The Daughter by C.B. Cooper (robert munsch read aloud .TXT) 📕

head back, then whipped it forward, cracking their skulls together. Then, he wrapped his long limbs around the other man’s and brought his heels in sharp, smashing them into the backs of the other man’s knees. The man folded and fell backwards, letting go of Sam to try and break his fall.
But Sam rode him to the ground and took advantage of his new position. Sitting a top of the man’s midsection, he kept him pinned down while he pummeled his face with wicked hard blows. When a big hand snaked up and wrapped around his throat, the thumb cutting off his air supply, Sam pushed a thumb of his own into the mans eye socket, applying a hard, steady pressure. The hand on his throat finally released as the big man screamed in pain and rage and fought to save his eye.
From somewhere in the crowd, Sam heard Zeb’s voice, “Hold up there, dirt bag. This aint no free-for-all, you’re a gonna have to wait yer turn.”
He wouldn’t have to wait long, the fight was over in under a minute. A sharp right on the big man’s chin rolled him over the edge, and left him snoring and bleeding in the dirt.
As Sam gained his feet, he looked to his friend. The mountain man had the tip of his Arkansas toothpick shoved uncomfortably into the adam’s apple of the man who had lost his dollar in a bad bet he had made earlier on. There wasn’t going to be any boot licking or ass kissing today, unless they were the ones that were gonna do it.
Zeb asked the man, “You ready to tangle with the tiger?”
He answered, defeated and through clenched teeth, “No, I’m out of it.” he said, raising his open empty hands to show he had given up.
“Wall, you got more brains than I figured ya for.” Zeb said, as he placed the big long bladed knife back into the sheath at his side. Smiling at Sam he said, “Come on, boy. I’ll do ya for a drink. ‘Pears to me you might’a worked up a powerful thirst.”
Laughing shakily, Sam said, “You got that right ol’ timer.”
The other men were shouting, laughing and slapping each other on the backs as they headed back into the saloon.
Dusk was settling into the street, and lights could be seen glowing in the windows of some of the store fronts. Sam’s heart was still racing, his knuckles were swollen and stiff, some were split and bleeding, his forehead ached from where it had connected with with the other man’s, and he could feel his left eye starting to puff up, it’d be a doozy in the morning. He hadn’t felt that, and that good, in a long time. Sam smiled to himself- he felt alive.
They were getting ready to step through the batwing doors to join the celebration inside when they heard a scream from behind them, “Face me now, you fucking coward!”
As Sam turned, his hand was already snaking for the colt on his hip. As his eyes found his target, he seen the other man was doing the same, only his had already cleared leather, the black hole of the barrel gapping at him. In a blur that came as natural to him as breathing, he jerked iron and threw lead before the bigger man even had time to pull the trigger. The bullet hit him square in the forehead, snapping his head back and spraying the street behind him with brains, bone and blood.
His crony, screaming in outrage, fought to pull his own gun. In a flash, Zeb had palmed the big knife once again, did a half spin, and had the blade buried in the mans neck, almost as fast as Sam could comprehend what was happening. His attention had been focused solely on the man in the street, standing stock still next to his dead friend.
When he seen Sam and Zeb, both eyeing him, he immediately threw up his hands, “Wait, wait, wait!” he screamed, waving empty palms. “I don’t want no part of this, never did. Just because those two were my friends, doesn’t mean I agree with what they did. I aint got no beef with either of you… I swear!”
Sam believed the man. He had seen the way he had hung his head in shame back in the bar when his friends were mouthing off.
Sam shook his head, “Alright then, lets let this be over. But I’m warning you, you come gunnin’ for me and I’ll kill you dead.”
“Me too.” Zeb seconded.
The man nodded his head emphatically, “Yes sir, Mr. Sharp, Mr. Zeb. You wont be getting any trouble from me.”
Sam nodded gravely.
The men in the bar had poured back out through the doors when they had heard the shot, they now ambled about, inspecting the two dead bodies.
“Drilled Art right threw the noggin, he did.”
So that was the big man’s name.
Someone whistled, “That pig sticker ‘bout took ol’ Larry’s head clean off.”
The bartender yelled at the man still standing in the street, “You there! Run on down to Clancy’s and have him bring a wagon. Then load up your friends here and git rid of them, their bloodyin’ up the place.”
“Yes, sir!” The man took off in a trot, glad to be getting away from there.
“I reckon I’m ready to bend that elbow now.” Zeb told Sam. “Come on, Compadre.”


