by Alan Lemay
“Hush, now,” Amos said. “I’m listening for something.”
Mose dropped his tone. “Point is, them ashes showed no spark. Amos, them devils been gone from here all night.”
“Catch up the loose stock,” Amos said. “Bring ’em in on short lead.”
“Waste of time,” Mose Harper argued. “The boys are tard, and the Comanches is long gone.”
“Get that loose stuff in,” Amos ordered again, snapping it this time. “I want hobbles on ’em all— and soon!”
Mart was buckling a hobble on a pack mule when Brad dropped on one knee beside him to fasten the other cuff. “Look out yonder,” Brad whispered. “When you get a chance.”
Mart stood up, following Brad’s eyes. A faint grayness had come evenly over the prairie, as if rising from the ground, but nothing showed a shadow yet. Mart cupped his hands over his eyes for a moment, then looked again, trying to look beside, instead of straight at, an unevenness on the flat land that he could not identify. But now he could not see it at all.
He said, “For a moment I thought—but I guess not.”
“I swear something showed itself. Then took down again.”
“A wolf, maybe?”
“I don’t know. Something funny about this, Mart. The Comanch’ ain’t been traveling by night nor laying up by day. Not since the first hundred miles.”
Now followed an odd aimless period, while they waited, and the light imperceptibly increased. “They’re out there,” Amos said at last. “They’re going to jump us. There’s no doubt of it now.” Nobody denied it, or made any comment. Mart braced himself, checking his rifle again and again. “I got to hold fast,” he kept telling himself. “I got to do my share of the work. No matter what.” His ears were beginning to ring. The others stood about in loose meaningless positions, not huddled, not restless, but motionless, and very watchful. When they spoke they held their voices low.
Then Amos’ rifle split the silence down the middle, so that behind lay the quiet night, and ahead rose their hour of violence. They saw what Amos had shot at. A single file of ten Comanches on wiry buffalo ponies had come into view at a thousand yards, materializing out of the seemingly flat earth. They came on a light trot, ignoring Amos’ shot. Zack Harper and Brad Mathison fired, but weren’t good enough either at the range.
“Throw them horses down!” Amos shouted. “Git your backs to the marsh and tie down!” He snubbed his pony’s muzzle back close to the horn, picked up the off fetlock, and threw the horse heavily. He caught one kicking hind foot, then the other, and pig-tied them across the fore cannons. Some of the others were doing the same thing, but Brad was in a fight with his hotblood animal. It reared eleven feet tall, striking with fore hoofs, trying to break away. “Kill that horse!” Amos yelled. Obediently Brad drew his six-gun, put a bullet into the animal’s head under the ear, and stepped from under as it came down.
Ed Newby still stood, his rifle resting ready to fire across the saddle of his standing horse. Mart lost his head enough to yell, “Can’t you throw him? Shall I shoot him, Ed?”
“Leave be! Let the Comanch’ put him down.”
Mart went to the aid of Charlie MacCorry, who had tied his own horse down all right and was wrestling with a mule. They never did get all of the animals down, but Mart felt a whole lot better with something for his hands to do. Three more of the Comanche single-file columns were in sight now, widely spread, trotting well in hand. They had a ghostly look at first, of the same color as the prairie, in the gray light. Then detail picked out, and Mart saw the bows, lances bearing scalps like pennons, an occasional war shield carried for the medicine in its painted symbols as much as for the bullet-deflecting function of its iron-tough hide. Almost half the Comanches had rifles. Some trader, standing on his right to make a living, must have taken a handsome profit putting those in Comanche hands.
Amos’ rifle banged again. One of the lead ponies swerved and ran wild as the rider rolled off into the grass. Immediately, without any other discernible signal, the Comanches leaned low on their ponies and came on at a hard run. Two or three more of the cowmen fired, but without effect.
At three hundred yards the four Comanche columns cut hard left, coming into a single loose line that streamed across the front of the defense. The cowmen were as ready as they were going to be; they had got themselves into a ragged semicircle behind their tied-down horses, their backs to the water. Two or three sat casually on their down horses, estimating the enemy.
