Strong Cold Dead (6 page)

The refuge, located off Route 183 through Lago Vista, was a majestically beautiful enclave of oak, elm, and cedar trees shading a lush countryside similarly rich in ground flora. All thanks to the waters of the massive Edwards Aquifer, which leached upward to keep the vegetation nourished, in stark contrast to the more barren, erosion-prone areas of the hill country. That same aquifer provided drinking water to a large number of Texans through springs that fed rivers flowing into the marshes, estuaries, and bays for miles and miles.

The Comanche reservation had been carved out of the most fertile portion of the basin before the preserve itself was a thought in anyone's mind. A large patch of prime land as lush and pretty as any that Texas had to offer, and upon which the Strong legend was born. Approaching the entrance to the reservation, Caitlin found herself searching her memory for the tale her grandfather had told her about his own grandfather, Steeldust Jack Strong, a Civil War hero who made his bones as a Texas Ranger on these very grounds.

The actual entrance to the reservation was a wrought iron gate fastened to a high stone wall layered with what looked like mosaic tile. That wall and gate, rimmed by wildflowers and accessible only via a single flat but unpaved road off of RM 1431, had been erected a mere generation before. The twin sections of gate, which had settled into a permanently open position, were today replaced by a tight line of young-looking Comanche lined up arm-in-arm to block access to the reservation by a number of trucks. Those trucks were currently parked amid the tall grass bordering the road, lugging both light and heavy construction equipment. An equally long, straight line of sheriff's deputies, Austin city cops, tribal policemen, and members of the highway patrol stood between the protesters and construction workers currently milling about, doing their best to keep the peace, while a grouping of spectators and media types watched from a makeshift gallery further back.

Caitlin left her SUV in a makeshift lot of vehicles parked in no particular pattern and approached, figuring Dylan's father, Cort Wesley Masters, wasn't far behind after receiving her text message. More than one hundred forty years ago, Jack Strong had probably been one of the few white men to set foot on the land beyond, which was rich with oak-juniper woodlands, mesquite savannas, and riparian brush that rare bird species shared with gray foxes and white-tailed deer. The preserve stood pretty much unchanged and unspoiled from that day, a swath frozen in time, which seemed appropriate given that many of the young Comanche blocking the entrance were dressed in garb better fit for the nineteenth century.

Caitlin could feel the building heat, the closer she got to the fracas, and not from either the sun or the camera lights. The bevy of construction workers looked none too happy about being denied entrance to the land on which their jobs rested, while what looked to be between fifty and sixty protesters, dominated by a dozen or so with painted faces and matching headbands, stood arm-in-arm before them.

Caitlin spotted Dylan Torres smack-dab in the center. His left arm was laced through the arm of one of the painted young Comanche men and his right arm was linked to a young, dark-featured woman whose beauty radiated even in a scene like this. She had long black hair and the darkest eyes Caitlin had ever seen, so full and shiny they seemed more liquid than solid. She boasted athletic lines and was wearing a sleeveless shirt that showed off the muscle layering her arms, her biceps strung with veins and all three heads of her triceps easily definable. Drawing closer, Caitlin noticed that the Comanche protesters, in their early to midtwenties, wore trousers that looked woven from animal skins, and open vests exposing what looked like blood streaks on their chests.

Now a junior at Brown University, Dylan wore the tapered jeans Cort Wesley hated, stretched over the boots Caitlin had bought him for a birthday that seemed a hundred years ago. He'd let his hair grow out, and it hung in loose waves and ringlets, past his shoulders, the same way it had back when Caitlin had bought him the boots, when he was often mistaken for some rock star whose name she couldn't remember. His gaze was fixed on the workers congested before the protesters, and Caitlin thought he was the only non–Native American manning the line that those workers looked ready to storm at any moment. Knowing Dylan as well as she did, his proximity to the beautiful Comanche girl made the reason for his presence here obvious.

