Monahan's Massacre

by William W. Johnstone

  “Come on, Blue.” Dooley snatched up the heavy. 50 caliber rifle and stumbled over burning sage and grass toward the dead Indian pony that had become a fort, perhaps a last stand, for Dooley, the minister, and Miss Sabrina Granby—and now Blue the loyal shepherd.

  He dived back, and Blue moved over to the reverend’s side.

  Something crashed, and Dooley peered over the pinto’s neck. The Granbys’ prairie schooner had either burned through the traces, or the wagon had toppled over a small incline, or the tongue had broken. Whatever had happened, the wagon had fallen onto its side, rolled over, showering the prairie with sparks and flames and burning trunks, chairs, supplies—whatever the preacher and his niece had wanted to bring with them from their peaceful life in that fine city on the Ohio River.

  The oxen kept moving, away from the carnage, and now Dooley saw a couple of young Indians running on foot, chasing the beasts.

  Dooley had time to catch his breath. He tasted sweat, gunpowder. The bitterness of battle singed his nostrils. His heart beat against his chest so hard that his ribs ached.

  He blew away the sand on the Dragoon’s cylinder, untied his bandanna, which he then used to wipe the weapon. Again, Dooley tried the hammer, and this time the cylinder rolled into position. Leaving the old Colt on full cock, he placed the revolver on the dead Indian pony’s neck, and brought the .50 caliber Sharps across his back.

  It was an old model, not like the new rifles those buffalo hunters had been using for the past few years. This one, like the Colt Dragoon, was cap-and-ball, but the percussion cap remained seated on the nipple, and Dooley eared back the heavy hammer until he thought, above the popping of gunfire, the flames, the whoops, the thundering of hooves, and the screams, that the big Sharps was ready to fire.

  He looked over Miss Sabrina’s back. She lay on her belly, Dooley’s pistol in both hands, her arms stretched out onto the crooked Indian saddle. Her lips moved, but she made no sound. Likely praying.

  Keep praying, Miss Sabrina, Dooley thought.Keep praying a lot.

  Clearing his throat, he raised up just a bit—for he did not want to catch a bullet in his back or head—and started to hand the rifle to the Reverend Granby. But Dooley stopped.

  The preacher would not be able to hold such a cumbersome, heavy buffalo gun. Dooley didn’t think the Reverend Granby could even hold a Dragoon or Dooley’s own Colt that was shaking in Miss Sabrina’s hands. As pale as the parson had turned, Dooley did not even think that the Reverend Granby would have been able to raise a .41 caliber Remington derringer anymore.

  His lips moved, too, Dooley noticed, and likely in prayer. Only unlike his niece’s lips, the parson’s were covered with blood, which leaked from one corner of his mouth. The man’s chest kept moving, up and down, in shallow gasps, and his fingers clutched the arrow that had gone deep into his stomach.

  Dooley dropped back down, rolled over, and brushed the sand and sweat off his mouth and face. Salty sweat stung his eyes, and he smelled smoke, felt more heat, though not as burning as it had been before the oxen had carried away the Conestoga about thirty or forty yards.

  Yet there was fire, all around him. The oxen had dragged the prairie schooner off, which had spilled burning wood and cloth and hot embers. There had been little rain in this country of late, and the grass and sage had become thirsty, dry. Now it burned.

  “Great . . .” Somehow Dooley heard his own voice. He did not finish what he was about to say. He just thought it:

  We might just burn to death.

  But all of those Cheyenne braves would likely save Dooley and Miss Sabrina that horrible death.

  Dooley got ready, his face hard, his nerves taut.

  More whoops. More death songs. More shots and galloping hooves.

  The war party was coming back . . . to finish the job.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  How many rode their ponies through the sage and smoke, Dooley could not guess. He brought the heavy Sharps up, pressing the stock tight against his right shoulder, and moved the barrel but knew better than to squeeze the trigger. You did not waste lead, especially when you held a single-shot weapon in your hand. An arrow tore through his bandanna, causing the threadbare piece of cotton to pull hard against his throat. Another went so close to his ear he could feel the wind rush by. Behind him came the sickening sounds of arrows and bullets tearing into the flesh of the dead Indian pony he had turned into a fort, a refuge, a last stand.