The men left the Fort, heading north, the next morning. The sun had barely had a chance to shake hands with the day.
“Where we headed to now, Zeb?”
“First stop is the Red River Station, we’ll grab up some more supplies, then continue on up north, and it‘ll eventually bring us out into Kansas.”
“You plan on us riding smack dab through the middle of Indian Territory?”
“Them injun’s wont bother us any. Besides, I been through there a time or two, and its a lot faster than back trackin’ to follow yer lady friend, or even cuttin’ over to catch the Santa Fe. I figure it wont be long before the gover’ment pushes the injun’s out of there, too.”
“Out of their own territory?”
“Hell, son, this is all their territory.”
“I know that, Zeb. The way their treated by our people, don’t sit right with me, but if we keep pushing them out, where in the hell are they supposed to go?”
“Son, those men sittin’ back east don’t give a goll damn about that,” Turning in his saddle, he looked at Sam, “I have at say though, I’m a might surprised to hear you say that. Weren’t your folks killed by hostiles?”
“Yeah, both my parents and my little sister when I was thirteen.”
“Well, I’m right sorry for yer loss. That’s a terrible thing, losin’ yer family so young, an all.”
Sam nodded, “Yes it is.”

He told the story that night as they sat around the low burning campfire.
“My father was commissoned in 1840 by the Ruplic of Texas to attend negotiations with the Comanche in Santa Fe. It was supposed to be a big event, thirty Comanche chiefs were coming in under the white flag of truce, and Texas wanted my father there because he spoke Comanche pretty fluently, and got along with a good number of them. Texas wanted their hostages released from the Comanche villages, and the Indians wanted to establish the boundaries of the Comancheria.*”
“He left the first part of march, and I, thinking it sounded like a great adventure, begged him to take me with him. ‘Course he wouldn’t, said I had to stay home to watch over my mother and sister. Be the man of the house while he was away.” Sam smiled, “ I was thirteen at the time.”
“Our cabin was no more than three or four miles away from the Penateka Comanche tribe, and their leader, Chief Muguara, was suppose to be attending the negotiations down south. His war chief, Buffalo Hump, had stayed behind with the tribe. We hadn’t really had any trouble with them, there was some theiving at first, but that turned out to be nothing more than the boys of the village playing a little game of ‘counting coup’.”
“My father had been gone for three weeks when I was out hunting one day. I rode south-east for about half a day looking for game, before deciding to turn back. It was then, that I seen the big colum of black smoke boiling into the air from the area of the Penateka village. It was huge, and ominous looking, I knew right away it meant big trouble. I took off for home on the run, I traveled as fast as I could to warn my mother and sister, but it hadn’t been fast enough.”
“By the time I reached home that evening, it was too late. They had been taken by surprise while out working the garden plot to get it ready for planting. My sister lay not five feet from the cabin door, plugged through by a dozen arrows. She had been the lucky one. I found my mother three miles from our home. The bastards had thrown a loop around her and drug her until there wasn’t much left to drag. The only way I could tell it was really her, was from the little bits of her calico dress that were left here and there.”
“Sweet Jesus.” Zeb murmured. “No boy should ever have to see that.”
“They would have stood a chance if they could of made it to the house, my father had built it as strong as the best fort, but they had been taken by surprise and they had just been too far away.”
“It was while I was burying my mother and sister, that something in me just…snapped. I could feel my anger and sorrow building with each pile of dirt that I shoveled, and by the time I placed the last rock on my little sister’s grave, I was no longer myself. I was a being that only craved one thing, blood. The only thing I thought of was revenge. All I wanted was to spill the blood of the red man, and I didn’t care how I did it, but I was going to get revenge for their murders.”
“The next morning at first light I picked up their trail, which wasn’t hard to do, I was following the whole damn village, plus a lot more, as they moved steadily south. I didn’t know it at the time, but the whole Comanche Nation was on the war path. They moved swiftly for how big they were, and I was a whole day behind them, but I did my best to catch up. I would occationally see tracks where the Indians from other Comanche villages would merge with Buffalo Humps tribe as they continued south, until the main group was near a thousand strong, men, women, and children, but I didn’t care. The further I rode the more distruction I would come across, the madder I got. The Indians moved through the countryside like a swarm of locust, destroying everything and everyone in their path. Whole settlements reduced to ashes, the people killed, buildings looted and then burned, and the livestock stolen.”
“I finally caught a glimpse of them one day. I was up on a ridge, over looking the flats, when I seen them down below, about a mile away. They were huge, they were angry, and they were definatly on the war path. That’s when I decided to try and go around them, warn the people at the next settlement, and together, maybe we could ambush the hell out of them. Of course, we wouldn’t be able to get them all, but we could cut their