd leave him here the girls would treat him like a younger brother. They'd enjoy teachin' him to read and write. And Clemmie needs somebody like him to help make up for losin' Billy and Lon."

"She's got
you
now. And she's still got one son."

"James is a grown man. He travels his own road. She needs a boy who'll need
her
."

Rusty did not ponder long. "This is too close to Comanche country. It'd be easy for him to take a notion to go back and test his luck. They'd likely kill him."

Webb frowned. "I guess you feel a special kinship to him, seein' what you both have gone through."

"We have a lot in common, and I've got no blood kin anywhere that I know of."

"Maybe it's no accident that he fell to you. The Lord knew you'd understand Andy in ways nobody else would."

"I hope gettin' into regular clothes will help him make the change. But he says he's not cuttin' his hair."

Webb shrugged. "Leave him somethin'. He can't change everything overnight."

Rusty thought back on the buffalo hunter's dark admonitions. "Do you think he can
ever
change it all?"

A
mong the Comanches, Andy Pickard had earned the name Badger Boy because he had that small animal's fiercely defensive attitude when threatened or abused. He had made it a point to strike back for every blow struck against him. When circumstances did not allow him to do it immediately, he would await his chance to administer punishment. No insult was forgotten or allowed to go unanswered indefinitely. After a time the abuse stopped. Those who would maltreat him learned that retribution was certain, even if occasionally postponed.

He faintly remembered that he had been called Andy long ago, but hearing that name still caught him off guard at times. He had an uneasy feeling of not knowing for certain who he was. His life before capture by the Comanches seemed distant and unreal, like a dream dimly remembered. He could grasp only fragments, while most of it drifted out of his reach.

He was ill at ease among most of these white people who wanted to be his friends. When Rusty was reluctantly taking him north to rejoin The People, they had stopped to rest awhile at the Monahan farm. Andy had perceived a special bond between Rusty and this family, a bond that had to do with the white men's war and the misfortunes it had brought upon them all. In vague ways these people conjured up hazy memories of a white mother and father whose faces Andy could no longer bring into focus but whose voices echoed faintly in his mind.

He could not discern what was memory and what was illusion. The Comanches placed heavy importance upon dreams. Perhaps what he thought he remembered of his Texan family was no more than that, a persistent dream that haunted him like a mischievous spirit. It seemed to offer secrets but dangled them just beyond his grasp.

Memory or dream, it kept coming back while he was with the Monahan family. And sometimes in the middle of the night he woke up in a cold sweat, remembering his Texan mother's screams as she died.

Comanches had killed her. That he knew, yet he held no malice against them. After all, they had taken him in. Buffalo Caller had claimed him as a son, and Steals the Ponies, after resenting him for a time, had accepted him as a brother. The People had become
his
people.

After awakening from a nightmare he would lie with open eyes, mourning over having left them, wondering if somehow he might yet find a way to rejoin them without jeopardizing his life. No way presented itself, but he clutched at the hope.

Andy stayed close to Rusty as much as he could. When Rusty was not available, he turned to Vince Purdy. The Comanches had taught him respect for elders, and Purdy had a gentle nature as well as a wise countenance. Andy felt comfortable in the old man's presence. He wanted to feel the same way about Preacher Webb, for the minister seemed tolerant and understanding. However, when he spoke about religion he left Andy confused. Webb's teachings seemed different in many ways from those of the Comanches. So far as Andy had been able to determine, the two religions had little in common except belief in a central great spirit who oversaw the world.

Clemmie Monahan reminded him in some particulars of his adoptive mother, Sparrow, widow of Buffalo Caller. She had always been busy, flitting from one task to another like a hummingbird, never settling for long. Clemmie's many attentions to him were well meant but smothering. She treated him like a child, and he did not consider himself a child. He had ridden with older warriors on a raid, though without permission. That should qualify him as grown, or nearly so. Clemmie's daughters were much the same, especially the youngest, the one called Alice. The oldest daughter, Geneva, was kind but did not overwhelm him. She had a husband and a baby who commanded most of her time.

Rusty had spoken little about Geneva, but Andy perceived that there once had been a strong attachment between the two. He saw it in the way Rusty watched her when she was not looking and quickly cut his gaze away if she glanced in his direction.

In this respect he found little difference between white man and Comanche. He had observed Steals the Ponies's disappointment when a young woman he favored had chosen someone else. He saw the same futile longing in Rusty's eyes. Unlike Rusty, Steals the Ponies had put his disappointment aside and sought the favor of another.

As much as possible Andy tried to remain outdoors, away from the attention of the womenfolk. He enjoyed watching the men brand the cattle they had gathered and brought to the farm. A man named Macy, a former soldier for the South, was accomplished with the reata, a long rawhide rope. From horseback he would cast a loop around an animal's hind feet and drag it to a fire. While a couple of men held the struggling creature down, James Monahan would pull a long iron bar from the blazing wood and draw his brand on the bawling animal's side. Rusty said it was the letter M. He promised that once Andy learned all his letters, he would be on his way to reading and understanding the talking leaves of books and newspapers.

