Wilderness Double Edition 26

  The Home of Great Western Fiction!

  Comanche Moon

  In the untamed wilderness of the majestic Rockies, Nate King has often seen that the line between life and death is a thin one. So far he’s managed to stay on the right side, but all that could change on a rare excursion to Bent’s Fort. Nate just wants to bring home a special gift for his wife. Instead, he finds a greenhorn couple looking to settle in the heart of Comanche territory. Unable to leave them helpless, Nate puts himself right in the middle of the warpath. But when an old enemy steals all his supplies and weapons, Nate’s left utterly defenseless against a band of vicious warriors who want nothing more than to see him dead.

  Glacier Terror

  The King family wouldn’t have lasted as long as they have in the remote, perilous Rockies if they didn’t know a thing or two about survival, But even after all these years, the wilderness has a few surprises for them. There’s something not quite right about a glacier high atop a peak near their valley. The Indians claim it’s bad medicine and won’t go near it. Of course that doesn’t stop. Louisa King from cajoling her husband to go on a getaway up to the high country. But they can’t fathom the savagery they’re about to unleash. For something terrible lives on that glacier, something that craves flesh and doesn’t care whether it’s from a deer or an elk—or a human.

  WILDERNESS DOUBLE EDITION 26

  51: Comanche Moon

  52: Glacier Terror

  By David Robbins Writing as David Thompson

  First Published by Leisure Books in 2007

  Copyright © 2007, 2020 by David Robbins

  First Digital Edition: June 2020

  Names, characters and incidents in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons living or dead is purely coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information or storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the author, except where permitted by law.

  This is a Piccadilly Publishing Book

  Series Editor: Mike Stotter

  Text © Piccadilly Publishing

  Published by Arrangement with the Author.

  WILDERNESS 51

  COMANCHE MOON

  Dedicated to Judy, Joshua and Shane. And to Kyndra, Josh’s special princess, and to Tori and Brian.

  Prologue

  There were two of them. They were white, and they came from the north. The horses they rode were draft animals that doubled as mounts when the need arose. The third horse was a pack animal with a sway back they had picked up on their way west.

  Both men were in their middle years. Both wore homespun shirts and pants that had seen a lot of use. As had their battered hats and scuffed boots. By their clothes and their sun-browned complexions, they were men who spent a lot of time outdoors.

  For days the pair had seen only grass, grass, and more grass. Trees were as scarce as hen’s teeth, water only slightly less so, which explained why, when they came to a meandering ribbon of blue amid the green, they promptly made camp for the night. Plenty of jerked venison was in their saddlebags. But they were not all that interested in eating.

  The two men were excited.

  “It’s better than we dared hope, Elmer,” said the oldest. He had a few gray hairs at the temples and a cleft chin.

  The man so addressed also had a cleft chin, as well as a similar nose and brow. The similarities suggested they were siblings. “So much land! And as much as we want, ours for the taking!” declared Elmer with almost childish glee. “Ten years from now we’ll have farms bigger than some states.”

  “Just the two of us?” Hiram said. “That will be some feat.”

  “Shep will help,” Elmer said. “Between the three of us we’ll become as rich as John Jacob Astor. He did it with fur. We can do it with corn and wheat. We’ll have our own little empire.”

  Hiram chuckled. “An empire now, is it? Where do you come up with notions like that? I’ll settle for pleasantly prosperous. For being able to provide for our families. That’s the important thing.” He sank his teeth into a piece of jerky and hungrily chewed.

  “The trouble with you is that you don’t think big enough,” Elmer said. “There’s nothing to stop us. There’s no law on the books to keep us from claiming as much as we want.”

  “Hush, you infant. Don’t jinx us with talk like that,” Hiram scolded, only partly in jest. “Remember, Pa used to say that when a thing seems too good to be true it probably is.”

  “There you go again.” Elmer’s gestured at the sea of grass. “Haven’t you got eyes? It’s endless and empty.”

  “In a hundred years there will be so many folks living west of the Mississippi River, a body won’t be able to spit without hitting a neighbor.”

  “We won’t be around to see that,” Elmer said. “Which is just as well. I like people as much as the next person, but I like my privacy more.”

  Hiram, too, encompassed the plain with a sweep of his left arm. “Is this private enough for you?”

  Elmer nodded. “There’s not another soul for a hundred miles.”

  “Make that five hundred, not counting Bent’s Fort.”

  They smiled and laughed, and then Elmer made a comment that sobered them. “And not counting Injuns.”

  For a while the brothers chewed and did not say a word, until finally Hiram shivered slightly and said, “This night wind sure gives a man a chill, even in the summer.”

  “Sure does,” Elmer agreed.

  “We haven’t come across any sign of redskins, you know,” Hiram mentioned.

  “Not hide nor hair,” Elmer said. “I reckon all the tales we’ve heard weren’t true. It can’t be as bad as everyone claims or we’d have run into some of the devils by now.” He patted one of two flintlock pistols wedged under his belt. “Not that I’d be all that afeared if we did. I can hit a melon nine times out of ten at twenty paces.”

