Slater Bros: Apache Summer Part 1

Slater Bros.

Apache Summer.

Heather Graham.

Chapter One.

Western Texas, 1870 ~ ~ Look, Lieutenant! Fire, rising high to our left!" Jamie Slater reined in his roan stallion. With penetrating silver-gray eyes he stared east, where Sergeant Monahah was pointing.

Across the sand and the sagebrush and the dry dunes, smoke could indeed be seen, billowing up in black and gray bursts. Tendrils of flame, like undulating red ribbons, waved through the growing wall of smoke.

"Injuns!" Monahan breathed.

To Jamie's fight, Jon Red Feather stiffened. Jamie turned toward him.

The half-breed Blackfoot was a long way from home, but he was still one of the best Indian scouts around. He was a tall, striking man with green-gold eyes and strong, arresting features. Thanks to a wealthy white grandfather, Jon Red Feather had received a remarkable education, going as far as Oxford in England.

Jamie knew that Jon resented the ready a.s.sumption that trouble meant Indians, even though he admitted readily to Jamie that trouble was coming, big trouble. The Apache hated the white man, the Comanche despised him, and Jamie was convinced that the great Sioux Nation was destined to fight in a big way for all the land that had been grabbed by the hungry settlers.

Through Jon, Jamie had come to know the Comanche well. He didn't make the mistake of considering the Comanche to be docile, but, on the other hand, he'd never known a Comanche to lie or to give him any double-talk.

"Let's see what's going on," Jamie said quietly. He rose high in his saddle and looked over the line of forty-two men presently under his command.

"Forward, Sergeant. We ride east. And by the look of things, we'd best hurry."

Sergeant Monahah repeated his order, calling out harshly and demanding haste.

Jamie flicked his reins against the roan's shoulders, and the animal took flight with grace and ease. His name was Lucifer, and it fitted the animal well. He was wild--and remarkable.

That was one thing about the U. S. Cavalry, Jamie reckoned as they raced toward the slope of the dune that led to the rise of smoke. They offered a man good horses. He hadn't had that pleasure in the Confederate cavalry.

When the Confederacy had been slowly beaten into her grave, there hadn't been many mounts left. But the war had been over for almost five years now.

Jamie was wearing a blue uniform, the same type he'd spent years of his life shooting at. No one, least of all his brothers, had believed he would last a day in the U. S. Cavalry, not after the war.

But they had been wrong. Many of the men he was serving with hadn't even been in the war, and frankly, he understood soldiers a whole lot better than he did politicians and carpetbaggers.

And he had liked the life in the saddle on the plains, dealing with the Indians, far better than he had liked to see what had become of the South.

This was western Texas, and the reprisals from the war weren't what they were in the eastern Deep South. Everywhere in the cities and towns were the men in tattered gray, many missing limbs, hobbling along on crutches. Homeless and beaten, they had been forced to surrender on the fields, then they had been forced to surrender to things that they hadn't even understood.

Taxes forced upon them. Yankee puppets in place where local sheriffs had ruled. The war was horrible--even after it was over.

There were good Yanks, and Jamie had always known it. He didn't blame good men for the things that were happening in the South--he blamed the riffraff, the carpetbag- gets. He liked his job because he honestly liked a number of the Comanche and the other Indians he dealt with--they still behaved with some sense of honor. He couldn't say that for the carpetbaggers.

Still, he never deceived himself. The Indians were savage fighters; in their attacks, they were often merc'fless.

But as Jamie felt the power of the handsome roan surge beneath him as he raced the animal toward the rise of fire and smoke, he knew that his days with the cavalry were nearing an end. For a while, he had needed the time to get over the war. Maybe he'd needed to keep fighting for a while just to learn how not to fight. But he'd been a rancher before the war had begun.

And he was beginning to feel the need for land again. Good land, rich land.

A place where a man could raise cattle in wide open s.p.a.ces, where he could ride his own property for acres and acres and not see any fences.

He imagined a house, a two-story house, with a great big parlor and a good-sized kitchen with huge fireplaces in each to warm away the winter's chill. Maybe it was just time for his wandering days to be over.

"Sweet Jesus!" Sergeant Monahah gasped, reining in beside Jamie as they came to the top of the rise of land.

