Michener, James A. (86 page)

Captain Garner offered verification: i was assured all prisoners would be released. We wouldn't talk, otherwise.'

'What are we expected to do?' Otto asked, and Garner explained: 'The army's in charge. They'll give the orders. My job is to deliver Mr. Ascot to supervise the legal arrangements.'

'But what do we do?' the two other Rangers asked, and Garner snapped: 'Obey orders.'

'Whose orders?' Otto asked, for he did not work well in a confused chain of command.

'The army's orders,' Garner said.

When they got to San Antonio and saw what a handsome town it was, so much more civilized than their frontier settlements and with buildings so far superior, they had moments of real delight. The beer was good, the Mexican dishes were new to many of the soldiers, the winter vegetables were a surprising relief from the drab food many of the men had been eating, and there was an air of levity unknown in the grimmer, less settled parts of Texas. It was as if the men had come into another country, one of ancient charm rather than new rawness.

The job of Garner's three young men was to stand watchful guard at the courthouse in which the important meetings with the Comanche were to be held, and they were attentive to the plans the army officer outlined: 'Don't frighten them when they ride in tomorrow. Try to accept them as neutrals. And for God's sake,

make no move toward your guns. Just let them come at us, and pray for the best.' When there was a rumble of apprehension, Garner whispered to his men: 'If trouble starts, give 'em hell.' The Rangers nodded, indicating that they understood.

Macnab and his two companions staked out a corner of the public plaza where they could stand by next morning as the Comanche braves rode in with their prisoners. 'They say there may be as many as a hundred white women and children delivered,' Otto told the Rangers, and one asked Captain Garner if he could be detailed to help these unfortunates, who might be in pitiful condition if frontier tales could be believed, but the captain pointed to a small building in which the women of San Antonio would care for the captives.

'You stay where you're put,' Garner said with unexpected sternness, emphasizing the seriousness of this assignment.

That night an old scout who had prowled the frontier with Deaf Smith told the young army men who the Comanche were:

'They came to Texas late, maybe 1730, not much sooner. Come down acrost the prairie from Ute Country. Mountain Indians movin' onto the plains. And why? Because they got theyselves horses, that's why. Yep, when them mountain Comanche got aholt of some good Spanish horses, they went wild. Now they could ride a hundred mile for buffalo, two hundred to find and burn a Mexican rancho.

'They took no prisoners, except women and children as slaves. Well, they did keep the eight or ten strongest men alive temporary. Me and Deaf Smith had a pact. "If n I'm wounded and cain't ride and the Comanche is comin' at me, you got to shoot me, Deaf." And he said "Same with me, Oscar."

'Well, when they hit Texas, about 1730 like I said, they like to tore this place apart. Terrified the other tribes that didn't have horses. You know how the old-timers was scairt of the Apache? The Comanche treated the Apache like they was nursin' babes, that's how they treated the Apache.

'These is the savages that now say they want a treaty with us. You know what I think? I think it's all a trap. Tomorrow in that building and out here on this square somethin' terrible's goin' to happen. With Comanche it always does.'

Apparently Captain Garner and his army superiors had the same fear, because about midnight Garner told Macnab: 'Tomorrow may be touch-and-go. If at any time I rush out that door waving this handkerchief, I want you three to dash in, right past me, guns

ready. No Comanche is to escape alive . . . that is, if they start something.'

There was great excitement that Thursday morning, 19 March 1840, when from the west the awesome Comanche rode in, for they were ghostly figures from some gruesome fairy tale. Taller than the Cherokee, thinner, with hollow cheeks and deep-set eyes, they wore battle finery that made them seem even more imposing, and by some trick they kept their horses stepping nervously sideways, as if the animals, too, were aching for a fight.

But there was also the gravest disappointment, for when the troop of about sixty-five neared the entrance to the town, it was obvious that only one captive was being led in, a girl of about fifteen whom someone recognized as Matilda Lockhart, captured two years before. When people saw her pitiful condition, sobs of the most deep and painful grief welled up, and many had to look away as she rode silently past.

