Destiny, Texas

Page

PART I

H

AMISH

Chapter One

Somewhere along the Little Wichita River,

100 miles beyond the frontier, state of Texas, 1866

Gunn and I rode the lead oxen, him on the big gray, and me beside him with my scrawny legs dangling down either side of the motley-colored steer Papa called Speck. Gunn had his freckled nose wrinkled and his eyes squinted against the far horizon like he always did, as if he were more than twelve years old and leading the wagon train himself, as if he could look into all that distance before us and see something that I couldn’t. Gunn always thought he was bigger than he was, and maybe that was because Papa doted on him so.

It wasn’t really a wagon train at all: just Mama’s buggy, two wagons, a Mexican cart, two milk cows, on one tailgate a crate of fussy leghorn chickens that Mama insisted on bringing, and Gunn’s big yellow dog running in and out amongst us all.

Old Ben was driving Mama to one side and out of the dust, the brim of his big flop hat tugged down over his face, shading his bushy gray eyebrows against the glare of the sun. Ben was from back in the Alabama times. That’s how I was already thinking about what we’d left . . . other times . . . before Texas . . . back before the war and before Papa came home half-dead and found what the Yankees did while he was gone. Blackhearted Blue Bastards are what Papa called them. Burned the big white house he built, stole Mama’s silverware, broke her fine china, and carried off the split-rail fences for firewood. What they didn’t eat or steal, they burned or ruined out of pure spite.

Everything changes, and a man can’t stop it any more than he can stand in front of the wind and make it stop blowing. That’s what Mama said. What she said didn’t matter, because everybody cried some over our misfortune, except for Papa and Gunn. They never cried.

I looked behind us at the pale wagon tracks mashed into the spring grass and wildflowers until they faded and disappeared the way we had come, leading back to somewhere else, beyond some point of no return, to some other people that looked like us, our forgotten predecessors of a sort in a world we’d quit. Old things were fading and something new took their place. All around us there was nothing in sight that spoke of civilization and nothing to prove we might exist except those wagon tracks—just miles and miles of sky and nothing. You could see forever, like a promise or a threat. Nothing and everything, that was Texas for you.

I turned the other way and saw Papa riding back to us from the south. I knew it was him because nobody else sat a horse like that. And his horse was easy to spot, too—the same long-legged, harebrained Thoroughbred that used to carry him along the roads, trading cotton and seeing to the business of his plantation, and the same chestnut gelding that packed him along with General Forrest from Chickamauga to Brice’s Cross Roads, where he got shot in the left leg by a Blue Bastard minié ball. Nobody rode Shiloh. He was a one-man horse, even if Papa would have tolerated anybody else on his back.

Mama’s fussing and wants to make evening camp in the shade, I said to Papa when he rode alongside us.

Papa scowled for an instant at Mama’s buggy. She was fair skinned, wouldn’t be caught outside without a hat or bonnet, and was used to waiting out the heat of the day on her porch swing or under the high ceilings of the house we used to live in. But Papa knew her buggy would follow along behind him, no matter if he decided we were going to travel past sundown and all night if he wanted to. Old Ben never failed Papa, and Papa didn’t have to look behind him to know that Old Ben would be bringing Mama along. She could complain all she wanted about Papa’s hardheaded, Scotsman ways.

You boys get off of those oxen and get your rifles out of the wagon, Papa said. Hurry up now.

Gunn bailed right off and ran for his gun. Me, I hesitated and looked a question at Papa.

Do like I said. Papa’s expression made it plain that he wasn’t going to tell me again. Smoke to the south.

I noticed for the first time the sooty column of smoke mixing with the cotton-white clouds in the distance and didn’t ask any more questions. Smoke was bad. Things burned—things you missed. And then there were the Indians Old Ben had talked about all the time since we ferried our wagons across the Sabine River months and months ago. Indians were fierce; everyone said so.

Gunn was already inside the wagon and he handed me my gun. The Richmond musket was longer than I was, and I envied the short Maynard carbine that Papa had given my younger brother. It didn’t look near so outsized or so silly in his hands when he carried it back to Papa.

You men look to your weapons, Papa said to the four Mexicans he’d hired to come along with us. That smoke might be something or it might be nothing.

Papa passed Old Ben a look and nodded when he saw that the black man already had his double-barreled shotgun propped up against the buggy’s dashboard and the slab-sided Dance revolver that Papa had bought for him laid on his lap. Old Ben was a good shot, and there were those back before Texas that said Papa was mistaken to give a nigger a gun. But Papa took great pride in his own common sense and laughed at them and reminded us boys that a Scotsman must be practical above all, and that it made sense to give Old Ben a gun. Ben could be trusted, and from what we heard about the Texas frontier, I suppose Papa might have armed all his slaves if that Republican, Abraham Lincoln, hadn’t taken them away from him.

