The Comancheros

Paul I. Wellman

• Publisher: Rare Treasure Editions
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781774644591
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Westerns
• Index: Literature

Texas Ranger Tom Gatling arrests gambler Paul Regret, but soon finds himself teamed with his prisoner in an undercover effort to defeat a band of renegade arms merchants and thieves known as Comancheros. This is the lusty story of love and gunslinging violence in the young republic of Texas.

ELEVEN:

“I Think They’re the Bravest Men
I Ever Knew!”

1

“Suspicion will naturally turn on us,” was the first thing Blake Henrion said when Regret woke them and related what had happened.

“How can they prove it?” asked Regret.

Gatling gave a short laugh. “There’s always the bastinado.”

It was a chilling thought. Together they stepped out into the moonlight and strained their eyes into the chasm below, fruitlessly trying to see the body of the fallen man. That part of the canyon was occupied by empty corrals. Nobody in the village, evidently, had heard the crash of Estevan’s fall.

After a moment, Regret said, “Lanny Henrion brought Eloise to the Palo Duro.”

“Lanny? Explain that!” the captain demanded harshly.

“That was what he was doing in Austin.”

“She told you that?”

“Yes.”

“Where’s he now?”

“Gone—for the present. Out on the plains somewhere with the Comanches.”

In the moonlight a powerful emotion of some sort twisted the captain’s bearded face. “Lanny—so the boy’s mixed up in—this,” he said, in a sort of whisper to himself.

As if he were suddenly very tired, he led the way back into the dark hut.

Gatling and Regret lit cigarrillos. Henrion stretched himself on his blankets. A long silence. After a time the captain gave a little exclamation, almost a groan.

“I half knew it—when Amelung mentioned Bernard Hare,” he said aloud. “Hare was with Fess McFadden—and—some said Lanny was, too.”

“Nobody never proved it,” said Gatling loyally.

“This proves it! A thief—a murderer—anything but a—a Comanchero! My brother—my kid brother—God!”

They could not say anything to comfort him.

“I blame myself. Only myself,” they heard him say presently. “He was a good boy, Lanny was. A fine boy. I handled him wrong.”

“You done everything a man kin do—you was like a father to him,” said Gatling.

“I tried to be—and I shouldn’t have. I was his brother. He didn’t want me to be a father—tell him what was right and wrong, what he should and shouldn’t do——”

“Somebody had to.”

“It’s been on my mind—ever since I saw him in Austin. I knew then he was gone—something God-awful had ahold of him. It’s bothered me, night and day. But I didn’t dream of anything as bad as this!”

Regret remembered Blake Henrion’s long, abstracted silences on their journey across the plains. This good man, this brave and honorable man, had been suffering, alone and secretly. . . .

“Some colts have spirit, some don’t,” the captain went on drearily. “Some you can just hitch up, or saddle and break. But some must be taught differently, to get the best out of them—a good thoroughbred’s like that. If you try to handle him like some range plug, you’ll break his spirit, or he’ll break you. But if you show him the way easy, he’ll learn better, and do more for you than any other kind of animal.”

He seemed to ruminate. “Trouble was, I didn’t treat Lanny like . . . a thoroughbred.” He paused. “I’m just a kind of work horse myself, I reckon, and I couldn’t understand he was a finer strain. You know him, Tom.”

“I shorely do.”

“He’s got everything, hasn’t he? Does everything well. And he’s afraid of nothing, and mighty pleasing to be around, and not a sneaking thing about him——”

“That’s right, Blake.”

“And I ruined him.” A groan, with agony behind it, was almost ripped out of him. “Oh, God, Lanny!”

In this bitter grief words were useless. Gatling and Regret sat and smoked in silence.

Blake Henrion rolled over on his side. He spoke no more, but Regret, in all his life, had never felt more mortally sorry for a man.

All at once Henrion sat up. “Two days . . .”

In the darkness they stared at him, not understanding.

“That’s what Amelung said,” the captain continued. “In a couple of days—he’d know. About us. That has to be Lanny!”

“You mean he’ll be back in the Palo Duro in that time?” Regret asked.

“That’s it! A Fess McFadden man—and he’d tell them whether Tom was lying or not. It means our time’s already too short——”

“To do what?”

“Get out of here. I was figuring that, give us just a little time, we’d have these people used to us. Then we could slip out some night, lift three horses, and get a long head start by morning. Riding for hell and liberty that way, and scattering, one of us had a chance to get through with the word for Sam Houston.”

He stopped. “But now—well, there’s just one hope for us. Just pray that Lanny doesn’t come.”

There was no sleep for them that night. Every hour of the darkness Regret counted over in his mind. He saw the first false light before dawn. He saw the slow coming of day. He thought of Eloise and of his companions, and his despair deepened and darkened with the new and added complications of danger that seemed to draw their deadly network closer and closer.

About nine o’clock in the morning a great shout came from below, followed by the calling of many voices. It was almost a relief.

“They’ve found your friend,” said Gatling.

Regret could not stand it. In a moment he was out on the edge of the cliff. Two hundred feet below the lip of the precipice on which the Casa Blanca stood, a growing crowd milled around the broken body of the man he had killed.

