Читаем Winter Rain полностью

What was it John Bell Hood’s old soldier had told him? Was it really eighteen and seventy-three already? If Zeke was born in the spring of fifty-nine, that would mean Jonah’s youngest was already fourteen. A time to set aside childhood things, time to take up the mantle of a man.

And Jeremiah. A dim, wispy portrait of his eldest son swam before him in that frosty darkness by their smoky fire. He was two years older than Zeke. Sixteen now and almost a full-growed man. Would either of his boys know him as their daddy?

What pierced him with all the more pain was his own self-doubt. Would he recognize his own sons, the flesh and blood of his own body, when at last the time came to find them? So many, many years gone. So much doubt lay waiting there in the cold darkness, enough to make him wonder if the time ever would come to find them both.

Huddled beneath his cold, wet blanket steaming beside the fire, Jonah counted off the years on his fingers. Eight of them gone. That meant Jeremiah had spent half of his life with the Comanche. Even more than half of little Zeke’s life was with the savages.

It had been even longer since last he had laid eyes on his boys. An eternity since they had last known their father.

His eyes grew hot despite the cold drizzle of earlyspring rain come to bring its resurrection to this winter-starved southern prairie, here on the precipice of what many had called the most dangerous country in the whole of the continent.

His lips moving silently within the dark curl of his beard, Jonah cursed this land for granting these poor people so little of life that they fell easy prey for the ricos. And he cursed the rich ones who funded the expeditions into the land of the Comanche that traded in human misery.

The wealthy hired the poor wastrels—turning them into drivers, wagon packers, cooks, guards, and even gun handlers for the dangerous plunge into enemy territory, the last two brought along as some minimal insurance against the terror of what lay ahead in Comancheria. In this land blessed with little hope, between the poverty of Mexico and the far edge of nowhere, a rico could buy what and who he wanted to put together his wagon train bound for Indian country, and not only buy the services of a man who might want nothing more than to earn enough to feed his family for one more season—the rico bought as well that poor man himself, body and soul.

Many times, Jonah had learned, the poor and expendable hadn’t returned from Comancheria. No matter to the ricos, though. There were always a dozen or more out there, each one eager to step into those empty tracks and embark on the next trip out come trading season.

When he thought on it, Jonah had to admit he really knew little more than he had four or five years ago. Only now Jonah was certain that the boys were not among those Mexicans—they were held by a band of Comanche. Every bit as bewildering, perhaps, as looking for a particular outfit of comanchero traders was looking across this trackless waste for the comings and goings of a particular band of horse Indians. True, he had learned to track and read sign, to tell if he was following a village on the move fleeing soldiers or a war party riding out to avenge themselves on far-flung settlements.

Later that spring Jonah finally admitted to himself that he did not know how to find any one single band of the Comanche.

Spring slipped into the first warming days of early summer as they left Fort Concho and crossed the Rio Colorado, moving north for the headwaters of the Brazos. The two were traveling lighter now, trading a Danite saddle if they could, a belt gun if they had to, to buy beans and bacon, flour and coffee, along with those twists and plugs of tobacco gone black as sorghum molasses in the tin cases sutlers opened for smoke-hungry travelers come in from the sun and the dust of the western prairie.

The Fort Concho trader had eyed Jonah’s rifle with envy as he stacked the horseman’s provisions on the counter to begin his total. He was a pie-faced man of simple features, most certainly a face nothing usually happened to. “That a sixty-six Winchester, ain’t it?”

“Yes, it is. But it ain’t for sale.” Jonah had long hesitated selling his own, or a single one of the rifles taken from the Danites years before.

The trader shifted his approving gaze at the Spencer carbine Two Sleep carried. “Give you top dollar for that repeater the Indian’s carrying. Ask anyone in these parts—they’ll tell you. I give a man top dollar for good weapons.”

Hook wagged his head, determined not to be taken in. The pistols they could let go for the food and cartridges and smoke, if need be and they ran out of scrip money. “Gonna hang on to our saddle guns, mister. Trade you some army belt guns if the price works out.”

“Got enough belt guns to do me,” the Concho sutler replied sourly, his mouth pinched up in sudden anger. “Just remember, you’ll never get a better price for them rifles than I’ll give you here, and now.”