CHAPTER 5

COLORADO RIVER VALLEY, 1850 - 1861

 

For the first and only time in his life, Orville knew joy and happiness. Susie and he worked hard together on the ranch and the pasturelands were verdant. In l85l a daughter was born, and a year later came a son. The power of love calmed Orville's restless, contentious spirit and he all but forgot Jed Catlow. Orville Miller was completely content.

Every autumn the trail drives came through the nearby grassland of the valley and, in rare quiet moments, he would sit on the porch and watch at a distance the drovers at their work as they herded their steers up the Shawnee Trail. An unspoken yearning stirred in him as he heard the lowing of the distant cattle herds on the Trail.

As the herds grew in size they began to encroach on the settlers' land, and Orville joined with the other ranchers in what became a constant fight to keep their land in the face of money offers to sell out from the bigger ranchers. Orville had no wish or intention ever to leave the Colorado River Valley - his parents' graves were there and they had died trying to defend the property he now occupied. The Shermans were nearby, and they delighted in visiting their grandchildren. The Apache threat receded as the tribes moved on and the area was heavily patrolled by the Union Army.

In 1858 Abilene was founded as a township of Kansas County and it began to rapidly expand as a trailhead.

One day in early October 1861 Orville set out from the homestead to Abilene to collect grain supplies and stores for the coming winter. For the three or four days he was to be away, both his mother- and father-in-law came to keep Susie and the children company, Franz leaving the running of his ranch in the capable hands of his foreman. Making his final preparations for departure, he hugged and kissed his wife as the children played tag around the wagon. A ranch hand, Jack Duval, was riding shotgun with him.

"Daddy, daddy, please bring me back a dolly!" pleaded his daughter, tugging at his hand.

"And I want a gun!" asserted his son.

"Sure, sure. I'll see what I can do!" he laughed and, giving his wife a final kiss, he took the team in hand and drove out, waving to the small group of people who meant the world to him.

When he got to town, he learned that the grain consignment had been delayed on the route - the storekeeper had heard of some more skirmishes with the Indians but, he assured Orville, the consignment, under Army escort, was due in the next day. Orville had no alternative but to stay in town overnight, so he found a guest house and booked in. A traildrive had just finished, and the noisy cowboys were whooping it up in the bars and other places of entertainment.

Orville and Duval went into one of the bars for a drink and listened to the drovers' tales of the trail. There was a roulette wheel doing great business in a corner of the bar and, feeling lucky that night, Orville went over end put a silver dollar on 15 red. To his amazement, it came up and he found he had won $20.

"Hey, boss, not bad." enthused Duval. "How's about another try?"

"Awright!" decided Orville, and he put $10 on the green 00.

Again, his luck was in and he and Duval laughed with pleasure and excitement as this time he raked in $100.

"One more try, boss - go on!"

"No, I don't think so - I don't want to push my luck. But now I reckon tomorrow I can buy Susie the purtiest dress I see - and the toys the kids want, too! Come on, I'm plumb tuckered out - I'm gonna hit the hay."

"Reckon I'll stay on awhile longer."

"Yeah, sure. See you in the mornin'." and Orville made his way out of the bar and along the sidewalk towards the guest house.

---oo0oo---

The woman dressed in red saw the tall, dark man, dressed all in black, moving with a catlike agility and elegance towards her. Standing in the shadows, she called out: "Hiya, handsome!"

He stopped, turned around to see who the man was that was following him, but there was nobody else around. "Hah!" he thought, "Must be me!"

The girl moved out of the shadows. "You're real cute!" she continued, moving towards him. She was medium height, auburn haired and had a figure like an hourglass in the red dress she wore. Orville, despite being very happily married, still nevertheless had an eye for the ladies. This particular 'lady' swung her hips provocatively as she walked up to him. Orville reckoned she was no more than sixteen years old.

"Whaddaya want?" he growled.

"Well, I had hoped that it was more what you wanted, big boy!"

He could smell her strong perfume as she wrapped her arms round his waist.

"Get away from me!" he said, pushing her off.

"Don't you like me?" she asked, alluringly.

"No, I don't like you." he said, still trying to avoid her.

"Don't you want to get to know me"" she responded, blocking his way again.

