arrangement for some treaty talks with the Texans.
“Comancheros?” Jonah asked, his interest growing more piqued as Lockhart went on with the story.
“Likely that’s where the Comanche learned the word,” the captain answered. “Seeing a chance to free some of the white captives held by the Comanches suddenly dropped in their lap, the Texans agreed to treaty-talks to be held at the Council House there in San Antonio—if … if the Comanche would bring in all their white captives to sell to the peace commissioners.”
“But them Texans weren’t about to buy the captives back, were they?”
Lockhart shook his head. “Plan was to capture all the chiefs and hold them prisoner. Exchange ’em for the white captives even up.”
“What came of it?”
“That meeting come to be—but the sixty-five Comanche chiefs, with all their women and kids that come in, brought only one white prisoner with them.”
“It was Matilda Lockhart,” Deacon Johns broke in.
Hook brought his eyes back to the captain. “She kin to you?”
He nodded. “My father’s sister-in-law. My uncle had been killed in a raid on the Trinity. Folks who watched her brought in said she had been starved down to hide and bone. Bruised and cut up something bad.” And the captain swallowed hard in its telling, the cold-banked fires glowing behind the man’s eyes. “When Matilda was brought into the Council House, she told the others there were several others at the big camp only three days away. The bastards brought her in to see if they could get a high price for her—planning to ransom each prisoner separately to get the most they could for each one.”
“But them God-fearing folk at San Antone took up the sword of the righteous!” exclaimed the deacon. “Rangers, they was. The ones closed the trap on those Comanch’.”
“Colonel William Cooke, our republic’s secretary of war, got his Rangers spread out around the walls inside that Council House while the peace-talkers tried to find out about the other prisoners. Red bastards claimed the other captives were with bands far, far off. So Cooke told the chiefs they were prisoners of the Texans and would be exchanged, one for one, for the whites.”
“That’s when the hoedown was called!” said Niles Coffee, his red hair lit with life in the fire’s glow.
Lockhart nodded. “When the chiefs and their women pulled out knives and bows, rushing the doors, Cooke gave his order and the Rangers opened fire.”
“Damn—but that would have been a sight!” marveled Johns, with a big smile dancing across the war-map wrinkles of his face.
“What come of it? How many dead?” Jonah asked.
“Half the Comanche were killed on the spot: thirty-five, including three women and two children.”
“The seed of the devil will suffer the gall and wormwood!” growled Johns.
“Twenty-seven women and children—plus two old men—were captured when the shooting stopped.”
“And the Rangers—what of them?”
“Seven died,” Harley Pettis said, the veins in his neck bulging like a river boatman’s hemp rope. He was a cliptongued sort with a dark broom of burr-length hair sprouting from the top of his head. “Another eight was wounded.”
Jonah shook his head in wonder. “Can’t believe there wasn’t more Rangers killed in all that gunplay.”
“The deacon here might tell you it was God’s own hand helping the Rangers against the devil’s children,” Lockhart said. “Whatever we are, Jonah—this is a flinthard bunch you’ve sworn allegiance to and joined, my friend.”
Hook squirmed anxiously on the stump where he sat. “So tell me—they ever get them other prisoners back?”
“Colonel Hugh McLeod of the Rangers sent one of the squaws out on a pony to tell the rest what bargain they could strike.”
Jonah looked sour at that, saying, “They didn’t come in, did they?”
Lockhart gazed at Hook a moment. “No. Not these Comanche. Maybe Lipans or Caddos or Tonkawas would’ve seen the writing on the wall. But not these Comanche.”
“Them heathens gathered up and marched south to the gulf coast,” Deacon Johns took up the story now. “Made their famous raid on Linnville, a tiny port village of Christians!”
“Looted all they could,” Sergeant Coffee added. “Burned everything to the ground.”
“But McLeod’s Rangers went after ’em,” Lockhart continued, staring into the fire. “Four days later they caught those Comanche moving north. At a place called Plum Creek. First and only time we know of those red sonsabitches fighting a pitched battle.”
“They made a real stand-up fight of it,” Wig Danville said, speaking for the first time. He had a high forehead that said something of his great even-mindedness and ready sense of humor. “Not like usual: hit and then run off when things get tight for ’em.”
“Eighty warriors killed that day,” Lockhart said, that slash of his mouth beneath the bushy black mustache. “Stock recovered, along with three more white captives abandoned when the fight turned bad.”
“An amazing miracle from the Lord!” Johns cheered, dribbling the front of his old ticking shirt with some tobacco juice. “Most normal the Comanche kill their prisoners if they can’t take ’em along with the fleeing village.”
“Was the tribe whipped for a while?” Jonah asked.
“Not by a long chalk,” Deacon Johns grumbled.
“Those what got away went right back to raiding the small settlements, same as always,” said Coffee. “Stealing, burning, killing, and kidnapping.”
“Ranger Captain John Moore caught another bunch down on the Red Fork of the Colorado later that fall,” Lockhart explained. “Caught them asleep. One hundred thirty Comanche killed, and one more white person freed from terror.”
Jonah leaned back, studying the faces of these men gathered around the embers left by the evening cook fire. Nearby, two other mess fires had gone to a red glow, circled by other Rangers.
“This the way it’s been ever since?” Hook asked. “They raid—you go try to even the score. They raid again— you ride out again to kill more of ’em.”
Lockhart only nodded.
“They strike when and where they choose—especially that bunch of Kwahadis with the half-breed,” Coffee said, scratching at his red whiskers.
“In their hearts still burns a rage against white folk for what those red fornicators suffered at the Council House all these decades gone,” Johns added, his steely eyes aglow in the dying flames.
“Things got no better during the war, Jonah,” Lockhart said. “Especially afterward, when we all figured that since we were part of the Union, that the goddamned federal government would now take care of the Injun problem for us.”
“Instead, the carpetbaggers come in to run our government for us,” Coffee snarled.
“A carpetbagger governor named Davis sat on his thumbs while the Injuns just got all the bolder too,” June Callicott added.
“That scalawag disbanded the Rangers for nine ever-loving years!” Johns bellowed.
“Not until seventy-one did the army finally get the idea that there was a serious problem down here,” Lockhart continued. “Back in Washington someone finally got some ears and started to believe that the Comanche were actually raiding. That spring the Sixth Cavalry was moved to Kansas, and Mackenzie’s Fourth Cavalry was assigned to Texas—anticipating a bloody spring.”
“Gotta give ’em credit,” Coffee said. “Mackenzie kept his boys in the saddle for the better part of seventy-one and seventy-two, chasing them red bastards.”
Lockhart scratched his crop of three-day whiskers, saying, “An uneasy peace came of things last year, so that scalawag Governor Davis cut back the money, meaning Ranger companies dropped from a thousand to just over three hundred men. And now this year Davis has gone and pardoned a couple of Kiowa chiefs who have the blood of white folks on their hands—why, the whole southern plains has took fire all over again.”
“Less’n three hundred Rangers—with all this ground to cover?” Hook looked at Lockhart, wagging his
