The Texans by Brett Cogburn Page A

shoulder at the house as if weighing what he should or shouldn’t say. “You’re coming with us.”
    Red Wing wondered if she stood a chance of outrunning his horse the short distance to the timber along the creek. She wished her Odie had come home like he had promised.

Chapter 9

    I hear what you’re saying, and I don’t like it any more than you do.” Commissioner Anderson dabbed at the fresh cut over his right eye with his handkerchief. “But for all that you’ve said, she’s still a Comanche, and there is no denying that.”
    â€œShe’s my daughter, and has been for nigh onto five years,” Mrs. Ida said. She was still crying, but she forced the words out between gasps and sobs.
    â€œIt’s Houston’s orders, and as the commissioner assigned to the Comanche, I have no choice but to obey them.”
    Captain Jones and Colonel Moore had Bud Wilson disarmed and pinned against the wall. He wasn’t putting up a fight at the moment, but it was apparent that he’d tried to whip the commissioner. He was panting from his scuffle with the men and glaring hotly at the two who stood between him and Red Wing, who had come up to the edge of the porch. There was no blood relation between her and him, but it had been a long time since he had treated her like anything but his true sister. Even little Mike was hovering around with a stick in his hands ready to fight for her.
    â€œIf you take her back to those savages, it will be over my dead body,” Mrs. Ida said.
    The commissioner sighed and rolled his hat brim around in his hands while he thought. “We’re taking her, but maybe the Comanches won’t even want her back, or won’t be willing to trade hostages for her. If so, I think we can manage to bring her back to you.”
    Mrs. Ida steadied herself and lashed out at Colonel Moore. “You’re word isn’t worth spit. You look me in the eye and tell me you didn’t give this girl to me.”
    The colonel didn’t meet her eyes; he couldn’t. He’d fought Mexicans and Indians more times than he cared to count, but he didn’t have the stomach to face her anguish or deny the truth of what she said. He cussed Sam Houston under his breath. The president thought you could deal with Comanches like civilized people when everyone in Texas knew that peace with them was a joke. Former president Lamar had been an ass, but at least he had understood that. The only way was to kill them all, or just outlast them, and the colonel had a sneaking suspicion it would be the latter of the two choices that eventually worked. Comanches were damned hard to run down, and harder yet to kill in a fight.
    He watched Placido standing guard over Red Wing at the far end of the porch. She had changed much, but the colonel couldn’t quite shake the vision of her as a tadpole of a little girl with a dirty face and chopped-off hair, dressed in a tow sack of a deerskin dress. He remembered how he’d found her standing in the middle of the Comanche village among the dead bodies of her people. She’d looked up at him on his horse without a tear in her eye. After the long day’s fighting was over he’d taken her up on his horse and carried her in front of him for the first few days, while the rest of his captives walked before his volunteer troops.
    Red Wing too was reliving that moment over and over again. Her capture from the Comanche had been more violent, but the thought of being carted off again was even harder for her than it had been on that day in her village. She had nothing to lose back then, an orphan even before Colonel Moore killed over fifty of the camp that had been her home at the time. The only thing similar for her about the moment was the numbness of mind and spirit that came over her when she heard what Commissioner Anderson intended to do.
    She went into the cabin and gathered a few personal belongings from the house