The Comancheros , livre ebook

The Comancheros
by Paul I. Wellman

First published in 1952
This edition published by Rare Treasures
Victoria, BC Canada with branch offices in the Czech Republic and Germany
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The Comancheros

by Paul I. Wellman

To J. Robert Tolle


physician, cattle rancher, and my friend, who
subscribes with me to the excellent axiom: If
you’re too busy to go fishing, you’re too busy.

Historical Note
The word Comancheros has almost no recognitionin formal history. Yet it was a word once excessivelywell known to the unprotected ranchers on the scantilysettled borders of Texas, and there are numerous recordsof the existence of that strange, shifting, gypsy-like people,in the writings of the earliest explorers of the westernplains.
In 1832 Albert Pike reported seeing the deep trailsmade by the Comanchero carretas across the plains towardthe Comanche country, carrying out goods to be exchangedfor Indian loot. Notice was taken of the trails,campsites, and the slinking traders themselves, by JosiahGregg in 1839, George Wilkins Kendall in 1841, and CaptainR. B. Marcy in 1849.
Apparently the inception of the nefarious trade with theComanches, in which the settlements and ranches of Texaswere the victims and prey, began innocently enough. Mexicanbuffalo hunters from the settlements of New Mexicowent out on the Staked Plains to hunt bison. They calledthemselves Ciboleros , and butchered and dried the meatthey killed, packed it in rawhide sacks, and carried it tothe Mexican settlements, where as carne seco —jerked beef—itwas an important article of commerce.
Gradually these hunters established trade relations withthe Comanche Indians, who at first exchanged with thempeltries and other products of the chase, for goods. Butpresently a new direction was given Comanche war activitiesby the type of trade in which the greatest interest wasshown by their visitors, who became known as Comancheros—thosehaving to do with the Comanches. Becausethey furnished an avid market for stolen cattle, horses, andother plunder, they were a tremendous spur, virtually adirecting force, to the Indians in making continuous raidson the Texas frontier.
By no means were the Comancheros all Mexicans. UnscrupulousAmericans and persons of other nationalitiesparticipated in the trade. At first the Comancheros madetheir expeditions out in the Staked Plains in a haphazardmanner, with no definite destination, and trusting to accidentalmeetings with wandering Comanche bands. Butlater, regular rendezvous were appointed, where the Comancheroswith their goods and the Comanches with theirplunder met and exchanged commodities. Sometimes theIndians brought not only livestock and goods, but captives,whom the Comancheros often cynically held until theywere ransomed by the Texas families to whom they belonged.
But chiefly the trade was in cattle and horses. LiveTexas cattle on the hoof were more profitable and easier tohandle than jerked buffalo meat in sacks. Horses and mulesalways found a brisk market beyond the Pecos. Not fewerthan three hundred thousand cattle and a hundred thousandhorses and mules were, over the years, bartered to theComancheros by the Indians, and all of that livestockcame from Texas, to the accompaniment of bloodshed.
Names of Comanchero rendezvous still stick to some localitieson the plains, and they are revealing. There is, forexample, Rio de Las Lenguas—the Tongue River. Hereoften gathered a hodgepodge of Indian tribes—Comanches,Kiowas, Lipans, and the like—with Mexicans andrenegade whites, in a native American Babel of the plains,the varied jargons of which gave the name River ofTongues. Near Quitaque, Texas, is a valley called Valle deLas Lágrimas—Vale of Tears—where the Comanches, onoccasion, tore weeping kidnaped white mothers and theirchildren apart, as the captives were apportioned to differentbands. The tragedy of these unfortunates left its impressioneven on the callous Comancheros, who witnessedit. Hence the name.
The Palo Duro canyon—that titanic crack in the surfaceof the plains—was a natural location for such a rendezvous,and traces of what undoubtedly were once Comancherodwellings existed in it until comparatively recent times,before the elements obliterated them. The canyon, one ofthe natural wonders of America, was always a favoritevisiting place of the plains tribes.
Concerning the chief, Iron Shirt, and his fabulous chainmail, both name and character are based on solid fact. Thename, as recorded by George Bird Grinnell, frequently occurredamong the plains Indians, and there are traditionsof several coats of mail, brought to the southern UnitedStates by the Spaniards in the very early days, which fellinto the hands of the savages and were worn by them.Fragments of these shirts have since been found.
The Comanches, in particular, had a series of chiefsnamed Iron Shirt, each of whom wore the chain mail—possiblythe same coat, which was passed on from one tothe next. The last of this line was killed by the TexasRangers in the Staked Plains.
With these remarks, the reader is invited to consider thisbook as a novel, all the major personages in it with theexception of Sam Houston the product of the author’s imagination,and save for background and historical actualities,all the adventures described herein purely fictional—althoughthey might have happened just this way.

