The Bandera Trail Read online

  THUNDEROUS APPLAUSE FOR RALPH COMPTON’S TRAIL DRIVE SERIES:

  “The beautiful covers will lure you in, the reasonable price will convince you, then the exciting story will keep you turning pages long after you should have turned out the light.”

  —Nashville Banner

  “Texas history buffs will relish these hard-hitting tales about maverick longhorn cattle, Texas rangers, the battles between the Comanches and the white man, and the fierce struggle to tame the harsh land.”

  —Times Record News

  “Compton weaves a fast-paced tale checkered with colorful—but clean—language. This is one book you can ‘gift’ to your husband, son, dad, granddad or brother without worrying that he’ll find part of it offensive.”

  —Quanah Tribune Chief

  “The fighting tactics, the role of weather in a trail drive, and the general historical context are right on for the millions of readers who still lasso a Western novel for bedtime campfire reading.”

  —Birmingham News

  “THE GOODNIGHT TRAIL runs true to the times and is a charming book as well as a fascinating piece of writing of the trail drives. Ralph Compton is to be commended.”

  —Miss Lena Louise Goodnight

  POWDER KEG

  The Texans kicked their horses into a run, but they were already too late. A galloping horse had passed through the herd, and was among the longhorns. There was no rider. The running horse trailed a lariat, dragging the hide of a freshly-killed cougar. There was the cougar scent and the smell of blood, and it had the effect of touching flame to a keg of powder. If the devil himself had taken a hand, the timing couldn’t have been more diabolically perfect. The longhorns were off and running, just in time for the horse herd to mingle with them.

  It wasn’t a stampede, but an explosion, something out of a cowboy’s nightmare. There was no pattern, no direction. The herds split seven ways from Sunday, and nothing would stop them till they ran out their fear.

  “My God,” Van groaned, “we won’t live enough years to round up all these brutes.”

  “I don’t aim to hunt for a one of ’em,” said Gil, “until we round up that bunch of yellow-bellied coyotes responsible for this. And if they’re hidin’ behind Santa Anna, then maybe I’ll end this scrap with Mexico myself!”

  St. Martin’s Paperbacks Titles by Ralph Compton

  THE TRAIL DRIVE SERIES

  THE GOODNIGHT TRAIL

  THE WESTERN TRAIL

  THE CHISHOLM TRAIL

  THE BANDERA TRAIL

  THE CALIFORNIA TRAIL

  THE SHAWNEE TRAIL

  THE VIRGINIA CITY TRAIL

  THE DODGE CITY TRAIL

  THE OREGON TRAIL

  THE SANTA FE TRAIL

  THE DEADWOOD TRAIL

  THE OLD SPANISH TRAIL

  THE GREEN RIVER TRAIL

  THE SUNDOWN RIDERS SERIES

  NORTH TO THE BITTERROOT

  ACROSS THE RIO COLORADO

  THE WINCHESTER RUN

  THE BANDERA TRAIL

  Ralph Compton

  In Memory of Rosa Faye Compton

  1936–1993

  CONTENTS

  AUTHOR’S FOREWORD

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  EPILOGUE

  AUTHOR’S FOREWORD

  Spanish explorers found little about Texas to excite them. There was no gold or silver north of the Rio Grande. In fact, there was no abundance of anything, except grazing land, and there was a blessed plenty of that in Mexico. Why spend more money for soldiers, missions, and padres in a vain attempt to civilize hostile Indians who had no desire to become civilized? The missions soon crumbled, and the Franciscan padres are a memory, but they left a legacy that may have changed the course of history in Texas and the American southwest. For it was the padres, forever struggling to support their missions, who became the first cattle ranchers.