  “Don’t brag on yourself,” Hiram said. “It’s unseemly.” He bit off another piece of jerky. “I figure another two or three days ought to be far enough. Then we’ll head back to Bent’s Fort and send word to Shep. While we wait for him and our families, we can build our soddies.”

  “It will be grand!” Elmer predicted. “The Beecher boys, kings of the prairie.”

  Hiram snorted. “We’re plow chasers, plain and simple. That’s all we’ve ever been, it’s all we’ll ever be. Whether we own a hundred acres in Indiana or a thousand acres out here.”

  “You think too small,” Elmer said. “Five thousand is more to my liking.”

  “One man can’t work that much,” Hiram said. “Hell, three men couldn’t. Your yearnings have outstripped your common sense.”

  Elmer opened his mouth to reply but closed it again when a wavering cry pierced the night to the west, ululating on the wind like the wail of a wandering specter. “Do you reckon that had four legs or two?”

  “It was a coyote,” Hiram said, “not a painted savage.”

  “I reckon all this talk about Injuns has me a mite spooked.”

  “It’s all this wide open space,” Hiram said. “It makes a man feel downright puny.” He leaned back against his saddle and stretched his long legs out. “We’ll get used to it, though, once we’ve settled in and lived here awhile.”

  “Sure we will,” Elmer said. He, too, leaned back, placing his rifle within easy reach. “What I don’t get is why there aren’t more people doing what we’re about to do.”

  “Blame the government and the newspapers,” Hiram said, “with their nonsense about this being the Great American Desert. We’
ve seen for ourselves. This soil is as rich as any back home.”

  “Richer,” Elmer said.

  Hiram tore a handful of grass out by the roots and sniffed the roots. “Fertile as can be. Perfect for crops. We’ll start with corn and wheat, and take it from there. The excess, we’ll sell.”

  “And there will be a lot of excess,” Elmer predicted. “We’ll have dozens of hired hands to help out.”

  “There you go again, putting the cart before the horse.”

  “We’ll be the first,” Elmer said. “In our own way we could become famous.”

  “Such foolishness,” Hiram said. “Men don’t become famous for farming. They become famous for fighting. Like Jim Bowie and Davy Crockett did at the Alamo.”

  “They’re as famous as can be and always will be,” Elmer said.

  “Nothing is ever forever. Always is only as long as folks remember, and memories are fickle.”

  The pair stayed up until near midnight, talking. At last they turned in and slept the sleep of the blissfully ignorant.

  There were five of them. White men called them red men, and they came from the southwest. They rode as if they were one with their mounts.

  They called themselves the Nemene. Everyone else called them something different, a name that instilled stark fear at its mere mention. They were as widely feared as the Apaches, as fierce in their defense of their territory as the Sioux.

  They were not on the warpath. They were hunting. They had come north after buffalo, the shaggy brutes on which their people and so many other tribes depended for food and for many of the articles they used and wore.

  They rode in single file. Relatively short in stature, they had high, sloping foreheads, and alert, piercing eyes. Their hair was worn parted in the center, and braided. They were naked from the waist up. Fringed leggings and moccasins sufficed. They bristled with weapons: bows and arrows, lances, war clubs, knives, and ropes.

  Their horses were as fine as horses anywhere. Animals with speed and stamina. God dogs, the Nemene called them. Which mystified those who did not understand how much the horse meant to them. Before the coming of the horse, the Nemene toiled hard to survive, and were no more exceptional than other tribes. After they acquired the horse, their toil lessened, their lives were made easier. But more than that, the Nemene became the lords of their domain, able to strike with lightning swiftness and seemingly be everywhere at once. God dogs, to them, was apt.

  The Nemene were divided into bands. The five riding north were Wasps. To those who were not Nemene, that meant nothing. To those who were, it meant a lot.

  The five came to a ribbon of a stream and turned east, searching for sign of the great beasts they sought. Presently they came across fresh tracks but not the tracks of buffalo. They came across the tracks of three horses heading south, and a tense excitement gripped the five warriors.

  The hooves of the three horses were shod.

  “White men,” Nocona said. He was the tallest of the five, uncommonly so for his people.

  “Here?” said Pahkah, he of the crooked nose. His surprise was shared by the others. Never before had they encountered whites so far into their hunting territory.

  The tracks led south, so they turned south. Buffalo were forgotten. The whites were more important.

  Soko, the oldest by a few years and the best tracker, hung down over the side of his horse, an elbow and a knee crooked to keep from sliding off. “Only two. The third horse carries heavy packs.”

  “Only two?” Pahkah sounded disappointed.

  “We know what we must do,” Sargento said. His body was a block of rippling sinew.

  A grim air came over them. The whites were invaders and the Nemene treated all invaders the same.

  Pahkah bitterly remarked, “The whites are locusts. They are everywhere. They push in from the east. They push in from the south. Now these two, from the north. Where there are two, more will follow.”

  No one said anything. Their sentiments, when it came to white men, were similar. It was more than hate. It was a deeply felt seething resentment, easily provoked.

