Chapter 5

The next morning we were up and on the trail and headed for the wagon train that was headed for us. They were very late getting started apparently since we had been on the trail three hours when we came up on them and they hadn't even broken camp yet. They did get very excited when we rode up.

We got close enough for them to see that we had women and children which did seem to put them a little more at ease. Three men came riding out to meet us and just based on the way one of them was dressed, I was pretty damn sure we had found another of the governor's men. "I'm Tom Dunlap. This is Red Hawk, and Broken Knife."

"I'm Sam Draper, the wagon master, this is John Pope, he's our scout, and the other feller there, is Jonathan Van der Wahl," Draper's voice was thick with contempt.

I caught the other two men looking my Comanche friends over and I motioned the wagon master, "I need to talk to you alone."

"If you have anything to say half breed, you can say it to all of us," the fancy dressed man replied.

"If I shoot that son of a bitch are your people going to start shooting?" I asked.

"Not if I put my hand up like this," Draper said.

I pulled my pistol on Van der Wahl and said, "If you are like your brother and his buddy Abernathy, you'll have a pistol in your coat and another in your boot. Broken Knife is going to take both of them right now. If you make any kind of move that I don't like I'm putting a bullet in your head before you even get close. Mr. Van der Wahl, I'm arresting you in the name of the public good." Before Broken Knife ever got a chance to disarm him everything went to hell.

Van der Wahl's face went bright red, "You can't arrest me, the Governor is a close personal friend of mine."

John Pope spoke up, "What's this all about?"

"It's about attacking wagon trains and cutting up children and blaming it on the Indians." Mr. Van der Wahl knew that he was in deep shit right about then and reached for his pistol. His hand never touched it and I didn't have to shoot him, Pope did. "We need to go and get the men that work for him. They could be in on this too."

"We are going to need help because there are fifteen of them," Draper said.

"Fifteen, damn! How many wagons?" I asked, not sure if I wanted an answer.

Draper rubbed his chin as he thought, "Well there's twenty wagons, but he's got slaves driving half of them. There're only ten drivers, the other ten quit the first month on the trail when he didn't pay them, the other five are like guards."

Broken Knife turned to me, "Tom, if we ride in there with the Henrys and revolvers those men are not going to want to fight."

"We better not tell them what we did to the others like them then." I turned to Sam Draper, "Go up there and tell all of the good people that we are letting them go but have them walk over towards our wagons so they'll be safe. Have them stop right about here. Tell Van der Wahl's men that they have a choice. A horse, food, water and an escort to the eastern edge of Comanche territory or we kill each and every one. You can also tell them that the governor's son was the one that was cutting the children up and that's what awaits any of them if they were involved." I nodded to Red Hawk and he whistled.

Forty riders, all in buckskins came out from behind our wagons and formed a line of horses, nose to tail. When they cleared the wagons they went to side by side in an obviously practiced move, the brass on the Henry rifles gleaming in the sunlight. They rode up and stopped, that's when Draper and Pope saw that not all the riders were Comanches, they weren't even all male.

Sam Draper rode back to the wagon train and people started walking toward where we were sitting our horses. About thirty minutes later Draper and another man came riding out. Draper stopped in front of us, "This is Red Hawk, Broken Knife, and Tom Dunlap. This is Jeff Golden. He's been elected to speak for the drivers."

I watched as Jeff looked over our riders, I didn't like the look on his face, "Mr. Golden I don't like the idea you're getting. Those forty riders may not all be Comanches, they may all not be men, but you better know this, they are all carrying repeating rifles and four revolvers apiece. Every one of them is an expert marksmen and they are quite capable of sitting back and raining bullets on you till there's nothing left. And if we decide not to do it that way, think about this; we can follow you for the next five days and I can promise you five sleepless nights and every one of you dead by the fifth day." The smirk he had when I started talking had disappeared. "You have to the count of ten to decide."

Golden looked at me with uncertainty on his face, "What about me? Are you going to let me ride back and tell them?"

I shook my head, "They already know what they need to do, you just know the how. You'll be the first one to die."

"That's not fair. I came out here to talk." The strain was evident in his voice.

"How fair was it for the people you work for to cut children up while they were still alive? Why should we show you any mercy?" I watched as his head dropped.

"We didn't have anything to do with that, we, the ten of us, are just drivers. What if we wanted to go on to Santa Fe?" he asked.

"You'll be taking a chance of being arrested and tried for all the murders. By now the Army has the only surviving member of the group that was attacking the wagon trains, and he is talking, long and loud. I'm pretty sure that you're not going to want to be there and have someone find out that you worked for those people, even if all you were doing was driving a wagon. And before you ask there will have been two wagon trains arrive in Santa Fe that know all about this. What do you think the chances are that the governor can keep from being lynched?"

Jeff slumped in his saddle, "We'll be lucky not to get lynched. On top of that, that son of a bitch hasn't paid us."