  Having little interest in Texas, the Spanish Crown wasn’t opposed to offering land grants to Americans willing to colonize the territory. Moses Austin, born in Connecticut but more recently from Missouri, sought and received permission from Spanish authorities to settle Americans in Texas. But Mexico declared its independence from Spain, and the newly arrived American colonists found their land grants worthless. Even as he sought an agreement with the new government, Moses Austin took sick and died. His son Stephen, then twenty-seven, had been studying law in New Orleans. Young Stephen took up his father’s fight on behalf of the hapless colony, and after many months in Mexico City, persuaded the Mexican government to recognize the grants the Spanish had promised his father. In 1825 the Mexican government passed an immigration law, and for ten years Stephen Austin managed the colony his father had begun.

  By the thousands, Americans came to Texas, all seeking a fresh start. A few were from the north, but most of them were southerners. There was unrest in the states. There had been a war in 1812, a panic in 1819, and an unpopular Land Law had been passed in 1820. In the United States the law demanded payment of $1.25 an acre—in cash—for a minimum of eighty acres. In Texas, not only was the land almost free for the asking, but in grants of such proportions that a man might build an empire. A farmer could secure 277 acres, but if he intended to raise stock as well, he became eligible for an additional 4338 acres! Most of the colonists, being southerners, intended to become cattlemen, and so received a maximum grant of 4615 acres. Austin had chosen the land wisely. The grants on which his American colony settled—millions of acres—lay along the Brazos and Colorado rivers. Eventually Austin’s colony consisted of 297 families, and until 1836 they lived peacefully as Mexican citizens. Then came the bloody battle of the Alamo, and every man north of the Rio Grande became a Texan.

  The cattle in Texas had been left there by the Spanish, but weren’t very numerous. Many of the American colonists, taking the larger land grant and promising to raise cattle, had not done so. Unlike much of the West, the fertile land along the Brazos and the Colorado was as suited to farming as it was to ranching. Most of the new “ranchers” raised only enough beef for their own needs, and the Spanish longhorns continued to run wild. The cattle drifted south, across the Rio Grande, and back into the thickets of Mexico. Herds of wild horses that had once roamed the plains soon followed. The Republic of Texas had become too civilized for them.

  After Mexico’s stunning defeat at San Jacinto, Texans entering Mexico—for any reason—did so at the risk of their lives. By 1840 there was only a few thousand wild longhorns north of the Rio Grande, and many of these were diehard old range bulls. There were few cows, and the natural increase was small. Ironically, the millions of wild longhorns in Mexico were viewed as virtually worthless, except for their hide and tallow, and the select fighting bulls chosen for the arena. It would be twenty-five years—in the aftermath of the American Civil War—before wild longhorns would be plentiful in the thickets and chaparral north of the Rio Grande.

  PROLOGUE

  With some urging from their uncle Stephen, Gilbert and Vandiver Austin came to Texas in the fall of 1833, applying for and receiving Mexican land grant
s as part of Stephen Austin’s American colony. Austin had originally been assigned a grant of 67,000 acres for his efforts in establishing the American colony, and he arranged for Gil and Van to receive grants adjoining his own. Following Stephen Austin’s untimely death in 1836, Gil and Van became heirs to their uncle’s original grant. Added to their own lands, their holdings became a veritable empire, stretching eastward from the Bandera Mountains to beyond the Colorado River.

  The Austin brothers had arrived in Texas when Gil was barely nineteen, and Van a year younger. With them came their fiddle-footed friend, twenty-one-year-old Clay Duval. Clay had steadfastly refused to file for a grant of his own, preferring to throw in with Gil and Van.

  “That’s an almighty lot of land to be responsible for,” he had said, “and I ain’t one to make a promise I ain’t sure I can keep.”

  In his rough-out cowman’s boots and sweat-stained black Stetson, Clay Duval was but an inch or two shy of seven feet. Shaggy brown hair curled from beneath his hat brim, and his brown eyes were flecked with green. His craggy face and neck were the hue of an old saddle. Faded blue homespun shirt and trousers completed his attire.

  Gil and Van Austin were as tall as Clay, but towheaded and blue-eyed. Their pinch-creased Stetsons had once been gray. Like Clay’s, their cowman’s boots were rough-out, their trousers worn at the seat and knees, and their old shirts faded almost white by the Texas sun. On his right hip each of the men carried a tied-down, .44-caliber five-shot Colt revolver.

