Come Sundown

by Mike Blakely

  “What does your heart tell you we must do now, my brother?” Kills Something asked me.

  I glanced upward to the brilliant blue heavens. “Look where Father Sun now stands in the sky. He sees that we have won this fight. We have turned the bluecoats away from our families. But we must be careful. The war books of the bluecoats teach many dishonorable tricks. If we send all our warriors to destroy the soldiers, we will leave our villages unprotected. There may be other soldiers coming from a different fort. Maybe many more. This is the way the bluecoats fight.”

  Kills Something frowned, but he nodded. “Plenty Man knows the ways of the white soldiers. I believe his heart is strong and his words are wise. He has stood among the enemy, invisible to them with his medicine, and he has listened to their plans. We should chase them out of our valley, but we must be careful. Many warriors must remain behind to guard this village in case other soldiers come, as Plenty Man has warned.”

  Now old Little Bluff, the Kiowa chief, dissented, holding his lance above his head. “They are going back to destroy the lodges of my people. We must kill them all!”

  The Kiowas answered with a war cry, but Kills Something was not moved.

  “Listen, uncle. Those soldiers are not worth killing. They are nothing to us now. We have shamed them into a retreat. They are beaten cowards. Killing them all would not amount to much. I would not even hang one of their scalps on my belt.

  “Now, about your lodges. Were your people not warned in council one moon ago about camping so far away from the protection of the big village? You wanted the fresh water upstream, but the council warned you that this was a dangerous place to camp, and you did not listen. Your warriors fought well, but your village is lost now. How strong is your medicine? If it is strong, you should not care if everything you own is lost, for your medicine will bring you whatever you need to survive.”

  Little Bluff fumed. “Must I send my wife back to my village to cook a meal for them, and then lie on her back in my lodge and wait for them to use her like a slave-whore?”

  “We will kill more bluecoats before this day has passed,” Kills Something assured the Kiowas. “But we must not risk any more good warriors just to count coups on cowards. The thunder guns have already killed many good young men.”

  “What will we do, then?” Little Bluff demanded. “Will we attack, or talk?”

  “Grandson!” said old Burnt Belly, raising his hand. “I have something to say.”

  “Yes, grandfather.”

  “I have dreamed about this fight,” the old shaman said. “I know how we will protect our warriors from the thunder guns and still get close enough to shoot at the bluecoats. You have all wondered why I spoke against letting the horses graze in the valley this winter. Now you will see why. It is because of my vision. We have saved the winter grass here and it is brown and dry now.” He held his hand up to feel the air. “The spirits have favored us with a good breeze from the north on this day. We must set fire to the grass behind the soldiers, and the smoke will hide us as we ride close to shoot at the cowards. I have seen this in dreams. Anyone who does not believe in my visions can stay back to protect the camp, as Plenty Man says we must do. That is all I have to say.”

  Kills Something smiled, as a glint of light sparked in his eye. “Burnt Belly has spoken. He is old and wise, and his visions have never failed us. Little Bluff, take your Kiowa warriors and set fire to the grass. The leaders of the brotherhoods will decide which warriors will attack through the smoke, and which will stay behind to protect the camp. I have spoken.”

  Kills Something raised his Henry rifle above his head and pushed a war cry from his lungs, up his throat. A deafening battle yell rose around him and spread outward like the percussion from a huge explosion. I knew that Kit’s men could hear this yell from where they stood, and I knew it must have shaken them to the marrow, for it sounded like ten thousand spirit eagles singing at once.

  When the trilling voices died down, we heard the bugle of the bluecoats sounding the retreat. I quickly groped for my own bugle, placed it against my lips, and answered with the charge as my stolen cavalry horses lunged against their reins with excitement. The laughter that spread around me filled every heart with courage and hope and, for a moment, drowned out the keening of the mourners among the lodges.

  When the laughter died, the angry voice of Little Bluff began to shout. “I am a Kiowa chief! I do not wait for smoke to cover me when I charge! Any man brave enough to ride with me now to attack the bluecoats must have his bow strung!” He yelped once, and turned his war pony, charging through onlookers who scrambled out of his way as his leading warriors fell in behind him with war whoops. Comanche men anxious to make names for themselves also joined the hasty attack, as the party gained strength and thundered toward the timber that separated them from the retreating soldiers.

