The Stalkers

by Terry C. Johnston

  He whispered to Liam, “When will he order——”

  “When he’s ready, Donegan!” Beecher snapped.

  Liam glanced over and smiled at his nephew. “Easy, lad.”

  “I don’t take to a man riding me down like this, Uncle.”

  “You’re seeing history made, Donegan,” Fred Beecher said, smiling. “Not a man’s seen Indians charge like cavalry before!”

  “Major knows what he’s doing, lad,” Liam replied. “Besides, us dug in here like we are … can’t take the chance of wasting bullets—they’re still too far out there.”

  “Far!” Seamus snorted. “I’ll be shaking hands with the bastirds in but another breath——”

  “Now!”

  Forty guns exploded around him, their muzzles jetting brilliant tongues of fire.

  “Now!” Beecher echoed Forsyth’s command.

  “Give it to ’em, boys!” hollered Billy McCall right behind Donegan.

  That first volley unhorsed but two.

  “Shoot low, dammit!” O’Roarke was yelling now. “Hold your breath and shoot for the ponies!”

  “Spill ’em, fellas!” Sharp Grover added his voice.

  On galloped the warriors, kicking their ponies into a full run without slowing for their fallen. Roman Nose answered the rifle-fire with an unearthly war-cry, popping his hand against his mouth as his head arched back, sending his curse of death to the heavens.

  In a heartbeat that bloody cry was taken up by the five hundred. On the hilltops a renewed chant thundered from the throats of the women and old ones.

  “Again!”

  A second volley roared from the island. The smoke from so many weapons hung in the stillness above the riflemen, turning the sky a murky, dirty gray.

  “Fire, by damned!” Beecher was up on his knees, hollering behind them, urging.

  More horsemen spilled this time, their ponies coming on with the rest. Charging without slowing, heeding neither the rifles nor their fallen. Their throaty cries for blood redoubled now as holes ripped open in their ranks. Then as quickly those holes filled anew with warriors lurching up from behind. The phalanx made solid once more.

  Ponies wavering. A few going down as sand flew from their slashing hooves. Glittering like fine gold-dust in the high sun of this summer day.

  Seventeenth day of September, he reminded himself. And waited with his finger on the trigger of his Henry for the next command.

  Like a good soldier you are …

  “Now!”

  Forsyth’s command was barely out of his mouth this time before the island ignited again for the third volley into the face of the five hundred. Closer now. He judged less than a hundred yards. Killing range. With every bullet, forty men had to kill more than sixty men on the front row.

  From what Seamus could tell through the murky haze of yellow sunlight slanting through the powdersmoke, the warriors were falling over one another with that third volley. And ponies too. Going down in bloody, tumbling, spinning heaps. Shrieks from the hillsides as the women and old ones watched the slaughter of their chosen.

  He slammed back the action on the Henry, ramming home another cartridge, then fed three into the receiver from his fingers. Hurried, his hands sweating, sticking to the brass cases. Hard to yank free from between his fingers. As much damage as they had done to the phalanx of horsemen, still they came on, riding faster. Hoofbeats pounding harder.

  Odds told him that forty men volley-firing against a charge of hundreds would not work for long. Then he prayed good infantry soldiers like Forsyth and Beecher and Billy McCall knew how to fight this way against cavalry. Because this damned well was something new to Seamus Donegan. And damned scary as well.

  “Fire!”

  “Hit ’em with every shot, men!” Beecher reinforced Forsyth’s order.

  “Knock one of those godless fornicators straight to hell, Seamus,” Liam said grimly, then winked as his face eased. “We don’t, likely be us two dancing with the divil this night.”

  With that fourth volley the warriors ceased their mighty screeching. Most not already hollering in pain and frustration rode on grim-lipped into the mouth of the fire-spitting riflemen. Following their chosen leader at the center of the first line, every man weaving back and forth, making it hard to take a bead on him. Recklessly coming on, Roman Nose raised his arm, exhorting the hundreds behind him in the riverbed, splattering water and grit and gravel as they come on.

  “By God, boys! We’re whittling ’em down!” McCall shouted.