  While Gil and Van Austin had land in plenty, they were woefully short on livestock. Many of the longhorns abandoned by the Spanish had drifted far south, into the wilds of Mexico. Most of the stock that remained in Texas had been claimed by Americans who had begun settling in the colony as early as 1822. Taking their grants in the fall of 1833, Gil and Van Austin quickly discovered the shortage of cattle and horses. Relations between Mexico and the Republic of Texas worsened, terminating in April 1836 with the bloody battle at the Alamo. A month later, at San Jacinto, the Texans took their revenge. For a dozen years the wild longhorns and the broomtails that roamed the plains south of the border would be more of a risk than most Texans would be willing to take.

  December 29, 1840. Bandera range, Republic of Texas.

  “We need horses and cattle,” said Clay Duval, “and Mexico’s the place to get ’em.”

  “Maybe,” said Van Austin, “but this purely ain’t the time for a gringo to ride south. Not with Santa Anna’s army on the prod.”

  “I’d have to agree with him, Clay,” said Gil. “That Mex army’s unpredictable enough, but there’s bandits and hostile Indians too. Any of the bunch would consider it a privilege to kill a Texan. Every horse and cow south of the Rio wouldn’t be worth that.”

  “I ain’t riskin’ anybody’s hide but my own,” said Clay stubbornly. “I aim to ride down to the Mendoza ranch, south of Durango. I’ll hide by day and ride by night. If we’re goin’ to have horses, why not blooded animals? I’ll have enough gold in my saddlebag to afford at least one of them Mendoza hotbloods. Ridin’ at night, if I can’t bring one cayuse out of Mexico on a lead rope, I’m a damn poor excuse for a Texan.”

  “I reckon,” Gil chuckled, “but do you aim to bring a herd of Spanish longhorns out on a lead rope too?”

  The lanky Clay grinned. “Only if you and Van meet me at the river. I’m bettin’ we can get a herd dirt-cheap. Mexico’s cow-poor. All a Mex cares about is fighting bulls for the ring.”

  “They’d have to be dirt-cheap,” said Van. “We’re land-rich, but money-poor. But it won’t matter if the cows are free, if we can’t get ’em out of Mexico.”

  “We’ll make that part of the deal,” said Clay. “The Mex rancher gets paid when he drives the longhorns across the river.”

  “I’ll believe that when I see it,” said Gil. “After San Jacinto, you think the Mex government’s goin’ to allow any dealin’ between us and the Mex ranchers? Santa Anna would gut-shoot his own mother if he caught her just lookin’ slanch-eyed at a Texan.”

  But Clay Duval was determined to ride to Mexico, whatever the danger. Clay was the restless one. The three friends had joined Sam Houston’s army for the fight at San Jacinto. It had been a decisive battle, but when Gil and Van had withdrawn to return to their Bandera range, Clay almost hadn’t gone with them.

  December 31, 1840, Clay Duval saddled his big black and rode south. Gil and Van Austin shook his hand and wished him luck, keeping their misgivings to themselves. Privately, they doubted they’d ever see their friend again. Alive, anyway.

  For five months Gil and Van didn’t know if Clay was alive or dead. When they were all but certain of the latter, they got word from him. The letter was dated April 1, 1841, and it had arrived on May 4. Gil read the single page and passed it to Van. He read it, read it again, and then looked at his brother in disbelief.

  “He wrote that on April first,” said Van, “so he’s got to be April foolin’ us. I purely can’t see old fiddle-foot Clay takin’ on the responsibility of a ranch. Not when it means stayin’ in Mexico, with a she-male ramrod tellin’ him what to do and when to do it.”

  “Why not?” Gil chuckled. “Old Mendoza’s cashed in, leavin’ his missus with a million acres, a couple hundred head of blooded horses, and God knows how many longhorn cows. A man could do a hell of a lot worse. What don’t seem right is, I can’t picture Clay Duval doin’ anything that sensible. With a name like Victoria, I’ll bet the Senora Mendoza’s the handsomest woman in all of Mexico.”

