Texas Rifles - Softcover

Kelton, Elmer

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0812551214 ISBN 13: 9780812551211

Verlag: St Martin's Press, 1998

Inhaltsangabe

The new Confederacy, facing into the Union cannon, had too much on its hands to send troops to the Texas frontier to hold back the Indians. Instead, it authorised the state of Texas to raise its own troops. Many kinds of men drifted into the Texas Mounted Rifles. Some thought it might be safer than fighting in far off Virginia. Many were merely young men thirsty for adventure. Some were settlers, who saw this as the best way to protect their families and homes against the murderous thrusts of the Comanche. And some were men who still loved the Union, who had lived too long under that gallant flag to turn their guns against it now. Such a man was Scout Sam Houston Cloud.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Elmer Kelton (1926-2009) was the award-winning author of more than forty novels, including The Time It Never Rained, Other Men’s Horses, Texas Standoff and Hard Trail to Follow. He grew up on a ranch near Crane, Texas, and earned a journalism degree from the University of Texas. His first novel, Hot Iron, was published in 1956. Among his awards have been seven Spurs from Western Writers of America and four Western Heritage awards from the National Cowboy Hall of Fame. His novel The Good Old Boys was made into a television film starring Tommy Lee Jones. In addition to his novels, Kelton worked as an agricultural journalist for 42 years, and served in the infantry in World War II. He died in 2009.

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TEXAS RIFLES

One

CLOUD ALMOST RODE UPON THE INDIANS' GRAZING horse herd before he realized it.

The summer sun had been bearing down upon him for hours now, sapping his energy, stealing from him the vigilance that he normally never lost while riding across these fringes of Comanche country. In this unrelenting heat it was easy to drowse in the saddle, to let one's mind roam the thousand miles and more to the smoky battlefields of Virginia.

There, even now, angry cannons thundered and men died in the blast of shellfire.

But here, in these rolling hills that marked the western edge of the Texas cross timbers, it was still and quiet ... so very quiet.

He saw the horses and yanked hard on the hair reins, pulling his sorrel back into the green cover of post-oak brush. Suddenly wide awake, he whipped his rifle out ofits beaded deerskin scabbard. He stepped down quickly to the summer-dried grass and held his hand on the sorrel's nose to keep it from nickering. Cloud's heart hammered, his breath came short.

Gradually he eased and got his lost breath back. Those Indians must have been as heat-sleepy as he was. They hadn't seen him.

That was just a shade too close to heaven! he thought.

He was a medium-tall man, crowding thirty. He was broad of shoulder, strong of back. Three days' growth of beard was beginning to blacken a face already browned by sun and wind. His large hands were leather-tough, for they had known the plow. Yet his legs showed a trace of a bow, too, because he had ridden a horse ever since he had been old enough to lace his fingers into a mane and hang on. He wore a sweat-streaked cotton shirt, buttoned at the loose-fitting collar to keep the sun from baking his breastbone. He carried a Colt revolver high on his right hip and a seven-pound bowie knife on his left, encased in a scabbard made from the hide of a buffalo's tail, the bushy black switch still hanging as a tassel.

Through the screen of brush, Cloud studied the loose-held horse herd and the Indians who slacked in the shade of scattered trees around it. Comanches, mostly squaws. He could see only one man, on the near edge of the herd. The warrior slouched on a bay horse that showed the marks of a collar and a white man's brand on the hip. He hadn't spotted Cloud because he was giving his attention to a slender young squaw who sat as close to him as her black-maned dun would get. The warrior was laughing and talking with the woman while he rolled a fresh-made arrow shaft between his teeth, taking the sap out of it.

These were horses a stray band of Comanche raiders had been picking up in the Texas settlements, Cloud reasoned. Now the wily thieves were working their way northto the safety of those trackless stretches of open grass on the Staked Plains, where they would lose themselves like a whirlwind that suddenly lifts and disappears into air, in a solitude so vast that white men drew back in dread.