Oh, man,
she thought.
Not again …

The boy was no stranger to trouble, almost all of it related to one girl or another. But the dark-haired Native American with whom he'd laced arms was the most beautiful of the lot, features and frame so perfect that she seemed painted onto the equally striking backdrop of the Balcones. Caitlin had intended to wait for Dylan's father, Cort Wesley, to arrive before she tried to sort things out. But a sudden forward thrust of construction workers, forcing the police closer to Dylan and the other protesters, changed that plan in a hurry.

The officers were barely managing to hold the line when Caitlin circled out behind them and in front of the Native Americans, even with the center, where Dylan and the beautiful Comanche girl stood.

“We're not looking for trouble, Ranger!” a big man with a scruffy beard, whom she took to be the work foreman, shouted from the other side of the cops.

“Well, sir,” she said, hands planted squarely on her hips, “it looks like you found it, all the same.”

 

9

B
ALCONES
C
ANYONLANDS,
T
EXAS

Caitlin's Texas Ranger badge glinted in a shaft of sunlight slicing through the shade trees, bouncing the light weakly back toward the workers.

“The trouble's standing right behind you, Ranger,” the foreman resumed, thrusting a thick, calloused finger toward the neat line of protesters. “I got the permits and copies of the signed contracts in my truck, if you want to see them. And these Injuns got no call to prevent us from doing the job we were hired to do by their mommies and daddies.”

“Did he just call us ‘Injuns'?” asked the Comanche girl standing next to Dylan.

Caitlin turned, ignoring Dylan while fixing her gaze on her. “Let me handle this please.” She turned again toward the foreman. “I'd ask, sir, that you and your people take a few steps back while we get this all sorted out. Nobody wants trouble, but if it comes, it'll be sure to delay the work you came to do even longer. I don't think that's in anyone's best interests. We on the same page here?”

The foreman scowled but then nodded slowly. “You've got your chance, Ranger. It doesn't work, don't blame me for what happens next.”

Then he backpedaled, along with the rest of his men, dispersing into smaller groups to continue waiting out the situation.

Caitlin turned back around to face Dylan. “Let's talk.”

*   *   *

“I'm taking some time off from school,” Dylan started, after they'd moved into a shady grove off to the side of the entrance to the reservation.

“Like a few days? A week?”

Dylan hedged. “More like a semester.”

“I don't recall your dad mentioning anything about that.”

“That's because I didn't tell him.”

Caitlin gazed back toward the line of protesters.

“Her name's Ela Nocona,” Dylan resumed. “We met in Native American studies class back at Brown.”

“Then I guess this would qualify as primary research.”

“I'm trying to do something important here.”

“Let's hope your father sees it that way,” Caitlin told him, as Ela Nocona joined them in the grove.

She was grinning wide enough to dapple her cheeks. “I didn't think Dylan was telling the truth,” she said to Caitlin, clearly impressed, her tone suggesting they were old friends.

“About what, Ela?”

“About you. I told him I had to see it with my own eyes.” She continued to smile, seemingly in admiration. “And now I have.”

“Peta Nocona was a great Comanche chief who fathered an even greater one in Quanah Parker. Any relation?”

Ela Nocona tried hard not to look impressed. “I believe I'm Quanah Parker's grandniece,” she said.

“And you go to Brown, too.”

“I'm a senior,” she told Caitlin. “Summa cum laude.”

“So are you taking some time off from school too, Ela?”

“The tribal school was short a teacher,” she said, without hesitation.

“She works with disabled kids,” Dylan chimed in.

“Far too many here, unfortunately. Ten times the number found among Caucasian children,” Ela explained, not bothering to elaborate.

“A noble pursuit for sure,” Caitlin nodded, “as long as those construction workers don't plow you over with backhoes and front loaders.”

“I didn't come back here to man a protest line, Ranger,” Ela said, her broad shoulders stiffening noticeably. “But this is our land. No one has a right to spoil it.”

“Including your tribal elders, who sold off the mineral rights?”

“That shouldn't have been their decision. They should've put it to a vote.”

“I heard they did,” Caitlin noted, “and that an overwhelming majority supported opening up these lands to drilling.”