Paul I. Wellman
August, 1952.
ONE:
“ The Sickening Conceit of Men! ”
1
A bayou mist filled the oak grove, so that in theuncertain early light objects even relatively close seemeddistorted or mysterious. That, perhaps, was what gavePaul Regret the momentary feeling of unreality, as if thewhole thing had never happened.
With a feeling of weariness and distaste, if not of actualremorse, he looked at the youth whom he had just shot,stretched on the wet grass twelve paces away, his youngface, with eyes half closed, a glimmering paleness; theruffled front of his white shirt already staining with blood.Then at least a dozen were kneeling about the fallen figure,Regret’s seconds as well as his, the witnesses, even Perigord,who as referee had given the signal for fire. It tookonly a few moments for the surgeon to make his examination,and they rose as if by concert.
In their faces Regret saw anger, accusation. One muttered,“Assassin!” Another, “Butcher!”
At that selfsame moment they all heard the rapid tattooof a galloping horse, and through the cottony lather of foga rider burst.
Paul Regret, seasoned gambler, was not a man easily dismayed,yet his heart sank, somewhat, as he recognizedJudge Beaubien.
For all his sixty years the judge was still a horseman;and he sat his saddle like a furious gray-haired centaur ashe wheeled his tall hunter into the grove.
They heard his shout, “My son?”
It was half question, half exclamation. Then he saw theprostrate form, half supported by one of the seconds, andthrew himself from the saddle to the ground. For a momenthe bent over the young face, then stood erect.
“Too late! I am too late!” he groaned.
Regret remained where he had placed himself at first, aslender and not inelegant figure, feet together, coatless, thepistol hanging heavy in his hand and the sharp tang ofpowder smoke still prickling his nostrils. He was twenty-nine,with a face lean and dark, and a narrow black mustacheof which he was a little vain. And he had areputation for being lucky, but at this moment it appearedto him that he was the unluckiest man in all New Orleans.
Toward him Judge Beaubien turned, a portly but vigorousfigure, dressed richly as usual. Regret had always respected,even admired him, but now the older man’s facewas bitter with fury.
“Paul Regret!” he cried, in a voice almost choked. “PaulRegret, my son’s death is on your head!”
He said it with solemn portent, as if he were pronouncingthe death sentence in his own courtroom, where heruled, as everyone knew, like an autocrat, virtually a king.
Regret inclined his head slightly. The judge’s feeling,the feeling of all those angry persons about him, was afterall understandable. It was, he reflected, one of those inevitablemoments in life when a man is not popular with anyone,however little he may be to blame for it.
The youth lying there, with his cambric ruffles dabbledwith his blood, was Emile Adrien de Rieux Beaubien. AndRegret thought of Eloise Grailhe, the fair and fickle.
Women, he sometimes believed, were at the bottom ofalmost all the trouble in the world. It was the misfortuneof Emile Beaubien that he loved Eloise Grailhe, or thoughthe did, which came to much the same thing. Shewas chanteuse légère in the French Opera, where her voiceand beauty had won her remarkable popularity. She hadher legions of suitors, her baskets of flowers, her jewels, herbanquets, her universal adulation. To be sure she was anactress: and of all the adorers who pursued her, none hadany thought of marriage, save perhaps one. And shesmiled upon all of them: but with no particular favor onany, save perhaps one. The man who would have marriedher was young Emile; the man she may have favoredwas Paul Regret.
Some whisper of this favor must have reached Emile’sears. He did not mention her name in the quarrel, but choseto act as if he did not know how to lose at lansquenet ,cursing, and flinging down the cards, and finally castingthe word “Cheat” in Regret’s teeth.
An epithet most unjust. Though Reg