Afoot on the Staked Plains
The man cut a Comanche arrow out of the mule’s flank after the fight at the tanks, but the festering wound would not knit.
Crossing the rain-swollen Nueces, the mule died under him and dumped his possibles into the churning red water.
He’d felt the animal falter as he spurred it down the bank, so he wasn’t surprised and managed to leap from the saddle, snatch up his powder and shot from the tree while he pulled his Walker Colt from his waistband. He waded ashore holding them aloft like holy relics.
But the man was afoot and it wasn’t two days before the half-breed Quanah and his band ran him down.
He managed to kill four of them before the Colt misfired. By then it was over.
The man spoke enough Comanche to understand what they had mind.
There was no comfort in this knowledge.