Henrion and Gatling joined him. They saw Jack Amelung stride into the mob, and quickly examine the dead man. He glanced up at the cliff above him, and must have seen them peering down.

Presently, with many following, Amelung came up the path.

To them, as he passed, he did not speak. They followed the jostling crowd along the pathway toward the Casa Blanca.

There Amelung spent a few minutes in a swift survey of the ground. Regret was sure he noticed the jagged stone. Something else the man picked up, and put it into his jacket—the knife that Estevan had dropped when the rock struck him.

Blear-eyed and gray, old Musketoon came to the door.

“What happened?” he rumbled.

“A man has been found dead,” said Amelung.

“Where?”

“Just below here—at the foot of these cliffs.”

“How did it occur?”

“Don’t know,” said Amelung slowly. “Perhaps he lost his footing in the dark and fell.”

But in that moment Regret encountered his eye, and in it was full understanding, or at least a guess so close that it amounted to the same thing. And it flashed over Regret that not yet was Jack Amelung ready to let Musketoon know that a spy had been placed to watch his house. On this slender circumstance hung their safety for the moment.

Knuckling his eyes, the old man went back inside. Amelung wordlessly led the Comancheros down the path back to their village. With a sense of suspended doom, Regret returned with Henrion and Gatling to their hut.

No use even to discuss what would happen now. The next move would come from Amelung, and they could only wait. They spent the time cleaning their revolvers.

2

About ten o’clock a Mexican went up the pathway past their hut at a run. In a few minutes he came back on his way to the town, and half an hour later they heard old Musketoon puffing down in the same direction. He stopped, as he saw them at their door.

“A good morning to you, messieurs!” he exclaimed. Evidently he was in the most jovial good spirits, and upon Regret he bestowed a grin of vast approval. “Observe me, Monsieur Regret—I do not limp? A miracle, for which I have you to thank!”

“I’m glad to hear this,” Regret said.

“Yesterday, after you spoke to me about it, you remember that I dispatched my mozo down to the village for garlic. It is a comestible not commonly carried by us, but he succeeded in discovering a small bag of it. I consumed a clove of it at once, you observed, and felt immediate relief of the gout. Later I ate more. Last night I drank—between ourselves—more than was good for me. That would, ordinarily, cause an aggravation of my disability. But, voilà! I skip like a fawn!” He attempted a skip, a clumsy fat man’s effort, and chortled. “Well, perhaps not exactly like a fawn. But at least without wincing. And though from the garlic I have a breath like a destroying angel, I am a happy man—and a man most deeply in your debt, Monsieur Regret!”

He expelled through his mustachios a breath so rank that it was all Regret could do to avoid stepping back from it.

Old Musketoon’s gratitude was received by Regret with complete astonishment. His suggestion of garlic appeared to have been a most fortunate inspiration. He was quite certain it had nothing to do with benefiting the gout—but the Comanchero chief had experienced one of those unexpected periods of relief that sometimes come naturally, and now gave full credit to the garlic and Regret. For the moment—until the pain returned to his foot—they were in high favor.

“You behold me going down to the council house,” old Musketoon continued. “A messenger has just brought word that a party of Comanche warriors, under the chief Iron Shirt, is coming in from a raid. I am on my way to receive Iron Shirt, who is a most important personage, if he is a savage.”

“Iron Shirt?” said Regret, surprised. “We encountered him on the way here—in the Red River Valley.”

“Yes, it was he who sent your party here, wasn’t it?”

“But—it’s hard to believe. That was five hundred miles from the settlements. After we left him he must have ridden all that way, and then come back to here—say another thousand miles—how is it possible in so few days?”

“Did you observe a peculiarity concerning Iron Shirt?”

“He was wearing a shirt of iron links.”

“Genuine chain mail! And very old. Because of that the Comanches believe him invulnerable and invincible, even gifted with supernatural powers. He is the head and heart of the Comanche nation. As long as he leads them they cannot be defeated, for to him they owe both their remarkable élan in battle, and their organization which has never been achieved by them before.”

“But—even so——”

“Iron Shirt rarely makes a raid in person,” went on old Musketoon. “Rather he directs them, as a general, sending this party out on a feint, another on the true thrust home. These are the tactics that our friend Amelung taught him. When you encountered Iron Shirt he had two parties out, and was awaiting their return with his own strong following of warriors—ready to go to either of his advanced groups if they were threatened.”

The fat old rascal plumed his mustachios and grinned. “Most ingenious, don’t you agree? I await eagerly the day when some rash company of the Texas Rangers, unacquainted with this stratagem, follows too far into the Comanche country, and is destroyed.”

Again he chortled. “Now, I must make my apologies. If you care to walk along the path past the Casa Blanca, it will bring you out on a promontory overlooking the lower valley. From it you will see the war party arriving—a sight you may find worth the effort.”

A wave of his hand, and he was gone down the path without a limp, and whistling as lightheartedly as if he were a child on some innocent errand for its mother, instead of the bloodiest of businesses.

Henrion stared after him...