  When the hoofbeats had died down, Kills Something said, “The first-year warriors of the Little Horse men will set fire to the grass. Go now, and get embers from the camp, and make much smoke.”

  I knew I had some time for all of this to take place, so I trailed Castchorn along with the cavalry ponies I had acquired. All these mounts were done in, and I needed a fresh horse with which to make my final charges of the day. What I might accomplish on these charges, other than getting myself killed or maimed, was beyond my ability to predict, but I was now so caught up in the machinations of the battle that I could not extricate myself from its bloody cogwheels. I stopped at the edge of camp to strip saddles and bridles from the army horses, then turned them into the herd.

  As I threw down the last U.S. Army saddle, I heard the roar of the mountain howitzers, accompanied by a resounding volley of rifle fire and screams of suffering horses. I knew Little Bluff’s followers had made a brave charge, but from the sounds of it, they had been drubbed soundly by the cool work of the veteran soldiery. I doubted anyone would attempt another charge without the cover of smoke.

  Mounting Castchorn one last time, I walked among the large herd of Indian ponies and found my old reliable paint horse, Major. He had not been ridden in the course of the last moon, so he was sleek and ready, his feet sound. He was a bit aged for a frontier pony, but I had used him sparingly over the years, saving him for special work, like that at hand. He was smart and courageous and always trusted in me, sometimes to the point of foolhardiness. I had been riding Major that fateful day, four years ago, on the elk hunt, when Kit got tangled in his pony’s reins and took a fall down the mountain. I knew Kit would remember this, and for some reason, I wanted him to know it was me charging through the smoke to brave the bullets of the soldiers. I wanted Kit to know that the beating his soldiers had given me after killing Tu Hud had not defeated me, and that I was as sure as ever that my course was right. Major was an eye-catching paint mount with plenty of white mottled by deep sorrel. If Kit caught a glimpse of him, he would know it was me, for the old voyageur had a good memory for quality horseflesh.

  Major seemed glad to see me. He had the most expressive eyes of any horse I had ever owned, and he was asking me plain as day with those eyes what the hell all the commotion was about. “Come on, I’ll show you,” I said. I slipped my war bridle past his teeth and mounted bareback.

  By the time I recrossed Adobe Creek, the grass was on fire in the prairie of Adobe Walls, the smoke flowing southward through the bend in the valley. The billowing gray cloud and the crackling blaze excited Major, which was good. It was easier to stick to a horse covered with a little sweat when riding bareback. As I trotted toward the grass fire, the Kiowa men began to appear in the smoke downwind of the flames, urging their ponies to brave the conflagration and get back to the fresh air upwind of the blaze. They came through in ones and twos, or in small groups, many of them dragging wounded or carrying corpses.

  “They should have waited for the smoke,” a familiar voice said to my left.

  I turned and, to my surprise, I found Burnt Belly mounted and riding beside me, having slipped up on m
e in the chaos. “Grandfather,” I said, almost scolding him with my tone. “Why are you here?”

  He smiled and rubbed the lightning scar across his torso. “Do not talk to me as if I am too old to ride into battle. I have dreamed of this day. It is going to happen now.”

  “What?”

  “That which is destined to happen. You will see. Come, and make this charge with me, Plenty Man.”

  He rarely called me by name to my face, and I took it as a compliment designed to win my approval. It worked, of course. Anyway, I knew that to argue with him was useless, for Burnt Belly had become accustomed to doing as he pleased. No one ever dared to make demands of him for fear of his powers.

  “I will ride with you, grandfather, but I am not going to kill any white men. I only want to see the fight from the middle of it.”

  He nudged his mount up to a slow lope. “I have already seen it,” he said. And we urged our skittish ponies toward a gap in the bright orange line of flames ahead.

