Shadow Riders, The Southern Plains Uprising, 1873

by Terry C. Johnston

  “What about Graves?” Donegan asked.

  For a moment Pierce regarded his colleague lashed to the wagon wheel some thirty feet away. “I only hope he’ll last until we can get him to a doctor.”

  “Don’t count on that,” Jack said. “Not a thing a army surgeon can do for him.”

  Pierce wagged his head. “At least by getting him back to Fort Richardson he won’t be a danger to me any longer.”

  “You think he’ll do you harm?” asked Lieutenant Stanton.

  The civilian’s face went grave with concern, his eyes pleading for understanding. “Don’t you know how bad it makes me feel to see my friend, compatriot and co-worker in such dire distress? Don’t you see how it kills something inside of me to see him tied up like an animal? But what with the way he’s been acting—there are times when I wonder if he would not turn on me, turn on any of us. How I pray there was something, even some magic, that could cure William of this curse.”

  “I’ve known some who think there is magic to cure hydrophobic,” Jack said quietly. “They’re real hard to find, but some carry mad stones—shaped like an egg, pale-colored like a egg too. A man finds one in the belly of a white doe or white buffalo cow.”

  “What good is a stone to a man dying of hydrophobic?” asked Stanton skeptically.

  “Word says that a mad stone grabs on to the bite wound if there’s hydrophobic poison—and a man can’t pull it off while the stone is sucking out all the poison. And when the poison’s all sucked out, the stone turns a green color—about like the color of the juice in a gut pile when you get through dressing out a buffalo carcass.”

  “My lord!” Pierce exclaimed quietly, his hand over his mouth in astonishment. “I rhetorically asked for magic—but what you’ve told me is nothing more than pure paganism.”

  “The best part of the whole story is the milk,” Jack went on. “I’ve heard from some of the old buffalo hunters who made their living chopping through the Republican herd that the mad stone had to be cleaned in milk after it had sucked all the poison out of a hydrophobic wound. Some of them hide hunters told me they’ve killed a wet buffalo cow just to milk her udder dry then drop the green mad stone into that warm milk.”

  “Did the stone turn back to white?” Donegan asked in the hushed silence.

  Jack nodded. “After some time in the milk, a man can take the mad stone out and she’s as good as new. Ready to keep a man safe again.”

  Pierce swallowed. “I’m willing to try anything for William. Where do you think we might find such a stone?”

  Stillwell glanced at Donegan a moment, then studied Graves tied at the wagon. “Mr. Pierce, your friend there’s too far gone. It’s been four days now. The poison’s gone to his head now—ain’t no doubt. You saw how he acted this evening when we pulled him down from the back of the wagon.” He looked into Pierce’s eyes. “I’m sorry.”

  Pierce bit a knuckle. “Dear God in heaven—poor William.”

  Seamus watched the civilian walk away, going over to sit beside Graves as the man slept against the wagon wheel.

  “You believe Pierce really cares about saving his partner, Jack?”

  Stillwell considered it. “He does make a fine show of it, don’t he? But I figure I know enough about men to know when a man’s more interested in himself than he is interested in a friend who’s done in every bit as sure as if that friend had been bit by a rattler.”

  “You ever know anyone bit by a hydrophobic animal before?” asked Seamus.

  “Yeah—a fella I hunted with back in ’seventy-one. Lemoy was his name. We was up west of Fort Dodge. Next year, in ’seventy-two, he worked his own outfit. Two of his skinners was bit, so Lemoy went right off and camped by himself on a little sandbar in the middle of the Arkansas River so he’d be safe from the skunks and badgers that was hydrophobic. But he got bit anyway. For all his trouble, he got bit on the cheek. Come the next morning, he built him a fire of some driftwood and heated his knife blade—cauterized the wound before he rode on in to Fort Dodge to see a surgeon. The doctor told him he couldn’t done a better job himself.”

  “So, Lemoy got healed from cauterizing the wound like we did to Graves that first night?”

  Jack’s face drained of color. “Lemoy was a good man. Drank a might too much. But a good man all the same. No, Seamus. He died too—even after his face healed up nice where he’d burned out the wound’s poison. Always was proud of the fact that he could still grow a beard to hide the scar—but he never had much of a chance to get that beard fully growed. He died less’n three months after he got bit. Tore off his clothes in camp one afternoon and run off onto the prairie. We tried to find him—but never did.”

