The Walker Colt. Lost Love

"After the battle, he had me arrested and charged with cowardice in the face of the enemy. His uncle was the Captain of the militia company and needed someone to blame for the deaths. It was either his nephew or me. I was tried, convicted and on my way to face the firing squad in the space of an hour when the Colonel found out and put a stop to it. He had the pair of them publicly humiliated, then dismissed from the army."

I just stared at him; I'd been almost fourteen when Drew had ridden off to fight in that war. It hadn't been the first time he'd gone to war; he and my pappy had been teenagers when they fought in the war against Santa Anna. He served with the Colonel (who'd been a lieutenant), and Drew had been one of the first men the Colonel had called on to ask him to join the Militia regiment he'd been raising.

Drew had come back a changed and angry man, and now I understood why. He'd left a year later to join the Mounted Rifles.

What was the chance that the women had met up with Major Davis? Had it just been an unfortunate accident? Two women were trying to find suitable transportation, and he was going in the right direction with a carriage. A thought began to form and kept on growing until it dominated me.

"Do you think he knew who Eileen and Colleen are, I mean their relationship with us?"

"If he hadn't, I'm sure he would have after dinner. For all his faults, he had a charming personality and people liked him. I'm sure he would have got the women talking about themselves. Neither were ashamed of our relationships and would have told him about us."

"Do you think the reason he invited them to travel with him was because of us?"

Drew shrugged and said, "Who can tell." He looked worried, and if Drew was worried, then so was I.

"So, what do we do now?" I asked him.

"We follow the road he'd have to have taken riding in the carriage all the way to Houston."

"But what if he's turned off the road? Too much time will have passed for us to track their trail." As I spoke, I realized that neither of us was considering that our girlfriends had stayed with Davis willingly. Subconsciously we knew that they had been abducted. The question was why, and Drew was fairly sure he knew.

"We'll check in at every way station and town, and then we can backtrack as soon as we find they've not passed through. That'll narrow down the area we need to search."

We were soon able to confirm that we were on the right trail when we reached the first of the stagecoach way stations. The stable hand remembered the party, the two pretty women sticking in his memory.

After a bit of head-scratching, he said, "I'm pretty sure there were ten in the party. There were two wagons and the carriage, of course."

He thought for a bit longer and Drew refreshed his memory with a dollar.

"There were the two women, of course," he admitted, "and the military looking gentleman. They were riding in the carriage. The rest were ranch hands; one drove the carriage, two more the wagons. The rest were all on horseback."

"Did they say where they were going?" I asked. Any clue would help, and there was a voice in my head that was whispering suggestions for more questions.

"The younger woman said they were going to Houston. The older one said they were hoping to take the train from there to New Orleans."

"Have you seen any of them before?"

"Never seen the women, but the others I've seen most of them before. They come through here every few months."

He gave the pair of us an odd look, and that voice pushed me to hand him a second dollar. I said, "There's something else, isn't there?"

"Several times, there's been a woman or two traveling with them when they come back through, never on the way into town. Working women if you know what I mean. This was the first time I've seen proper ladies with them."

This triggered a memory, and I pulled Drew to one side. "Davis must have known them from before when they were working. Do you remember that the lady at the boarding house told us that Eileen said that they'd had dinner with an old acquaintance? That had to be Davis, and that also means he knows what Eileen and Colleen used to do."

Drew considered what I was saying. "That could mean that this isn't Davis using the women to get back at me. He's got other plans for them."

"Damn it, Drew; we need to find them as soon as we can."

"I know Billy, I know."

We hit the trail as soon as we could. The ride was hot, dusty, and miserable; both of us couldn't help letting our imaginations run riot. As much as we wanted to, we couldn't urge the horses into a gallop in case we missed evidence that the wagons had turned off the trail. Every time we came across a side trail we had to dismount to see if there was any indication that the three vehicles had taken it.

After the sixth time we had stopped and wasted more valuable time with no results, Drew kicked at a bush and exclaimed. "We're wasting time doing it this way. I had the right idea before. We are only going to slow down and give the turnoffs a quick check and see if there is an obvious sign. At each of the way-stations and homesteads, we'll ask if they passed by. If they have, we carry on, if not, we backtrack and check every turnoff."