Andy understood that when enough cattle had been gathered, James intended to drive them to a faraway place called Missouri and exchange them for money. He could not fathom white men's obsession with money. It was worthless in itself. It could not be eaten. Silver coins could be used as shiny ornaments on necklaces and bracelets and such, but they had no other practical purpose that he could see.

Still, he was told that they could be traded for food, for horses, even for land. It seemed a poor exchange. But white people had strange ways.

He heard James tell Rusty, "You can't do much farmin' from now 'til spring. You and Andy could cow-hunt down yonder this winter like we're doin' here. Come spring, throw your gather in with ours and I'll take them north. The bigger the bunch, the more buyers they ought to draw."

Rusty acknowledged, "I've been thinkin' about it."

That pleased Andy. He had pictured himself wasting the winter days sitting in Rusty's cabin, studying books, learning to read and do ciphers. He would much rather be on horseback chasing wild cattle. Living among The People, he had been considered too young to go on a tribal buffalo hunt. Only grown men were privileged to participate in the excitement. Andy had been compelled to remain with the women and children, watching the action from afar, then moving in to the killing ground for the unpleasant skinning and cutting of meat. Though cattle seemed a less dangerous challenge than buffalo, at least he could share in the pursuit.

Talk in the evenings often turned to politics, which did not hold Andy's attention long. He understood little of it. He could tell that it meant a great deal to Rusty and the Monahans, however.

James said, "I'm hearin' that the military has set up a provisional government for Texas. General Reynolds has appointed his own people to office 'til the state can hold an election."

Evan Gifford said, "But I hear they may not let us old Confederate soldiers vote—"

James said, "They've been thrashin' the vote question around. One time I hear that everybody can vote if they'll take an oath of allegiance. Next time I hear that soldiers of the Confederacy are disqualified. Just goes to show why there ought to be a law against war. Maybe even a law against laws."

That too gave Andy pause. Among the Comanches, war was highly regarded. Only battle and the hunt gave a young man the chance to gain honor and respect. He had heard older men discuss what a calamity it would be if they killed all their enemies and had no one left to fight.

James declared, "Local sheriffs and judges do the best they can, but nobody knows how much authority they've got under the occupation. Thieves and outlaws run free and nobody does much to stop them."

Rusty nodded. "They need to organize the rangers again."

James said, "No chance. Last thing the Federals want is to give guns and authority to old Confederates."

Andy had heard much talk and wonderment among The People about the war between white men of the North and South. They had taken advantage of the increased opportunity for raiding into the settlements because so many young white men had been drawn away to the distant fighting, weakening the Texan defense.

He had seen a few Yankee soldiers. They looked no different from Texans except for the blue uniforms and that some had black skins. He knew only one black man, a former slave named Shanty who lived near Rusty's farm. He had found that Shanty's color did not rub off like paint, as he had thought it might.

Andy did not understand why Yankees and Texans would fight one another. It was not as if they were different in the way Comanches and Apaches were different. War between those tribes seemed natural because they had so little in common and all wanted to hunt on the same land. So far as he could determine, white men of the North had little interest in coming this far to hunt.

Josie Monahan was trying to teach Andy his letters and to print his name. During his earlier visit she had coached him on the use of English, helping him remember bits of the Texans' language. He still felt awkward, often struggling for a word that seemed determined to hide from him in a far corner of his mind.

She said, "If you'd talk Rusty into stayin' longer, I'd have time to teach you out of the first reader."

He guessed that the first reader must be a book. He wished he could learn to read without having to study so much. Studying made his head hurt.

He suspected that Josie was less interested in teaching him than in keeping Rusty around as long as she could. It was plain that she had strong feelings for him. He was not sure to what extent Rusty shared those feelings, though in his view if Rusty could not have one sister he should be contented with another. They looked much alike, and the younger one was not encumbered with a husband and baby.

He had seen more than one Comanche warrior who was disappointed in his first love but had taken the next youngest sister and found her more than satisfactory.

Josie had taught Andy to recite the alphabet from A to Z. Now she began trying to teach him the look and sound of each letter. She drew one on a slate.

"That's an
H
," she said. "It makes a `huh' sound."

It was like no word Andy knew in either English or the Comanche tongue, but he repeated after her to keep her from becoming impatient. "What's it for?" he asked.

"Lots of words start with
H
, like
harness
and
house
and
horse
. If you use enough imagination you can almost see a horse in that letter. See his body and his legs?"

"His head, his tail, they stand straight up."

"I said you have to use a lot of imagination." She wiped the slate and made a single vertical mark. "That's the next letter,
I
."

"Don't look like nothin'."

"I means me, myself. If you use your imagination, you can see your own picture in that letter."