"You were never going to get paid," I said.

Jeff looked up at me, "What?"

"Lucy Abernathy told me that if you weren't in on the plan then you were going to be arrested and thrown in jail, they never planned to pay any of the drivers. If y'all will give up and go back to St. Jo I'll see that you get paid." I knew if this Van der Wahl was like his brother there was a lock box in his wagon. "Jeff, how many slaves did Van der Wahl have?"

"There's seven negro girls in their teens, five that are indentured, three negro women, one little girl and ten negro men driving wagons. What's going to happen to them?" It was plain that Jeff was not someone that approved of slavery.

"We've freed the others we came across, and that's what I'm planning on doing with these." I saw something in his face and wondered what the story was. I turned to Sam Draper, "Let's go give them the good news and let these people get back to the wagons." Draper nodded and rode over to his people and they started walking back to their wagons. I turned in my saddle, "Column of fours on me. Come on Jeff I want to meet this girl of yours." I had to laugh at the look of shock on his face. "What about the five guards? What are they going to do?"

Jeff looked at the body of his dead boss, "I think the only cause they were ever loyal to was their own pocket."

I looked Jeff in the eye, "They won't fight to keep those wagons?"

Jeff shook his head, "Not against forty revolvers, not to mention the rifles, no matter who's behind them, besides there's nothing in them wagons but trade goods."

I shook my head and smiled, "That comment tells me a lot."

We rode around the circle of wagons at a lope to where the Van der Wahl's wagons were. "Column wheel and face, spread out and keep your eyes open." The forty buckskinned riders turned until they faced the twenty Van der Wahl's wagons. Turning to Jeff, "Jeff will you call the drivers together while I check on the slave problem? By the way, was Van der Wahl married?"

"Yeah, but she hated his guts. I don't know what the story is on that." Jeff left to gather the other nine drivers, and the guards.

After I got to thinking about it I decided that we might as well move our wagons up. I had an idea that I was going to need Lucy and her sister anyway. Turning to my riders, "Let's move our wagons up. Maggie, take who ever you need and bring the wagons over here." I watched with no small amount of pride as Maggie barked off names and orders as they wheeled their horses and rode off in a column of twos.

Jeff snapped me out of my daydream, "Here are the drivers. I told them what you said about Van der Wahl paying us."

"Jeff, are those the guards that Sam Draper is talking to?"

Jeff turned to look and see who Draper was talking to, "Yep, that's them, looks like they are coming over here to talk to you."

The five men that were headed this way looked like they were pissed off, "Two Bears, you got me covered?" Two Bears and nine other Comanche rode in behind me, which made the five angry men to pull up short about ten yards away.

"We didn't have anything to do with attacking those wagon trains," the man shouted at me.

I was pretty sure from what Jeff had told me that none of these men had been, but I was going to feel them out a bit anyway, "Well you were working for a man that was involved, as was his brother and his brother in law. So you can see where I have to be suspicious."

"Mister," a tall lanky man stepped up causing Two Bears and company to raise their rifles, "Whoa! We're unarmed, all of us." I motioned for Two Bears to have the men lower their rifles and the man continued, "Van der Wahl tried to do to us what he did to these drivers. The difference being Hank here told him we'd kill him in his sleep if he shorted us. Mr. Draper said you told Jeff that he was going to throw them in jail instead of paying. Don't you imagine that this jackass was probably going to do the same thing to us since we threatened him?"

I had admit that my impressions of the Van der Wahl brothers led me to believe that they would not have allowed that insult to their manhood to stand, "Yeah, I suspect you gentlemen would have been arrested and fined the full amount of what you'd been paid and any extra you might have had in your pockets. I've got no quarrel with you, if you have pay coming then come on, we'll go get it out of Van der Wahl's strong box, but if you're smart you'll forget who you've been working for, because chances are it could get you lynched."

The lanky man was nodding his head, "I reckon you're right as rain on that Mr.?"

I smiled, "Dunlap, Tom Dunlap, come on let's get your pay." I looked to Jeff, "All right, which one of these wagons was Van der Wahl's personal wagon."

Before Jeff could answer a woman's voice said, "This is the Van der Wahl's wagon. What is your business?"

I turned to put a face to the lovely voice, "Well I'll be. Which one of the Wilson sisters are you?"

"Pricilla. Who are you and how did you know that I was a Wilson?" the lady replied.

I stepped off my horse, took my hat off and swept it across my body as I bowed, "Thomas Jefferson Dunlap, at your service Miss Wilson."

"It's Van der Wahl, Mrs. Jonathan Van der Wahl," she responded.

I put my hat back on and sighed, "Well ma'am I have some bad news about your husband. Mr. Pope shot him earlier when he tried to pull his pistol on me."