Ela stiffened. “That vote wasn't legitimate. I made the elders let me address the crowd at the meeting, but they wouldn't let me introduce all of my research on the Bakken field up in North Dakota and what oil did to the Indian lands there.”

“Sounds like their call, to me.”

“Dylan told me you were there when his mother was killed,” Ela said suddenly. “He said you shot it out with the man who did it.”

“Close enough, I suppose,” Caitlin said, looking at Dylan again. “Did I mention your dad's on the way?”

Dylan swallowed hard. “You told him?”

“Left him a message as soon as I got word myself, via an anonymous phone call to my cell number. You wouldn't know anything about that, would you, ma'am?” she asked Ela.

“Me?”

“Because the caller specifically mentioned Dylan Torres being on the scene. Not something a random person would make note of. Like they were doing me a favor. Or maybe that person wanted me involved in whatever's going on here.”

Some of Ela Nocona's long black hair strayed into her face and she whisked it off, only to have the breeze blow it back. “There's a story my people tell about their first encounter with a Texas Ranger on this land.”

“That Ranger was my great-great-grandfather,” Caitlin started. “His name was Steeldust Jack Strong, and he was also a hero in the Civil War.”

“The stories passed down through the years speak well of him, but the truth about what happened the day he rode onto the reservation's become muddled. Might you know it?”

Caitlin cocked her gaze across the road to where the workmen had broken out the lunch boxes and coolers they'd intended to open at a break in their labors. That had yet to commence, though things had simmered down for now.

“As a matter of fact,” Caitlin told Ela, as a sliver of sunlight broke through the tree line above, “I do.”

 

10

B
ALCONES
C
ANYONLANDS,
T
EXAS; 1874

Jack Strong rode straight through the center of the reservation, past the pastures and farmlands, until a trio of arrows pierced the ground directly in his path.

Steeldust Jack dismounted stiffly, careful not to put too much weight on his bad leg, and held his hands in the air, watching a half dozen Comanche warriors, their faces streaked with traditional war paint, emerge from the nearby forest line, where a cluster of small log homes dotted a landscape shaded by sprawling maple and evergreen trees. Only a few tepees, likely for ceremonial purposes, were in evidence, placed not far from a series of large cooking pits, from which gray smoke rose in preparation for the tribe's next meal.

Steeldust Jack noted that the youngest Comanche warrior wasn't wearing any war paint or carrying a bow like the others. He walked ahead of them, his muscular shoulders seeming to sway with the wind, heading straight for the Ranger as if they were the only two men here.

“You are not welcome on this land,” the young brave said, stopping a few yards before Steeldust Jack. “You must leave.”

Steeldust Jack shielded his eyes from the sun. “You the chief?”

“The chief has no call to speak with the white man. I am Isa-tai, White Eagle in your language.”

“Well, I'm Jack Strong, Texas Ranger in your language.”

Isa-tai bristled at that. He didn't look all that much older than Steeldust Jack's son, William Ray, who'd just joined the Rangers himself, at seventeen, and had been assigned to the newly formed Frontier Battalion. Strange for a father to be jealous of his son, but that's the way Jack Strong felt, and he couldn't help it. The truth was, he'd have been much happier fighting Indians than investigating a killing that might have taken place on their land. But duty was duty.

“You have no business here, Ranger.”

Isa-tai had eyes so dark that the Ranger was pretty sure they were black, with hardly any white mixed in. His bronzed face was angular, with ridged cheekbones and smooth skin that was free of the scars Steeldust Jack was used to seeing on the Comanche he'd done battle with over the years. Isa-tai's raven hair was clubbed back, the way all braves wore it, with what looked like a bone looping through it and poking out from the top.

“And authority here, either,” Isa-tai continued.

“Is what I heard true? That you folks here are immortal, that you're gonna live forever?”

“Not if the white man can help it. This land was given to us in peace and we have kept it in peace. We ask only to be left alone, and for the white man to keep to himself, just as we do.”

“All the same, I was hoping you could help me with something.”