  “Now!”

  And a fifth volley split the air.

  Through the gray smoke hung like dirty gauze above his rifle-pit, something shouted inside him now, telling Seamus to aim for the one Liam called Roman Nose.

  Chapter 20

  Roman Nose sensed the pony beneath him begin to falter. Nothing close to a stumble. Something so faint only a man raised from infancy with a powerful animal like this beneath him could sense.

  As much as he himself had bobbed and weaved each time the soldier guns were trained on him, Roman Nose had not foreseen that the straining ponies would take the brunt of the white man’s rifles. In all the battles past, the great war-chief had ridden out alone. But now, riding in this full-fronted charge, there was no way he could rein his pony from side to side, dipping his body from left and right.

  One choice only—he and the others must ride the white men down, crushing them into the sand of the riverbed.

  In barbaric splendor Roman Nose drew himself up when a second shock-wave exploded through the ranks, causing more of those about him to pitch from their ponies.

  For an instant, The Nose glanced at the women and children and old ones too weak to fight, on the hilltops to watch the might of all the gathered bands sweep across the island in victory. One last time he raised his arm in the grandest of royal sweeps to his people of these plains.

  They answered this war-prince with renewed cries of encouragement, screeching for Roman Nose himself to bring about the defeat of the half-a-hundred.

  With their voices ringing in his ears, the breeze tugging at the horned bonnet tied beneath his bronze chin, Roman Nose once more glared into the muzzles of those rifles spitting fire at his charging followers. He tightened his hold on the chestnut pony, again sensing that failing in the lungs, a gasping, a straining for continued strength. His knees tightened about the pony’s ribs, held tight beneath the horsehair surcingle. Then for an instant he let go of the short rawhide bridle, shaking his fist at his white-skinned enemies, burrowed like mice in their sandy holes.

  At his right knee, a warrior fell with the third volley, blown backward off his pony in a spray of blood and brain.

  Nearer and nearer they pounded toward the island, every man at a full gallop. The fallen warrior was replaced with the old medicine man, White Bull. The warrior-cries thundered about his ears as river spray and sandy grit flew in all directions.

  He swallowed it down, and rejoiced in taking into his body the water and earth of this place where his medicine had brought him.

  The fourth volley took the old medicine man from his side. He glanced at the cloudless blue overhead, cursing the white murderers. Shamans like White Bull were not supposed to fight, but this one had come to ride alongside Roman Nose, if only to assure the young Cheyenne warchief that his powerful medicine suffered no taint.

  To have White Bull the medicine man riding at his right knee had been a good omen. When the old man spilled from his pony, dead before he hit the sand to be trampled beneath hundreds of hooves, Roman Nose knew the course of the day had been decided.

  Still, he rode on.

  Up ahead, the white men loomed closer. Heads only, peering over the lip of their rifle-pits. Down in the grass.

  Only minutes ago he had knelt on the hilltop, gazing down at the island. It had reminded Roman Nose of a squat, oblong anthill, this place where the white men hid. Dead horses had been dragged into a ragged oval like the shape a Cheyenne lodge makes upon the ca
mping ground.

  What seemed like only heartbeats ago, it was in the gorge beyond the first bend of the river that Roman Nose had told the hundreds of his plan.

  “The Brule and Oglalla and Arapaho will join us, my brothers. No more do we need to shoot at the island, because the whiteman burrows himself like the barking dogs of the prairie.”

  “H’gun—h’gun!” the Sioux warriors shouted, declaring their respect for Roman Nose in using the Lakota courage word.

  “Send runners swiftly to both sides of the riverbank. Tell them to keep the whitemen down by shooting at them until our ponies are almost on top of them.”

  “H’gun!”

  “Like mice forced into their holes by the bullets from our brothers on the riverbanks … the whiteman will soil their pants to watch us ride down on them. Crushing the life from their bodies.”

  “Hoka HEY!”

  “The Arapaho’s white brother, the one called Kansas, will blow his horn again during our charge. Blow, Kansas! Blow the death-song for these whitemen soon to give up their spirits to us!”