  Yet Dooley had no target at which to aim. He heard the Indians, and their ponies, and maybe he could detect a flash of gun smoke. Mostly, however, all he saw was thick dust that mixed with the smoke from the burning wagon—no, wagons—others from the train, farm wagons and such, were aflame by now—while hot flames licked and spread across grass and sage.

  The dust cloud and war party moved on past Dooley, Miss Granby, and her uncle. Dooley fell back to his knees. Blue barked, but did not move.

  Dooley wiped away sweat that drenched his face and hair. He tried to wipe his hands dry against his trousers. He wanted to run, but knew he could not do that. Leave Miss Sabrina behind? No, that was something Dooley would not do, but now he regretted that he had not insisted that the Reverend Granby had made Miss Sabrina—and the Widow Kingsbury—travel with the other women and those children to Fetterman City, to Cheyenne. Hell, they should never have left the Queen City of the West.

  For that matter, Dooley wished he were back on that farm outside of Des Moines.

  The Indians came back, loping, yipping, firing.

  This time, however, they rode against the wind, and the smoke and dust had blown away.

  Miss Sabrina snapped a shot.

  “Aim low!” Dooley yelled. “And stay low.”

  Ten Cheyenne or thereabouts, Dooley guessed, splitting up. Some rode to Dooley’s left, others to the right. Again, Dooley brought up the Sharps, aimed, and lined up his gun sights on a bone breastplate. The rifle roared, slamming Dooley’s shoulder so hard he knew he would likely sport a bruise for the short time of life he had left.

  He managed only a glimpse as the warrior was slammed off the back of his horse. Dooley started to toss the big buffalo gun aside and reach for the Dragoon, but he had no time, no chance.

  Switching his intention, he put both hands on the burning hot barrel of the rifle and brought the rifle up like a club. He reared back, yelling now, shouting something unholy, and hardly human. A black-toothed Indian with his hair cut short—no braids, rare for a Cheyenne, at least the Indians from the only tribe that Dooley had ever seen—leaned over in his Indian saddle, wielding a tomahawk. Dooley swung. So did the brave.

  Down went Dooley, sailing over the dead horse, falling on his back in the blood-soaked ground. Blinking away pain and confusion, fighting for his breath, Dooley rolled over, came to his knees. He looked to his left, and then right, trying to find the .50 caliber cannon he had been holding. Yet he couldn’t see it, and guessed he had dropped it on the other side of the dead Indian pony. His arm ached, his right wrist throbbed, and he felt blood leaking from two of his fingers. A glance told him one fingernail had been ripped off.

  That’s when he saw the short-haired Indian, standing up, falling to his knees, coming up again, blood racing from a savage cut across his forehead, so deep and so wide that Dooley could see the Cheyenne’s skull.

  Dooley had made contact with the warrior after all. Maybe the warrior’s tomahawk had hit Dooley as well. He had no idea of knowing, no memory, just pain that could have come from anywhere.

  The Indian saw Miss Sabrina, and staggered toward her, before he caught a glimpse of Dooley out of the corner of his eye. Dooley was moving by then, but pain in his left calf caused him to cry out, to fall, and he felt blood soaking his trousers, filling inside his boots, and he knew he had been shot in the leg. Bullet? Arrow? He did not know, and it did not matter.

  He fell onto the horse’s dead, bullet-riddled body. The Indian drew a knife, and lunged. Dooley gripped the first thing he could,
heard the sucking sound as he pulled a Cheyenne arrow from the dead horse. Somehow he managed to turn the weapon, and he jabbed as hard, and as blindly, as he could.

  “Aiiyeeeeeee!”

  Dooley kept moving, over the horse as a bullet clipped off the heel of his right boot. He saw the Indian, with the arrow now in his belly. The Indian dropped to his knees, and ripped the arrow out, and made a lunge toward Dooley as if to return the arrow, to put it inside Dooley’s stomach.

  Yet Dooley had picked up the knife that the Indian had dropped. He parried the arrow with the bone blade of the knife, and then turned, slashed, and saw the Indian collapse, his throat cut.

  Something slammed into Dooley’s back, and he went down, pushing himself up. He saw legs, black, and knew he had fallen across the reverend. As he rolled over, grasping for anything, he found another Cheyenne standing over him, holding a lance, bringing it up to thrust into Dooley, to skewer him.

