The Black Jacks

The irony of his own situation did not escape John Henry McAllen. Jonah Singletary had made snide comments in the City Gazette about his wife, Leah, who had been seen in the company of more than one young Austin man-about-town, while McAllen was off with his Black Jacks chasing a Comanche raiding party that had struck several farms in Brazoria County six weeks ago. "Poor Captain McAllen," Singletary had sneered. "While the heroic fellow is on the warpath against those red savages, his wife can be found on the footpath of Lovers Lane with several of our own local bucks."

The problem, from McAllen's point of view, was that this was no baseless slander. It was the truth. Nonetheless, he was obliged to defend Leah's honor—even though she had none. Truth or not, Singletary had overstepped his bounds.

"I never said I would issue a challenge," McAllen told Ashbel Smith. "But I could hardly be blamed for taking a blacksnake whip to the man's back."

Smith sighed. Whether Sam Houston or John Henry McAllen had the quickest tempers in Texas was a close-run thing. The difference lay in the Old Chief's talent for being charming and tactful when called upon. As for tact, McAllen did not know the meaning of the word. He was a blunt, straightforward man of action, cut from the Andrew Jackson mold. He was tall, lean, rugged, strong; a fighter, and a man of iron will. The kind of man Texas desperately needed, particularly in these times of crisis. But he was no politician. And Ashbel Smith worried that the scandalous Singletary comments were a trap designed to ruin one of Sam Houston's most loyal and able supporters. The caustic, keen-witted Jonah Singletary was taking advantage of McAllen's only weakness—his pride.

Smith was well aware of the problems in McAllen's marriage. The man seldom spoke of them, but Smith had eyes and sound instincts. McAllen didn't love Leah. Perhaps he never had. Leah Pierce was a beautiful and seductive young woman, and McAllen had fallen prey to her charms. The fatal flaw in Leah's character was a need for male attention. Not just from one man, but all men. That being so, she was incapable of fidelity.

John Henry realized now that he had made a terrible mistake. A few friends who were acquainted with Leah Pierce had dared to warn him before the marriage took place, but McAllen, completely beguiled, had refused to listen to their counsel. Now he was paying for his folly.

And paying dearly, mused Ashbel Smith. There were no children involved, and Smith believed his friend ought to divorce his unfaithful wife. But he didn't dare suggest such a course to McAllen. For one thing, it wouldn't do any good. Call it stubborn pride, a refusal to admit failure, but McAllen was a man who simply could not let go. And so, even though he knew that Jonah Singletary's information concerning Leah's indiscretions was probably accurate, McAllen felt duty-bound to defend the honor of a wife who had none. What cruel irony!

Deeming it unwise to press the issue, Smith changed the subject. "I wonder if Lamar really is up to something with the Comanches."

McAllen only shrugged. He was a man of occasional massive silences, and he now forgot all about the physician who accompanied him, and brooded over what Sam Houston had said about the imminent peace talk at San Antonio's Council House.

Comanche affairs were of tremendous importance to McAllen—as they were to all settlers who lived on the fringes of civilization. Criticizing Houston's conciliatory approach to Indian affairs, Mirabeau B. Lamar had made nothing but belligerent talk when it came to the Comanches. So why now, suddenly, these peace overtures?

The Comanches were a proud and fierce people. Tested by more than a century of conflict with the Spanish as well as other Indian tribes, they were now the undisputed masters of the plains. As fighters they had no peers. Fortunately for Texas, they were divided into a number of autonomous bands—the Quohadis, the Penatekas, the Tanawas, and others. Lacking unified leadership, they had yet to combine for the purpose of waging full-scale war upon the white interlopers.

But if they ever get together, mused McAllen, there wouldn't be a white left alive west of the Sabine.

That was what Sam Houston was worried about. The Old Chief was concerned that Lamar, by some underhanded device, might give the Comanche bands motivation to join together. In which case, the fledgling Republic of Texas would be extinguished in a maelstrom of fire and blood. McAllen hoped Lamar had better sense. Surely the man could see that Texas was in no condition to battle the Comanches, not with another war with Mexico so likely.

Lamar's chief weapon in his campaign to rid the republic of what he liked to call the "red scourge" was a group of hard-bitten Indian-haters called the Texas Rangers. The organization had been created by Stephen F. Austin in 1823, when the impresario dipped into his own pockets to pay ten men to serve as "rangers." Their job was to protect the Austin colony from all enemies. Later, the colony's militia as a whole took to calling themselves Rangers.

During the revolution, the Committee of Correspondence resolved to create a corps of Texas Rangers "whose business shall be to range and guard the frontiers between the Brazos and Trinity Rivers." The Rangers were irregulars; they furnished their own horses and weapons; they had no flag. There were three companies of fifty-six men each. They did little to distinguish themselves during the revolution, and while he was president, Sam Houston had made no use of them.

Then Mirabeau B. Lamar succeeded Houston. In his opinion, the white man and the red could never live in harmony. "Nature forbids it," he declared. He approved a law for the protection of the frontier by creating eight companies of mounted volunteers. Since the men who volunteered came from the frontier counties and had in all likelihood already tangled with the Comanches and, in some cases, had lost loved ones during a Comanche raid, there was no love lost between the Rangers and the Indians. The only good Indian was a dead one. That was their creed, and they tried to live by it. Their mission was to exterminate the Comanches. Only then, they believed, would Texas be safe. You couldn't make peace with a savage, because a savage had no concept of honor, and would not keep his word. This was their thinking. And President Lamar's, too. So McAllen kept coming back to the same old question.

Why the peace overtures?

Two months ago, three Penateka Comanche chiefs had ridden boldly into San Antonio and, in a conference with Ranger Henry Karnes, stated that a tribal council had agreed to ask the Texans for a treaty. Colonel Karnes had replied that no treaty was possible until the Indians gave up all their white captives. The Comanches agreed to this condition, and the talks were scheduled for March 19.

There would be trouble. McAllen could feel it in his bones. The Comanches were not gentle with their captives. If they did bring in their white prisoners, Texas would be able to see all the suffering those poor souls had endured, and bad feeling would run at high tide.

But what could he do?

Scowling, John Henry McAllen shook his head. It didn't really matter what he thought he could or couldn't do. Sam Houston had entrusted him with this task, and by God he would get it done or die trying.

Chapter Three

Saying farewell to Ashbel Smith in the bar room of Floyd's Hotel, McAllen took three days to travel the distance between the booming town of Houston and the Brazos River. The rains had swollen the creeks and rivers, and the crossings slowed him down. He arrived at the Grand Cane plantation late in the afternoon of the third day.