The Texans (8 page)

Chapter 10

B
ud Wilson unhitched from the plow and rode just as fast as his poor mule could go all the way to the Prussian's farm. A crew of men busy building a new house watched him come down the little creek valley with cautious looks. Every man of them set aside their tools and went to stand beside their guns, at least those that had them. A fast-approaching rider in that neck of the woods was never a good sign and often meant danger was at hand.

Bud pulled up before the framed beginnings of the house that stood like a skeleton in the clearing with its bare, white lumber looking more like bones than wood. The Prussian stood at a long table set up in the yard, poring over a set of building plans with a square and a pen. He straightened the silk sash around his waist and adjusted his saber before coming up to greet Bud.

“Herr Bud, you've come fast and look tired. If I didn't know you only live four miles from me I'd say you'd come all the way from Austin.”

Bud felt a little silly when he realized he was indeed breathing hard, as if he'd run the distance himself and not been carried by his mule. He tried to calm himself and managed to finally blurt something out. “They've run off with Red Wing and are going to give her to the Comanches.”

The Prussian studied the young man while he absorbed the news. Bud gathered his breath and a jumbled, confusing version of the day's events at the Wilsons' farm poured out of him in one quick rush. The Prussian held up a palm to slow him down and invited him to dismount and take a seat under the shade trees surrounding the house they were building.

“This will steady you some.” The Prussian poured a tin cup full of whiskey from a jug and offered it to Bud. It was well known among the settlers on the upper Colorado that the Prussian's stills turned out especially good sipping liquor.

“I ain't a drinking man.” Bud was just barely sixteen, and the fact was, he had never been offered any.

“Go ahead and drink it. It'll take the edge off your day, and then maybe you can slow down and tell me just what happened.”

Bud tossed down the liquor in one gulp and took the chair the Prussian offered him. His host remained standing, and despite all his calm talk, it was plain that he was impatient to hear what Bud had to say. The whiskey burned Bud's throat to the point of almost bringing tears to his eyes, and it was a moment before he could give another go at telling his story.

The Prussian listened quietly until Bud had told him of the Peace Commission taking Red Wing from Mrs. Wilson. Bud had expected him to react powerfully, but the Prussian went back to his table and traced a finger over the blueprint pinned down on the tabletop with small creek stones at each corner. He studied the house framing as if he was seeing the construction finished in his mind, and then surveyed his hired men standing around doing nothing but staring at him.

“You've four men here, and with you and me that should be enough to run the Peace Commission down and take her back,” Bud said.

“Yes, I have four men here, but they're carpenters and farmers and not fighters,” the Prussian said.

“You mean to tell me you're just going to let them take her? I thought the congress appointed you some kind of militia officer or something. She sent me here, counting on you.” Bud had always looked up to the Prussian and was more than a little shocked at the man's complacency. He took new measure of him and wondered if it had only been the sword that had impressed him. Rich foreigners with fine manners, gold money, and a fancy horse were certainly inspiring to a frontier boy.

“No, I mean nothing of the sort.” The Prussian pointed to the white framing of the house being erected. “I'm building this for Red Wing, and as soon as it was finished I was going to ride over to your home and ask her to marry me again.”

“Well, you ain't going to marry her if they trade her off to the Comanches.” Bud could see no need to dawdle around talking while the men who'd taken his sister got farther away by the minute.

“Rest assured, I will bring her back.” The Prussian waved his laborers back to work. “You men know what to do, and I expect my house to be finished by the time I get back. And I expect it to be built according to my plans.”

Bud thought the big house the Prussian was building was a little silly. Nobody on the frontier built frame houses, even if they did own a sawmill. And besides, there was already a good log cabin on the farm that was bigger than the one the entire Wilson family lived in. There was a round-topped barn with a loft and a nice set of split-rail lots, a large corn crib, cotton press, and wagon shed on the place. In Bud's opinion, such hard work and money as the new house required would have been better spent clearing brush and breaking new farm ground. Corn would feed you and cotton would make you wealthy, but a big, fancy house was nothing but showing off to the neighbors or his sister.

“Let's get going. Maybe we can pick up more men as we go,” Bud said as he started for his mule.

“You go back to your mother and see that she's all right. With your father gone, you're all she has to take care of her.”

“I ain't going back home. I'm riding with you.”

“By
Gott
, that old plow mule of yours wouldn't make it a day on a hard ride.” The Prussian could already tell he might have to tie the boy up to keep him from going. “If you want to help, you'll stay and protect your mother so I can go after Red Wing without worrying she won't have anyone to give her away in marriage when I get back.”

“You can't talk me out of going with you.” Bud jumped to his feet and stuck out his jaw.

“Oh, well, you're a man grown.” The Prussian shrugged and quit the argument as quickly as it had begun.

He went to his cabin and disappeared inside for a long while. He finally came out balancing a roll of blankets bound inside an oilskin groundsheet, an odd-shaped, small box on one arm, and a stubby carbine in his other hand. One of the carpenters brought up the Kentucky horse, and the Prussian tied his bedroll and the box behind the saddle and hung the carbine by its sling from the saddle horn. The ancient, decrepit Mexican woman who served as his cook followed behind him with a thin wooden chest, and he opened it while she held it in her outstretched hands and pulled out a matched pair of flintlock pistols. He checked the priming on both pans before attaching the pistols to lanyards tied to his belt, and then stuffed them into the holsters on each hip at a cross draw.

“Herr Bud, can you go inside and get my saddlebags? They're on my bed.”

