Devil's Creek Massacre

by Len Levinson

  Tandor and his warriors had been attacked by a gang of American outlaws, and their leader was Richard Cochrane, formerly of the Confederate Cavalry Corps. He and his men rampaged onward, maintaining steady pistol fire at Apaches fleeing in all directions.

  A half hour earlier, Cochrane had heard gunfire far away and decided to investigate. The Apaches scattered into the desert, but there was no point to dividing his small force and chasing them. Cochrane held up his right gloved hand while pulling back his horse's reins with his left. His men coalesced about him, a rugged dusty lot, sunlight glinting off steely eyes. They'd expected a small band of embattled Mexican vaqueros, but could locate no hint of the gun battle that they'd just interrupted.

  “Could be they was just Apaches a-fightin’ amongst theirselves,” suggested Clement Beasley, second in command, formerly a sergeant in the Ninth Virginia Cavalry.

  “Looks that way,” replied Cochrane. He took off his smudged silverbelly cowboy hat and wiped his forehead with the back of his arm. A jagged purple scar worked its way up his right cheek, and he wore a black patch over his right eye. “This is as good a place as any to break for dinner.”

  He climbed down from his horse and let Beasley pass along his orders. Cochrane managed the outlaw band like a line cavalry detachment, with strict discipline and rough punishment for infractions of the rules. They were mostly ex-Confederate soldiers returning from the armed robbery of a west Texas bank, as attested to by packhorses carrying bags filled with loot.

  Cochrane sat in the scant shade of a cottonwood tree as his men performed campsite duties. They traveled light as Apaches, with no tents, only grub and canvas bedrolls. Two men dug a firepit while two others prepared food. Another crew cared for horses, and three were lookouts, because no place is home for desperadoes with prices on their heads.

  Cochrane smoked a cigarette and examined his map as dinner was prepared. Thirty-one years old, five-ten, he was sturdily constructed, with dirty tan jeans and two Colts in crisscrossed gunbelts, a bandolier across his chest, and a bowie knife sticking out his boot. He and his men didn't believe that the Great Cause was lost, and fought on as highly mobile and efficient mounted guerrilla fighters. Cochrane had dubbed them the First Virginia Irregulars, and they were on their way to their hideout in the Sierra Madre Mountains.

  No one sat near Cochrane, who maintained himself remote from the men. It was partially by design, because men won't take orders from a friend, and partially because he genuinely despised small talk. He removed his old brass army compass from his shirt pocket and took an azimuth on mountains on the horizon, then returned to the map. He loved tactics, ordnance, action, and danger. Certain events that had occurred at the Appomattox Courthouse in 1865 didn't change anything as far as he was concerned. The war that broke out at Fort Sumter was still on, and he'd never bow down to the Yankee invader.

  Beasley approached his commanding officer and threw a salute. He was heavyset and wore a walrus mustache. “The camp is secure, sir. Walsh's horse has a loose shoe, but that's the total damage.”

  “Carry on,” replied Cochrane. He didn't have to issue more orders; they all knew what to do and functioned like a smooth well-oiled war machine. Beasley sat opposite his commanding officer and rolled a cigarette. “I wonder what them Apaches was up to. They might come back with some of their friends.”

  “I don't think so,” replied Cochrane.

  Beasley and the others usually deferred to Cochrane, while the ex-company commander felt no need to explain himself. Who had the Apaches been fighting? he wondered.

  Cochrane had more important concerns, such as his next raid behind enemy lines, and then came the cantinas of Monterrey, with beautiful Mexican girls, gambling tables, horse races, and other pastimes to take his mind off the War of Northern Aggression that had destroyed and punished the South.

  A strange sound came to his ears as he carefully folded his dog-eared map. “Someone's there,” he said, dropping to the ground and whipping out his old Remington New Model Army .44, the same one he'd carried during the war.

  The men were all on their bellies instantly, searching for danger. “What's wrong?” asked Ginger Hertzog, who'd served under General Nathan Bedford Forrest during The Late Unpleasantness.

  “Something's in those bushes over there,” replied Cochrane.

  “It's probably a bird,” said Beasley. “Walsh—take a look at that bush. We'll cover you.”