This time he hesitated, and her hand reached up to touch the hair on his exposed chest. Despite himself and with the picture of Susie in his mind's eye, he heard himself saying "How much?"

"Depends on how mach you enjoy it!" she said mischievously, her hand wandering and exploring, rubbing his beard, his chest, skilfully stimulating him. He felt himself reacting and his big hand reached down to her, stopping her. She was a pretty little thing, he thought. Maybe, just this once ... He put his long arm around her slender waist, and guided her to his hotel room.

---oo0oo---

When he awoke the next morning she was gone, and so was the $100 he had won. Cursing his own stupidity, he went down to find Duval and together they had breakfast.

"You gonna get them purty things for yore family?" asked Duval conversationally.

Orville's eyes narrowed and he thought fast. "I was robbed last night on my way back to the hotel."

"Oh, no! What happened, was you attacked?"

"Yeah, got hit from behind. When I came to, the money was gone."

"Damn! Shore is bad luck. You tell the sheriff?"

"Yeah." lied Orville. "He holds out little chance of getting the money back, though."

"Does your head still hurt?"

Orville rubbed the back of his skull. "Yeah, it does a bit."

"Lucky you paid for the rest of the stores and grain beforehand."

"Uh-huh." agreed Orville. They ate their breakfast in silence, then headed for the grain store.

"Haven't you heard, Mr Miller? Consignment got ambushed again, this time it was Comancheros - killed the whole detachment, stole the supplies. Seems there's a few bands roving about, further down south." the storekeeper said.

"Down South?" Orville's voice was suddenly husky, a dreadful fear gripping at his insides.

'Yeah, Union Army captain jest told me there was talk of them north of the Colorado."

Orville and Duval were out of the grain store and out of Abilene in ten minutes, spurring the wagon's horses on at a breakneck pace they could not possibly maintain for the whole journey.

---oo0oo---

Approaching the ranch, they saw the red glow in the night sky from a considerable distance away.

"Oh, no." thought Orville, "Oh, please God, no, not again!" he spurred on the exhausted team at breakneck pace again, but deep within himself, he knew. As the horses' hooves drummed the earth he thought, over and over again, "Oh, please don't take them all away from me!" But, as they drove in, he could see that his worst fears had come true. In the darkness he could see two little forms lying in the forecourt. Both children had been stripped naked, the boy had been mutilated and his daughter had obviously been violently raped before they killed her. The look of horror frozen on both his children's faces stayed with him for the rest of his life to haunt his henceforth forever sleepless nights. Duval found Orville's wife first, in the barn, and he tried to restrain him from going in.

"No! For God's sake don't go in!" but, with the strength of two men, Orville threw him aside. Susie was a bundle of broken limbs in a heap of torn rags. "Susie! Susie!" he shouted, running to her side. The bundle of rags whimpered as she heard her beloved husband's voice. "Susie" he said, his voice filled with pity, love, pain and anguish. He gently took her in his arms, despite a cry of pain from her. Softly, he touched her swollen face and she opened her eyes. With revulsion, Orville saw that she had been raped as well. She shuddered in his arms and tried to speak. Through his tears of anguish, he managed to comfort her. "Take it easy, honey, you're gonna be fine, just fine." but he could see quite clearly that, for Susie, there was no more time left. "Tell me, baby, who did this? Tell me - tell me and I'll kill every murderin' one, I swear to you!"

Gathering up all her remaining strength, she whispered: "Mex - Mexicans, Comancheros ..." and Orville felt her die in his arms.

The carnage was dreadful, the Shermans and the ranch hands had been slaughtered where they fought, the livestock either butchered or stolen to supply meat and milk to the marauding Comancheros. Orville quickly became haunted with remorse and self-recrimination for not being there and doing what he had been doing while all those he loved were being tortured, fighting and dying for him. The only thing that kept him from going insane was the vengeance burning black in his heart. It was Mexicans who had killed John, and now they had wiped out his entire beloved family. He had sworn to his dying wife that he would avenge them, and he was going to fulfill that promise, or die in the act.

Having buried his family high on the hill overlooking the river valley, he headed towards Abilene. He learned that the Marshal had rounded up a posse to try and track down the band of Comancheros. They had left a half-day ahead of him. Uncaring now for his own safety, he rode alone, trailing the posse to El Paso.

---oo0oo---

CHAPTER 6

CONTENTS