The Comanche were led by an elderly wizened chieftain named Muguara, veteran of a hundred raids and killings, but one now apparently desirous of peace. Looking eagerly about, like a scout on the trail, he studied each element that faced him in San Antonio as if to satisfy himself that he was not heading into an ambush, and when he felt that the meeting could proceed, he signaled his women to remain behind, guarded by most of the braves, while he, twelve others and an interpreter dismounted and marched to the council house, almost dragging the mute Lockhart girl with them.

When he brought her into the room where the negotiators waited, with Commissioner Ascot prepared to offer clemency if only peace could be established, the Texian delegation gasped and one man clutched Ascot's arm: 'Jesus Christ! Is that a human being?' It was a fair question, for when Ascot moved forward to give her comfort, the girl quivered like some tortured animal and looked at him with wild, uncomprehending eyes.

It was with difficulty that Ascot prevented a break right then, but with great fortitude and holding back his own tears, he counseled patience, reminding his negotiators that they were dealing with savages who would have to be tamed by time, and he took the Lockhart girl, who would have been an attractive young woman had she been allowed to grow up on her ranch outside of San Antonio, and delivered her to the women waiting in the adobe house where they had hoped to welcome at least a hundred more. When they saw her, they began to weep, and the Rangers outside heard their cries of rage.

'Let's go in and get them now,' one shouted, but the others calmed him, and the soldiers waited, fingering their guns.

With the dreadful evidence of the Lockhart girl removed from the council house, it was possible to start serious discussion, but first Ascot and his team had to know the whereabouts of the other prisoners. However, when they asked, Chief Muguara lacked the English words for a conciliatory answer: 'Not my prisoners. Other tribes. You pay enough, you get them.' Then he added a most unfortunate phrase: 'How you like that for an answer?'

Even Ascot, who had vowed not to be unnerved by anything the Comanche did or said, blanched: 'Interpreter, tell Chief Muguara that he and his dozen warriors will be our prisoners until he arranges for the other captives to be brought in.'

The interpreter, knowing that such an ultimatum must mean war, shouted the words in a jumble, then bolted through the door, right past Captain Garner, who stood guard, and shouted to the Indians in the plaza: 'War! War!'

Garner, recovering from the shock of having the interpreter knock him aside, waved his handkerchief, at which Macnab and half a dozen others dashed into the council hall, where a general melee had erupted. Otto arrived just in time to see one of Muguara's braves leap upon Ascot and drive a long knife into his heart. The astounded commissioner gasped, and with blood gushing from his mouth, fell dead.

This so enraged Macnab that he began firing coldly at any brave who could be separated from the white men, and the room became a miasma of gunsmoke, screams and death. Macnab and others kept firing with relentless accuracy, and within a few minutes all thirteen of the Comanche inside the hall were dead.

Outside, in obedience to army commands, the soldiers stationed about the plaza killed thirty-five more Comanche before the others fled. Six white men lay dead.

It was a ghastly affair, a ghastly mistake, and it terminated any efforts to bring about peace with the Comanche. Captain Garner and his men saddled up to join the army in pursuit of whatever Comanche tribes might be in the vicinity. They came upon campfires recently abandoned where corpses testified to the fact that the Indians, enraged by their betrayal in the council house, had savagely executed all their white prisoners.

Macnab came upon one site where the rampaging Comanche had assaulted a Texian ranch; two wagons had been placed beside a fire, their tongues projecting over the embers. To the tongues, face down, had been lashed the living bodies of the men running

the ranch, and the wagons had been adjusted so that the men would slowly burn to death.

'Well,' Otto said, 'Martin met the Comanche.'

That happened in March, and for the next five months the Comanche retreated deep into the plains, tricking the Texians into believing that the massacre had been so devastating, there would be no further raids.

