Read [Texas Rangers 01] - The Buckskin Line for Free Online

enemy should have the poor judgment to try, their blood and bones would enrich this prairie ground, and the grass would grow stronger for years.
    Antelope opened his hands, showing all his fingers. "With this many men I could run them all the way back to the water."
    He had always been prone to overstate his accomplishments and sometimes took personal credit for deeds performed by others as long as he did not expect to be challenged by someone who had been there.
    "Go, then. I will marry your widow and give her many sons."
    "You have two wives already, and your seed produces only girls. You have no son except that Texan boy."
    Buffalo Caller saw danger in Antelope's eyes. Antelope had repeatedly made veiled threats against the child since they had taken him from his dead mother's side.
    "The boy is not your concern."
    "I tell you again, that hair is an ill omen. It looks like blood. I had a dream last night. The boy will bring evil. If you do not have the stomach to do what must be done, let me." He clasped the deer-horn handle of his knife.
    Buffalo Caller stiffened. "You will not touch him!"
    Antelope roughly pulled his horse away and joined other warriors, but a dark scowl said the question was not settled. Buffalo Caller knew their friendship, though of long standing, would not be enough to protect the boy. Antelope believed strongly in medicine and omens. He had a remarkable ability to sense the presence of dark spirits when no one else was aware of them.
    Buffalo Caller believed in medicine as strongly as anyone, but his guardian spirits often disagreed with Antelope's. Antelope claimed to carry the power of the badger, and certainly he possessed that animal's belligerent temperament. Still, Buffalo Caller sometimes wondered if Antelope was not misled by Coyote, the trickster. Coyote was always up to mischief. He liked to play with men's minds and lead them into folly.
    Antelope's implied threat began to play upon the mind of Buffalo Caller. To reassure himself that the boy was all right he put his mount into a long trot, passing the rear guard and going around the massive herd of stolen horses and mules. The women and children rode near the head of the column, where they were considered safest from attack by the trailing Texans. He sought out Whippoorwill, the younger and prettier of his two wives, the one he had chosen to accompany him on this long journey. She carried the boy in front of her on a high-stepping sorrel mare taken from the Mexican traders at Victoria.
    "Is he all right?" he asked, though he could see no evidence to the contrary. The boy still wore his homespun clothes, now dirty and beginning to ravel from the stresses of traveling. He did not look Comanche, but the shirt and trousers would have to last until the band made its way back to the homeland. Then he could be put into something more suitable.
    "He does not understand anything I tell him," Whippoorwill said. "At times he talks, but they are not words I know."
    "He will learn soon enough to speak like a Comanche. Has Antelope said anything to you about him?"
    "This morning, as we broke camp. He said the spirits came to him in a dream and told him we should kill the red-hair before he brings death to us.
    "Watch out for him. Do not let him get close to the boy."
    "What if he is right? What if the red-hair is bad medicine?"
    "My spirits have told me no such thing. Antelope makes wind and thinks it is spirits speaking to him."
    Satisfied for the time being, he dismounted and let his horse graze the dry grass while he waited for the column to pass. Its movement was slow as a turtle's, he thought. He remembered his doubts when the council first decided to allow women and children to accompany this grand punitive excursion. Ordinarily it would be considered too dangerous, but so many warriors had massed together that the expedition seemed secure enough to allow such luxury. It was argued that the outnumbered whites would fall like dry leaves in an