“May as well hold up,” Mose Harper said. His tone was as pressureless as a crackerbox comment. “They’ll swing plenty close, before they’re done.”
“I count thirty-seven,” Ed Newby said. He was still on his feet behind his standing horse.
Amos said, “I got me a scalp out there, when I git time to take it.”
“Providin’,” Mose Harper tried to sound jocular, “they don’t leave your carcass here in the dirt.”
“I come here to leave Indian carcasses in the dirt. I ain’t made no change of plan.”
They could see the Comanche war paint now as the warriors rode in plain sight across their front. Faces and naked bodies were striped and splotched in combinations of white, red, and yellow; but whatever the pattern, it was always pointed up with heavy accents of black, the Comanche color for war, for battle, and for death. Each warrior always painted up the same, but it was little use memorizing the paint patterns, because you never saw an Indian in war paint except when you couldn’t lay hands on him. No use remembering the medicine shields, either, for these, treated as sacred, were never out of their deerskin cases until the moment of battle. Besides paint the Comanches wore breech clouts and moccasins; a few had horn or bear-claw headdresses. But these were young warriors, without the great eagle-feather war bonnets that were the pride of old war chiefs, who had tallied scores of coups. The ponies had their tails tied up, and were ridden bareback, guided by a single jaw rein.
Zack Harper said, “Ain’t that big one Buffalo Hump?”
“No-that-ain’t-Buffler-Hump,” his father squelched him. “Don’t talk so damn much.”
The Comanche leader turned again and circled in. He brought his warriors past the defenders within fifty yards, ponies loosely spaced, racing full out. Suddenly, from every Comanche throat burst the screaming war cry; and Mart was paralyzed by the impact of that sound, stunned and sickened as by a blow in the belly with a rock. The war cries rose in a high unearthly yammering, wailing and snarling, piercing to his backbone to cut off every nerve he had. It was not exactly the eery sound of his terror-dream, but it was the spirit of that sound, the essence of its meaning. The muscles of his shoulders clenched as if turned to stone, and his hands so vised upon his rifle that it rattled, useless, against the saddle upon which it rested. And at the same time every other muscle in his body went limp and helpless.
Amos spoke into his ear, his low tone heavy with authority but unexcited. “Leave your shoulders go loose. Make your shoulders slack, and your hands will take care of theirselves. Now help me git a couple!”
That worked. All the rifles were sounding now from behind the tied-down horses. Mart breathed again, picked a target, and took aim. One Comanche after another was dropping from sight behind his pony as he came opposite the waiting rifles; they went down in order, like ducks in a shooting gallery, shamming a slaughter that wasn’t happening. Each Comanche hung by one heel and a loop of mane on the far side of his pony and fired under the neck, offering only one arm and part of a painted face for target. A pony somersaulted, its rider springing clear unhurt, as Mart fired.
The circling Comanches kept up a continuous firing, each warrior reloading as he swung away, then coming past to fire again. This was the famous Comanche wheel, moving closer with every turn, chewing into the defense like a racing grindstone, yet never committing its force beyond possibility of a quick withdrawal. Bullets buzzed over, whispering “Cousin,” or howled in ricochet from dust-spouts short of the defenders. A lot of whistli
ng noises were arrows going over. Zack Harper’s horse screamed, then went into a heavy continuous groaning.
Another Indian pony tumbled end over end; that was Amos’ shot. The rider took cover behind his dead pony before he could be killed. Here and there another pony jerked, faltered, then ran on. A single bullet has to be closely placed to bring a horse down clean.
Amos said loud through his teeth, “The horses, you fools! Get them horses!” Another Comanche pony slid on its knees and stayed down, but its rider got behind it without hurt.
Ed Newby was firing carefully and unhurriedly across his standing horse. The buzzbees made the horse switch its tail, but it stood. Ed said, “You got to get the shoulder. No good to gut-shot’ em. You fellers ain’t leading enough.” He fired again, and a Comanche dropped from behind his running horse with his brains blown out. It wasn’t the shot Ed was trying to make, but he said, “See how easy?”