Her face showed none of the emotion that one would expect of a woman that had just found out her husband was dead. She looked at me and for a brief second showed a hint of a smile then spoke to me, "Surely there is more to the story than that. He pulled that stunt several times and got away with it."

"Yes, ma'am there is more to the story. Your husband was involved with the men that were attacking the wagon trains and trying to blame it on the Indians. They were the men that were torturing and murdering the children. I'm sorry to be the one to have to tell you that, but in a way I'm glad that I wasn't the one that killed him."

"And why pray tell is that Mr. Dunlap?" she asked.

"You would have been the third Wilson sister that I had made a widow," I replied.

"You know my sisters?" her face brightened.

I turned to the riders that were waiting nearby, "Two Bears, send someone to get Broken Knife to bring Lucy and Marie over here."

"Broken Knife?" Her left eye brow arched as she tilted her head and grinned at me.

"Yeah, well I'm going to let them explain Broken Knife to you. Right now I need to know where your husband's strong box is so I can pay these men."

Pricilla smiled, "Of course, come with me." She led Jeff, Hank, one of the guards and me to the back of her wagon. There she counted out what each man was due and then tried to give each of the men a ten dollar bonus. Jeff refused to take it saying she would need the extra money now that her husband was dead. They left her in tears, not for the loss of her husband, but that they had shown more concern for her than her husband ever had.

Pricilla was crying on my shoulder when Broken Knife, Lucy, and Marie showed up along with my girls. I shouldn't have to tell you that eyebrows were raised when that happened.

"Prissy! What are you doing here?" Lucy exclaimed as she slid off Broken Knife's horse and ran to her sister.

Pricilla turned and hugged her sister and the crying began in earnest. If anyone had any ideas about it letting up, they ended when Anne Marie showed up after stopping her wagon beside Pricilla's.

"Look, I hate to break up the reunion but there is the matter of the slaves," I said. Lucy gave Pricilla the abridged version of my emancipation campaign and Pricilla agreed. She called all of the slaves together. After asking two of them to unpack a small secretary and the strong box out of her wagon she sat down and signed the papers freeing all of her slaves.

I had noticed Jeff Golden standing nearby, and it only took watching him a few minutes to know that the green eyed, red haired, freckled face, girl of seventeen or eighteen that was next in line was the girl he was waiting on. After Pricilla signed the papers ending her indentured servitude she ran to him and they kissed and held on to each other like they would never see each other again. After having to hide their affection for so long, freedom now meant that they could be open with their love.

When they had calmed down some they walked over to Pricilla, "Mrs. Van der Wahl," Jeff started.

"Prissy, call me Prissy and I'm a Wilson again now," she interrupted.

Jeff had his hat in one hand and the girls hand in the other, so that when Prissy offered her hand there was a few seconds of confusion before he decided to put his hat back on. Taking Prissy's hand, "Jeff Golden ma'am, ma'am I don't know how to thank you enough. Sally and I have been in love ever since the first day on the trail out here. I was going to try to buy her freedom from you when I got paid. I..."

Prissy smiled, "I'm glad it has all worked out. All of us are free today, and we all have Mr. Dunlap to thank for that."

Prissy turned and gave me a look that said, 'as soon as the sun goes down I'm going to fuck his brains out to thank him.' Lucky for me I wasn't the only one that saw that look. Lucy and Marie grabbed Prissy by the arms and took her out of sight for a talk while all four of my ladies moved in to surround me.

With a cat fight averted, the next order of business was sorting out the wagons. The emancipated slaves were another problem. Technically at this point in time it was illegal to free slaves in Texas and while we were in what would, in my time, be considered New Mexico it was currently part of Texas; the so called 'disputed territory'. It would take the Compromise of 1850 to establish the state lines that I was familiar with and that was still three years away, if it happened.

The changes in what I knew of the history of the southwest were really starting to bother me. I don't know what weapons were going to be in the twenty wagons that I had acquired today, but if these wagons contained the same guns and ammunition in the same ratio then I had enough to outfit a large army. If I united the Plains Indians, the history of the United States would be very different. The so called 'Manifest Destiny' of the U. S. would have a serious road block. The big problem would be that there was no way in hell that the United States would stand for having an Indian nation dividing their country.

The other half of the story was that it would be better for my future family as it stood then to go farther west. Oregon maybe. And what would I do with all these orphans that I'd collected?

As if on cue I looked up to see Tommy coming towards me grinning, with three teenagers following him. More recruits for the orphan train, Tim French, Charlotte Appleton, and Alice Harris. Tim was seventeen and he had taken sixteen year old Charlotte and fifteen year old Alice under his wing, but they had been getting grief from several of the so called adults on the train. I had to smile because it was plain to see that both girls were very much in love with Tim, but seemed to be held back by what the people on their train thought.

Apparently Tommy had told them about me and my girls because that was the first thing they asked about. After shaking hands with each of the teens, Alice the youngest asked, "Is it true you are married to four women?"