I wasn’t sure then exactly what a Republican was, but I knew they were as bad as those Blue Bastards. If you went to Texas you might get away from them, and Papa was dead set on that and making a new home for us. Once we got to Texas, men that he talked to along the trail said all the good cotton ground down south was taken. What’s more, a carpetbag (another word I aimed to find out about) governor and other radicals had beaten us to Texas. All bad things, but that didn’t stop Papa. He said we’d go farther west than anyone else. Maybe there wouldn’t be cotton ground there, but we would find other ways to make a living. No matter what, we would live like freemen and like a Dollarhyde should. I was young, but even then, I had an inkling of how stubborn we Dollarhydes were.

The rutted trail we followed left the prairie and entered a thick belt of low, scrubby oaks. Gunn and I walked to either side of the wagon, both of us eyeing the edge of the trail to either side of us. Indians might be anywhere, and Texans said they stole children if they didn’t cut out your guts and scalp you. Gunn and I had spent a great deal of time on imagining what terrible ways an Indian could hurt you. Mama made us quit if she heard us discussing Indian massacres. She said such talk would give us nightmares.

We soon came to another stretch of prairie barely visible through the timber ahead. The smoke climbing black into the sky was close by then, and Papa had us all stop and form up the wagons tight together. He put Mama, Baby Beth, and Juanita, José’s wife, inside one of the wagons, and the Mexican men stood guard around it. We didn’t know anything about Texas Indians at that time, or I don’t think Papa would have been so foolish as to think his arrangements might help anything.

You boys look out for your mother, Papa said while he waited for Old Ben to untie his saddle horse from the buggy and mount up.

We nodded fiercely but neither one of us had a clue. We just stood there and watched him and Ben ride off toward that smoke. The south breeze couldn’t find its way through that thicket, and it was as hot as the dickens. The flies were bad and making the stock restless, the Mexicans looked nervous under their big hats, Baby Beth was crying inside the wagon, and neither Gunn nor I could see a thing of what had everyone so worried. Neither of us spoke Spanish, so we had a fair excuse when we took off after Papa, ignoring whatever orders or warnings those Mexicans were calling after us.

We knelt at the edge of the oak thicket, where we had a good view of the far prairie. There was about a mile of nothing but grass and prickly pears between where we were and where the river made a bend to the south. Not far from the riverbank were the ruins of some kind of settlement. Smoke was pouring from it, and at such a distance, the black silhouettes of what was left of the buildings looked charred.

The wind picked up hard enough to bend the grass, and a couple of white wagon tops down there stood out, billowing and snapping against their bow frames. I couldn’t see anybody moving among the wagons, but the wind kept blowing the smoke across everything and made it hard to see. One thing was for sure. A ways out from those wagons, little stick figures of men on horseback were trotting back and forth. Occasionally they shouted or made strange, shrill cries, but nobody answered them.

Indians, Gunn said.

I glanced at him, seeing how he had his carbine ready, and that his hands weren’t shaking like mine. It would be like him to notice that, too, and remind me of it later.

Comanche or Kiowa, I guess, I said.

How do you know?

Because I’m smarter than you.

I might not shoot like Gunn, or get my pocketknife as sharp as he could, or decipher a deer’s track from a hog’s, but I read a sight more than he did. Hamish the reader, the bookish one, that was me. Papa was always on me to put down my books and quit lazing about and do something, but hadn’t I been the only one to read Mr. Irving’s book about what we could expect on the prairies? Gunn never read anything.

See there, Gunn said with a quaver to his voice. Papa’s getting ready to fight.

Indeed, Papa had pulled up a couple of hundred yards from the besieged emigrants in those ruins. He was off his horse and kneeling with only his upper body sticking up out of the grass and his Sharps to his shoulder. Old Ben was dismounted, too, holding both horses by their bridle reins behind Papa.

Man on foot can shoot steadier, Gunn added, like he had ever fought an Indian in his life.

Papa doesn’t have but one shot, and there looks to be a half dozen of them.

Papa ain’t scared.

No, Papa probably wasn’t, but I was. And Gunn would have been, too, if he weren’t such a fool for any kind of trouble.

The stick Indians finally noticed Papa, and after more milling around, they started toward him. I wanted to call out for him to run back to the timber, but the words wouldn’t come.