  That’s when Miss Sabrina Granby picked herself off the ground and blew a hole in the Indian’s cheek with a slug from Dooley’s Colt.

  The Indian turned, his hideous face out of view, and crashed to the ground. Dooley grabbed the preacher’s niece and pulled her back to the dead horse. Reaching up to the horse’s neck, he filled his hand with the big Dragoon. He waited, but heard no more hooves, just chanting, and now what seemed to be arguments among the Indians.

  “You . . . all right?” Dooley asked, not even recognizing his own voice.

  Miss Sabrina choked out: “I-don’t-know,” almost as one word.

  Dooley looked into the dust and smoke, trying to see other men in black hats and black pants and black coats. Two lay on the ground, but that’s all he could see, and those two he knew would not be getting up. Even if they still lived, all those arrows and lances in their bodies would have pinned them to the earth.

  He turned away from that ghastly sight and chanced a brief look at the reverend. He could not tell if the preacher breathed or not.

  “You’re hurt.”

  Dooley saw Miss Sabrina lowering the .45 and moving to Dooley’s leg. That’s when he looked down and saw the arrow, a bloody black arrowhead poking through Dooley’s calf, the feathered shaft on the other end, also stained with blood that leaked out of Dooley’s body.

  The niece of the preacher took hold of one end of the arrow, and Dooley screamed in pain. Did heroes scream? Dooley did not know, only that it hurt like hell and that he was no hero, anyway, just a man doing what any man would do—trying to stay alive for as long as he could.

  “I’m sorry,” Miss Sabrina said.

  “It’s all right,” Dooley said, and lowered the Dragoon to grab the Indian knife he had dropped. He put the knife against the point of the arrow, and, yelling again, cut the shaft to a spot just above the bloody hole in his pants.

  “Miss . . . Sabrina . . .” He ground his teeth tightly, rolled over, saw Blue lying, quivering, panting, and reached over to rub the dog’s fur. “All right, boy. Everything’s . . . just . . . dandy as hell. It’s . . .”

  He cried out, almost fearing that he would pass out, and looked back to find Miss Sabrina holding the feathered shaft of the arrow in both hands. Despite the blinding pain and the tears and sweat in his eyes, he could tell that she had just yanked the arrow from his calf.

  “The . . . hell did . . . you do?” he asked.

  “I thought that’s what you wanted me to do!” she said, her voice two or three octaves higher than normal.

  He made himself smile. “No. It’s all . . . right.”

  He fell back down, pressing his head into the hide of the horse. The world spun above him, and he had to fight to stay conscious.

  The woman came to him, and he seemed to see her, that gentle, beautiful face covered by sweat and dirt and blood and smut, still lovely, but never had he seen such determination on anyone’s face. Her eyes burned as she worked, freeing the knot that held Dooley’s bandanna. She brought the kerchief over, and Dooley thought he could feel her as she tied it over the arrow wounds in his leg.

  More yips, more songs—Dooley thought he heard women singing now, and maybe he did. Sometimes, he had heard, Indians brought some of their women along, to sing songs of encouragement, to help their warriors. He remembered an old army scout telling him—this was probably Boise or maybe Ogden—that you never wanted to be caught alive by an Indian woman. “A buck,” the grizzled old scout had said, “he’ll just kill you outright, take your scalp, maybe cut off some parts that you ain’t got no use for no more. But an Indian harlot? Well, them gals know more about inflicting pain than ol’ Lucifer his ownself.”

  Dooley rolled over, peered over the dead horse, and saw what looked to be flags waving through the smoke on the prairie. He strained, stared, and buried his face in the horse’s stinking flesh, as another round of dizziness almost sent him reeling into a deep black void that had no bottom.

  When he straightened, he again saw the waving flags.

  Flags? A cavalry guidon? No. No. He had to tell himself to stay awake, to stay focused. Miss Sabrina’s very life depended on it.

  Then he understood. And he brought up the Dragoon, pulled the trigger. Cock and fire. Cock and fire. Cock and fire. No longer did he taste the acrid smoke, smell the cordite.

  “Stop that, you damned curs.”

