Night Flower (Gone-to-Texas Trilogy) (18 page)

      
“How progresses your career as a reporter?” he inquired.

      
Melanie sighed in disgust. “That's what I was woolgathering about...sort of.” She paused and looked into his cherubic, earnest face. “All Mr. Pemberton wants me to do is write gossip columns about parties and dances and that kind of silly stuff. I want to write about important things. Speaking of which, how are you doing with starting a school for those poor Indians?”

      
Now it was Father Gus's turn to sigh. “Father Calvo is very solicitous but says the bishop is first concerned with the children of white settlers. The government is to take care of the Indians.”

      
Melanie snorted in derision. “He's just like all the rest of these good Texians—Anglo or Mexican. They all fear Indians, even the ones like the Lipans and Cherokees who work for the army.”

      
“Even among themselves the San Antonians quarrel,” the priest said, half in sorrow, half in irony. “The Spaniard, Father Calvo, dislikes Germans. The Germans dislike the Anglos and the Anglos dislike the Mexicans.”

      
“And everyone hates the Indians,” Melanie added to his litany. They both laughed. Then she said, “You have been gathering a fair number of German Catholics for your masses, though, haven't you?”

      
“
Ja
, a few come, but so many are more concerned with making money. On the Lord's day still they work in their shops and stores.”

      
“It's an old Texas custom, I'm afraid,” Melanie replied. “Religion always has taken a back seat to business.”

      
“All the more reason to minister to those in greater need—the hungry children of those Indian scouts,
ja,
and the women who follow the soldiers,” Father Gus said with a hint of iron in his voice.

      
Melanie's mind was racing as she looked past the young priest, down a wide street lined with frame houses and sycamore trees. “If your white parishioners can spare you—and if Father Calvo will allow—I just might know someone who could help. If she'd lived two thousand years ago, she'd have helped feed the five thousand,” Melanie said impishly.

* * * *

      
“I think you and Father Gus will have a good deal in common,” Melanie said as she introduced the priest and proprietress of San Antonio's best boardinghouse.

      
“I got me no quarrel with this here black robe er any other, long's they don't try 'n' git a old hard-shell Baptist like me ta switch!” Obedience reached out a red, meaty palm and pumped Father Gus's hand in an enveloping grip.

      
Father Gus stood his ground and returned the vigorous handshake. “
Ja,
I think we will be friends,
Frau
Oakley.”

      
“Now, whut's this here scheme you two have cooked up? Feedin' them Injun kids 'n' all.”

      
Melanie explained that she and Father Gus had just located a deserted old adobe on the edge of town where a makeshift school could be held for the half-breed children and a number of impoverished
Tejano
children as well. “The problem is getting them to come. They're starving and ragged. And no one, not the church or any of the citizens who own stores or market stalls, will contribute food or clothes. So, we thought—”

      
“Jeehosaphat! Cain’t larn readin' when yer belly's growlin'. I cotton ta thet.” Looking from one to the other of the conspirators, Obedience sighed. “I'll git Sadie 'n' Lena ta work on fîxin' a feast ta tempt a saint, much less a passel o' hungry little pagans.”

Chapter Ten

      
“This isn't social news, but it is a story about people—a real story, Clarence Viv—”

      
“Don't say it or I'll rip that paper up and feed it to you one strip at a time,” the old man intoned gravely.

      
Bubbling over with excitement, Melanie ignored his threat. “Oh, I promise, Mr. Pemberton, never again to tease you about your heinous middle name but—” she stopped abruptly.

      
His brows rose diffidently. “Pray continue.”

      
“But you must read this story about Father Gus's school for underprivileged children! San Antonians do have hearts. Obedience got all the big ranchers to donate one steer each to the children's fund. Well, not all of them—that nasty old land speculator Laban Greer refused, and so did Noah Parker; but even Lee Velasquez agreed, after Obedience threatened to thrash him.” Melanie chuckled at her mentor's description of that interview! “And that's not all. Charlee Slade got a whole bunch of women in town to gather up all their children's older or outgrown clothes and fix them up—even donate blankets. And the three of us went to all the storekeepers and got them to give Father Gus a set of readers and ciphering books for the school! Here. Read about ‘The City with a Saint's Heart’!”