But two days before the August moon, one of the largest bands of Comanche ever gathered for a single raid assembled well west of San Antonio, and under the leadership of skilled chiefs, prepared to spread fire and terror across Texas. Cunningly, they slipped past military outposts, keeping well to the north of Gonzales, and fell with great fury upon the unprotected town of Victoria. They captured the entire town, burning and raping and killing. Corpses were scattered about, and more than two hundred horses were herded off. On they went, down to the little town of Linnville, where Finlay Macnab's Baltimore wife had landed with her two daughters, and here, at the edge of the sea itself, they rampaged unmolested all through the day, burning more, killing more, and stomping in fury at the shore as certain clever townspeople took refuge in boats, standing well out into the bay without food or shelter until the savages departed.

With these two incidents—the shooting of the Indian chieftains during a parley at which they were supposed to be protected by the white man's code of honor, and the burning of Victoria and Linnville—the Texians spoke no more of rapprochement with the Comanche. War of annihilation was seen to be the only recourse, and it would be fought with terrible intensity by both sides. In 1850 the slaughter would be appalling; in 1864, when the whites were engaged in a great civil war of their own, with their men assigned to distant battlefields and unable to protect their homes, the Comanche would ride right into towns and set them ablaze; in 1870, the same; and up to 1874 this terrible war would continue. Along the frontier Deaf Smith's rule prevailed: 'Never let a Comanche capture you. Better you shoot yourself in the head.'

When Otto Macnab heard of the disaster at Victoria he had to assume that his mother's unprotected home, and his aunt Maria's as well, must have been assaulted, so he sought permission from Captain Garner to ride down to see if the women had survived, and the captain said: 'Sure, but watch out for stray Comanche.'

So Otto rode south from Xavier County, and as he approached Victoria and saw the desolation spread by the Comanche six days

before, it became clear that only a miracle could have saved the Garza women.

When he reached the Guadalupe River and started down it toward Victoria he found only burned-out ranches: Around the next bend, I'll see it. And when he made the turn he did. The two houses which had known so much love between Texian and Mexican were gone. The drying corpses of the two women still lay under the hanging oak, where they had fled to escape the lances.

I better bury them, Otto told himself matter-of-factly, but digging in this hard, clayey soil had never been easy, and he had to be satisfied with very shallow graves indeed. But you could call it Christian burial, he thought.

That evening he bunked in one of the houses in Victoria that the Comanche had not burned; the man in charge told him: 'Senor got himself killed out in the street. Senora, she's with the other family.' He said it would be all right if Otto stayed there and he even helped prepare some beans and goat's meat, but Otto could not sleep, and at about nine he told the man: 'I think I better go back and say goodbye.' The man insisted upon joining him, just in case, but Otto said: 'No, it'll be all right. They've gone.'

He rode slowly back to the ruins, giving no consideration as to what he might do when he reached them. The Comanche moon, as it was called in these parts—that bright full moon which encouraged the Indians to raid—was waning, but it would remain a crescent in the sky until morning, enabling him to see once more the landscape he had loved so much when he first came to Texas: the silent Guadalupe, that first important stand of trees after the bleak marshes of the shore, the gently rolling hills that gave the land variation, the oak tree from which Zave ... Suddenly he became aware that someone else was near the tree.

'Who goes?' he called, readying his pistols.

'Amigo' came a strong Mexican voice. 'That you, Otto?'

From behind the oak, his own pistols at the draw, came Benito Garza, who had ridden north from the Nueces Strip to pay homage to his sisters. Standing quietly, he pointed with a pistol to the new graves. 'You bury them?' he asked in Spanish.

'I did,' Otto said.

Slowly the two men lowered their pistols and moved closer.

'What brought you?' Garza asked, still in Spanish.

'You hear about the big fight in San Antone?'

'Those Comanche can be bastards,' Garza said, still in Spanish.

'Why are you speaking Spanish with me?'

'I don't speak English no more,' he said in English, and after that explanation he used the language no further.

After they had found rude seats on the blackened remnants of a wall, Otto asked: 'If you think the Comanche are such bastards, why did you work with the Cherokee, against us?' Garza was late in replying, so Otto said: 'We found papers on the dead spy Flores . . .'

'Is he dead?'

'On his corpse were these papers, they named you as a principal. We have orders, I suppose you know, to shoot you on sight.'