  Out of the gorge, into the narrow valley itself he led his hundreds at a walk, Nibsi at his side. To his right, the wrinkled face of the medicine man smiled like cracking walnuts beneath the old shaman’s owl-feather cap.

  Turning a moment and seeing the last of the horsemen had cleared the gorge, Roman Nose had kicked his strong chestnut into a lope, the long trail of war-eagle feathers and herons’ plumes bannered out on the hot wind.

  The young white man and former bugler of the 7th U.S. Cavalry, Jack Clybor held the tin horn to his lips and blew for all he was worth. Abandoned the year before by his fellow soldiers, Clybor had been found and cared for by a small band of nomadic Arapaho. Ever since becoming “Kansas” to his adopted people, the renegade had become a bloodthirsty adversary as well, torturing cruelly, mercilessly killing white men, women, and children on the Central Plains.

  “Come, my brothers! Let us turn their hearts to water!” Roman Nose shouted as Clybor’s bugle call faded from the riverbanks.

  Once he and the first row had come round the far bend of the river upstream from the island, a wild cry leaped from his throat as he beat his hand against his mouth with the Cheyenne call for death.

  Behind him, the hundreds cried out their death-songs in response, until their haunting voices reverberated from riverbank to riverbank.

  Though he heard the many behind him as they neared the island, Roman Nose nonetheless felt alone.

  More alone than he had in all his life, a life spent without a woman, without children to exalt in his name after this glorious day. None of his blood carried on in his name. Instead, his juices would soak into this sandy riverbed. The sand of this place the only memorial to his passing.

  He could pick out a few of the white faces now, some taut with fear. Others gone pale at the sight of what he led down on them.

  Would none of these whites dare fight him like a man? Would they all lay in hiding? When would the gray-eyed one of his vision show himself?

  The fifth volley ripped through his ranks, shredding the warriors and the ponies into bloody ribbons as they closed on seventy yards.

  He recognized two in blue shirts, then a third behind the first row of riflemen. These must be the leaders, he decided. Three who knelt behind the protection of those guns, yelling their orders. When they spoke, the guns spat fire. He decided to ride directly over the top of the defenders, killing those leaders as he rode them down.

  At twenty yards, Roman Nose ceased weaving, clamping his legs round the faltering pony, feeling the animal’s warm blood on his own bare legs. He tensed his muscles for the coming leap out of the riverbed and onto the island itself, where the white men waited for him.

  As it was in the sundance dream, he watched the hatless one in the blue shirt rise on his elbows, waving his arm wildly, his mouth silently giving voice to a wordless command. The one with a bloody bandage wrapped at his head.

  Roman Nose tightened the hand he gripped in the pony’s mane, yanking upward as he brought the muzzle of his rifle down, aiming at the soldier in the blue shirt and bandage. Then out of the smoke rising from those rifle-pits saw one stand.

  A single white man stand.

  In that sundance dream—rising. Solitary. Looming tall from the dense, yellow-gray powdersmoke.

  The tall one of his medicine vision. Come to pass, here on the sandy riverbed of his prayer-dream.

  He watched the tall one calmly throw his rifle against his shoulder, aiming.

  The Cheyenne war-chief no longer aimed his captured rifle at the wounded soldier in blue. Aimed now at the tall, dark-haired one with the whiskers blackening his chin.

  Roman Nose pulled the trigger on his Lodge Trail rifle at the exact moment he watched fire belch from the tall one’s weapon.

  Unable to reload, Roman Nose swung the rifle backward, preparing to use it as a club when his pony clawed from the riverbed onto the lip of the sandy island. The animal stumbled, down for a moment on its forelegs, then fought back up, leaping into a ragged gallop toward the first rifle-pits.

  Those first rifle-pits where the tall one had cocked his rifle and slammed it against his shoulder once more. Standing above the others who remained huddled in their holes.

  A brave one, this man, Roman Nose thought, the sounds of it inside his head like a prayer.

  If I am to die, let it be this gray-eyed one who takes the breath from my body, oh—All-Spirit! Hear me!