The warriors came on in a wide skirmish line until I could make out the bright paint on their horses and on their own, burned-brown hides—strange hieroglyphics in blues and whites and yellows and reds. Their horses’ legs surged through the waving grass, and the faint tinkling of the little hawk bells some of those braves had braided into their horses’ manes barely reached my ears over the wind. Feathers, scalp locks, buffalo tails, and other trinkets dangled from the edges of their shields or from their weapons.

I’ve heard a lot of people, so-called pioneers, try and describe various plains tribes’ war cries, but none of those imitations did the real thing justice—not even close. The shrill cries and whoops coming from those Indians made my bladder spasm, and all I wanted was to run or pee.

Savages, Gunn said with awe in his voice, and more than a hint of admiration.

Papa waited and he waited, until one warrior fired off an old trade musket. The powder smoke from that musket hadn’t even blown away when Papa shot him off his pony. That was the first man I ever saw killed.

Chapter Two

One of the Kiowa—for that’s what they were—pulled up to gather his downed comrade while the rest of them kicked their horses to a run and came on. Papa never took his eyes off them while he set down the empty Sharps and stretched out an arm and an open palm behind him. The saddle horses were spooked from the gunshots, but Ben held on to them and handed Papa the shotgun. Papa leveled the 10-gauge and waited some more while those Kiowa came on through the grass.

The charging warriors split into two bunches a long rock’s throw in front of Papa and passed to either side of him at a dead run, hiding behind their buffalo hide shields and hanging from the off side of their horses. Papa held his fire, unwilling to be baited into wasting his last rounds. Most guns back then didn’t reload near quick enough. Maybe one of those Blue Bastard Spencers or Henry repeaters, but not a breechloader like Papa’s Sharps. And especially not that old double-barreled shotgun Old Ben handed him.

Old Ben popped off a couple of shots with his Dance revolver, but missed, the frightened horses jerking him around too much to take good aim. The Kiowas’ momentum carried them well past him and Papa, and they were almost to where Gunn and I waited by the time they pulled up to turn for another go. One of the Kiowa was having trouble with his horse, and it reared right in front of where we hunkered in the thicket. I heard the sound of Gunn’s carbine cocking several seconds before it dawned on me what he was about to do. None of those Indians had a clue that we were so close to them, and I started to whisper to Gunn not to shoot right before he did.

That Maynard gun cracked and the Kiowa on the rearing horse tumbled off its back before the animal’s front hooves even hit the ground—as if it had thrown him for a tumble, instead of Gunn’s bullet boring a hole through his rib cage.

The remaining warriors turned to face the timber, and I rested that Richmond musket on an oak limb and eared its hammer back to full cock. Gunn was cussing like a grown man, and out of the corner of my eye I saw that he had his Maynard tipped open and was trying to find another cartridge and primer in his belt pouch. Two arrows hissed between us and rattled off the tree limbs, but that only made Gunn cuss worse—words that I didn’t even know he knew. Papa didn’t have anything on Gunn when it came to cussing.

I couldn’t keep any of the Kiowa in my gun sights. They were milling and moving too fast, and my Richmond gun was too big and awkward for me to handle like I should. Something hit the tree trunk I was hiding behind, and flying bark and I don’t know what else struck me full in the face. Guns began going off behind us, and our Mexican teamsters were coming through the brush to help us by the time I could see anything again.

The Kiowa were caught between us and Papa and Old Ben and not liking it any. My eyes were still watering too badly to take aim and I never fired a shot. By the time Papa and Old Ben rode up, the Kiowa were retreating across the prairie, joined in the distance by the other one who had stopped to pick up the warrior Papa had killed.

Papa and Old Ben took some time looking me over to make sure that I hadn’t been shot in the eye, and then some more time chewing out the Mexicans for leaving Mama alone in the thicket. Those two delays were an opportunity and excuse for Gunn to slip off. He was out in the grass by the time we spotted him.

Gunn was staring at the body when I walked up. The flies were already buzzing around where the dead Kiowa lay bent and crooked in the bloodstained grass. He would have been as tall as Papa if somebody had straightened him out.

It’s all right, Gunn, I said. You did what you had to.

The Kiowa’s face wouldn’t let me look away. A fly crawled across one of his eyes, yet it remained wide open and unblinking. The dead warrior was all but naked except for a red strip of wool cloth covering his privates, and that breechclout was soaked were the Kiowa had spilled his bladder. The bits of gray intestine around the ugly bullet hole stood out starkly against his brown skin. The fly and the smell of guts and urine made me want to puke.

Papa and Old Ben rode up.

From the look of you, I’m taking it that it was your shot that got him, Papa said.

Gunn nodded and looked away from the body.

It’s a hard thing there, especially as young as you are, and I hate it for you. But if it helps, that Indian would have done worse to you and yours.