      
Clarence Pemberton scanned the pages with his lightning-quick eyes, taking in every detail. The girl was good. Clear style, tight organization, yet with just the right touch of sentiment and emotional appeal. He hated to do it, but he said, “We'll run it under your name.”

      
With a squeal of delight she leaped up and kissed him on his jowly cheek. He restrained her with a frosty raising of his eyebrows.

      
“I'm scarcely surprised Laban Greer and Noah Parker refuse to help your impoverished Indians,” he said, returning to the story he was writing.

      
Melanie's eyes strayed to the copy, and she seized it before he could stop her. “ ‘Militiamen plan a bold-raid on marauding Comanche at dawn this day....’ ” she read aloud, then scanned the rest of the rough draft and notes in haste. “Quite a story. How did you find out? I haven't heard a thing about it.”

      
Clarence looked smug. “I have my sources, child. Men will confide to other men in a, er, libational setting, shall we say.”

      
“Oh, you got them drunk, huh?”

      
“Another thing a male reporter can do which a female cannot, I daresay,” he patronized.

      
“But I can ride and shoot, something Texians can do that Massachusetts Yankees can't—I daresay,” she sassed as she shoved her story about Father Gus's school into Amos's hands. “This should sell a few papers this week, Amos. I'm off!” With that, she whirled with her heavy-soled shoes clumping across the oily wood floor past Clarence Pemberton.

      
“And precisely where are you going, young woman?” he called after her retreating figure.

      
“To get a story,” she yelled over her shoulder before vanishing through the front door.

      
Pemberton sighed and Amos chuckled.

* * * *

      
Twilight was deepening when Melanie stole down the back steps of the boardinghouse, through the kitchen, and out the side door. The last pink streaks of sunset were leaving the sky and the kitchen was deserted now. Good. Melanie didn't want to be detected, especially in the clothes she was wearing. The old black cook might mistake her for a prowler and take her broom to the youth in baggy patched buckskins and shabby boots.

      
Melanie had checked her appearance in the mirror repeatedly as she dressed in the carefully assembled costume, mostly “borrowed” from old Racine Schwartz, the boarder who used to be a mountain man in his youth. He was small and wiry and possessed the most disgusting-looking clothing she could readily lay her hands on. That afternoon, she had dug the worn, greasy buckskins and boots from the bottom of a chest in his room and smuggled them into her wardrobe.

      
Before she put on the worn clothes, she had flattened her breasts with a tight wrapping of linen toweling to disguise the ample evidence of her sex. Her hair was pulled into a tight knot and hidden beneath the brim of a battered felt hat. After sneaking out the back door, she had liberally smeared herself and the buckskins with dirt so that even her fingernails were encrusted with filth. That last detail made her sure she could pass as a rather runty young man.

      
Melanie walked quietly toward the icehouse behind the garden, where she had tethered a rented horse of no distinguishing quality to await her predawn rendezvous. Her Hawken rifle was loaded and set in the scabbard. On her person she carried an Allen and Thurber pepperbox, a gun small enough for her to handle. She had also filched an old skinning knife from Racine.

      
Armed, tough and dirty looking, she hoped to blend in with the band of volunteers under the leadership of a local ranger captain, Seth Walkman. It was, according to Clarence's notes, to be a hunting expedition in search of a band of Comanche raiders who had burned out several ranches and stolen cattle southeast of Fort Inge. The undermanned and woefully ill-equipped soldiers couldn't stop the Comanche, so the citizen militia of Texians would do the job.

      
Jim Slade had made several exceedingly unfavorable comments about Seth Walkman and his rangers, lamenting the departure several years earlier of his old friend Captain Jack Hays, who had headed for the California gold fields. Walkman lacked Hays's leadership skills and essential decency. The men who rode under him tended to be drawn from the dregs of west Texas society—gunmen, drifters, and scalp hunters. Melanie wondered if Lee Velasquez would ride with this punitive expedition, but decided that no matter how great his hatred of Indians, he'd never deign to take orders from a Texas Ranger.