That voice in my head was shouting at me again, and I let my emotions relax enough to listen to it. 'You know where they are going. Davis has a ranch, where else would he be taking them.' I was mentally kicking myself. As soon as I'd mentioned Davis's name to Drew, he'd gone off on a rant and I'd completely forgotten about the ranch, and only focused on the supposed destination of Houston

"Shit, Uncle Drew, the clerk at the hotel mentioned that Davis has a ranch near La Grange. I forgot all about it after he said that they were going to Houston. That must be where he's heading."

I don't know who was more annoyed, Drew at me, or me at myself. I suffered his verbal abuse for the next few miles as we pushed on as fast as we could to the next way station. There we were able to confirm that Davis and the wagons had passed by.

The manager of the way station was able to tell us that Major Davis owned a big ranch just north of the township of La Grange. The turn off for the town was 70 miles away and was clearly marked.

"You'll have no problem spotting it," he insisted. "You looking for work at the ranch? He has a big crew, and they are a seedy-looking bunch of cowpokes. The folks in the town fear them, quick with their fists and guns, if you know what I mean. They come through here every few months and I'm glad to see the back of them."

"We's got jobs," Drew said.

"We think our cousin works for him. His Daddy's poorly sick, and his Mama wants him to come home. We were going to Houston so we said we didn't mind taking a few days to see if we could find him." Drew lied without a twitch of his face.

The Manager accepted our explanation without a blink. After we replenished our provisions and canteens, we got back into saddles and carried on down the trail. It took a day and a half before we reached the signpost that pointed towards La Grange.

"We need to stay off the trail," Drew said as he looked down the dusty trail. The road headed off to the north, winding around a few low hills in the distance. On the horizon, there was a dusty smudge that we took to be the town. Past it, the hills rose up and I couldn't see how much further the road went.

"Why, it'll take much longer if we do?"

"Because two strangers riding into that town are going to be noticed, and someone will tell Davis. If we stand any chance of getting the women away from him safely, he mustn't know we are around."

I couldn't argue with Drew's insight. Drew took a compass bearing on the town, and then we started to ride in a wide arc to bring us in the hills north of the town. We didn't hurry, the ground was dusty and we didn't want to leave a dust trail. The pair of us slipped back into our man-hunter role that we'd grown so accustomed to down on the southern border. We rode slowly but surely, riding just below the crests of the hills, never letting our silhouettes be seen. If we had to crest a hill, one of us would walk up and check that there was no one around before we would slip over and down into the relative safety of the lower ground.

When night fell, we led the horses, picking our way carefully by the faint light of the full moon. It was past midnight before we reached a small valley where we decided to set up camp. There was a tiny spring that fed a small pond, and the horses were grateful for the water. We settled them down, leaving a pair saddled, just in case we needed to leave in a hurry.

Drew dug a small fire pit and ringed it with boulders to hide the light of the flames. We wrapped blankets around our chilled bodies and sat as close to the fire as we could without singeing ourselves. Drew dozed while I kept the first watch, one of my Colts in my hand, ready to fire. The moon had set and the only light came from the red embers and the multitude of flickering stars that stretched across the black sky.

I was barely able to keep my eyes open, and I was grateful when Drew stirred and took over the watch. I was asleep as soon as my head rested against my saddle pack. Odd dreams of long black roads along which rode noisy wagons without horses pulling them invaded my sleep. Those are cars, the voice in my head said, and I dismissed the images as the ramblings of an anxious mind.

The first glimmers of dawn had appeared on the horizon before Drew woke me. In the far distance, I could hear the faint sound of cattle lowing, suggesting that we were deep inside the boundaries of the ranch. Hopefully, they were running free and there was nobody riding herd on them.

I checked the tethers that secured the remounts and packhorses. They were still secure, and after ensuring the horses were watered and fed, we left the camp and cautiously rode in the direction Drew determined the ranch house should be. We needed to find a spot where we could stay concealed while watching the ranch house for any evidence that Eileen and Colleen were there.