I think it was Papa mentioning Gunn’s age that made Gunn say what he said next. He took it in mind to prove some point to us.

Somebody let me borrow their knife, Gunn said.

Whatcha want a knife for, young ’un? Old Ben asked.

Gunn looked at him like he was daft. I guess I ought to scalp him.

You’re going to what? Papa asked, spurring his nervous horse to keep it close to the body.

Gunn clenched his lower lip in his teeth and stared defiantly at Papa with his bony chest puffed out, although his jaw trembled a little bit. I think he realized his big talk had backed him into a corner, but wasn’t going to quit what he started and lose face.

You was raised better than that, Old Ben said. Civilized folks don’t scalp people. No, they don’t.

Texicans do, Gunn said. Man I talked to back in Fort Worth showed me his scalps. Every real Indian fighter has some.

A man you talked to? Papa asked.

Said he was a Texas Ranger. Had two pistols and a knife as long as that. Gunn held his hands wide apart to approximate a very, very large knife—one of those downscaled swords Texans called a Bowie, and good for anything from splitting wood and skinning buffalo to lopping off people’s limbs. Texans are high on utilitarian, versatile weapons.

Quit that foolish talk, Papa said.

Gunn had been avoiding looking at the dead Kiowa since I first walked up, but he had another glance and spotted the sheath knife in the Kiowa’s belt. He took a deep breath, and then jerked it free with a quick tug.

Papa had used up the last of his patience, and I thought he was on the verge of snatching Gunn up and giving him what Old Ben called the what for.

The Indians need to know not to mess with us, Gunn said, oblivious to the limit he had pushed Papa to, or not caring. They would see the scalp and know that this is Dollarhyde country. Not theirs.

Dollarhyde country?

Our country, Gunn said.

Where does he get this stuff? Papa asked Old Ben with a little less frustration in his voice.

Old Ben shrugged and the two of them shared a look.

Killing isn’t something to be proud of, nor to be taken lightly, Papa said.

Are we going to bury him, Papa? I asked.

That Indian’s long past caring. Burying him or all the ceremony in the world won’t make it any different, Papa said. We’d best get the wagons to where those folks out there are holed up. They might need our help, and we can fort up with them if need be. More of those Indians are liable to come back for the body and catch us out here in the open.

I hear they never leave one of their fallen after a fight if they can help it, Old Ben said.

You two boys get yourselves back to the wagons, Papa said. I’m about half a mind to tan you both for not staying where I put you.

Papa was done talking and already riding away, and even Gunn wasn’t so stubborn as not to know what would happen if he argued anymore and didn’t do as he was told. He threw one last glance at the dead Kiowa. Tough, maybe, but I noticed he gagged when he looked, and quickly turned his back on the sight.

I bet you wish you had shot that Kioway, Gunn said to me as we followed behind Papa and Old Ben.

I didn’t egg him on by answering him. What he wanted was to argue more.

I’m going to be the best Indian fighter in Texas, he added. You watch and see.

You’d better put that Kiowa knife away before Mama sees it, I said. She’s going to be mad enough at Papa for leaving her in the brush.

He gave me another one of his defiant looks, but tucked the knife into his belt behind his back. You’re just jealous.

Why don’t you shut up?

You don’t think I would have scalped that Indian, do you?

I wouldn’t put anything past you.

I can whip you any day. He shouldered into me and gained two steps on me while I regained my balance. You know it.

Papa was looking over his shoulder at us, so I kept quiet.

You may be older, but I can still whip you, Gunn said after a bit.

Okay, you’re the toughest.

I’m going to be tougher than even Papa someday.

Maybe, but I’m going to be smarter than both of you.

You might be, at that. I wouldn’t put it past you. Gunn found his hat where he had lost it at the edge of the woods. He picked it up and dusted it off and twirled it around in his hands. I could tell he was still thinking something over.

I wouldn’t have scalped that Indian, he finally said. Not really. I was joshing.

I know it.

Never thought it would feel like that. Didn’t feel like that when I pulled the trigger, he said. You know when you’re all excited and shoot a rabbit and then you walk up to it and feel kind of bad?

Yeah.

It was like that, only way worse, he said. Papa shot one. You think he feels the same? He shot lots of men in the war.

Papa never talked about the war, and Mama said not to ask him. All the other boys back in Alabama bragged about what their fathers did in the war, but the only things we knew about Papa’s service were bits and pieces we overhead from grown-ups when they didn’t know we were around. Old Ben wouldn’t even tell us anything, and said Papa had done things he wanted to forget. Him saying that only made us more curious.

Try not to think on it and remember if we hadn’t come to help, those Indians might have got him and Old Ben, I said.