  “Don’t bet the ranch on it,” said Van. “With a stable of fancy blooded horses, she could be ugly enough to stop an eight-day clock and Clay Duval wouldn’t care.”

  The next letter Gil and Van received from Clay Duval arrived on December 5, 1842. Again it consisted of a single page, painfully brief. It was a plea for help, offering no explanation.

  “He ain’t askin’ much, is he?” said Van. “All we got to do is help him drive two hundred horses and five thousand longhorn cows through eight hundred miles of hostile Injuns, outlaws, and Mex soldiers.”

  “Don’t forget Victoria and Angelina,” said Gil. “He aims to bring them along too.”

  “Who in hell’s Angelina? On top of everything else, you reckon old Clay’s went stomp-down, hog-wild crazy and become a daddy?”

  “Wouldn’t surprise me none,” said Gil. “With Clay’s luck, them females will be ridin’ sidesaddle and carryin’ parasols.”

  “Or maybe ridin’ in a buckboard, drivin’ a matched team,” said Van. “I flat don’t like the sound of this, Gil, and I ain’t sure I’d want to be a party to it.”

  “You look after the spread, then,” said Gil, “and I’ll see what I can do. I’m with you, when it comes to not likin’ the sound of any of this, but Clay’s countin’ on us. I get the feelin’ that if there was any other way, he wouldn’t be askin’ for our help.”

  “Ah, hell,” groaned Van, “I’ll have to go, for the same reason you are. That’s the trouble with bein’ a Texan. It’s less painful gettin’ shot dead with your friends than bein’ sensible, stayin’ behind, and feelin’ guilty. But if we’re both goin’, who’s goin’ to look after our spread? God knows, we got little enough to look after, besides the land, but we may be gone awhile.”

  “There’s them three hombres that’s been ridin’ around lookin’ for work,” said Gil. “All we can offer is grub and a place to bunk, but that’s more’n they got now.”

  “They’re likely on the dodge,” said Van. “I’d bet my part of the spread they’re wanted in the states. You reckon we can trust ’em?”

  “I’d trust them before I’d trust the rest of these jacks,” said Gil. “I won’t forget how they all but starved Uncle Steve to death, refusing to pay him the twelve cents an acre he was entitled to for securing their grants.”

  “You’re right, brother,” said Van. “Let’s go find those outlaws, and see can we strike a deal.”

  1

  December 10, 1842
. San Antonio, Republic of Texas. Gil and Van found the trio they were seeking, not far from the ruins of the Alamo, in a dirt-floor saloon. The three were conspicuous because it was a time when there were few unoccupied men in the territory. Most of those owning land grants were simply trying to survive, while others—especially the young men—had joined the militia and were clamoring for a fight with Mexico. Although it was broad daylight outside, the saloon was dark. The only light was a single guttering candle, its own wax holding it upright on a makeshift bar. There were no chairs. The tables were long X-frames, made of rough boards. The bench on each side was another rough plank, each end of which was pegged to the table’s X-frame. Two of the wanderers sat with their backs to the door. The third man sat on the other side of the crude table, his back to the wall, and it was he who answered Gil’s question.

  “Yeah,” he said, “we’d hire on fer a spell. Long as ye ain’t askin’ fer references.”

  His companions laughed. Gil said nothing. The stranger took that for agreement, and got to his feet. He was a gangling scarecrow of a man, seven feet tall without his hat. When the other two men stood up, the contrast was startling. The trio followed Gil and Van outside, and although there was a crude bench at the front of the saloon, none of them sat. They stood facing one another. The tall man spoke.

  “Th’ scrawny jaybird, here, is Shorty. T’other, with th’ bug eyes, is Banjo. Me, I’m Long John Coons. An’ see that ye keep it plural. First man calls me ‘coon,’ I’ll gut him.”