About a quarter of a mile to the west of the ranch buildings rose a 100-foot craggy bluff. Near the top, we discovered a narrow cleft. We were able to conceal our horses in a nearby wash and set up an observation post in the cleft. We brought our saddle packs and canteens and Drew carried his new Sharpe's slant breech carbine.

He'd bought the rifle before our last patrol, as he hadn't liked the old muzzle-loaded carbines the company had been issued. It was a breach-loader, and he could reload on horseback. Even with its shorter barrel, it was still very accurate, and with its fancy automatic primer feed, he could get off more than six shots a minute.

We settled down, concealed from prying eyes. Drew pulled out his expanding spyglass. He'd acquired it during the Mexican war, taken from a dead Mexican officer, he'd once admitted to me.

The sun beat down on the dry, parched land. Fortunately, during the worst heat of the day, the cleft was in the shadow, even so, the hours crawled by. One of us would keep watch while the other rested. The large two-story ranch house was flanked by a pair of bunkhouses and a large barn and stables. There were a few smaller buildings, sheds, tool stores and outhouses. There were a couple of horse corrals behind the barn.

We kept the place under view for the rest of the day, there was a lot of activity, but the only women we saw was a cook and someone we decided was most likely the housekeeper.

The shadows were lengthening when Drew stiffened and spoke my name. "Take a look, that's Davis on the front porch." He handed me the spyglass, and I focused it on the figure. He wore a light grey suit and held a cigar in his left hand, his other resting on the rail. He was looking down at a small group of men and appeared to be giving them orders.

"That's Davis," I muttered. "Are we sure the women are here, I've not seen any evidence, have you?"

"No."

"I guess we keep watching then."

"Yes," but he didn't sound convinced.

"What do you want to do?"

He considered his answer. "I'm thinking we watch until the place settles down for the night, then one of us goes down and has a look around."

"And by one of us, I guess you mean you."

"I've done this before, and you haven't."

I argued with him, but he wouldn't budge. "If we spot them beforehand, then this is all moot. We'll both go down there and get them."

"Drew, I counted almost twenty ranch hands, and I don't think that's all of them. How the hell are we going to go down there and get them out on our own?"

"We do what those Mexican bandits did to the ranchers last year. We set fire to one of the barns and then take out the ranch hands when they try to put it out."

"We just kill them?" I hadn't worried in the least when we'd killed the bandits, but these were ranch hands

"If they are holding our women against their will, then hell, yes, we are going to kill every one of the bastards we can," he said, his body stiff with repressed anger.

There wasn't much else I could say, and Drew was right, so I returned to watching the ranch house. The lamps were being lit as the evening drew in. Soon all I could see was the squares of the windows. Figures flitted across the yellow squares, but I couldn't tell if any were the women we were looking for.

We continued to watch deep into the night, passing the spyglass between us. We wrapped ourselves in our blankets to ward off the chill. Slowly the number of lit windows decreased as the people settled down for the night.

When finally, the last the lights dimmed, Drew stirred. "Time I moved," he said. He looked at his pocket watch, turning the face to catch the moonlight. "The moon will set in an hour, and I'll need the light it gives to climb down there safely. Dawn will be in another three hours and I need to be away by then."

I shook my head. "No, you shouldn't go that way; it's too dangerous. You need to take your horse; if things go tits up, you'll need to get out of there fast. There's enough light to ride around the bluffs, walk the horse in the last bit and hitch him up by that far coral. That'll give you a straight run down the road if you need to get out fast. You'll be well gone before they can even saddle a horse to give chase."

Drew looked like he was going to argue with me, then he grunted in agreement. "You keep watch from up here. Cover me, use my Sharpe's, there's a load of cartridges in that bag," He said, pointing at a one of a pair of canvas pouches by his saddlebags.

"Fire a shot if you see trouble heading my way," he added. "It'll take me twenty minutes to get down there." Taking his gear, he slipped out the back of the crevice. I heard the faint clatter of rocks marking his passage, then the even fainter whinny from one of our horses.