Fifty yards out in front of him Mart Pauley saw a rifle snake across the quarters of a fallen pony. A horn headdress rose cautiously, and the rifle swung to look Mart square in the eye. He took a snap shot, aiming between the horns, which disappeared, and the enemy rifle slid unfired into the short grass.
After that there was a letup, while the Comanches broke circle and drew off. Out in front of the cowmen lay three downed ponies, two dead Comanches, and two live ones, safe and dangerous behind their fallen horses. Amos was swearing softly and steadily to himself. Charlie MacCorry said he thought he goosed one of them up a little bit, maybe, but didn’t believe he convinced him.
“Good God almighty,” Brad Mathison broke out, “there’s got to be some way to do this!”
Mose Harper scratched his beard and said he thought they done just fine that trip. “Oncet when I was a little shaver, with my pa’s bull wagons, a couple hundred of ’em circled us all day long. We never did get ’em whittled down very much. They just fin’y went away.... You glued to the ground, Zack? Take care that horse!”
Zack got up and took a look at his wounded horse, but didn’t seem to know what to do. He stood staring at it, until his father walked across and shot it.
Mart said to Amos. “Tell me one thing. Was they hollering like that the time they killed my folks?”
Amos seemed to have to think that over. “I wasn’t there,” he said at last. “I suppose so. Hard to get used to, ain’t it?”
“I don’t know,” Mart said shakily, “if I’ll ever be able to get used to it.”
Amos looked at him oddly for some moments. “Don’t you let it stop you,” he said.
“It won’t stop me.”
They came on again, and this time they swept past at no more than ten yards. A number of the wounded Comanche ponies lagged back to the tail of the line, their riders saving them for the final spurt, but they were still in action. The Comanches made this run in close bunches; the attack became a smother of confusion. Both lead and arrows poured fast into the cowmen’s position.
Zack whimpered, “My God—there’s a million of ’em!” and ducked down behind his dead horse.
“Git your damn head up!” Mose yelled at his son. “Fire into ’em!” Zack raised up and went to fighting again.
Sometime during this run Ed Newby’s horse fell, pinning Ed under it, but they had no time to go to him while this burst of the attack continued. An unhorsed Comanche came screaming at Amos with clubbed rifle, and so found his finish. Another stopped at least five bullets as a compadre tried to rescue him in a flying pickup. There should have been another; a third pony was down out in front of them, but nobody knew where the rider had got to. This time as they finished the run the Comanches pulled off again to talk it over.
All choices lay with the Comanches for the time being. The cowmen got their backs into the job of getting nine hundred pounds of horse off Ed Newby. Mose Harper said, “How come you let him catch you, Ed?”
Ed Newby answered through set teeth. “They got my leg—just as he come down—”
Ed’s leg was not only bullet-broken, but had doubled under him, and got smashed again by the killed horse. Amos put the shaft of an arrow between Ed’s teeth, and the arrowwood splintered as two men put their weight into pulling the leg straight.
A party of a dozen Comanches, mounted on the fastest of the Indian ponies, split off from the main bunch and circled out for still another sweep.
“Hold your fire,” Amos ordered. “You hear me? Take cover—but let ’em be!”
Zack Harper, who had fought none too well, chose this moment to harden. “Hold hell! I aim to get me another!”
“You fire and I’ll kill you,” Amos promised him; and Zack put his rifle down.
Most took to the ground as the Comanches swept past once more, but Amos stood up, watching from under his heavy brows, like a staring ox. The Indians did not attack. They picked up their dismounted and their dead; then they were gone.
“Get them horses up!” Amos loosed the pigging string and got his own horse to its feet.
“They’ll scatter now,” Mose Harper said.
“Not till they come up with their horse herd, they won’t!”
“Somebody’s got to stay with Ed,” Mose reminded them. “I suppose I’m the one to do that— old crip that I be. But some of them Comanch’ might circle back. You’ll have to leave Zack with me.”
“That’s all right.”
“And I need one fast man on a good horse to get me help. I can’t move him. Not with what we got here.”
“We all ought to be back,” Amos objected, “in a couple of days.”
“Fellers follering Comanches don’t necessarily ever come back. I got to have either Brad Mathison or Charlie MacCorry.”