  Walsh was a survivor of Pickett's Charge, and he crawled forward, cradling a double-barrel shotgun in his arms. His head and shoulders disappeared in the foliage, and then he said, “My God—there's somebody here, and I think he's daid!”

  The outlaws looked at each other in surprise, then advanced into the thicket. They found a young man lying on the ground, blood everywhere, flies buzzing noisily. “Guess he's what them Apaches was after,” said Beasley.

  The outlaw band carried a doctor who had lost his license on their roster, and his name was Jeff Montgomery, formerly on the staff of General John Longstreet. Dr. Montgomery, forty years old, wore a black frock coat, stovepipe hat, and gray pants, with high-topped cowboy boots and shiny burnished spurs. Businesslike, he knelt beside the wounded young man and rolled him onto his back.

  The victim had been shot in the chest, shoulder, and leg, his face pale, eyes closed, limbs loose. Dr. Montgomery opened his saddlebags, pulled out a small tin mirror, held it to the young man's nose, and a faint mist appeared.

  “I believe he's alive, but not by much.” Dr. Montgomery pressed his ear against the young man's heart. “Very faint beat.” The physician was the oldest member of the outlaw gang, with a short salt-and-pep-per beard. He unbuttoned the bloody shirt and saw dried gore around the wound. “I'd say that he doesn't have long to go.”

  “Is the bullet still in there?” asked Johnny Pinto, twenty-one years old, the most recent recruit to the gang and the only nonveteran. Cochrane had admitted him because of Johnny's raw outlaw guts. Johnny Pinto was wanted for murder, robbery, and assault with intent to kill in a variety of jurisdictions.

  “Unfortunately,” replied the doctor, “all three bullets are inside him.” He turned toward their leader. “Should I operate, or do we let him die?”

  “How long will it take to operate?”

  “A few hours.”

  The former company commander gazed at the young man sprawled on the ground. “He doesn't look like he's going to make it.”

  “He probably won't.”

  The weapons lying nearby indicated that the stranger had held out to the end, and that weighed the scale in his favor. “Sergeant Beasley—have the cooks boil some water, and please render any assistance that Dr. Montgomery might require.”

  The campsite bustled as Dr. Montgomery prepared for surgery. He'd served in the field during all five years of the war, but then, after Appomattox, during a particularly difficult period of his life, he'd performed an abortion on a certain young woman brought him by an old family friend. The woman had died from unforeseen complications, and then scalawags and carpetbaggers decided to arrest the good doctor. He wasn't interested in Yankee prisons, so he'd cut out for Texas, met Cochrane in a saloon, and offered his services. Now the former field surgeon was an irregular, too, but one highly experienced at removing projectiles from human flesh.

  Cochrane sat nearby, alternately munching a biscuit and sipping from his canteen as he watched Dr. Montgomery slice into the unconscious young man's stomach. The former captain of cavalry understood wounds all too well. He'd been smacked across the face with a cavalry saber in the hard fighting around Yellow Tavern, 13 March 1864. Many of Cochrane's closest friends had been killed in the bloody struggle, while polite and elegant Captain Cochrane had gone berserk on the battlefield, hacking down federal soldiers with his saber, getting shot and cut himself in the wild melee, then he'd fallen out of his saddle from loss of blood and been trampled by horses. Seven years later some corner of his frame hurt every time he moved.

  Meanwhil
e, Dr. Montgomery probed forceps into a hole welling with blood. His patient was white as a lily, heartbeat barely existent. The doctor had to work quickly, but during the war he'd been awake three or four days in a row, sawing off limbs and digging out lead while the occasional stray bullet flew by.

  Dr. Montgomery's bright red nose twitched as he caught a piece of lead solidly in his forceps. Slowly, he withdrew the jagged irregular lump from the patient's open stomach cavity. Funny how a little thing like this can kill a man, he mused.

  He took one last look inside the bloody cavern, then removed the clamps, took needle and catgut, and sewed the wound with quick deft strokes while an assistant sopped the blood. At the perimeter of the surgical area, guards searched the desert for Apaches while other irregulars cared for the horses, and the cooking crew roasted meat on an iron spit.