While I waited for my first sighting of him, I checked out Drew's rifle. It was unloaded, so I took one of the paper cartridges he'd made, and pushing the lever forward slid it into the breach and closed it. I blew away the sliver of paper; the closing breach block had cut off the back of the cartridge and the few grains of loose powder. It felt odd not fitting a cap on the nipple but that was the feature of the rifle that had convinced Drew to spend the fortune it had cost him.

He'd let me fire it a few times. You loaded the cartridge, closed the breach then brought the hammer back to full cock. As you pulled the trigger, a spring would flip out a primer pellet onto the nipple just as the hammer fell. It worked most of the time; if it didn't, you just re-cocked the hammer and fired again. I was envious of Drew and was saving up for one of my own.

My pappy had let me hunt for game for the pot since I was eight. I used a small-bore muzzle loading rifle, and I'd only get one shot. Soon I was able to shoot a jackrabbit at a hundred yards and hit the head every time. Drew's carbine was just as accurate and I'd regularly hit targets with it, at a distance of half a mile.

Without a pocket watch, I had no idea how much time passed before I saw a shadow moving around the side of the main ranch house. Peering through the spyglass, I was just able to see the shadowy figure climb up a trellis to the side of the porch, then crouch down on the balcony that ran the front of the building.

Then I lost sight of him in the dark shadows, and it wasn't going to be long before the moon set and we lost all the moonlight. All I could do was wait, keep watch and hope nobody stirred.

The door to one of the bunkhouses was pushed open, and my heart leaped into my mouth. A figure appeared in the rectangle of light carrying a lantern, and I cocked the carbine. The figure stumbled through the light streaming from the doorway and then turned away from the ranch house and in the direction of the outhouse. I released the tension on the hammer, returning it to half cock.

I followed the path of the lantern until it disappeared inside the outhouse. The scene drew darker as the moon dipped below the horizon, only the faint hint of light from the stars remained.

I was mentally urging Drew to hurry up when there was the distant sound of shouting and lights appeared in several of the upper windows of the ranch house. Fuck, this is bad, I thought. A gunshot echoed and I felt a shiver of fear run down my spine.

I had the carbine up at my shoulder, but there wasn't a target I could define that was worth shooting at that justified revealing my presence. Lamps and shadows moved below me, too indistinct to make out if one of them was Drew.

There were a couple of louder shouts and several shots. One faint shadow broke away from the black rectangle that marked the ranch house. Lights appeared outside of the bunkhouses, and in the glow of the doorway, several figures appeared. Now I had a target and I commenced to fire and reload as fast as I could. Drew had reckoned he could get off a shot every ten seconds, I know I broke that easily. I was shooting at shadows and I had no idea if I hit anybody but the lamps were quickly dimmed.

I only stopped shooting when the hammer fell, and the rife didn't fire after re-cocking and trying again. After the third time, I guessed that the primer magazine was empty. I could use the same caps the Walker used, but my spares were in my saddlebags. Random shots were being fired from below and once I'd heard a bullet strike the rocks below me. It was too dark for me to find Drew's spare primer pellets, and when I checked the canvas pouch, there were only a dozen or so cartridges left.

I was sure that Drew had made his escape until a pool of flames appeared halfway between the back of the barn and the outhouse. Damn, I'd forgotten all about the guy in the outhouse. The outhouse was close to the route he would need to take to get back to his horse.

Two figures fought; their bodies outlined if the flames from the fallen lantern. I think Drew was winning when a couple more men appeared and drove the one I'd recognized as Drew to the ground. More lamps appeared, and the group of men headed back towards the ranch house dragging a limp figure with them.

I had no idea what I should do next, only that I wasn't going to leave Drew at Davis's tender mercy. While Drew was being half carried, half dragged, I fumbled in the second of the canvas bags and was so relieved to find a second package of the paper cartridges for the Sharpe's. From its size, I estimated there were another fifty cartridges. There was also a square tin that I knew held the preloaded tubes of primer pellets and a second tin with standard primer caps.

Remembering how Drew had shown me, I quickly loaded a fresh tube of the primer pellets into the carbine, then I took stock of the scene that was evolving below me.