Bud leaned his rifle against the worktable and did as he was asked. He came back out of the house just in time to see the Prussian take up the rifle he had left behind and lay it across the mule's rump. He pulled the trigger on Bud's gun and the exhaust from the muzzle burned the mule enough to cause him to leave in a crazed runaway.

“What'd you do that for?” The mule had always been a little harebrained, and Bud was surprised more by the Prussian's act than he was to see the animal fleeing wildly over the hill toward home.

“It's a short walk home for you, and I am sure you will find your mount waiting there.”

The Prussian took the saddlebags from Bud and handed him the empty rifle in exchange. He tied the saddlebags behind his cantle and mounted without so much as a word of apology. By the time Bud had thought about what had just happened long enough to get angry, the Prussian was already loping away and out of hearing distance of any complaints. Bud knew he should have at least returned the favor and ran off the Prussian's horse, but it was already too late. He was disappointed by his own inaction and being left standing there like a fool. If he had been given more time to think, he might have made a better account of himself, but Bud had never been the brightest of the Wilson children. He wished Red Wing had been there to help him figure things out. As it was, the only thing left for him to do was to go after his mule.

The Prussian felt bad for treating the boy so, but he knew it was better than getting him killed somewhere out on the trail. He was going to have to ride fast if he was to gather the help he needed and then catch up to the Peace Commission. He had no time to babysit young boys with poor rifles and slow mules.

He knew the expedition had taken Red Wing up the Colorado, but he rode southwest instead. He hated to abandon the fresh tracks they were sure to leave, but he was outnumbered and hoped to remedy that by traveling out of his way to get some help. He could have gone into Austin, or downriver to Bastrop looking for men to aid him, but he had no use for cautious family men or drunken brawlers loafing in taverns—not for what he intended.

If Colonel Moore and Placido weren't going with Commissioner Anderson, then his guess was that they would be heading for the headwaters of the San Marcos. Placido often left his wife there while he went off to fight with various ranging companies. Colonel Moore might have ridden there with him, but the Prussian blamed Moore too much for Red Wing's predicament to want his help. To his way of thinking, much of Colonel Moore's reputation as an Indian fighter was ill deserved anyway. However, Placido was known to be a fine tracker and killer of Comanches. The Indian might know the route the Peace Commission intended to travel, and maybe he could round up some more Tonks to help fill out the war party the Prussian hoped to gather.

Against his better judgment, he did stop at several homesteads far to the south to try to stir up some settler men with a little Indian fighting experience to ride with him. None of them had been neighbors of the Wilsons, and they didn't seem to care about a captive Comanche girl being taken back to her murderous tribe enough to leave their work and families. He didn't even mention the fact that the Comanches had killed other settlers and had stolen livestock, and left the farmers to their corn and barefoot children.

By nightfall he was in a foul mood from the long ride and cussing everything in general. Although more than a little put out with some of his fellow Texans' apathy and prejudice, he was no less determined to free Red Wing from her captors. Texas was a paradise to his way of thinking, but the one thing it lacked was women, especially women beautiful enough for a man who liked the best of everything.

He wished he had a regiment of Prussian hussars to ride with him, because he was sure no force in Texas was strong enough to stand up to his fellow countrymen in arms, even Comanches. The hussars were the finest light cavalry on the face of the earth. The fact that he had been forced to flee the place of his birth due to political difficulties didn't diminish his pride and assurance of Prussian superiority over all makes of men. His homeland might suffer under foolish tyrants, but there was nothing wrong with the men bred there. Where other soldiers might falter, a Prussian never did.

The Prussian was a hot-blooded and violent man at heart, and the illegitimate son of an important baron had been no match for him with a saber. He had killed the slanderous dandy in a duel, and rather than waiting to be executed or locked up in prison, he had fled the country with his extended family aboard a chartered English ship. Texas at the time was nothing but a vague spot on a map to them, but it promised to be a place where stubborn, free-thinking men could live their lives without interference. To the Prussian's surprise, Texas had proven more than he had dreamed. It wasn't long before he began to consider killing the baron's bastard as the greatest stroke of fortune in his life. Granted, Texas was a primitive place, but a tough, smart man with a little ready gold and the ability to lead men might one day make a fortune there.

It was as if Texas was made for him, and the bloody attributes that had almost landed him in a Prussian prison served him well in his new home. The best thing about the frontier was that a man could always find a fight, or it would find him. Wild, violent men in Texas were as common as flies, and their deeds often led them to rank and position, rather than jail. Adventurous rogues seemed drawn to the land like moths to a flame, and the Prussian was a bigger rogue than any of them.

He considered Sam Houston as no fool, and surely the old general had picked competent men to man his expedition to the Comanches. It would be no easy task taking Red Wing away from them. The Prussian knew defying the president of the republic was liable to cause him problems, but he wasn't the type to be thwarted in what he set out to do. Life could be like playing high-stakes poker, and a man sometimes had to take his chances in the game. Red Wing was a prize worth gambling for, and just to sweeten the pot, his journey chasing after the Peace Commission was likely to be long and land him in the middle of Comanche country.

Thinking of Comanches excited him, and a new plan began to form in his mind. He had no doubts that he could rescue Red Wing, but why not kill two birds with one stone? All he needed was a good band of fighters to help him. A man who could successfully lead a battle against a large number of Comanches might go all the way to the presidency of Texas. President Houston had made some very unpopular decisions of late, and there was no way he was going to be reelected.