  The field surgeon cut into his patient's leg; the patient's eyes were opened to slits, but only white showed. His earlobes were turning blue, not a good sign. Dr. Montgomery withdrew the second bullet carefully.

  Cochrane knelt beside the patient and said, “What d'ya think?”

  “He's lost a lot of blood, and now it's in the hands of God. We'll have to rig out the travois.”

  “Beasley—get the travois!” ordered the former company commander.

  Beasley turned to Johnny Pinto. “You heard him.”

  Johnny Pinto appeared surprised. “We're not a-takin’ ‘im with us, are we?”

  “The captain said get out the travois.”

  Johnny Pinto wore tight black pants, a flowing red shirt, and a yellow bandanna. His flat-brimmed black Mexican estancia hat sat at an angle over his brown eyes. “But he's as good as dead, and anybody can see it. We're wastin’ our time with ‘im.”

  “Do as I say.”

  “But it's stupid.”

  At the sound of the last word, Beasley's eyes widened. He hooked his thumbs in his gunbelt, strolled toward Johnny Pinto, and peered into his eyes. “You were told the rules when you jined up with us. If you can't take an order, you can quit right now.”

  “What do we need a dead man for?”

  Beasley was about to reply when Captain Cochrane stepped onto the scene. “I'll take care of this, Sergeant.” Then Cochrane turned toward Johnny Pinto. “Do as you're told, or ride on out of here. It's as simple as that.”

  Johnny Pinto spread his legs and leaned his head to the side. “What if I don't do neither?”

  “I'll have to execute you.”

  Johnny Pinto blinked, not certain he'd heard those deadly words. Then he stood straighter, loosened his shoulders, and said, “What makes you think you can do it?”

  “I'll count to three. If you're not on your horse by then, I'm opening fire. One.”

  Johnny Pinto raised his hand. “Now wait a minute.”

  “Two.”

  The young outlaw didn't like bosses and could out-draw anybody in the band, or so he thought. He'd won six-gun duels in the past, and men had told him afterward that they'd never seen anything like his speed. Johnny Pinto tensed for the showdown, his eyes focusing on Cochrane. He saw the ugly battle scar, knew that Cochrane was a Confederate war hero, and remorseless determination glowed from Cochrane's eyes.

  “Three!”

  “Whoa—hold on,” said Johnny Pinto. “I was jest askin’ a question—that's all.” With a nervous giggle, he headed toward the packhorse that contained the travois.

  Cochrane returned to the surgical area, thinking about Johnny Pinto. The ex-officer had known from the moment they'd met that the young killer would be trouble, but an army needs tough fighters. Cochrane's troopers had obeyed his orders without hesitation during the war, but now it was a new world. One of his father's ex-slaves had actually become a state senator in Virginia!

  Cochrane was sickened by the drastic transformation of the world since the war. He was a rich man's son who couldn't become somebody's hireling, but money could be found in banks, and he was well versed in strategy, tactics, and the importance of surprise.

  Dr. Montgomery sewed the wound in the patient's shoulder, and the ground looked as if a hog had been butchered. “I wonder who he is?” asked the surgeon as he washed blood off his hands.

  Cochrane upended the patient's saddlebags, and a variety of articles fell out, but no identification. Cochrane picked up the King James Bible, then laid it on the ground. He noticed the other book.

  THE PRINCE

  by Niccolò Machiavelli

  Cochrane was surprised to find an obscure philosophical work in the middle of the Mexican desert. He opened the pages at random, and his one good eye fell on a passage:

  Anyone who becomes master of a city accustomed to freedom, and does not destroy it, may expect to be destroyed by it; for such a city may always justify rebellion in the name of liberty and its ancient institutions.

  The book reminded Cochrane of his student years at the University of Virginia, when his mind had been exposed to the writings of great thinkers like Machiavelli. He'd loved libraries, research, and the writing of essays, but then the war broke out and he'd enlisted in the old First Virginia Cavalry. Harsh lessons had been taught at the front, such as killing efficiently, with no moral qualms. Cochrane had planned to become a learned professor someday, but was professor of robbery instead. What is this kid doing with Machiavelli? he wondered.

