Strong Cold Dead (Caitlin Strong, #8)(94)
*
But Jack Strong found the Comanche reservation abandoned when he got there, not a soul in sight. Riding through that land felt like exploring a graveyard. There were no signs of life at all, including livestock. He’d ridden through ghost towns before, and had been witness to the aftermath of massacres at the hands of marauding Indians or Mexican bandits, where the bodies had been buried and the survivors had fled. This felt like neither of those. There was no residue, sense, or smell of death. No hopelessness to be found in tumbleweeds blowing about the abandoned settlement of buildings. The Comanche reservation was just … well …
Empty. Like the residents had picked up and left. On closer inspection, he saw that even their meager belongings were gone, right down to the wooden utensils and iron pots with which they cooked and ate, the animal hides they used for blankets.
Steeldust Jack inspected the grounds thoroughly, chewing tobacco even though he hated the taste of it and the feeling against his lips, because it kept his mind off whatever had happened here. He wasn’t sure whether to suspect foul play, wasn’t sure whether to expect anything other than the involvement, somehow, of none other than John D. Rockefeller, who’d lied right to his face, back at the train station, about giving him the rest of the day to continue working toward a peaceful solution.
Just after noon, Jack Strong saw the man himself approaching, riding high in his saddle at the front of an endless procession of wagons bearing his workmen, equipment, and army of hired guns. Steeldust Jack had just become aware of a smell caking the air like a fine mist, an odor that was sweet and acrid at the same time. Overpowering in some of the spots he rode through, barely noticeable in others. He stopped paying the scent any heed at all as he approached Rockefeller.
“Why, howdy there, Ranger,” Rockefeller greeted him, doing his best impersonation of a Texas drawl.
“What happened here, Mr. Rockefeller?”
“Why are you asking me?”
“Because I believe you had something to do with this.”
“With what?”
“Look around. Tell me what you see.”
John D. Rockefeller obliged, in melodramatic fashion. “Nothing at all, my good man.”
Steeldust Jack cast his gaze beyond Rockefeller. For as far as he could see, the path was lined with wagons and with men, wielding both Winchesters and shotguns, guarding those wagons. “You and your gunmen have something to do with that?”
Rockefeller almost laughed. “You give me too much credit, Ranger.”
“The Comanche turned tail and fled. You expect me to believe they did that on their own?”
“I expect you to believe they must’ve smartened up. I expect you to believe I had nothing to do with their timely departure, because I didn’t. I’m sure you told them what was coming.”
Jack Strong let his gaze drift beyond Rockefeller to all his hired guns, a number of which were gathering in a tight mass, weapons showcased in a show of intimidation.
“And now it’s here,” he said.
“Like I said, Ranger, they must’ve smartened up. This was inevitable, anyway; both of us know that. If the Comanche refused to stand down and adhere to both Governor Coke and the U.S. Congress’s orders, they would’ve been forcibly removed.”
“From their own land, you mean.”
John D. Rockefeller gazed around at the emptiness, the desolation of the abandoned Comanche reservation. Nothing in the air but the sweet and sour smell.
“Smell that, Ranger? It’s the smell of oil bubbling to the surface. So much of it I’ll use the proceeds to buy this whole goddamn state of yours.”
“Texas ain’t for sale, Mr. Rockefeller, and neither are the Texas Rangers.”
“Don’t worry.” Rockefeller grinned. “I wasn’t interested in buying you anyway.”
*
Steeldust Jack took a seat atop the nearest hillside to watch the procession fan out through the reservation. The activity was centering around a stretch of grasslands where Rockefeller’s surveyors and engineers must have pinpointed the biggest of the potential oil strikes. Steeldust Jack watched them work, while sipping water from his canteen and eating the dried beef he’d smoked himself. Ate it all and drank, while trying to determine his next move, only to conclude he didn’t have one.
It took much of the rest of the day for Rockefeller’s workers to empty the wagons of the digging and drilling equipment they were hauling. A whole bunch of men were already taking to the ground with shovels while Rockefeller’s brigade of ex–Civil War gunmen watched over them protectively. Their eyes continued to scan the nearby woods, lands, hillsides, and ridgelines as if expecting to see an attack coming at any moment. But none followed, and by the time light began to bleed out of the day, Jack Strong had pretty much figured none would be.
How wrong he turned out to be.
Somehow Steeldust Jack was certain he felt, actually felt, the hot gush of air blowing past his ear an instant before the flames erupted. He wasn’t sure where the fire actually started—everywhere at once, it seemed. One minute the dusk air was cool and crisp, and the next it was superheated amid the blinding glow of an inferno that swept across the land like a blanket being draped on a body. It was dark and then it was bright, with seemingly no transition, as if he’d blinked the flames to life between breaths.
The smell he’d detected on the air before blew into him with a force that nearly toppled Jack Strong from his feet. The noxious scent of oil, he realized, now aflame with burned pine, grass, and oak added to the mixture. Steeldust Jack wasn’t thinking right then about how the Comanche had managed to light the whole of the oil nearest the ground on fire. Most likely, they’d figured out some way to force it up to the surface, if it wasn’t there already, and then let it spread in pools, following the natural grade of the land. But Steeldust Jack wasn’t thinking of that.