Robson, Lucia St. Clair by Ride the Wind

Author:Ride the Wind
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 2011-11-20T23:45:30+00:00

CHAPTER 32

Ben McCulloch was satisfied. The chief had made the fatal error. Maybe it was overconfidence. Maybe it was an arrogant challenge, a gauntlet thrown down to the Texans. Ben doubted that it was stupidity. It didn't matter. The Comanche were taking the most direct route home, retracing their route north along the Colorado.

As soon as he saw which direction the Indians were headed, he knew where to ambush them. He sent riders fanning out in all directions. Their orders were to assemble every able-bodied man available in the thick trees and brush along Plum Creek outside of Austin. The Comanche army would have to pass through Big Prairie, an open plain near the creek. They would be exposed there.

"They'll never make it back with all that baggage." Ben looked at the bolts of cloth strewn along the trail. Already the Comanche's mules were tiring and being abandoned as the Rangers hounded them, sniping at the army's rear guard. McCulloch's men had been pursuing them for three days, and were losing their own horses. The men would jump off them as they fell to lie heaving and convulsing before their eyes rolled up and they died.

Bill Wallace kicked one of the dented enamel chamber pots, sending it clattering down the hillside before it came to rest against a cedar bush.

"Ben, they aren't splitting up and disappearing into the brush the way they usually do. Can't bear to part company with all those trinkets they stole. If their captain were smart, he'd dump all that frumpery and skedaddle."

"He's smart, but he's not crazy. Would you tell five hundred blood-drunk, whiskey-soaked Comanche bucks to throw away more loot than they've ever seen in their lives?"

"I see your point."

"A reverse Trojan horse."

"What'd you say, Ford?"

"A reverse Trojan horse," John Ford repeated. "Instead of taking the fatal gift to the city, they've carried it out."

"Well, Trojan or not, I wish we had some more horses. This campaign's been hell on them." Wallace went to collect his own.

The group of men following Ben McCulloch and his little patrol of Rangers was growing. Seventy had joined from among the irate citizens of Victoria alone. All along the Comanche army's wake, small parties of Rangers, militia, and volunteers were gathering, growing, and coalescing. And more men were converging from the hills around the small, clear, tree-shaded stream known as Plum Creek.

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