  Not any mount will carry a rider right into a prairie fire, but I asked Major to do just that, and he obeyed. We shot through a momentary pass in the flames and crossed the crooked orange line that crawled across the grassy plain. The smoke stung my eyes and lungs, and filled my nose with the pungent odor of burnt straw. The dense cloud soon thinned enough to see a few pony lengths ahead. Burnt Belly and I fell in with a general charge led by Kills Something. The smoke remained so thick that we were within pistol range before the uniforms began to appear through the choking cloud.

  “Look, boys!” I heard a voice shout. “Fire!”

  “No shit, Captain,” said some soldier, his reply punctuated by a gunshot as I galloped by on Major, gaining speed.

  “I mean fire your weapon, damn it!” The voice trailed off as Burnt Belly and I loosed our battle cries and charged along the left flank of the retreating column of fours protected by a line of infantry. The soldiers began to yell all manner of astonished oaths as we flew past them near enough to spit on them, yet neither Burnt Belly nor I drew a weapon. In the smoke, we appeared and vanished so quickly to most of the soldiers that they scarcely had time to see us, let alone take aim. Still, they began to take wild shots through the smoke and that made things hot.

  I drew my revolver, not wanting to be found dead on the battlefield without a weapon in my hand. I made the charge of a lifetime, riding blindly past an enemy at near point-blank range, blinking away smoke-wrought tears, screaming at the top of my lungs. But the column of soldiers was long, and near the head, which was farthest away from the fire, the smoke began to twist away in tendrils, leaving bands of fresh air between, and the faces of the soldiers came clearer.

  Glancing back, I looked for Burnt Belly, but he was no longer behind me. I pulled rein in the smoke to wait for him as other riders thundered madly by. Suddenly the smoke cleared, and I caught sight of a soldier just twenty paces from me, pulling his ramrod from his rifle. When he looked up, I recognized Luther Sheffield. The smoke veiled me again, and I heard him speak:

  “Show yourself, damn it.”

  I reasoned that he had failed to recognize me, so I yelled, “Don’t shoot, Luther!”

  Another break in the cloud revealed his keen eye behind the irons of his rifle, and I knew he could have shot me through, but he hesitated long enough for the smoke to cover me again.

  “Who the hell?”

  I laughed and fired my pistol in the air just for fun, turning back now against the grain of the charge to find Burnt Belly. “Grandfather!” I yelled. “Where are you, old man?”

  Suddenly a rider vaulted into view—some young Kiowa I did not know—and as he passed me he took a bullet that may well have been meant for me. It ripped through a jugular vein and his spinal column, killing him in a cruel instant of fate. Major leapt wildly away from the spray of blood and the falling body, but I managed to hang on as I found myself once again lost in the smoke cloud, thickening again as the fire pressed closer.

  As I turned back toward the column of fours, I saw an image running like a specter through the smoke, an errant shaft of sunlight glinting on a knife blade held in the soldier’s hand.

  “No, Toribio!” I heard. “Get your Meskin ass back here, goddamn it!”

  That was Blue Wiggin’s voice, sure as I was alive. The cloud shifted, and I saw Toribio Treviño kneeling over the body of the dead Comanche warrior, his eyes gleaming vengeance as he groped madly at the hair and slashed savagely with the blade. More hooves thundered to my right, and I knew Toribio would be overtaken as he tried to collect his trophy, so I made Major spring in between the riders and Toribio. I screamed so that I would be heard, but almost too late, as three veteran Comanche horse warriors suddenly burst into view, smoke swirling around them like whirlpools in a muddy stream. They dodged three ways and we all slammed against one another, yet managed to stay horseback as they glared in anger at me, and rode away with the thickening smoke.

  My eyes were stinging now, but I saw the scalped Comanche corpse on the ground, and caught sight of Toribio sprinting back to the column to the cheers of soldiers. I knew I had to get out of the way as the smoke began to choke Major and me, so I turned downwind and urged my mount to gallop. Finally, toward the very head of the column, the fresh prairie air began to find its way into my nostrils and lungs again and Major coughed as he ran, as if to clear the smoke and make way for pure wind. I heard a voice shouting and saw Kit on his horse.