Jamie silently echoed the thought as he looked down upon the carnage.

The remnants of a wagon train remained below them. Men had attempted to pull the wagons into a defensive circle, but apparently the attack had come too swiftly. Bodies lay strewn around on the ground. The canvas and wood of the wagons still smoldered and smoked, and where the canvas covers had not burned, several leathered arrows still mmained.

Comanche, Jamie thought. He'd heard that things were heating up.

Seemed like little disputes would eventually cause a whole-scale war.

Monahah had told him he'd heard a rumor about some whites tearing up a small Indian village.

Maybe this was done in revenge. "d.a.m.nation!" Sergeant Monahah breathed.

"Let's go," Jamie said.

He started down the cliff and rocks toward the plain on which the wagon train had been attacked. It was dry as tinder, sagebrush blowing around, an occasional cactus protruding from the dirt. He hoped there was no powder or ammunition in the wagons to explode, then he wondered what it would matter once he and his men looked for survivors.

The Indians had struck sure and fast, then disappeared somewhere into the plain, up the cliffs and rock. L'like the fog wisping away, they had disappeared, and they had left the death and bloodshed behind them.

"Cimle carefully!" he advised his men.

"A half-dead Comanche is a mean one, remember?"

Riding behind him, Jon Red Feather was silent. Their horses snorted and heaved as they slowly came down the last of the slope, trying to dig in for solid footing. Then they hit the plain, and Jamie spurred his horse to race around and encircle the wagons. There were only five of them.

Poor b.a.s.t.a.r.ds never had a chance, he thought. He reckoned that someone had been bringing some cattle north, since there was at least a score of dead calves lying gla.s.s-eyed and b.l.o.o.d.y along with the human corpses.

There was definitely no one around. And there was not a single Indian left behind, not a dead one, or a half-dead one, or any other kind of a one.

He dismounted before the corpse of an old man. There was an arrow shaft protruding from his back.

Jamie touched the man's shoulder, turning him over. He swallowed hard.

The man had been scalped, and a sloppy job had been done of it. Blood poured down his forehead, still sticky, still warm.

It hadn't happened more than a half hour ago. If they had headed back just a lousy thirty minutes earlier, they might have stopped this carnage.

His men had dismounted too, he realized. At a command from Sergeant Monahan, they were doing the same as he, searching through the downed men for any survivors. Jamie shook his head, standing. h.e.l.l. He had just been to see the local Comanche chief. Running River was the peace chief, not the war chief, of the village, but the white men and Running River's people had been doing just fine together for years now.

Jamie liked Running River. And though he had never kidded himself that any Comanche couldn't be warlike when provoked, he couldn't begin to imagine what in h.e.l.l would have provoked an attack like this one. If the Indians were hungry, they would have stolen the calves, not slaughtered them.

Jon Red Feather was next to him, investigating the body. "No Comanche did this," he said.

Jamie frowned at him.

"Then what do you think? A band of Cheyenne?

Maybe a wandering tribe of Minutes. We're too far south for it to be the Sioux"--" I promise you, Lieutenant, no self-respecting Sioux would ever do such a careless job. And the Comanche are warriors, too. They learn from an early age how to lift the hair."

"Then what?" Jamie demanded impatiently. His blood run cold as he realized that Jon was insinuating that it hadn't been Indians who had made this heinous attack. It wasn't possible, he told himself. No white man could have killed and mutilated his own kind so savagely.

"Hey, Lieutenant!" Charlie Forbes called to him. Jamie swung around.

Forbes was on the ground beside one of the dead men, an old-timer with silver-gray whiskers. "What is it, Charlie?"

"Looks like this one was. .h.i.t by an arrow, tried to rise and got shot with a bullet, right in the heart."

He could feel Jon standing behind him. Jamie adjusted his plumed hat and twisted his jaw.

"Don't try to tell me the Comanche don't have rifles."

"h.e.l.l, I'm not going to tell you that. They get them from the Comancberos--the Comancheros will sell rifles to anyone.

Of course, you've got to bear in mind that the Comancheros do buy them from your people."

Jamie didn't say anything. He stepped past Jon and stared at the one wagon that seemed to have had little damage done to it. He thought he heard something.

He had to be imagining things. The job here had been very thorough.