“You get Mathison, then,” Charlie said. “I’m going on.”
Brad whirled on Charlie in an unexpected blast of temper. “There’s a quick way to decide it,” he said, and stood braced, his open hand ready above his holster.
Charlie MacCorry looked Brad in the eye as he spat at Brad’s boots and missed. But after that he turned away.
So three rode on, following a plume of dust already distant upon the prairie. “We’ll have the answer soon,” Amos promised. “Soon. We don’t dast let ’em lose us now.”
Mart Pauley was silent. He didn’t want to ask him what three riders could do when they caught up with the Comanches. He was afraid Amos didn’t know.
Chapter Nine
They kept the feather of dust in sight all day, but in the morning, after a night camp without water, they failed to pick it up. The trail of the Comanche war party still led westward, broad and plain, marked at intervals with the carcasses of buffalo ponies wounded at the Cat-tails. They pushed on, getting all they could out of their horses.
This day, the second after the Fight at the Cat-tails, became the strangest day of the pursuit before it was done, because of something unexplained that happened during a period while they were separated.
A line of low hills, many hours away beyond the plain, began to shove up from the horizon as they rode. After a while they knew the Comanches they followed were already into that broken country where pursuit would be slower and more treacherous than before.
“Sometimes it seems to me,” Amos said, “them Comanches fly with their elbows, carrying the pony along between their knees. You can nurse a horse along till he falls and dies, and you walk on carrying your saddle. Then a Comanche comes along, and gets that horse up, and rides it twenty miles more. Then eats it.”
“Don’t we have any chance at all?”
“Yes.... We got a chance.” Amos went through the motions of spitting, with no moisture in his mouth to spit. “And I’ll tell you what it be. An Indian will chase a thing until he thinks he’s chased it enough. Then he quits. So the same when he runs. After while he figures we must have quit, and he starts to loaf. Seemingly he never learns there’s such a thing as a critter that might just keep coming on.”
As he looked at Amos, sitting his saddle like a great lump of rock—yet a l
ump that was somehow of one piece with the horse—Mart Pauley was willing to believe that to have Amos following you could be a deadly thing with no end to it, ever, until he was dead.
“If only they stay bunched,” Amos finished, and it was a prayer; “if only they don’t split and scatter... we’ll come up to ’em. We’re bound to come up.
Late in the morning they came to a shallow sink, where a number of posthole wells had been freshly dug among the dry reeds. Here the trail of the main horse herd freshened, and they found the bones of an eaten horse, polished shiny in a night by the wolves. And there was the Indian smell, giving Mart a senseless dread to fight off during their first minutes in this place.
“Here’s where the rest of ’em was all day yesterday,” Amos said when he had wet his mouth; “the horse guards, and the stole horses, and maybe some crips Henry shot up. And our people—if they’re still alive.”
Brad Mathison was prone at a pothole, dipping water into himself with his tin cup, but he dropped the cup to come up with a snap. As he spoke, Mart Pauley heard the same soft tones Brad’s father used when he neared an end of words. “I’ve heard thee say that times enough,” Brad said.
“What?” Amos asked, astonished.
“Maybe she’s dead,” Brad said, his bloodshot blue eyes burning steadily into Amos’ face. “Maybe they’re both dead. But if I hear it from thee again, thee has chosen me—so help me God!”
Amos stared at Brad mildly, and when he spoke again it was to Mart Pauley. “They’ve took an awful big lead. Them we fought at the Cat-tails must have got here early last night.”
“And the whole bunch pulled out the same hour,” Mart finished it.
It meant they were nine or ten hours back—and every one of the Comanches was now riding a rested animal. Only one answer to that—such as it was: They had to rest their own horses, whether they could spare time for it or not. They spent an hour dipping water into their hats; the ponies could not reach the little water in the bottom of the post-hole wells. When one hole after another had been dipped dry they could only wait for the slow seepage to bring in another cupful, while the horses stood by. After that they took yet another hour to let the horses crop the scant bunch grass, helping them by piling grass they cut with their knives. A great amount of this work gained only the slightest advantage, but none of them begrudged it.