The same bevy of young braves enclosed Isa-tai, their faces painted up to make them look like crisscrossing checkerboards. Steeldust Jack knew a war party when he saw one, knew that he was looking at an all-out clash between the Comanche and the forces of John D. Rockefeller, which would put to shame the ongoing battles being fought by the Frontier Battalion today.
“How many guns you got on hand?” he asked the young leader, whose coppery skin looked shiny in the sunlight.
“We won’t need guns.”
“Don’t talk that nature dung to me again, son. Wasn’t nature that killed those men in the hotel. I don’t know what it was, but I know it walked on two legs and came from this here reservation.”
Isa-tai backed off, the added distance between them slight but seeming much greater. “Get off our land, Ranger. When our enemies come, the land will deal with them.”
*
Two days later, Steeldust Jack was watching from a nearby cattle pen, leaning up against one of the fence posts, when the train carrying Rockefeller’s reinforcements arrived. The Houston and Texas Central had resumed construction on its lines after the Civil War, in 1867. The company built steadily northward, reaching Corsicana in 1871, Dallas in 1872, and the Red River in 1873. At the same time, the company began work on a spur that reached Austin on Christmas Day in 1871, creating boom times for the fledgling state capital.
The gunmen who emerged from that train seemed to form an endless wave, some still dressed in their Confederate uniforms, as if to remind passersby of their lineage and loyalty. They were met by Curly Bill Brocius, along with Rockefeller’s personal bodyguards, culled from Pinkerton’s agency of cutthroats and killers. Steeldust Jack wondered whether the country recognized this offshoot of violence spawned by the war’s aftermath—how a side effect of all that blood, bitterness, and fighting had been to create a dark underbelly of law-averse gunfighters who were used to killing with impunity and not needing to justify their actions, beyond the uniforms that they’d worn. Maybe that’s why a whole bunch still wore those uniforms, as if it gave them license to pursue the same violent predilections that had been spawned by their service and spurred further by the alienation that followed the defeat of the South.
He spotted Rockefeller standing a ways back in the company of more of his Pinkerton’s men, checking a pocket watch he’d pulled from his vest. Steeldust Jack approached right down the center of the day’s light, making no effort to appear either threatening or menacing.
“What can I do for you, Ranger?” Rockefeller asked, under the protective cover of his hired gunmen, as soon as he spotted Steeldust Jack.
“I was hoping you could hold off your men for a while, sir. Give me time to see if we can bring all this to a peaceful conclusion.”
“Broker a deal, in other words. What do you have in mind, given that time is of the essence?”
“I don’t have much right now, but I’m working up a couple of things,” Jack Strong lied, hoping to buy whatever time he could.
“You’ll have to be more specific than that.”
“Mr. Rockefeller, I’m just trying to avoid any more bloodshed here.”
“I appreciate your concern, Ranger, given that the only blood spilled so far belongs to men in my employ.”
“Maybe you’re forgetting those Indian boys who got dragged to death.”
Rockefeller’s features tightened, his head canting slightly to the side. “I hope you’re not suggesting, again, that was the work of anyone working for me. If you have any evidence or witnesses to the contrary, then let’s hear it.”
Steeldust Jack regarded the surly smirks cast by the Pinkerton’s men. “That reservation has plenty of women and children living on it, sir.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. Truly.”
The Ranger looked back toward the widening mass of gunmen still spilling off the just-arrived train. “I’m going back to that reservation to have one more go at this, peacefully.”
“I’ll give you the day, Ranger. We move come tomorrow.”
*
But Jack Strong found the Comanche reservation abandoned when he got there, not a soul in sight. Riding through that land felt like exploring a graveyard. There were no signs of life at all, including livestock. He’d ridden through ghost towns before, and had been witness to the aftermath of massacres at the hands of marauding Indians or Mexican bandits, where the bodies had been buried and the survivors had fled. This felt like neither of those. There was no residue, sense, or smell of death. No hopelessness to be found in tumbleweeds blowing about the abandoned settlement of buildings. The Comanche reservation was just … well …