  “Fire the grass ahead, soldier! Burn it ahead of us! You, too, boy! Use your powder.”

  He came into view: the grizzled warrior, gaunt and gnarled on a walleyed horse; sitting there like part of the half-crazed beast between his knees. I could not help reining in to watch him for a spell, though bullets clipped the tall grass blades around me. He felt me watching, Indian-like. His pony sensed his alarm, and wheeled full around before he could check the animal. As if to answer, Major made a circle of his own, then Kit and I locked eyes and squinted at each other for a moment, dancing on our four-leggeds.

  A billow of smoke. The hum of a musket ball. A death song. The smell of guts. A shout, a scream, a groan. The sting of cinders. An orchestra gone mad in mutiny, like the mind of a fiend; like a flock of thunderbirds low overhead; like a stampede of nightmares and terrors unleashed.

  “Pettis! To the high ground! Right flank, Lieutenant Pettis. Get the guns up high, to …”

  The voice trailed off as Kit rode one way and I rode the other.

  I galloped to safety, running around the line of fire the soldiers had lit to burn the grass ahead of them—a simple stroke of commonsense genius on the part of Colonel Carson. Soon I thundered into the Kiowa camp. Here I found many Kiowa warriors and their women trying to carry their belongings away before the soldiers could return to destroy the village. They darted feverishly in and out of lodges and dragged all manner of property with them along a trail that circled back to the larger Comanche encampment downstream.

  “Leave your things and get out!” I ordered. “The soldiers will be here soon. The big guns are going to fire into the village—the thunder guns that shoot twice!”

  I shouted my warning again and again as I rode through the shambles, passing erstwhile belongings flung haphazardly about in the confusion. Not only did I see robes and blankets and weapons and Indian foods, but I also noticed things that were sure to anger the soldiers and make them think themselves justified in their dawn ambush of this gathering of families: a buggy and a spring wagon belonging to Little Bluff; white women’s dresses and bonnets; white children’s clothing; family photographs; books; soldiers’ uniforms and weapons; and one particular scalp taken from a woman who had once combed long, beautiful blond hair.

  I left the Kiowa camp and rode to higher ground to get a better view of the scene. Major used all of his muscle and the last of his wind to climb a bluff overlooking the Kiowa camp. He was really getting too old for this sort of exertion. From this vantage, I could see over the smoke from the grass fires. I spotted Lieutenant
Pettis to my left, his men toiling to drag the two gun carriages up onto an elevation by hand, having unhitched them from their teams.

  The top of this little elevation was barely large enough to accommodate the two mountain howitzers and all their accompanying equipage and soldiery; the elevation itself was just high enough to afford a view over the column of unhorsed soldiers. It was as if God himself had placed this little hillock here for Kit Carson’s salvation. The column of soldiers was now strung out between the artillery and the Indians, protecting the gunners as they loaded their pieces.

  The escaping column of soldiers had now stalled under fierce Comanche attacks concentrated along its left flank. The artillerymen positioned and loaded their pieces as if they themselves were on fire. I watched as they lobbed a deadly missile toward the charging Comanches, and when they did, the howitzer lurched backward and went tumbling down the back side of the little hill, the gunners chasing it. I laughed as the second cannon fired, with the same comical result. However, I knew that the men would soon have the guns back into position and would continue to shell the attacking Indians. Then they would unleash their deadly fire on the Kiowa village, clearing it of Indians so the soldiers could destroy it.

  Entranced, I swept my gaze across the ground below. The first line of fire set by the Comanches had burned past half of the column of soldiers, and Indians were still charging the head of the column now where the smoke was thickest. The second line of fire, set by Kit’s soldiers, had swept ahead and was now clouding the Kiowa camp. The soldiers I could see stood bravely upon their blackened ground, holding their positions, but there was great commotion I could only hear going on inside the cloud of smoke: gunshots, shouts, battle cries, screams of horses and men. Then, as my eyes searched this battle-torn valley, I spotted a white-haired rider slumped on his pony, far beyond the soldiers, heading back toward the Comanche camp.