  The Nemene had heard what the whites did to other tribes. How the whites had driven the tribes from their lands, or wiped them out with bullets and blood, or brought disease that wiped them out even more effectively than the bullets.

  The Nemene knew little of the country to the east of the father of rivers. But they did know that at one time other tribes called that country home, and now many of those tribes were no more, or had been forced west of the great river, and the whites now overran that country from end to end.

  A sage among the Nemene once compared the whites to a thunder head on the horizon about to swoop in and engulf the Nemene in a deluge. “There is nothing we can do to stop the storm from coming,” he had said.

  But that did not mean the Nemene had to suffer the same fate as those other tribes. They were a proud people. They bowed to no one. They surrendered to no one. Maybe other tribes had not been able to resist the whites, but the other tribes were not Nemene. The Nemene would succeed where those others failed.

  “Why are the two whites here?” Soko wondered aloud.

  “What does it matter?” Sargento responded. “It is enough that they are.”

  “The whites are many things we do not like, but they are not stupid,” Soko said with the patience that came from being older than they were. “They do not do things without a reason.”

  Sargento’s scowl darkened his swarthy features. “You might not think they are stupid, but I do. They are poor hunters, poor trackers, and poor fighters. Only in numbers are they great. Were it not for their numbers, they would be nothing.”

  “Say what you will,” Soko said, “but the reason they are here is important.”

  “They hunt buffalo, like us,” Pahkah suggested.

  When Soko did not say anything, it was Nocona who prompted him by asking, “Share your thoughts. I am interested.” It was Nocona who had organized the hunting party.

  “Why do they hunt this far south?” Soko asked. “Have all the buffalo to the north died?”

  “That is silly,” Sargento said.

  “No. He is right.” Nocona stared at the tracks of the shod horses. “There are plenty of buffalo for the whites to hunt to the north. Why come this far when there was no need?” He looked at Soko. “I would hear more.”

  “I see several paths,” Soko said. “It could be they are on their way to join the whites in Texas, but no whites have ever come this way before. It could be they are buckskins, exploring, but the whites who wear buckskin live off the land, like we do, and do not need packhorses.” Soko paused. “It could be they look for a place to live.”

  Had the ground opened up and swallowed them, the other four warriors would not have been as shocked.

  Pahkah started to laugh, as if it were a great joke, then caught himself. “You believe that is what they do?”

  “This is our land,” Sargento said.

  “When has that ever stopped the whites?” Soko countered. “To them, all land is theirs. Did they not take the land of the Cherokees, the Creeks, the Seminoles? Did they not take the land of the Chickasaws and the Choctaws?”

  “But not here,” Pahkah insisted. “It is too far from their villages of stone and wood.”

  “Their villages are not as important to them as our villages are to us,” Soko said. “Remember what we have been told. It starts with a few. Then, if something is not done, more come, and ever more, until there are as many as there are blades of grass. By then it is too late to oppose them.”

  “We must not make the mistake others have,” Nocona declared. “We must not let these whites or any others build a lodge on land the Nemene have long roamed.”

  “There are only two,” Sargento said. “It will be easy.”

  “Two we know of,” Soko said. “What if there are others? What if these two are part of a larger party?”

  “You are saying we should not slay them?” Sargento
growled.

  “I say we should watch them awhile,” Soko suggested. “Once we know they are alone, then do with them as you want.”

  “I say we kill them as soon as we catch up to them,” Sargento said.

  Pahkah looked to Nocona. “What do you say?”

  “Soko’s words are wise,” Nocona said.

  The fifth warrior, called Howeah, had not said a word the entire debate. He did so now. “I agree. If I dropped my knife in a rattlesnake den, I would look to see how many rattlesnakes were in the den before I stuck my hand in to get the knife.”

  Sargento glowered. But then, Sargento nearly always glowered. His temperament made him hard to get along with. Even his fellow Wasps believed he was more bloodthirsty than was normal, although none said so to his face.

  The issue decided, they followed the tracks of the whites. It was late in the afternoon when Howeah, whose eyes were those of a hawk, spied wispy tendrils of dust on the horizon.

  “I hope we find they are alone soon,” Sargento remarked. “My fingers itch to slit their throats.”

  Twilight shrouded the plain three days later when Hiram and Elmer Beecher brought their weary mounts to a halt in the middle of a hollow some forty yards in circumference.

  “This is as safe a spot as any,” Hiram said. “No one can spot our fire.”

  Brush along the west rim provided the fuel. Elmer took his fire steel and flint and hunkered. Kindling was everywhere. A handful of dry grass, a few puffs of breath, and a tiny flame blossomed into their campfire.

  Hiram had shot a rabbit earlier. He skinned it and cut the meat into chunks while Elmer filled a pot with water from their water skin and added a cup of flour and bits of chopped onion. The stew that resulted was more broth than bite, but after days of nothing but jerky, it was a feast. They ate slowly, savoring every mouthful.

  The pot was empty when Elmer leaned back and patted his gut. “That was fine. I am in heaven.”