“Good and kind, brother Jesus!” the deacon shrieked, half standing, firing with a pistol in each hand. “Heartily smite these heathen sinners!”
As he gazed back down at the Ranger, Rule’s eyes widened, then eased half-down the mast. His hand loosened on Jonah’s arm as the rest of his body slumped. Hook used two thumbs to ease the eyelids closed.
“What the hell are those bastards up to now?” June Callicott was hollering, half standing at the barricade of carcasses.
Hook found the greater number of warriors breaking off their attack after those first few grinding minutes. The Rangers, what was left of Company C inside that ring of carcasses, lay waiting among the sprawled and leg-flung horses for the next rush by the Comanche.
“Sonsabitches gonna work us down with their goddamned wheel,” Coffee reminded them.
Harley Pettis dropped his serious bulk to his knees. “They re-forming, Sarge?”
Coffee and the rest watched the horsemen pulling off. The second wave from the village joined up with the first, swirling about one another, working themselves up into a fighting frenzy, shrieking at one another, waving lances and shaking scalps.
“Looks like they’re ready to wear us down, boys!” Lockhart promised them.
But as the Rangers watched, breaking open the actions on their pistols to dump empty cartridges, jamming new ammunition into their heated weapons, the lords of the southern plains surprisingly did not form into that spinning, death-carrying wheel that would work itself around and around its prey, inch by inch, yard by yard, moment by moment grinding away, working ever closer to the white man until the enemy could be overrun in one great sweep of terror.
Instead, the Comanche drew off.
Stunned, slack-jawed in shock, Jonah stood, watching the horsemen drive their ponies into the arroyo, plunging across the sand and up the far side into the remnants of the village where all was of a sudden panic.
Above the screaming and wailing of the women, the barking of the dogs and the war cries of the men, above it all floated the first distant, but no less distinct, notes of a bugle.
43
February-Early April 1875
“HOOK! GET BACK here!”
Most of the Rangers had to be in shock, finding themselves between two overwhelming waves of battle-frenzied warriors in those first few minutes of panic, only to watch utterly dumbfounded as the horsemen drew off their attack.
“Hook! Goddammit—you’ll be killed!”
Jonah heard Lockhart’s voice behind him as he vaulted the horse carcass and skidded down the loose, giving sand at the icy side of the arroyo. His high-heeled riding boots felt clumsy in sand as he plowed through, heading for the narrow stream, for the far side, for the village suddenly up, screaming and on the run.
Just who the hell was that outfit?
Goddamned soldiers, he grumbled—and they’d go and chase off the Comanche before he could get into the village to find the boys.
If the boys were still alive.
Chances were if the village found itself between the attacking Rangers and some soldier outfit, they’d slaughter any prisoners they still held.
The cold water lashed up against his bare skin, assaulting face and hands—as he ran flat out for the far side of the arroyo, aware for the first time of two dozen or more warriors racing along that north lip, skidding their ponies to a halt and dismounting on the run. In a blood fury.
Jonah turned to find out he was not alone. Behind him came a half dozen, maybe more, of the others. Every one of them firing their pistols and yelling at him, some even snarling at the warriors who had set up their own howl as they fired back and began dropping over the lip to spill into the snow-crusted arroyo, ready for some close, dirty fighting of it.
If he could just break through them, Jonah knew he could claw his way up the side and get into that village before the soldiers overran it. His boys—they might be mistook for Injuns in the dust and confusion by some green-gilled, nervous soldier who would shoot a white youngster by mistake.
A bullet hissed past his ear. He dropped on instinct. Jonah whirled in a crouch to find the warrior lunging for him at the same time the Comanche and Rangers closed ranks in a clattering collision that reverberated across the bottom of that arroyo. Hook rose to meet the screaming, painted demon hurling down on him like the master of hell itself.
The Comanche was young, strong. They grappled, stumbled backward. The warrior threw Jonah to the ground.
For a moment Hook stared up at the Indian’s eyes, not startled to find his enemy no more than a youth. The predictable foolishness of these young warriors—come back to cover the retreat of their village in the face of the soldier charge. The distant firing loomed closer still above the rim of the arroyo as he struggled with the warrior, who suddenly gripped a knife.
Glinting in the sun, it sailed overhead, then hung suspended there for a moment at the end of the youth’s arm. Jonah mightily lunged for that wrist with one hand, his right leaping to the Comanche’s throat, where he locked his fingers into a noose around the windpipe.
In but a moment Jonah sensed the arm weaken slightly, felt the shudder of his enemy as the Comanche fought for breath, clawing at the white man’s hand crabbed at his throat. Heaving himself up off his shoulders and hips, Hook desperately threw the strong youth to the side.
All about them men clashed and grappled in the thick of close quarters: grunting, crying out, cursing, yelling, begging for help. The smack of weapons against bone and sinew. The soggy slap of bodies pitched into the shallow, icy creek.
For that critical heartbeat the Comanche warrior lay gasping, his mouth a huge O, wheezing, coughing for breath as he rolled onto his side. Eyes wide with fury, hate, for the white man who had near killed him.
Hook threw himself atop the warrior as a war cry from beyond bit Jonah’s ears. All around him the rest of the fight faded as Hook landed on the Comanche trying to rise, wrestling his enemy back down, pinning the warrior by dropping a knee against the youth’s throat. Hook dragged the knife from the Indian’s hand.
With his left Jonah savagely yanked back on the man’s long hair, surprised to find it something other than black. He laid the edge of the blade under one ear as the wild eyes went wider, glaring into Jonah’s face.
Hook’s hand froze. He studied the hazel eyes, the sharp slash of nose, the crease of cheekbone no longer disguised beneath the war paint smeared in their combat. Hope. Fear. Desperation—
“Jere—…Jeremiah?”
As quickly the Comanche’s grunt of exertion faded. The warrior’s eyes stared back at Jonah’s face as the Indian stopped wrenching at the hand locked in his scalp, stopped yanking at the wrist and hand and knife pressed against his jugular. Jonah watched something like wonder, something of disbelief come into those eyes. Something almost familiar. The look he imagined Gritta would have in her eyes when at last he held her in his arms.
“P-pa?”
“Oh, dear Jesus …,” Hook whispered, his hands opening, releasing his son’s hair, letting the knife tumble into the sand. He could not take his eyes off the eyes of the one beneath him, seeing there the question, as well as the recognition, then the return of question and confusion.
Of a sudden there Jonah also saw the horror of something come to contort the face of his son.