Still, he watched the wagon as he straightened his back, trying to get out all the little cricks and pains. He felt queasy about this thing.

And he hadn't felt queasy about anything in quite some time.

He'd grown up on bloodshed. Before he had been twenty, his sister-in-law had been slain by Kansas jay hawkers Then war had been declared, and though he had fought in a decent regiment under the command of John Hunt Morgan, he had never been able to escape the horror of the border war.

From his brother Cole he had learned that the Missouri bushwhackers could behave every bit as monstrously as the jay hawkers And a Southern boy called Little Archie Clements had gone around doing a fair bit of scalping in his day. He and his men had stripped down men in blue and shot them without thought, and when they'd finished with the killing they'd gone on to scalping.

He had no right to think that the Indians were any more vicious than the white men. No right at all.

He exhaled slowly. Knowing that the Southern bushwhackers had been every bit as bad as the Northern jay hawkers was one of the reasons he was able to wear this uniform now. A blue cavalry uniform, decorated in blue trim, with a cavalry officer's sword at his side. He didn't carry a military-issue rifle, though. Through four years of civil conflict he had worn his Colts, and he wore them to this day.

His eyes narrowed suddenly. He could have sworn that something in the wagon had moved.

He glanced over his shoulder. Jon was behind him. Jon nodded, aware instantly of Jamie's suspicions. He circled around while Jamie headed straight for the opening at the rear.

He looked in. For a second he could see only shadows in the dim light.

Then things took form. There were two bunks in the wagon. Ironically, they were neat and all made up-- with the sheets tucked in, the blankets folded back at an inviting angle and the pillows plumped up. Beyond the bunks were trunks and boxes. ~Everything seemed to be in perfect order.

But it wasn't. He felt just a flicker of movement again. He didn't know if he really saw it or if he felt it, but all his senses were on edge.

He hadn't worked in Indian country and spent all this time with Jon Red Feather not to have learned something of his senses. There was someone near. He could feel it in his gut, and he could feel it at the nape of his neck, and he could feel it all the way down his spine. Someone was very near.

"Come on out of there," he said softly.

"Come on, now. We don't want to hurt anyone here, we just want you to come on ont."

The movement had ceased.

Jon was moving up toward the front of the wagon. The horses, still smelling smoke, whinnied and nickered nervously.

Jamie leaped to the floor of the wagon.

His eyes flickered to the left bunk. There was a long, soft white gown lain out by the side. It was sleeveless, lowbodiced and lacy, a woman's nightgown, he thought. And a pretty piece for the dustiness of the road.

It did belong with the perfectly made and inviting beds, but it didn't really belong on a wagon train. Was she alive? Had she been some young man's bride? He hadn't seen a woman's corpse, not yet, but then his men were still moving among the bodies.

"Is anyone in here?" he said, moving past the bunks. There were boxes and trunks everywhere. There was a coffeepot, cast down as if someone had been about to use it. There was a frying pan in the middle of the floor, too. He paused, crouching on the b.a.l.l.s of his feet, looking at the floor.

Coffee was spilled everywhere.

"Come on out now," he said softly.

"It's all right, come on out."

He kept moving inward. The shadows in the wagon made it difficult to see.

There seemed to be a swirl of soft mauve taffeta, fringed in black lace, set in a heap before him. He reached down carefully, hoping he hadn't come upon another corpse.

He touched a body. He touched warmth. He moved his hand, and it was filled with fullness and living warmth.

Instinctively his fingers curled over the full, firm ripeness of a woman's breast. He could feel the shape and weight and the tautness of the nipple with his palm right through the taffeta.

She was warm, but very still. Sweet Jesus, let her be alive, he thought, still stunned by the contact his fingers had made.

She was alive. Beyond a doubt, she was alive. She burst from her hiding place with a wicked scream of terror and fury. Startled, he moved back.

He had been prepared for danger, for a wounded Comanche, but when he had touched the softness and striking femininity of her form, he had relaxed his guard.

Foolish move.

He backed away, but she screamed again, high and shrill and desperate, a sound like that of a wounded animal. He started to reach for his Colt, but his hand fell quickly as he reminded himself that it was just a woman. A small, delicate woman.

"Ma'am" -- She cast herself upon him with a vengeance, pitting her body against his with a startling ferocity and strength.