  Were it not for the surcingle lashing his legs to the weakening pony at that instant, Roman Nose would have tumbled into the rifle-pits himself. Instead, he swallowed down the sudden fire burning low in his back as his pony leaped, and leaped again over the scattered, struggling for the far riverbank.

  Wearily, he laid his head alongside the pony’s neck, feeling at last the warm, frothy blood and lather blowing against his cheeks from the countless wounds in the animal’s chest.

  And for the first time sensed that he was sitting in his own juices, warm and sticky as the chestnut shuddered to a halt on the riverbank opposite the island. Stopping so suddenly in the swamp-willow and plum-brush that its rider nearly slipped off. The pony trembled as it would to shed water, trying to stand beneath the growing weight of its rider.

  Roman Nose himself could no longer stay on. The sunlight was disappearing from his mind, as if the bullet holes in his body had allowed the prayer-light to seep from his body in huge rivulets with his warm blood.

  He sank to the grass, choking up clots of the sticky fluid collecting at the back of his throat. Sensing his eyes rolling back in his head. He fought it, like nothing else he had fought in his life. And began crawling, clawing with his hands, pulling with the waning strength left to his arms.

  His legs useless now, his back shattered with the bullet from the gray-eyed one’s rifle.

  The darkness swept over him, remembering it felt much like this in the sundance.

  When your body was no longer yours to control. And you gave yourself up to the Everywhere Spirit at last …

  * * *

  “Down, goddammit!” Billy McCall shrieked at the young Irishman, watching O’Roarke trying to pull Donegan back into the pit after that first shot.

  As he said it the attacking warriors closed on twenty yards. With a parting swirl of the powdersmoke, McCall could see ponies’ nostrils swell, their eyes widening like saucers of sour buttermilk back home in Pennsylvania. Time and again as a leader of infantry in the Civil War he had witnessed the charge of Confederate cavalry. Yet nothing this eerie: the wails and chants of the women, the screams of the ponies going down, the shrieks of the warriors’ bone whistles.

  Not that a man like Billy McCall was afraid of facing the charge standing. Any man who knew that Forsyth’s sergeant had been breveted a brigadier-general for his heroism in taking Fort Steadman during the siege of Petersburg could hardly call Billy a coward.

  He saw the huge warrior’s pony suddenly, surging ahead as th
e Indian aimed his rifle at Donegan.

  The bastard is using one of the Fetterman Springfields!

  In a swirl of sand, grit, smoke, and yellow haze, the ponies leaped from the river, snorting in a hell of noisy terror onto the end of the island. As quickly some of the animals spilled with the seventh and final volley tearing into their ranks. Spilling warriors, turning the row upon row of naked horsemen to the side, like a wave crashing upon the rocky coast.

  Brown bodies tumbled into the sand, lapping on the shallow, churning waters beaten to a froth by the thousand thundering hooves.

  Cries of the wounded from both sides reverberated as the wave collided with the rocks, parting the waters in a violent explosion.

  Donegan had to get that bastard!

  Billy saw the bloody hole open up on the huge warrior’s side as he leaped by the young Irishman, like a huge turkey-buzzard, so big it momentarily blotted out the sky above them.

  Donegan stood his ground, pumping and firing, pumping and firing again and again. His muzzle swinging in a slow, controlled arch, following the single horseman that leaped and leaped again through the maze of rifle-pits.

  Until the wounded, bloody rider reined his dying pony off the island, kicking up spray across the shallow branch of the creek, and into the swamp-willow. To disappear.

  “Down, men!” Forsyth was shrieking, up on one elbow, as Billy’s eyes found him through the murky haze.

  A scattered cheer erupted. O’Roarke and Grover, hollering like bellowing bulls in contest. Leaping to their feet as the charge melted to either side of the island. Scouts clambering up out of their pits, pistols barking in their hands at the retreating warriors. Killing all the ones who fell close enough to finish off.

  “Get down!” Beecher was shouting.

  Joined by McCall: “Down for your lives, boys!”

  But none of the scouts paid them any mind until the instant those snipers hidden on the banks saw the charge had been bested and opened fire on the island, furious at their failure.