Winter Rain

“If they come onto the ground this company of Rangers is sworn to protect,” Coffee said, his voice low, laden with resolve, “by God they’ll have to come through a narrow door in the caprock less’n three mile wide.”

Jonah followed where the Ranger pointed, Coffee’s arm extended toward the last rose tint to the twilit sky. Against the pale pink of that aging sunset stood the rising bulk of the caprock that surrounded the immensity of the Staked Plain, swathed boldly in black as all light drained from day. Back to the east a few first stars blinked on. But here, looking toward the west and all that wild, open country ruled by the red lords of these southern plains—it was the raw, ragged edge of the earth itself thrown against the far sky.

Where they were heading, the ground itself seemed to swallow the heavens in huge, hungry, ripping gulps.

As long as he had been out here in this country, riding with these men—never before had Jonah ever experienced such a feeling staring at all that jagged, savage immensity. A land every bit as big as the sky itself. And someplace in that primitive, ragged country, these men seemed cocksure of waiting out the Comanche, of being there in the right place when the Kwahadi up and decided to move out with the break in the winter weather.

Lockhart had them up and scrubbing leather before sunrise, after coffee and a breakfast of what leavings they could find among the skillets from last night’s feast. Niles Coffee said they’d make the White River portal by nightfall if they humped it and got high behind. And with the way the captain let his big gelding have his head, Company C had their tails high behind and covering ground.

“This is real country for a real man, Jonah Hook,” Johns said to him that morning not long after sunrise. “A land for a man who loves nature and all God’s finest handiworks. Bet you’ve seen some tall mountains out where you been.”

“I have, that.”

“They must be something, Jonah,” he replied in imagined awe. “But nothing could possible compare with the savage beauty of what God Himself has took up and made for the critters out here,” Deacon Johns said, admiration closing on reverence in his voice as he gazed side to side. “Hill and valley and canyon teeming with deer and buffalo and turkey and antelope. Streams so full of fish, we don’t have to use a line—only that seine the captain carries along. Bear caves and bee trees—Lord, what bee country this is! Why, in the spring a man can ride for near three hundred miles on a solid bed of flowers the color of the rainbow.”

Jonah replied, “And for generations it belonged to these here Comanche.”

Johns squared his eyes at Hook, his face souring a bit as he answered. “Yep. It did belong to them. But God Almighty Himself set the way of nature when He created this world in six days, Jonah Hook. God Himself made it the first law of nature that in the wilds the strong shall always hold sway over the weak.”

“So these Comanche are about to find out which of us is stronger?”

The deacon nodded. “It’s the way of nature. The way of all things under God’s own heaven. They submit and move aside of the progress of white Christian civilization—or we’ll crush ’em underfoot on our way past.”

“Praise God, eh?”

Johns drew himself up and replied, “Praise God for making things right in His world, Jonah. His world. Not man’s. This is God’s world, and it’s herein He reigns.”

That evening when Lockhart brought them to a halt in the first cold caress of winter’s darkness after the sun had fallen, he explained that this was likely to be their last night together as a company for some time to come. They had permission to build fires for boiling coffee, but only if those fires were set at the bottom of pits scooped out of the hard, flinty ground. The captain did not have to waste his breath explaining that the light from any fire was likely to travel a great distance in country such as this.

Sergeant Coffee mustered out his three watches, then sent out the first after the men had picketed and sidelined mounts. Then the camp fell quiet as the rest lay down two by two to share body warmth and their scant issue of blankets. Above them lacy silver clouds scudded across the growing moon. Jonah figured it would reach full plug in something less than two weeks. And then they could count on the Comanche moving.

If they weren’t already.

Their breath came frosty, the hairs of his mustache and beard matted icy film that next morning as the captain stood them to inspection and broke them into squads in that predawn darkness. Four, each with one of those who had long served with Lockhart, to act as squad leader.