by Jon E. Lewis
Quickly Sam rose up to see what was happening and dropped flat again. He’d had time to see hundreds of mounted braves gathered at the foot of the bluffs out of rifle range. One big brave who was wearing a red sash around his waist was haranguing them and making wild gestures as if he was furious over something.
“It was a good thing for us Roman Nose wasn’t in on the start of this ruckus,” Smith said, “or they’d have grabbed the island afore we got it. The trouble with Injuns is that they want to count coup so bad that even a good fightin’ man like Roman Nose don’t have no luck gettin’ ’em to foller orders.”
“How many do you figure are out there?” Sam asked.
“Maybe a thousand,” Smith answered, “though it’s hard to say for sure, with some of ’em hidin’ in the grass and sharpshootin’ the way they are. Damn that Forsyth! I tried to tell him yesterday we was follerin’ a big party, but you can’t never tell an Army man nuthin’.”
“Are they all Cheyennes?”
“Mostly, but there’s some Oglalas with ’em. Arapahoes, too, chances are, though I ain’t spotted any yet.”
An arrow flashed over Sam’s head, and a moment later a bullet hit the body of his horse with a sudden thwack. He dug his nose into the sand, then realized he’d be no good to anyone if he remained in this position.
He raised his head to look and dropped back quickly, puzzled by what he saw. The mounted braves were riding downstream toward a bend in the creek below the island. There didn’t seem to be any sense in this maneuver, but the warriors were undoubtedly following Roman Nose’s orders. If Smith was right about the great Cheyenne’s fighting savvy, there must be very good logic back of what the Indians were doing.
Again there was a momentary lull in the firing. A bugle sounded from somewhere among the Indians, surprising and shocking Sam. He asked, “Where in tunket would a Cheyenne learn to toot a bugle? And where would they find one?”
“They’d find one easy enough,” Smith said. “Kill a bunch of soldiers and you get yourself a bugle. Tootin’ one’s something else. But I don’t figger it was an Injun. Chances are one o’ William Bent’s sons is out yonder with ’em. Some of ’em have turned renegade, and it wouldn’t be so hard for one of ’em to have learned a bugle afore he left Fort Bent.”
“Looks to me like they’re riding downstream,” Sam said. “I don’t see any reason for that.”
“Kind o’ funny about Injuns,” Smith continued, apparently not hearing what Sam had said. “Now there was Fetterman, who got massacreed by Red Cloud. I’ll bet you that right now Roman Nose is thinkin’ about what happened to Fetterman and he’s tellin’ hisself that if he can give us the same treatment, he’ll be great like Red Cloud.”
Sam had been paying little attention to Smith. He was still puzzling over the reason for the movement downstream, and now a possible explanation came to him. He asked, “You think Roman Nose is taking them downstream to get them lined up for a charge?”
“Downstream?” Smith bellowed, and sat up to get a quick look. He got his head back a second before a bullet whizzed above him. “That’n was a mite close,” he said as if he had been annoyed by a passing mosquito.
Sam grinned, thinking he couldn’t have been that calm about it. But then the mountain man had been ducking bullets longer than Sam Burdick had been alive.
“Well sir, I’ll tell you what you’d better do,” Smith said thoughtfully. “The colonel ain’t one to listen to me. I ain’t his official scout, and Sharp Grover is. One thing’s sure. Grover ain’t gonna listen to anything I say neither. But Forsyth oughtta be told what them damn brownskins are doin’.”
“Grover’s probably told him,” Sam said.
“Mebbe so, mebbe not,” Smith said. “Just the same, you’d better make a worm out o’ yourself and git over there to the colonel and tell him. If we ain’t fixed to roll ’em back, they’ll roll over us. That’s as sartin as there’s sin in hell.”
“I’ll try to get to him,” Sam said, and slid out of the shallow trench he had dug behind the body of his horse.
He snaked through the grass, hoping he had time to reach Forsyth. He moved slowly, his body flat against the ground, pushing himself forward with his hands and feet. Once a burst of firing lashed out from the low end of the island. Sam stopped until it was over. Jack Stillwell was hiding there in the tall grass with two older scouts. The three were the best shots in the command.
Sam felt good just remembering they were there. Stillwell was very young, younger even than Sam, but he was not a farm boy. Even though he was still in his teens, he had the reputation of being one of the best scouts on the frontier. Although it had seemed incredible, Sam had heard that Stillwell had once guided a wagon train when he was only twelve. Now that he knew Stillwell, he could believe it.
He went on, still keeping low. He felt as if he were moving at a snail’s pace, but he had not been far from Forsyth’s trench when he started. Now, not certain where he was, he called, “Colonel.”
“Here,” Forsyth answered.
Another minute was all it took Sam to reach Forsyth. He saw that the man was suffering. He kept biting his lower lip against the pain that racked his body; sweat made a shiny film across his forehead. Suddenly it occurred to Sam that the colonel was a soldier all the way down to his boot heels, and if they lived through this fight, it would be Forsyth who brought them through.
“Can’t the doctor do anything for you?” Sam asked.
“Dr Mooers has suffered a head wound and will not live through the day,” Forsyth said. “To make our situation worse, we lost all our medical supplies. We left them in camp when we headed for the island. Of course it’s impossible for us to get them now. By the time we have a chance to go after them, the Indians will have carried them off.”
Sam considered this, wondering how anyone could have been careless enough to go off and leave the medical supplies. This, plus the loss of the doctor, could be a fatal blow if the battle lasted any length of time. With the possible exception of the officers, Forsyth and Beecher, the scouts could not have lost a man who would be missed as much as Dr Mooers.
“Was there something you wanted to say?” Forsyth asked.
“Yes,” Sam said. “I wasn’t sure whether you knew or not, but the Indians are drifting downstream toward the bend. Bill Smith and me figure Roman Nose will lead a charge against us as soon as he gets them lined out.”
“We’re whipped if they run over us,” Forsyth said. “They’ll trample us to death or shoot us.” He hesitated a moment, then called, “Beecher, get ready to repel an attack. It’s up to you to see that all the men have their rifles and revolvers loaded. Take the guns of the dead men and the badly wounded and see that the scouts on the low end of the island have them.”
Sam crawled back toward his trench, momentarily exposing himself as he left Forsyth’s pit. He lay motionless for a few seconds in the tall weeds, thankful he had not been hit, then went on. A minute or so later he was back in his own trench.
“The doc’s hard hit and expected to die before night,” Sam said. “ What’s almost as bad is the loss of our medical supplies. They were left in camp this morning.”
Smith shrugged at the news. He said, “Well, that whittles down our chances a little more. All we need now is to run out of ammunition, and Roman Nose has got us.”
A moment later Sam heard the command, “ Load up. Hold your fire till you’re given the order.”
“ Look at ’em come,” Smith said, his voice holding a note of admiration. “If I was where I could see this but knowed my hair was gonna stay on my head, I’d say it was a real purty sight.”
Sam nodded agreement. In an oblique sort of way he admired the Indians. They were a people fighting for their homes against impossible odds. Now, easing up so he could look over the top of his dead horse, he saw the Indians sweep up the creek. For the time being the sharpshooters’ fire had died, so it seemed safe to keep his head up.
Sam’s heart began to pou
nd as he watched the great mass of riders gallop up the stream toward the island, sixty wide and eight deep, Roman Nose in the front rank. Then Sam reminded himself it was no time to feel compassion for the Indians. They would kill him as readily as they had killed his saddle horse if they could.
The deadly cold that had nested in the pit of his stomach spread through his belly as his sweaty hands tightened on the Spencer. The Indians were fighting for their homes, but he, Sam Burdick, and his friends Bill Smith and the rest of the scouts, were fighting for their lives.
The Indians swept on up the creek, the painted braves naked except for their moccasins and breechclouts and cartridge belts. They rode bareback, their horse-hair ropes knotted around the middle of their ponies so that it went over their knees. They gripped their horses’ manes with their left hand, their rifles held above their heads in their right hands.
