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Authors: Elmer Kelton

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BOOK: Texas Rifles
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The captain looked at the young woman, and he gently shook his head. Watching him, Cloud knew the captain was thinking the same thing the scout had.
The captain said, “How about showing us where you made your stand?”
The old man argued, “Now, soldier, there don't seem to be no reason for that. ‘Pears to me like you fellers would be most interested in gittin' out after them Indians.”
“I'd just like to see how you fought them off.” Cloud could see suspicion in the captain's eyes.
Then Miguel bent over and examined the foot tracks. “
Capitán!
”
Catching Miguel's eye, Cloud quickly shook his head. But it was already too late. The captain said, “What is it, Miguel?”
Miguel glanced again at Cloud and shrugged. “It is nothing,
Capitán.
We forget it.”
“You've found something,” the captain pressed. “What is it?”
Hemmed up, Miguel showed Barcroft the tracks. The captain said grimly, “I knew something was wrong here. I just couldn't put my finger on it.” He turned to the old man and pointed out into the brush. “Who's in there?”
Trembling, the old man said, “Nobody, sir, nobody. You're mistaken.”
The captain declared, “There's no mistake. You're hiding someone. Who is it?” When he got no reply from the old man, he turned sharply to the young woman. “Your
husband, perhaps? What is he, a deserter? A conscription dodger?”
Tears rolled down the young woman's cheeks, leaving trails in the dust that lay heavy on her face. “Please,” she begged, “please.”
Barcroft turned to his men. “Dismount and fan out. We'll push through that brush until we find him.”
Miguel eased up close to Cloud. Quietly he said, “I'm sorry. I speak before I think.”
“Can't help it now.”
They moved out in a walk, a ragged line of men filtering through heavy brush. Cloud could hear the young woman sobbing behind them. She was following. He turned once and told her, “Ma'am, you better go back.”
She kept coming, and he let her alone.
A jackrabbit jumped up and skittered away, and half the men in the group jerked their rifles up in sudden reflex before they realized what it was.
Then a man somewhere ahead of them shouted, “Stay back, all of you! We've got rifles here!”
Cloud saw a movement. It wasn't one man; it was two!
“Stay back!” the voice shouted again. There was a shot that clipped the leaves out of a post oak above Cloud's head. Then came the sound of a quick struggle and a second man saying sharply, “Put the gun down. It's no use.”
Two men stood up in plain sight, their hands in the air. Cloud broke into a trot toward them. He was one of the first men to reach them. Behind him came the young woman, crying, “Don't shoot them! Please don't shoot them!” She dodged in front of Cloud and threw her arms about one of the men, sobbing. The man lowered his chin and pressed his cheek to her hair, his hand gently patting her back.
Barcroft moved up to them and said solemnly, “You're under arrest.”
“What for?” one of the young men asked.
“Desertion, possibly, or flight to avoid conscription. Whichever it is, we'll find out.”
The woman turned her face toward the captain. “What'll happen to them?”
Evenly the captain said, “They fired upon a Confederate company. I'd say they'll likely hang for that.”
She cried out, “No!” and clung tightly to her husband.
The younger of the two men said, “I was the one fired the shot, not
him.
Besides, I didn't shoot at nobody. I just fired over your heads. Hoped I'd scare you off.”
It was easy to tell that the two men were brothers, both in their twenties, both tall and strongly handsome with the broad shoulders of men who know well the ax and the plow.
“What happens to you will be up to a military court,” Barcroft said.
Seward Prince growled, “Unionists, I'd bet, the both of them. Hangin'd be just about right, if you was to ask me.”
Curtly Cloud said, “Nobody asked you.”
The Rifles walked back out to the edge of the timber, with the two men in front of them and the young woman leaning tearfully against her husband. The old couple stood slumped helplessly, hopelessness in their tired, grieving faces. They sat down on their wagon tongue, and the old man pleaded:
“Captain, it weren't none of their fault. I was the one made them run. It's this damned war. It's not
our
war. We didn't ask for it, and we don't want no part of it. I got no slaves and don't want none. I say if these rich landowners and slave men want a war fought, let them fight it theirselves, and leave us poor folks alone!”
Cloud thought he could see sympathy in the captain's face, which surprised him a little. But he knew the captain was not one to be swayed from duty, even by sympathy. The captain asked, “Where were you going?”
“We was tryin' to git to Mexico.”
“That's a long way.”
The old man nodded. “It is that, but we had nothin' much else but time anyway. We wasn't goin' to hurt nobody. We was just tryin' to find us a neutral ground. Is that a sin, Captain?”
The captain slowly shook his head. “Too bad, old-timer. If your boys had stayed out in plain sight, we never would have thought much about it, might not even have asked any questions. But they hid, and that changed things. When they fired on us, that sealed the warrant. We'll have to take them with us.”
The people were silent a moment. Then the old man asked, “And what about us? What're we goin' to do?”
The captain had no answer. Lige Moseley spoke up quietly: “I got a cabin south a-ways. Back-trail us, and you'll find it. If we don't git your horses back from the Indians, maybe I can swap you a couple. There's lots of things me and my family needs, and maybe you got some of it we can trade you out of.”
While the two young men said their tearful good-byes to the family, the captain had a couple of packhorses stripped so the prisoners could ride them.
“You'll have to go bareback,” he said to the pair, “but that's the best we can do. And we've got to take you with us because we can't spare anybody to stay back and guard you.”
Lige Moseley frowned. “I'd guard them, Captain.”