  “Maybe that hydrophobic does something to a man’s soul, Jack. Drives him right on back to the wild things.”

  “All I know is that last year up on the Arkansas was a bad year for skunks, Seamus. Some fellas put out bait meat with poison—and ended up getting a lot of wolves and coyotes through the summer and into the fall. Hides wasn’t worth a whole lot neither. But after last winter, we started to find a lot of dead skunks around—really nothing more’n some dried-up black and white hides and a few bones. Found the carcasses everywhere: in the forts, out by the hide ricks, right at the edge of our camps. Downright spooky, it was.”

  “The skunks were all gone? Just up and died?”

  “Until now, I thought that was so,” Jack replied. “But now I’m worried this is turning out to be the beginning of another season of them hydrophobic skunks.”

  “I suppose we’ll never know about them two,” Seamus said, watching Graves whispering in Pierce’s ear, and Pierce shaking his head. Graves lunged at Pierce, struggling in vain to get loose from the ropes that tied both wrists to the wagon wheel before he sank in enraged frustration to the ground again.

  “I’ll be happy when we get back to Richardson with this outfit,” Jack said. “I don’t figure Camp Supply is any closer than heading southeast would be.”

  “Pierce will turn you back around when you do start heading this outfit in to the fort,” Seamus said. “By the saints, it’ll be the dead of winter when he drags you back out here. But you best be prepared for more argument and threats from that one.”

  “No—I don’t figure Pierce will be able to do that,” Jack replied. “Not with Colonel Ranald S. Mackenzie having anything to say about what happens to his soldiers and where they go and when they march. No, Mackenzie’s the sort will tie that badger-faced Pierce up in knots so tight he and his Washington friends won’t be able to get loose until spring anyway. By then—yes, I’ll come back out here with Pierce. And so will you … just to see what it is we came out here to do in the first place.”

  “You’re so damned sure about me joining you, ain’t you, Jack Stillwell?”

  “I am at that, you bloody Irishman,” he cheered. “Unless you’ve got marrying on your mind.”

  “M-Marrying?”

  “Samantha Pike? Ain’t you gone soft on her now?”

  Donegan choked. “She’s a pretty thing and a real joy to smell and hold, she is—but … marrying is a whole different matter now.”

  “Best you explain that to Sharp’s wife—Samantha’s sister. I figure they’ve all three got you measured for a marrying suit, Seamus Donegan.”

  “I’ll have no more such talk,” the Irishman protested, clapping his hands over his ears.

  “All right then—it’s time for me to find my bedroll anyway,” Jack replied, strolling off. “Have yourself some sweet dreams, Seamus—filled with that doe-eyed Samantha Pike.”

  “Sweet dreams, indeed,” he growled, dragging out his own canvas bedroll and pulling back the wool blankets inside the waterproof sacking. Winter was come to the southern plains, and all warmth would again be drawn from the ground with another nightfall. The cozy cocoon felt good to him, despite the unrelenting hardness of the ground where his hip and shoulder lay.

  And, try as he might to fight it, Seamus did fall asleep thinkin
g on Samantha Pike—thinking on her ravenous hunger that had surprised him there on the blankets and hay in Sharp Grover’s lopsided barn.

  * * *

  At the crack of the pistol Seamus was up and kicking at the blankets, his own pistol drawn and cocked as he came awake.

  Overhead the sky still domed as black as the inside of a cast-iron kettle, but along the eastern rim of the world stretched a long, gray line of winter’s light.

  And standing in the dim glow of last night’s coals was Simon Pierce, his pistol hung at the end of his right arm, smoke curling from its muzzle. At his feet slumped William Graves, blood oozing from both bullet wounds: the one fired at close range between his eyes, blackened with powder burns; and the messy, bigger exit wound that glistened the back of his head as he sagged against the rope tethers binding him to the wagon wheel.

  “What the hell you doing, Pierce?” demanded the lieutenant, pulling on his wool coat against the stiff, bone-numbing wind heavy with the smell of snow. He hurried over and yanked the pistol from the civilian.