Unexpectedly the Indians pulled up just out of rifle range, the sudden silence bringing a tension to Sam’s taut nerves that seemed more than he could bear. Again Forsyth shouted, “Hold your fire until I give the order.”
Roman Nose had swung out of line to face his men. He talked to them briefly; then he turned back to the scouts and shook his fist at them. He tipped his head and let out a great war cry, hitting his mouth with his hand. Sam, crouched there in his pit, felt a chill travel down his spine. He had never heard such a sound in all his life, a sound he would not forget as long as he lived.
They came on again at a gallop, the long lines as perfect as those of a well-trained drill team. Sam kept his gaze on Roman Nose. Cruel and brutal, Sam thought, but certainly a magnificent physical specimen. He was big, six feet three or more, and unusually muscular for an Indian. He sat astride his great chestnut horse with perfect balance; his war bonnet was beautiful, the curved buffalo horns just above his forehead, the eagle and heron feathers floating behind him.
Now the sharpshooters opened up from the grass, bullets whistling past Sam’s head. Smith said, “They’re just figgerin’ on keepin’ us down, but it won’t last long. They’ll have to stop shootin’ in a minute, or they’ll plug their own men.”
Smith was right. The firing stopped; the bugle sounded its clear, sharp call as it rang out into the war cries of the charging avalanche of painted warriors.
“Now,” Forsyth called.
An instant later Beecher picked up the order, “Now.”
The volley made an ear-hammering roar as powder flame lashed out from the Spencers, the bullets tearing great holes in the front rank of the Indians as men and horses fell. They closed ranks and came on. Roman Nose was still in the front, yelling his frightening war cry and holding his rifle above his head.
Another volley and a third and a fourth. Far out on the left flank a medicine man was knocked off his horse. Sam, squeezing off another shot, thought for an instant the charge was broken, but once more they closed ranks and swept on, the prairie grass behind them littered with dead and wounded men and horses.
They were almost to the island now, charging straight into the death-dealing fury of the Spencers. A fifth volley and a sixth, and then Roman Nose was knocked off his horse, the medicine that had brought him through so may savage fights failing him at last.
The big warrior was the key to the charge, the very heart of the attack. When he fell, the charge stopped as if it had rolled up against an impenetrable wall. One more volley, and even in the face of this leaden death the Indians picked Roman Nose up and carried him off the battlefield.
Sam jumped to his feet with the rest of the scouts who could stand, all yelling and emptying their revolvers at the Indians, who were racing away across the prairie. A handful of braves had reached the lower end of the island. If they had come on . . . if Roman Nose had not fallen, they would have overrun the island, and the scouts would have been trampled to death just as Roman Nose had planned.
Sam had been surprised to find himself on his feet, his empty revolver in his hand as he cheered with the rest. This was not like him, but now he felt a great wave of pride engulf him, pride because he was a member of this body of scouts, pride because they had fought hard enough to stay alive, pride in having the courage it took to stay and keep firing in the face of five hundred horsemen who wanted only to kill him and his fellow scouts.
“Get down,” Forsyth yelled. “Lie down.”
And Beecher, “Get down or you’ll have your heads blown off.”
Smith reached over and yanked Sam back into his pit just as the sharpshooters opened up once more from the grass, raking the entire island with a vicious, deadly fire. Sam lay in his trench and reloaded his Spencer and revolver, thinking briefly of the insanity of war, of the squaws who loved the Indians who had fallen just as much as some white women loved the scouts who had died since the first dawn attack, just as his own mother loved him.
He lay on his back, the hot morning sun hammering down on him. The powder smoke that had been a drifting cloud above the island was gone now, its acrid smell still lingering in Sam’s nostrils. Then it came to him. This was the best the Indians could do. They would never do any better.
He would walk away from this island, he told himself; he would be back on the farm in time to help his father harvest his corn.
ELMER KELTON
Desert Command
ELMER KELTON (1926–2009) was born in Texas, where he was educated at the University of Texas, Austin. He worked as a journalist and editor, than served with the US Army in Europe during World War Two. His first Western story appeared in the pulp magazine Ranch Romances in 1947, and he quickly established himself as one of the genre’s leading authors. Among the many honours he received for his writing are four Spur Awards from the Western Writers of America, three Western Heritage Awards from the National Cowboy Hall of Fame, and a Life Achievement Award from the Texas Institute of Letters. Kelton has written about the New West as well as the West of the nineteenth century, and his contemporary Western, The Time It Never Rained (1972), has been acclaimed as one of the finest American novels of any sort ever. Among the many notable qualities of Kelton’s Western fiction are its historical realism and its racial tolerance.
The story ‘Desert Command’, which features a company of black buffalo soldiers lost in the South-west desert in the 1870s, comes from Kelton’s novel, The Wolf and the Buffalo (1980). It was first extracted as a short story by Jon Tuska.
THE CAPTAIN WENT through the motions of setting up a guard mount, but it was a futile effort. Most of these suffering men could do little to defend themselves should the Indians choose this time to attack. Gideon’s vision was so blurred that he could not have drawn a bead. Sergeant Nettles could no longer control his limp. He kept his eyes on the captain and contrived not to move more than necessary when the captain looked in his direction.
Gideon asked, “ Sergeant, why don’t you take your rest?”
Nettles’ eyes flashed in anger. “You tryin’ to tell me what to do, Private Ledbetter?”
“No, sir. Just come to me that you had a hard day.”
“We all had a hard day. Mine ain’t been worse than nobody else’s.”
“You’ve rode back and forth, walked back and forth, seein’ after the men. You gone twice as far as most of us. You rest, why don’t you? Tell me what you want done and I’ll do it.”
“I want you to leave me alone. Ain’t nothin’ wrong with me that ain’t wrong with everybody here.”
“The rest of them got no arrow wound that ain’t ever healed up.”
The anger in Nettles’ eyes turned to sharp concern. “It’s all right, and I don’t want you talkin’ about it.” He glanced quickly toward the captain and showed relief to find Hollander’s attention focused elsewhere.
Gideon said accusingly, “You been hidin’ it from him.”
He could not remember that he had ever seen Nettles show fear of anything. But the sergeant was fearful now. He gripped Gideon’s arm. “Don’t you be tellin’ him. Don’t be tellin’ nobody. Without the army, wha
t could I be? Where could I go?”
“Lots of things. Lots of places.”
“You know better than that. In the army I’m a sergeant, a top sergeant. I’m somebody, and I can do somethin’. Anywhere else, I’m just another nigger.”
“Captain’ll see for hisself sooner or later.”
“Not as long as I can move. Now you git to your own business.”
Sometime during the early part of the evening Gideon heard horses walking. He pushed up from the ground, listening, hoping it was Jimbo and the canteen carriers coming back. He was momentarily disoriented – dizzy – but he realized the sound was from the wrong direction to be Jimbo. It was coming from along the column’s backtrail, to the west. He thought about Indians, but they wouldn’t make that much noise. The clinking and clanking meant cavalry horses.
Captain Hollander figured it out ahead of Gideon. He walked to the edge of camp and did his best to shout. “Waters! Sergeant Waters! Up here!” His voice was weak and broke once.
The horses seemed to stop for a moment. The men – one of them, at least – had heard the captain. Hollander shouted again, his voice hoarser now. After a moment, the horses were moving again. The captain grunted in satisfaction. His good feeling was soon spoiled, for the horses kept walking, right on by the knoll.
“Waters!” Hollander tried again. Gideon took up the shout, and so did several others. The riders continued to move, passing the hill and going on eastward. The captain clenched his fists in anger.
Gideon volunteered, “I’ll go, sir. I’ll fetch them back.” Hollander only grunted, but Gideon took that for approval. He started down the hill, his legs heavy. He shouted every so often for Waters, but he heard no reply. When he stopped to listen he could tell that the horses were getting farther from him. He tried to run but could not bring his legs to move that rapidly. He stumbled over the crown of some dried-up bunchgrass and sprawled on his belly. He invested a strong effort into getting on his feet.