The captain smiled. “That's a kind offer, Moseley, but I don't know you that well. Being a friend of Cloud's, you might even share a little of his Unionist feeling, for
all I know.” Despite the smile, Cloud could tell the captain was dead serious. “No offense, but I like to know my guards.”
Moseley turned his palms upward and shrugged.
They moved out again, quickly leaving behind them the wagon, the old man and the women. For as long as the raiders remained in sight, the trio watched motionless—three tragic statues standing in the grass.
 
The Indian signs were fresh now. Captain Barcroft signaled Cloud and Miguel to speed up. But darkness came, and the Indians had not been caught. Reluctantly, Barcroft called a night halt. The men ate supper and stretched out to rest. Barcroft had the prisoners' hands tied to the trunks of trees, and set a special guard to watch over them through the night.
Long before daylight, the men were up. As soon as they could see tracks, Cloud and Miguel were out a-horseback, far in the lead of the company.
Before long they came to the place where the Indians had camped. The ashes were still warm. Cloud nodded in satisfaction at Miguel, and the pair moved out. It wasn't hard now to keep the company at a strong pace. If anything, it was hard to hold them back.
Late in the morning Cloud and Miguel rode into sight of the Indians. They reined up quickly and gave the Indian sign to the company behind them. Barcroft spurred forward in a lope. He took a long look, then signaled the men to spread out and charge. The sound of pounding hoofs carried ahead to the Indians. Cloud could see the alarm rush through the bunch like the sudden sense of danger spreads through a herd of buffalo. The Indians pushed their horses into a hard run.
Way ahead of them lay a stretch of timber. The Indians made for it. Cloud spurred hard, the captain riding right
along beside him. Glancing at Barcroft, Cloud could see the man's grim anticipation. Truly, here was a man who hated with all his soul, who took a fierce pleasure in seeing Indians die.
Realizing they could not make the timber, the Indians did a strange thing. They stopped and turned around, letting their stolen horses go. They formed a rough line and came running straight back toward the Rifles. Lances bristled. Cloud could see bows swung into readiness. He caught the glint of sunlight off a rifle barrel.
Most of the Texans drew their pistols, for this was going to be sudden and mean—and close up. With the pistol they would have six shots instead of the one they could get from a rifle.
One of the two prisoners pulled up beside the captain. “For God's sake, sir, give us a gun so we can defend ourselves.”
Barcroft said something unintelligible, then there was no more time, for the Indians were upon them. The Indians fired first, arrows sailing ahead of them, flame blossoming from stolen guns. A Rifleman's horse went down, and Cloud heard a man shout in pain as an arrow plunked into a leg.
The Texans hauled up on the reins—most of them—and fired back with their pistols. A couple of Indian horses went down, and an Indian was chopped off of his mount as if he had run into the low limb of a tree. The rest of the Indian force passed by and went on beyond, carried by the momentum of the rush.
Suddenly, then, Cloud could see that the Rifle force had been scattered. The captain was far out to one side. The Indians wheeled their horses around and came back for another desperate try. An early shot from one of them brought the captain's horse down. Cloud saw the animal fall, saw the captain's gun sail out into the grass. The
captain tried to slip out from under the animal, but he could not move. He was pinned.
Cloud yanked his horse around and spurred out toward the captain. But the oldest of the two prisoners was closer. He raced to the captain's side and stepped down from his horse, letting the mount run on without him. The prisoner grabbed up the captain's fallen gun and threw himself to his belly in the grass, beside Barcroft.
A handful of Indians, seeing the two men down, peeled off from the rest and swept down toward the pair. Cloud saw the prisoner grab the captain's rifle out of the saddle scabbard, even as he handed the captain the pistol. Leveling the rifle over the dead horse, the man took careful aim and fired just as the nearest Comanche drew a bow into line. The Indian rolled in the grass and went limp as an empty sack.
By the time Cloud got there and stepped off beside the captain, the Indians had hauled up. Cloud fired once, bringing down one of the horses. The Indian, left afoot, reached up for help and got it from one of his friends. He swung up behind another Indian and rode away.
It was a rout now, the remaining Indians abandoning the stolen horses and everything else in an effort to get to the timber.
Most of the Rifles followed after them awhile, managing to bring down one more. They stopped short of the timber, for that was likely to be like a beehive.
With his own horse and rope, Cloud managed to pull the captain's dead horse over and free Barcroft. The captain stood up shakily. The young prisoner loosened the cinch and got the captain's saddle loose.
That done, Cloud walked back to Barcroft and asked, “Everything all right, sir?”
Barcroft was rubbing his leg. “I guess. There doesn't seem to be anything broken.” He glanced at the prisoner.
“I was in a bad spot for a minute,” he said to the man. “If you hadn't come when you did, they'd have ridden over me, more than likely. And they wouldn't have left much.”
The prisoner was trembling a little now, the nervous aftermath of the quick battle. He didn't say anything.
The captain observed, “It might have been better for you if you'd let them get me.”
When the young man said nothing, Cloud put in, “Captain, it just goes to show you the kind of man he is. He couldn't let a thing like that happen to you, even if standin' back might've given him a chance to go free.”
Barcroft said evenly, “Cloud, you should know better than try to change my mind.”
“Wasn't tryin' to change nothin', Captain. I was only thinkin' maybe this might make you show some extra consideration.”
“Damn it,” Barcroft argued, “I'm a soldier. I can't allow personal feelings—personal gratitude—to stand in the way of my duty.”
“Can't you, Captain? Ain't nobody knows about these boys but us. What other people don't know won't hurt them none.”
BOOK: Texas Rifles
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