Counting in fives with tiny moves of his big hand, Cloud estimated that there were eighty or ninety horses. Many a farmer and cowman had been left afoot to walk and curse. More than likely, a few had lost their scalps as well as their horses. To the Comanche warrior stealing down from his stronghold on the high plains, warfare was a game to be played and enjoyed--an end in itself. To steal a Tejano's horses brought material wealth and a considerable measure of honor. To count coup on the hated Tejano and bring back his scalp greatly increased the honor and raised the warrior's status in the eyes of the tribe.

Cloud could still see only the one buck, and he wondered where the rest were. He counted six women, young squaws who remained physically able to make the long forays with their men, to do the menial chores and hold the horses and glory in the fighting manhood of their warriors. That there were six women didn't mean there were only six men, however. Many of the bucks never brought women on these trips. They didn't have to, for a Comanche warrior fortunate enough to have a woman with him thought little of lending her to a needful friend.

The other men must be off somewhere trying to gather up more horses, Cloud reasoned. They must feel sure of themselves, leaving only one man with these squaws to watch the ones they already had. Either they had whipped back their pursuit or they considered it too far behind to worry about.

High time to h'ist my tail and get out of here, he thought. Only, which way had I ought to run? Wrongguess and I'll butt heads with Lord knows how many Comanches.

He was no stranger to Indian warfare. He'd had his scraps, and a deep scar on one shoulder to show for it. But he saw no sense in riding headlong into a one-sided battle where overwhelming weight of numbers was sure to grind him down.

There was a time to fight and a time to ride away. Without question, this was a time to ride.

He heard the heavy roar of a rifle from somewhere over the next hill, and he jerked involuntarily. The blast was followed by the staccato rattle of smaller guns. The horses lifted their heads, their ears pricking up in the direction of the gunfire. The buck and the squaws turned too, listening. The buck shook his head confidently to the young woman beside him. Telling her, Cloud judged, that it wouldn't take long.

Cloud eased back afoot until he could no longer see the horses, and until he hoped the Indians could not see him. At least now he knew where the rest of the band was. Good chance to get away.

But he was held by the sound of battle. Somebody across yonder was putting up a good fight.

The trouble with being a reasonable man was that reason all the time wanted to argue with a man's emotions. Reason told Cloud to mount up and spur out of there while he could. But emotion made him wonder and worry about whoever the Comanches had bottled up. How much chance did those people have?

Cloud skirted through the post oak, circled the horse herd and made his way up the off side of a hill, the rifle across his lap. Staying within brush cover, he climbed until he could look out across a clearing at the farmhouse below. It was pretty much the usual Texas frontier farmer's log cabin. Actually, it was almost two cabins, its two roomsbuilt under one roof but separated by a narrow, open "dog run." Each room was buttressed by a heavy rock chimney. Man with a family, Cloud figured. And most of them shooting.

Defending fire racketed from three places--from each section of the cabin and from a heavy post-oak corral. The settler must have had a little warning, time enough to get his horses into the corral and shut the gate. To get them, the Indians were first going to have to kill him. Even then, they would be under close fire from the cabin. Heavy smoke rose from the man's position in the corral and drifted slowly away in the hot breeze.

They sometimes said of Texas gunpowder that if the bullet didn't kill the enemy, the smoke would choke him to death.

He's in a good spot long's his powder holds out, Cloud thought. But there's four or five horses in that corral, and them Comanches can almost taste 'em.

He tried to rough-count the attacking Indians, but it was hard to spot them all. Some had found good cover in the tall grass. Others lay behind downed trees that the settler hadn't yet put into his fences. Ten or twelve, Cloud judged. A few were firing rifles. Most used bows. He could see the straight, quick flight of arrows, although at the distance he could not hear them strike the cabin or the timber that made up the corral.

He saw an Indian sprint toward the house, then jerk in midstride, pitching headlong to the ground. That angered the others.

They're...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: St Martin's Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 1998
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0812551214
• ISBN 13: 9780812551211
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 224
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar