Upon reaching the comparative safety of the bluffs, Jeffers and Ryman remained exposed to the blistering attack from across the river while they directed the rest of the troop into defensive positions among the cuts and gullies that ran down from the bluffs. When the last man staggered into safety, leading his horse, the lieutenant and his sergeant took cover and the troop began to return fire.
“How many lost?” Jeffers gasped.
Ryman wasn’t sure. In the chaos of the crossing he had seen one body floating downstream and another knocked from his horse, but he had been too busy to see everything. “I don’t know for sure. Two I saw—three counting Fannin. We’ll just have to count heads.”
When the head count was completed, there were five troopers missing. “Damn!” Jeffers exclaimed softly when he heard. Five men dead and he was now backed up in the bluffs. He had been suckered by a undisciplined band of savages and his men were pinned down by the rifle fire from directly across the river. While the soldiers were clamoring for cover among the gullies, their attackers had moved from their hiding places and advanced to new positions along the riverbank. From the long line of rifle fire pouring in upon them, keeping them low behind what cover they could find, Jeffers could now see that he faced a force of considerably more than the nine Arapahos he had been chasing.
There was no time for self-blame as the lieutenant did his best to direct his men to return fire, admonishing them to conserve their ammunition. At the start of the patrol, each man had drawn one hundred rounds of carbine ammunition and twenty-five rounds of forty-five pistol shells. So the ammunition was not low by any means but he didn’t like the position they were forced to defend and he was afraid the siege could last a long time.
“How many do you make it out to be?” Jeffers asked Ryman when the sergeant crawled up beside him after making a check on the condition of his troops.
“Hard to say, but from the way they’re spread out along that bank, I’d say at least forty or fifty.” He hunkered lower to the ground when a bullet kicked up sand just above his head. “We’re in a mess, all right.”
“How are the men?”
“Hell, they’re doing as best they can, I reckon. They’re all veterans. They’ve been shot at before. Evers and Schumacher are wounded but they’re all right.” He ducked his head again as another bullet kicked up dirt between them. “God damn that son of a bitch!” He crawled up to the brim of the gully and fired several shots at the spot he thought the shots had come from. Knowing that he was wasting ammunition when he couldn’t see his target, he fired anyway to release some of the frustration he felt.
After the first forty-five minutes or so, the firing from the Arapahos tapered off to occasional bursts of rifle shots whenever a trooper carelessly exposed part of his body. Now two hours had passed and the sun began to descend below the bluffs, throwing the gullies into shadow. It would not be long before the river bottom would be immersed in total darkness. Ryman wasn’t looking forward to that. It would be a long night and every man would have to stay alert. There was always the chance that the hostiles would tire of the siege and ride away during the night, but Ryman didn’t give that thought much of a chance. Why should they? Hell, they held all the cards. They knew as well as he did that there wouldn’t be any rescue column coming to reinforce the besieged troopers—they were three days’ ride from the fort. Ryman also knew, from personal experience, that the tales that Indians didn’t fight at night were simply myths. So the troopers’ only chance for survival was to hold the Indians off till they got bored with the battle. They were not likely to charge—that wasn’t usually their style, since they didn’t like to suffer the heavy casualties that military face-offs usually brought. So the soldiers would have to sit tight and pray the hostiles got tired of waiting them out. Ryman promised himself one small liberty in the event they had to hold here until their ammunition ran out and the hostiles overran them. When it came down to the end, he was going to make sure he told Lieutenant Page Jeffers what an arrogant ass he was for leading a twenty-man patrol this deep into hostile territory.
Evening began to settle in, still with sporadic gunfire between the battle lines. One of the men, Private Greenwell, called to Sergeant Ryman that he thought he had seen Fannin move. The trooper had laid where he had fallen on the riverbank, the arrow imbedded in his chest, for over three hours. Ryman ducked low and, in a crouch, made his way over to the end of the gully to get a look for himself.
After staring, unblinking, at the fallen trooper for several minutes, he was about to conclude that Greenwell had simply seen a dead man’s contraction. Then he saw Fannin’s hand slowly reach up and touch the arrow shaft as if to pull it out. He was too weak, however, and the effort to raise his hand seemed to exhaust him. The hand dropped back to his side.
“He ain’t dead,” Greenwell said. “I’ll make a run for him.”
Ryman stopped him with a hand on his arm. “No. I ain’t gonna lose another man right now. He’s laying out in the open. They’d cut you down before you got halfway there. It’ll be dark in another thirty minutes. We’ll get him then. Another half hour won’t make much difference.” So they waited.
Lieutenant Jeffers made the rounds to each man’s position as the light faded away in the valley and only long streaks of orange and dark blue remained above the ridges. He cautioned each man to keep a sharp eye to guard against a surprise attack and to make sure he knew the exact position of the men on either side of him. “I don’t want us to start shooting each other during the night, so if you’re going to change your position make sure you tell the man next to you.”
As soon as it was dark enough that the outline of the river became lost in the softness of the night, Greenwell and McManus crawled over the rim of the gully and made their way to the wounded man. Fannin cried out in pain when his two comrades picked him up and the sound brought an immediate response from the hostiles. Within seconds the air was filled with gunshots as several troopers targeted muzzle flashes from the opposite bank of the river.
Fannin was almost out of his head with pain. There was no medical orderly with the column and the one man who had had some training in the care and bandaging of wounds was the body that Ryman had seen floating downstream during the ill-fated crossing. At times Fannin seemed lucid and then he would seem to be hallucinating and ranting about a dark angel who would smite the savages with his scythe. They figured he wouldn’t last till morning, especially if he was seeing dark angels around him. The arrow was buried deep in his chest and, after a futile attempt to dislodge it, during which Fannin collapsed into unconsciousness from the pain, they concluded the arrowhead had bent around the bone and had best be left to the surgeon—if Fannin was still alive when they returned to Camp Carson. There was nothing they could do for him except try to make him as comfortable as possible. For the rest of the night, he drifted in and out of consciousness. During one of his lucid moments, he thanked the sergeant for not leaving him out in the open to die.
Not long after total darkness set in, they were aware of movement in front of their position and every man tensed to repel what might turn out to be a frontal attack. Every eye strained to see in a night so deep that a man could stand ten yards away and be totally invisible. Occasional muffled sounds reached the men dug in under the bluffs. Fingers rested nervously on triggers, knowing the savages would be using knives and bows, not wanting to reveal their advances with muzzle blasts. Suddenly a scream rang out on the far end of the line of troopers, followed by the blast of an army carbine. One Arapaho was dead, a bullet through his gut. But the price had been one trooper, his throat opened up by the daring hostile’s knife.
Knowing the Indians would probably make a try for the horses, Sergeant Ryman posted two men to guard them. The horses were crowded together in the back of the gully and Ryman didn’t want to take a chance on the possibility that some of the hostiles might be able to descend the steep wall of the bluff behind them.
Another half hour passed and ther
e was another attempt by an Indian to slip in and kill a trooper on the opposite flank from the one just killed. This time the trooper targeted was alert and quick enough to dispatch this warrior with his Colt forty-five. The hours creeped slowly by, occasionally punctuated by a sudden flight of arrows that rained down around the weary soldiers. But there were no more sneak attempts. Ryman figured they had decided to wait for daylight. Everything was quiet then; the only sound reaching the besieged cavalry were the insect noises along the river and an occasional night bird’s call.
A muffled cry was heard from the opposite side of the river, then nothing again. Minutes passed. Then, downstream, a grunt reached them and Ryman and the lieutenant speculated on what the sounds meant. In a few more minutes a sharp cry of some kind rang out briefly before going silent again. It sounded somewhat like an abbreviated war cry.
“What the hell are they doing?” Jeffers mumbled.
Ryman answered. “Damned if I know. Maybe they’re getting theirselves worked up to attack us.” As if underscoring his remark, they heard a low grunt in the darkness before them.
“I think they’re trying to work on our nerves,” Jeffers concluded.
“You might be right.” Then he added, “They’re doing a right smart job on mine.”
Whatever the reason for the sounds, there were no more that night beyond the general noise of movement across from them, which indicated to the lieutenant that they were getting into position to attack at first light.
The first faint rays of sunlight that probed the heavy darkness of the river bottom found a sleepless cavalry patrol nervously waiting for the dawn and the fury it promised to bring. Every man strained at his post, trying to penetrate the gloom that was rapidly fading away. It seemed that, hours before, when the darkness was a cloak for the sinister movements of the savage Indians, it was a foreboding and threatening thing. Now, as that darkness lifted, there was almost a reluctance to let it go. There was a feeling of nakedness, knowing that the sun’s rays would expose the meager defense of the patrol. They knew they were outnumbered three or four to one. Their only avenue to the water was across an open riverbank and most of the canteens were emptied during the long, sleepless night. The horses were already restless at being so close to water and not being allowed to drink. There had been no cookfires during the night for obvious reasons, and there was no wood available to them to build fires even if it had been allowed. So, tired and hungry and nervous, they waited and watched.
Even as the sky lightened and the ridges beyond the river became visible, there remained an eerie quiet over the river bottom. A heavy mist rose from the water causing the opposite side of the river to remain obscure. Sergeant Ryman crawled over beside Lieutenant Jeffers and checked the load in his carbine for at least the tenth time since the darkness started to lift.
“It shouldn’t be long now,” Jeffers said. “I haven’t heard a sound for hours.”
“It’s too damn quiet to suit me,” Ryman agreed. “I don’t know what they’re up to but they’re being mighty quiet about it.”
Up and down the line, he could hear the muffled sounds of his men shifting around in their dug-in positions, situating their rifles in scooped-out firing trenches, eyes riveted on the wall of mist hovering over the river. “Keep a sharp eye,” he cautioned. “Some of them devils will be sneaking in under the cover of that mist.”
Still there was no sound and no sign of movement. They waited. Now the first rays of the sun extended down to touch the river bottom and the mist began to slowly dissipate. “Hold your fire till you can see a clear target,” Jeffers ordered. “We can’t afford to waste ammunition.”
The silence was almost unbearable. At Ryman’s elbow, Greenwell complained. “Why don’t they come on?”
Ryman didn’t answer. His eyes strained to see through the rapidly evaporating mist, and as he stared, his eyes burning from lack of sleep, he thought he saw a form materializing on the far side. At first he thought his eyes were playing tricks on him, but the form began to take on shape and he realized it was a man. He raised his carbine and took aim. It was a long shot so he hesitated to pull the trigger. Come a little bit closer, he said to himself. In seconds, the fog faded to reveal a tall man dressed in buckskins. Ryman lowered his rifle. He thought once again that he was seeing things, that his mind was playing tricks on him. But in a few more moments, the mist swirling around the appellation’s feet and legs melted away and he realized that it was no mirage he was looking at. The man didn’t look like an Arapaho. Seconds later he realized it was a white man. A few more seconds passed and the ghostly form spoke.
“Hold your fire,” the stranger called out. “I’m coming across.” There was a few moments’ pause. “Can you hear me? I’m coming across.”
The significance of the man’s ghostlike appearance hit him with thunderous impact—the hostiles had gone! Ryman stood up and ordered, “Hold your fire! Hold your fire!”
“What the hell…?” Jeffers started but didn’t finish, for by that time Ryman had walked out in front of the gully.
“They’ve gone,” Ryman told him. Turning back to the river, he called out, “Come on across!”
Daylight was rapidly filling the river bottom now as the lone figure on the far bank led a brown and white paint to the water’s edge before stepping up in the saddle and starting across. The beleaguered men crawled out of their rifle pits and, one by one, walked out on the hard-packed sand, scarcely believing their deliverance from what had promised to be a massacre. With bleary eyes they watched the progress of the mysterious rider as he unhurriedly forded the shoulder-deep water. They looked around them in confused amazement as the sunlight revealed still more. Not ten yards from the spot where Fannin had lain wounded for hours was the body of an Arapaho warrior. Directly in front of their position, at the water’s edge, another body lay, his legs in the water from his knees down. Ryman looked in wonder at the bodies and then back to the tall stranger now climbing up the shallow bank.
“You boys got any coffee?”
Lieutenant Jeffers was almost in shock. “The hostiles…” was all he could get out at first, still unable to understand what had happened.
“They left a couple of hours before daylight,” was the simple explanation.
Ryman stepped forward, offering his hand. “Mister, you’re welcome to all the coffee you can drink. Roy Ryman’s the name.”
“Jason Coles.” He took the extended hand.
* * *
An almost festive atmosphere settled over the small command as the threat of imminent death was lifted. After assurance from Jason that the Arapahos had indeed left the area, Jeffers gave the men permission to gather firewood and have a hot breakfast. While the bacon and hardtack was being prepared, Jason gave the lieutenant and Ryman an explanation for the sudden change of heart by the Arapahos. Jason Coles’s accounting, as usual, was simple and abbreviated on the first run-through, but with Sergeant Ryman’s probing and questioning, a fuller version was extracted from the soft-spoken scout.
Jason explained that he was trailing two white renegades who had kidnapped a woman, and he had heard rifle fire late last evening. He broke off to investigate and was surprised to find the cavalry patrol so deep in hostile territory with no more than the few men he could make out from his position up on the ridge. He could see the Arapahos below him in the bluffs and it was apparent to him that the soldiers were in a box they couldn’t get out of.
Jeffers interrupted. “But there must have been fifty or sixty hostiles.”
“There wasn’t but forty that I could see,” Jason countered, and then he continued. After sizing up the situation, he concluded that he would be of little help if he tried to ride through to the soldiers. He could be far more effective by himself after dark. He figured that, if he could take out a few of their warriors without them knowing what hit them, he might be able to spook them into thinking some mysterious force was telling them that maybe it was bad medicine they were making and they’d
best fight another day.
As soon as it was dark enough, he scouted around until he found their horses beyond the second ridge. There were only two warriors left to guard the horses and, in the darkness, it wasn’t too difficult to get the jump on them, using his knife to kill them both. He took their scalps, figuring to further confuse the Arapahos, making them wonder if one of their natural enemies, like the Crows or Pawnees, was at their backs.
“One of the horse guards had a bow and that made my work a little easier. I ain’t what you might call a crack shot with a bow but I’m a fair shot and I can hit something if I get close enough.”
He cut the hobbles on about half the horse herd and chased them off. Then he went about stalking the rest of the warriors. He worked his way in behind them on the bluff, slipping up to within his bow range. He killed one who had left the others to relieve himself. Then he worked his way around to the downstream side of the war party and waited until he got a shot at another one. “It was pretty close in there after that so I went downstream a ways and came across to this side. I figured to wait till they found their friends dead and their horses gone.”
“You were on this side of the river?” Jeffers asked. “Why didn’t you come on in, then?”
“Well, to tell you the truth, Lieutenant, I didn’t fancy getting myself shot by one of your boys.”
Ryman interrupted. “That was four killed. What about those two?” He pointed to the two bodies on this side of the river.
“Like I said, I was laying low. I saw that one buck come across the river—it was so damn dark he damn near stepped on me when he sneaked by. He was fixin’ to take that boy’s scalp with the arrow in him—I thought the boy was dead—but I couldn’t see any sense in sitting there letting him take his scalp.”
Cheyenne Justice Page 13