You weren’t the one that shot him.

Come on, you two, Papa called back to us. And don’t tell your mother that you were in the middle of that fight. She’s most likely to find out anyway, but don’t you say anything.

Papa put his horse to a trot, and I picked up my pace. I didn’t want to miss what Mama had to say to him when he got back to the wagons, especially when she found out he had taken her boys into an Indian fight. Papa was right. You couldn’t hide much from Mama.

Wouldn’t you know it, but Gunn slipped off again. I was almost back to the wagons before he caught up to me. He was leading a blue roan Kiowa pony and smiling like he was the king of England. I compared the way he had looked only a bit before to the way he looked then, and it was like two different people. He was always moody and changed like the weather.

My horse, he said.

I didn’t argue any. I was too busy trying to hear what Papa and Old Ben were saying.

Dollarhyde country, Papa said.

That boy’s something else. Kind of reminds me of you at times, Old Ben answered. No offense meant.

None taken, Papa said. Dollarhyde country. That boy worries me, but I kind of like the sound of that.

Chapter Three

The emigrants were waiting for us behind their wagons or hidden in the ruins of the old settlement. Many of them were black with soot where they had been fighting to put out the fire in one of the half-collapsed buildings near their wagons. There were better than twenty of them: five men, their women, and a whole lot of big-eyed, snotty kids peeking out from behind them. They must have been unsure who we were, for it took Papa two shouts to get them to come out and talk to him.

Thank the Lord for hearing our prayers, the oldest of the men said in a crackling voice when he walked up to Papa’s horse. He was tall and thin and his hatless, his bald head was sunburned and spotted with peeling blisters. Welcome.

Papa looked over the group a long time without speaking while he studied the remains of the settlement on either side of an overgrown, short stretch of street. There had once been ten or so buildings lining that street, but most of them had been burned to the ground years before. Only two shelters could be termed to be still standing. One of them was nothing more than some rickety log walls with a portion of caved-in roof hanging over it, still smoldering from the day’s Indian raid, and the other was a half-completed sod structure those emigrants had been working on. Some charred, salvaged lumber was piled alongside it, as well as a stack of fresh-cut sod bricks and a moldboard plow.

Last, Papa’s eyes landed on a brand-new sign nailed to a post beside the old man. D

ESTINY

, T

EXAS

was painted on it in wavy, unsteady red letters.

People back down the trail never mentioned a place by this name, Papa finally said.

It wasn’t what it was called before the war, the old man answered. I mean, before all the people left it to the Indians.

Looks like you’re aiming to rebuild this town, Papa said.

We were, indeed, the old man said. A new name for a reborn place.

Were? Changing your mind?

We’re rethinking things. Praying on it. I don’t know if God intended for men to live out here.

Is this all of you?

The old man turned to his people to pass somber looks between them, and then shook his head. No, Brother Ezekiel and Brother George are out there on the prairie where they went to greet those Indians. Sister Josey, George’s woman, went crazy when she saw what they did to George and took two arrows before we could drag her back.

Mind if we camp here for the night? Papa asked. Could be, those Indians will come back.

The old man acted as if he didn’t understand. But then again, it could have been the sun in his eyes. The Texas sun was hard on a man without the good sense to wear a hat.

We formed our wagons up in a square against the front wall of the dilapidated log building after we put out the smoldering parts with handfuls of dirt, and Papa built a fire inside the log walls and under where the roof was missing. Mama sat in the shade, fussing over my baby sister while the wife of one of the Mexicans, Juanita was her name, started cooking us some supper. Juanita was young and pretty, but I soon tired of watching her and went to double-check that I had tied the horses securely, as Papa would hide me good if one of them got loose.

Papa was leaning against a wagon tailgate, puffing on his pipe and staring at those emigrants over by their own wagons. They were sitting in a circle on the ground, facing one another. Some of them were reading from Bibles, some of them had their heads bowed, and occasionally one of them would break into a hymn or quote some scripture.

What kind of people are those? I asked. I’ve never seen church held like that.

Quakers, Papa said. Call themselves Friends, or some such like that. Gentlefolk.

Papa, why would gentlefolk come out here?

Looking for a place they fit, I guess.

They don’t look like they fit.

Papa tapped his pipe on the heel of his palm to knock out the ashes and nodded at me. No, they don’t look it. My impression of this country is that it’s going to require a scrapper.

Mama says it’s going to be hard out here. Living, I mean.

Don’t let things vex you. You’re bad to be thinking instead of doing.

I was about to ask Papa more, but he was already looking over my shoulder at something else. I turned around and saw that Gunn was trying to get