  Miss Sabrina must have realized what was happening, too, because now she took up Dooley’s Colt again, and her shots echoed Dooley’s own.

  Bam!

  Bam!

  Bam!

  Indians were just behind the fire, waving blankets—sleeping blankets, saddle blankets, maybe dresses and buckskin shirts. Trying to turn the fire that kept burning sage and grass, fanning the flames, hoping to burn out Dooley and Miss Sabrina and Blue and the reverend.

  One of the warriors raised up, and a bullet—Dooley could not tell if the shot had been fired by Miss Sabrina or him—must have hit the brave, or woman, or maybe even a kid, because down went the figure with a grunt. Two other figures, nothing more than shadows through the smoke, rushed over, picked up the wounded Indian, and ran from the fire and smoke.

  “You’re not burning us out!” Dooley yelled. “You’re not burning us out! You’re not burning us out! We might see Hell soon enough. But you’re not burning us out!”

  He was still pulling the trigger, and so was Miss Sabrina, long after the last round had been fired. Now all they heard were those hard metallic clicks as their hammers fell on empty chambers. But it did not matter. And they did not stop for several minutes.

  Click!

  Click!

  Click!

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  When they finally realized what they were doing, when some semblance of sanity returned, they stopped and collapsed against the dead horse. They breathed in and out, deeply, not caring that they sent more smoke and dust into their lungs than air.

  At length, they listened.

  All they heard was silence.

  * * *

  Dusk came, and darkness soon bathed the prairie, although flames still sparked here and there among the sage and grass, and the remnants of the wagons glowed all around them.

  Not trusting his luck—although he had to concede just how lucky he was to still be breathing—Dooley crawled over to where Miss Sabrina knelt, tending to her uncle.

  She turned to face him, and from the glowing coals of what had been that giant Conestoga, Dooley could see the trails the tears had left on her dirty face. “I can’t,” she whispered, “get that arrow out of Uncle Bob.”

  “Leave it,” Dooley said. Pull it out, he knew, and the man might bleed to death. Leaving it in was a risk, too, of infection, of poison, but the shock of the removal of an arrow in that deep might likely kill the preacher. From the looks of the Reverend Granby’s face, Dooley didn’t think the man would live much longer. He couldn’t understand how the man had stayed alive this long, but for the time being, he seemed to be at peace, and Dooley wasn’t going to spoil that.

  �
��Are they gone?” Miss Sabrina asked.

  He thought about lying, but found no solace in that. “No,” he said.

  “Will they attack us soon?”

  “Not tonight.” Dooley read the look on her face, that said she knew he was lying to protect her, even though he wasn’t. He explained, “Indians don’t attack at night. It’s their religion . . .” A quick glance at the sleeping reverend made him question his choice of words. “Superstition,” he said, more for Miss Sabrina’s and the parson’s upbringing. A man of the cloth might not cotton to what an Indian believed, Indians being heathen and all. Dooley wasn’t altogether certain that Indians were godless creatures like he had heard the circuit-riding minister back in Iowa preach. “They seem to think that if they get killed, where no one can see them, then they’ll have to wander around aimlessly.”

  “Like Purgator y?”

  He shrugged. “Something like that.”

  Somewhere in the darkness to the south, a voice shouted. “Reverend? Reverend Granby?”

  Abercrombie? That’s who it sounded like. Dooley bit his lip, not wanting to talk, for he knew the Indians might not attack in the dark, but they could still send arrows or rifle balls in the direction of voices. Yet when the voice kept calling out, Dooley relented. “He can’t talk! He’s wounded!”

  A long pause. Then: “Is that you, Monahan?”

  “Yeah!”

  “Is Miss Sabrina all right?”

  “Yes, Mr. Abercrombie!” Sabrina Granby answered.

  “Thank the Lord! How’s your uncle?”

  Her voice choked, and she could not find the words, so Dooley answered, “Grave.”

  “We shall pray for him. We shall pray for the deliverance of all of us . . .” Now Mr. Abercrombie’s voice broke. “. . . still . . . alive.”

  “Is Mrs. Kingsbury all right?” Miss Sabrina had recovered from the emotional weight.

  “She is well . . . as well as can be expected, but I fear others are with our Lord. Monahan?”

  “Yes!”