  “I … I,” he started, then dragged the empty pistol hand beneath his drippy nose. “I had to. He … William asked me.”

  “Asked you to do what?” Donegan demanded.

  Pierce glanced up, looking for the moment like a wounded animal. Seamus almost felt sorry for him. Then the eyes went cold again.

  “Asked me to kill him.” Pierce knelt beside the body, picking up one of Graves’s hands in his, stroking it like a sick child’s. “He said he couldn’t take the pain anymore. He was frightened of the uncertainty. Not knowing when the insanity would come.”

  “You’re the one what’s crazy,” Seamus growled, suspicion eating a hole in his gut. “I’ve a mind to turn you over to—”

  “This is a government expedition, Donegan,” Pierce snapped, glaring up at the tall Irishman. “These soldiers are my personal guard—and you’ll do well to act the same.”

  “Is he right, Lieutenant?” asked Jack Stillwell.

  Stanton nodded grudgingly. “Unless someone prefers charges against Mr. Pierce, there won’t be an inquiry into the shooting. You, Mr. Donegan?”

  Seamus glanced at Jack. Stillwell shook his head slightly, almost imperceptibly.

  “I … I suppose not, Lieutenant,” Donegan found himself saying, as much as the gall rose in his throat to say it.

  There was something inside his belly that hammered away at him, something that made Seamus believe Pierce had shot his partner to keep him quiet. Perhaps out of the fear that with Graves slowly growing insane with every passing hour, William Graves would indeed spill his guts about something. To shut the man up … and then Seamus looked at Jack Stillwell again.

  Maybe there was a good reason Jack did not want him to protest, to ask for an inquiry. Maybe Jack knew something …

  “Very well,” the lieutenant replied, a look of extreme worry crossing his face. He turned and called for two soldiers to abandon their bedrolls, to cut the dead man loose from the wheel and get him wrapped in two blankets.

  “Ain’t he gonna start to smell if we don’t bury him, Lieutenant?” one of them asked.

  “Not in this cold, sojur,” Seamus answered, shivering.

  “Snow’s coming—soon,” Jack said, smelling the air. “You want the man buried in the morning, Lieutenant?”

  In turn the officer looked at Simon Pierce. “Mr. Pierce—are we to bury your companion here before we pull away in the morning?”

  He was a few moments in answering, finally dropping the limp hand of William Graves. “By all means, Lieutenant. We’ll give him a decent burial here … in this wild country where we had both hoped to make the discovery that would rock the civilized world.”

  “You heard the man,” Stanton said to his soldiers. “Wrap the body up and we’ll bury it in the morning. And the rest of you, back to sleep. Damn, if it doesn’t feel like winter itself is coming down on us at that.”

  Chapter 28

  Mid-November 1873

  Graves was mad … raving mad.

  Although his face didn’t grow distorted there at the last, in the cold, winter darkness beside the glowing coals of the fire—although he did not rant and rave like a lunatic … Graves was mad nonetheless.

  Simon Pierce was sure of it. As sure of it as he had ever been of anything.

  Oh, for sure Graves was an intelligent being—very likely savvy enough to control the creeping, incipient insanity. That’s the only reason he hadn’t appeared or sounded crazy there at the last.

  Perhaps it was only what he had told Pierce that was crazy. Yet what he said with that wild, consumed look in his eye proved that the cartographer was downright insane.

  But Simon didn’t need the map expert any longer. As much as he had watched Graves brooding over the fragile Castilian parchment, as much as Graves himself had innocently and stupidly shared all the map’s secrets with Pierce—Simon no longer needed Graves along. If things had turned out differently, there would have been more than enough to divide between the two of them. But now, with Graves unwittingly providing his own untimely exit, Simon Pierce found himself center stage at this singular moment in history, no longer compelled to share with any man the limelight, the fortune, and the ultimate in raw power that would come from that treasure.

  Who knows? Simon Pierce thought to himself as they rolled through the growing darkness of midday, marching northwest on a course away from Fort Richardson and Jacksboro, where Lieutenant Stanton and the others had wanted to go after the prairie fire—marching away from the safety of the settlements … north by west because Pierce ordered the party to continue its march across the Llano Estacado.

