Strong Cold Dead (Caitlin Strong, #8)(95)
He was thinking of the screams. Just a few to start with, but increasing by the second as the flame burst fed by the oil captured more and more of Rockefeller’s men in its grasp. The worst of the screams came when those who escaped the initial burst realized they were trapped by walls of flames on all sides of them. Jack Strong thought he saw men, some with their clothes flaming, tearing out for the stream that supplied the reservation with its water. And when they got close, a fresh wall of flames spurted upward, yet another trap sprung.
The screams only got worse from there.
And kept coming.
Steeldust Jack thought he’d never lose sleep over anything but memories of the Civil War again, only he was wrong. The awful screaming and stench of burning flesh and hair, pushing through the oil-rich air, was worse than any battle he’d fought in or any carnage he’d seen.
Nature takes care of its own, Isa-tai had told him.
He’d been a fool not to listen, not to realize that damn kid had something deadly up his sleeve—carried out in concert, no doubt, with the tribal elders holding his leash. Steeldust Jack had tried to warn off John D. Rockefeller, but the man wasn’t hearing it, convinced that his wealth and power, rising behind the guise of Standard Oil, insulated him from the kind of violent opposition he was hardly averse to dispensing himself. The Comanche likely would have accepted the men killed in the hotel as trade for the three boys dragged to death the day before, but once Rockefeller wouldn’t back down, all bets were off.
Jack Strong cursed himself for not recognizing the pungent scent of oil on the air, for not figuring the reservation’s abandonment had to have some deadly plan behind it. Now dozens of men were being roasted alive, their plight worsened by the secondary explosions that came when the oily flames found boxes of dynamite loaded onto wagons. Huge curtains of flame exploded both out and up; the hot gush of wind blown into him was comparable to a cannon’s backdraft.
Steeldust Jack made himself stay on the hilltop until the echoes of the final screams had faded into the descending night. He’d never get that sound from his ears, or the smell from his nostrils. Nor had he ever felt more helpless. The Indians may have prevailed in this battle, but the war against the likes of John D. Rockefeller was one they were destined to lose.
The flames were still raging when Jack Strong finally walked his horse down the hillside. He wasn’t sure if Rockefeller was among the survivors who’d managed to flee. But before he could give the matter more thought, his eyes settled on one of the strangest sights he’d ever seen.
The flames had all spread downwind from the Comanche corn crops, miraculously sparing them. Stalks blew in the smoke-rich air, seeming to dodge the floating embers that disappeared into the fall of night before Steeldust Jack’s eyes.
91
SAN ANTONIO, TEXAS
“Opinions vary as to how many of Rockefeller’s men died that day,” D.W. Tepper finished. “I’ve heard as many as fifty to as few as a dozen. You won’t find any of that written up in any Texas history book, but it’s supposed to be the God’s honest truth of what happened.”
“But you don’t think so,” said Caitlin.
“In spite of all the money he spread around, I think there were plenty in Austin back then who wanted John D. Rockefeller, and everything he represented, out of the state. He was a Northerner, and I doubt the folks in Austin fancied him any more than the Comanche did. Who knows, maybe they were in it together, since where else did the money come from to help the Indians rebuild the reservation? They reclaimed the land sometime in the next decade, led by a leader who called himself White Eagle.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Wish I was, Ranger.”
“If it’s not the whole truth, it’s something close. All that’s missing is the part about what killed those gunmen in the hotel. We found a hidden chamber in that cave just off White Eagle’s land that looked like something out of the Inquisition. I think they chained Comanche warriors inside there after pumping them full of peyote and unleashing them to kill. I think they used a version of this neurotoxin ISIS is after to incapacitate their victims first, so they couldn’t fight back. Create the illusion it was monsters, not men, who did it. Nature taking care of its own,” Caitlin said, repeating the words of both White Eagle and Isa-tai. “Just like that work foreman found torn apart a couple nights ago, and Rockefeller’s hired guns in 1874. History repeating itself, the Comanche making the same point now they made back then.”
Caitlin stopped short of mentioning Dylan’s Miraculous Medal being found in the vicinity of the construction foreman’s body, the boy being set up as the killer by the same girl who’d rescued him from the woods last night—a contradiction she still couldn’t make sense of.
Caitlin watched Tepper fan a Marlboro from his pack and then press it back downward when he caught her disapproving stare. “Does this story belong in the fact or fiction section of the library, Ranger?”
“You tell me, D.W., because I believe there’s one chapter still missing.”
This time, Tepper finished the process of knocking his Marlboro from the pack. He stuck the cigarette in his mouth and raised his lighter, Caitlin’s glare stopping him.
“We’re about to take on ISIS, Ranger. I believe I’m entitled to a smoke. Now, if you want to know how things finished up for Steeldust Jack Strong and John D. Rockefeller, I need to hear what Cray Rawls told you, first.”