      
Still, when she pulled her horse up by the riverbank south of the city where the men were gathering, she was relieved to see that Lee was not with them.
He might recognize me,
she said to herself. But she was glad that he had truly left his bloody past behind.

      
She did recognize a number of the men hunched around the campfire, drinking coffee. Walkman, rawboned and rangy, with stringy gray hair and eyes the lusterless color of pewter, conferred with Laban Greer, a rancher from the western part of the county who doubled as a land speculator in town. Greer was short and thickset as a bull, with a disposition to match. Turning her attention from the unappealing duo, she observed a number of rangers who regularly rode with Walkman and about a dozen assorted townsmen, small ranchers, and drifters who apparently had nothing better to do than chase Indians.

      
As she scrutinized the crowd, Melanie committed to memory as many faces as she could without being obvious about it. She was careful to stay clear of Laban Greer, who knew her from their hostile encounter when she had tried to get him to donate cattle for Father Gus's Indian school.
He'd rather shoot Indians than educate them.

      
When the command came to mount up, no one paid particular attention to the "boy" hovering in the shadows of a willow tree near the riverbank. Several youths, drifters who worked cattle and doubtless did less honest jobs, were among the riders. A sense of grim determination seemed to infuse most of the men. Jocular comments were infrequent, but the men did talk among themselves. Melanie learned one of them, a settler named Ben Haycox, had lost his ranch house and most of his herd in the recent raid. Another, who now worked as a blacksmith in town, had suffered the same fate as Lee, having his family killed by Comanche when he was a small boy. An icy sense of foreboding washed over her as she eavesdropped on their conversations.

      
They rode for several hours as Walkman, who was a skillful tracker, watched for signs and shifted directions several times. The moon flitted in and out of cloud cover, slowing their progress when it vanished. Still, Walkman seemed to know where he was going—almost as if it were prearranged, Melanie thought uneasily. But if they were tracking a band of raiding braves, how could Walkman know where they'd head?

      
Her unease grew through the night. Then, just as the first warning haze of false dawn lighted the sky, Walkman signaled for the group to dismount and be quiet. He and two of his rangers left the others behind and rode slowly down a narrow ravine off to the west. About half an hour later they returned.

      
‘‘We got ‘em, boys. Clean ta rights.” Walkman's whisper crackled across the still dawn air like a whiplash. “You, Jonas, get a dozen men 'n' follow Miller here. Tatum, take the rest 'n' go with Abe. Greer, you ‘n your boys come with me.”

      
While the men fell into informal ranks as directed, Melanie slipped in with Marsh Tatum's group, where she would be less likely to be recognized. Few of the men had even noticed the taciturn youth or spoken six words to “him” on the grueling night's ride. Keeping her head down and her rifle ready, she followed the men as they stalked silently through the rough, hilly terrain toward a destination known only to Walkman and his two rangers.

      
Expecting to come on a campfire and a host of Comanche warriors sleeping out in the open, Melanie was amazed when they crested a low rise of land at the lip of the ravine. Below, strung along several hundred yards of a twisting stream, lay a small village. The loose brush arbor shelters built by Comanche women resembled the Mexican
jacals
constructed by peasants from San Antonio to Sonora. She could hear a sleepy child cry and a woman's voice raised in reprimand. Then several more women became visible. Obviously the first to arise in the sleepy encampment, they headed toward the stream to fill their cook pots.

      
The village was awakening. Two dogs chased a naked boy who splashed and giggled in the water. Finally, a male, clad only in a breechclout, appeared from beneath the crude shelter of a
jacal,
stretching and rubbing his eyes as he ambled out to greet the dawn. As was their custom when encamped in the wild canyon country of
Comanchería
, the Indians had posted no sentries and had pitched camp haphazardly along the water with no defensible perimeters.