  “Time fer eats,” said Jim Walsh, the cook.

  They gathered around the fire with their tin plates, and Cochrane cut the first slice. Then the rest attacked with knives. Dr. Montgomery held his dripping chunk over the wounded man's mouth and let some of the gravy drip into it.

  They ate as the wounded man lay ashen nearby. Johnny Pinto returned from lashing together the travois, then fetched his tin plate, and was left with a charred end of mule deer. He plopped it onto his plate and sat near the edge of the crowd.

  “He must be a damned fool if he was a-roamin’ alone out here,” said Johnny. “Seems to me a feller generally gits what he deserves in this world.”

  Nobody replied, because they hadn't yet cottoned to strange disagreeable Johnny Pinto. Meanwhile, Johnny Pinto thought they were jealous of his good looks and fast hand. He was five feet six, with a sunken chest, nervous eyes, and constant wrinkling of his forehead. He couldn't understand why they made such a fuss over a stranger. One of these days they'll push me too far, Johnny Pinto thought darkly. Then maybe they'll larn somethin’ new.

  “Somebody's a-comin'!” said Ginger Hertzog, one of the lookouts.

  The outlaws grabbed their rifles and left the wounded young man with Dr. Montgomery. The doctor held a Henry rifle in both hands, ready to fire.

  “I do believe it's a horse,” said Johnny Pinto. “Looks tame.”

  They watched the big russet stallion approach shyly out of the wilderness, and Johnny Pinto figured finders keepers.

  “Where the hell are you going?” asked Beasley.

  “He's mine, ‘cause I see'd him first.”

  Johnny Pinto swaggered toward the animal, holding out his hand in a friendly manner. “Come here, boy. Let's you and me be pals.”

  Nestor didn't like the looks of him. He turned away and broke into a trot, crashing through the foliage, and in seconds was gone. “He was skeered of his own shadow, I reckon,” replied Johnny Pinto.

  “He was afraid of you,” said Beasley.

  Johnny Pinto shrugged. “If n he wants to get et by Apaches, it's okay with me.”

  “But yer the one who spooked ‘im,” accused Ginger Hertzog.

  “You'd better watch the way you talk to me, friend.”

  “I'll talk to you any way I like, Pinto.”

  “That'll be enough,” said Cochrane. “Pinto, if you want fights, you'd better join another gang.”

  Johnny Pinto sulked like a guilty little boy. “Hertzog insulted me.”

  “You spooked the horse. What of it?”

  Cochrane's voice had a challenging tone, but Johnny Pinto wasn't ready to take on the former captain
yet. I wonder how good he can aim out of one eye? mused Johnny. Cochrane walked past him, heading toward the spot where the horse had been seen last. “Come on out,” he coaxed. “We'll take care of you until your master gets well.”

  Nestor listened carefully as he stood behind tangled Carolina snailseed vines not far way. He was alone on the desert, a treacherous situation for a solitary horse, and was scared to death. A pack of hungry coyotes could rip off his legs, or a rattlesnake might sink poisonous fangs into him. There were too few water holes, and Apaches lurked everywhere. Nestor decided to tag along at a distance and see what developed.

  Johnny Pinto turned to Cochrane. “Looks like you spooked him, too, sir.”

  Cochrane didn't bother to acknowledge Johnny Pinto's presence. The former company commander returned to his dinner, and the others gathered around while the guards watched for Apaches. The doctor pressed his ear against the wounded man's chest.

  “Is he still alive?” asked Cochrane.

  “Just barely,” replied the doctor.

  Johnny Pinto returned glumly to the campsite. “If I was like that, I'd just as soon be dead.”

  “Why don't you kill yourself?” asked Jim Walsh.

  “Maybe I'll kill you instead.”

  Cochrane said, “That time it was your fault, Walsh. If you two can't get along, maybe the both of you should leave.”

  “Everything was fine before Pinto came here,” replied Walsh, who had hulking shoulders and a hairy mole on his cheek. “Why doesn't he keep his yap shut, and everything'll be fine.”

  “Why can't I talk too?” inquired Johnny Pinto innocently. “Who are you to tell me what to say?”