  Yes, he thought. Indeed, there have been rumors of great distress in Mexico. Perhaps they are ready for a benevolent leader—one who can buy his own army and navy, a presidente who will not take any guff from the big bully to the north. Perhaps the time was right, the stars in alignment, the fates smiling on him—everything ready to make a very wealthy American the president of Mexico and, who could say? Perhaps with a well-paid army and navy, El President Pierce could reach out and absorb the riches of Central America as well.

  Why stop there? He could easily defeat the ignorant Indians of South America with his unstoppable military. By then there could be no telling how much power one man might hold.

  Money was power, he knew. And by controlling the world’s greatest wealth, Simon Pierce just might possess the greatest power in the world.

  “Are you warm enough, Mr. Pierce?”

  “What?” he asked, surprised, of the lieutenant who had ridden back to the rattling wagon crowded with soldiers, their dwindling rations and camp supplies. “Oh, yes. Thank you. Warm enough.”

  Simon found the eyes of the soldiers in the wagon glaring at him. Indeed, he was the warmest, having selected the softest spot among the bedrolls for himself. The rest squatted precariously atop campaign gear while he was rocked in the lap of luxury. At least enough luxury that the dropping temperature and icy flakes lancing down from the lead-belly sky bothered him very little. He could tell the rest of the soldiers were miserable. Perhaps it was time to spread some cheer.

  “Thank you for your words over William’s grave this morning, private,” he said to the young soldier squatting to his left. “I was most happy you remembered so many kind thoughts and scriptures to repeat over his final resting place.”

  The soldier sniffled, his nose red in the angry wind. “My mama taught me the bible at her knee. Likely I’ve heard the burial service said over and over again more times than I have years, Mr. Pierce. But you’ve no need to thank me—every man deserves to have the proper words said over his mortal remains.”

  “Yes—dust to dust … ashes to ashes,” he sighed thoughtfully. “We are all but temporary wayfarers, aren’t we?”

  The young soldier never did answer his poetic flight, but looked away instead, resuming his watch of the darkening sky churning out of the north with the others.

  To hell w
ith you then, soldier, Pierce thought. Let them believe what they will. Any of them—including those two civilians. Especially that big Irishman. There was no way any judge or court of law could convince a jury that Simon Pierce had killed William Graves with anything but the most humane intentions … simply to ease a troubled and fellow wayfarer from this earthly veil, at his own request. And besides, who was there who could testify to, much less prove, that William Graves hadn’t begged Simon Pierce to shoot him—to put him out of his great and unfortunate misery?

  Certainly not that Irishman who Pierce sensed was suspicious, and therefore clearly enough a threat. Perhaps not even that young Stillwell, who, while quiet, showed great distrust in his eyes for how Pierce had explained the killing.

  It mattered little now—for after William’s burial, Pierce had ordered Lieutenant Stanton to turn about and head northwest once more—against the protests of both Stillwell and Donegan. Simon was not about to be deterred now—and if that meant placing the two guides under military arrest, he would see to that in the days to come.

  Low food supply? Nothing more than an inconvenience. Simply have the soldiers find some game in this veritably unpopulated countryside. There were clearly no Indians to be found, Indians scaring off the animals. Stanton’s soldiers could surely find game enough to sustain the party.

  What of the incoming storm? Listen to the carping! Were they not soldiers? Simon had jeered. Did they not have tents, bedrolls and the wherewithal to survive in all conditions of nature?

  No, for all the protests Stillwell and Donegan raised, Pierce had answered them in due course. He was, after all, much smarter than they. Oh, either one of them might have more experiential knowledge of the land and its native inhabitants, and possess more of the requisite survival skills. But nonetheless, Simon Pierce was clear and away much smarter than either of those bumpkins.

  The lieutenant and his men were soldiers, trained to take orders from their superiors—and Simon was clearly the superior mind remaining in the party now … what with William’s unfortunate tangle with that hydrophobic skunk. With the lieutenant and his obedient troopers allied behind him, Pierce had only to concern himself with the two guides. They were the unknowns, the variable factors to this great scientific expedition. They were ultimately the men Pierce had to monitor most closely.