Buffalo Trail

by Jeff Guinn

  Quanah tried. He called the Kiowa warriors together and explained why they should wait. Responding for their tribesmen, High Forehead and Buffalo with Holes in His Ears replied that they had agreed to join the People and the Cheyenne in one fight, but that didn’t mean they were giving up their right to fight on their own as well.

  “Your Spirit Messenger says he’s been given magic so we can win the fight at the big camp easily,” High Forehead said. “If the spirits already promise us victory there, what does it matter if we kill some more whites before that?”

  This was a question that Quanah couldn’t answer. He waited nervously with Lone Wolf and Satanta while a Kiowa war party of about a dozen warriors rode out. They’d heard that wagons loaded with supplies had left the white town above the main treaty river and were coming south, probably with supplies for the big white hunting camp. The Kiowa meant to intercept the wagons, kill all the white men, and take the supplies. They hoped their booty would include good guns and lots of ammunition. Most of the firearms carried by the Kiowa were essentially useless—ancient muzzle-loaders and antiquated pistols. None of the warriors had more than a few bullets.

  But the raiders returned empty-handed. They’d ambushed the wagons as planned, but the white men all had the rifles that shot long and straight, so the Kiowa couldn’t get close enough. In retrospect, they should have waited to attack at night, when most of the white men would have been asleep.

  “That’s our plan at the full moon when we fall on the big white hunting camp,” Quanah said. “If you’ll only be patient, after we kill everyone there, you can take their guns for yourselves.”

  “Yes, we’ll take their guns, but until then I don’t want to be patient,” said Bear Mountain, a Kiowa who honored Satanta by blowing a bugle as he rode into battle. “Any white man I see, I’m going to kill.”

  Iseeo, who hadn’t joined the raiders in the attack on the wagon train, supported Quanah. “At the Comanche’s sun dance, we all heard the words of the Spirit Messenger. We should trust him and trust Quanah.”

  “Trust who you want,” Bear Mountain said. “I promised I’d fight with them at the white hunting camp, and I will. But otherwise, they’re not my leaders.”

  Lone Wolf and Satanta told Quanah that he should go. When the time for the attack on the white camp neared, they would bring the Kiowa warriors south. Until then, they’d do what they could to keep their young men under control.

  • • •

  NOW VERY WORRIED, Quanah went to the Cheyenne camp, where, to his relief, things seemed better. The chiefs assured him that Medicine Water and the dog soldiers were maintaining strict discipline.

  “None of our warriors will fight too early,” Gray Beard assured him. “If they try to, they will have to fight the dog soldiers instead, and none of them want to do that.”

  “The Cheyenne have wisdom,” Quanah said, feeling and sounding grateful. “If we win the fight with the white hunters, most of the glory will be yours.”

  “Others can have the glory. What we want afterward are the white hunters’ guns, because they are so much better than the ones we have.”

  “You’ll have them all,” Quanah promised. “No one among the People or the Kiowa will get any. Every one of the white guns will belong to the Cheyenne.”

  • • •

  THOUGH HE’D HAD DOUBTS regarding the Cheyenne, the Kiowa, and even some of the bands of the People, Quanah was certain he could count on his own Quahadi to show sense and leave the whites alone until the great attack. But when he returned to his village, he was disgusted to learn that some Quahadi braves had also gone out on a raid. Fortunately, they scouted the white hunting party they encountered instead of attacking on the spot. They decided that there were too many guns among the hunters and rode away.

  “Did they see you?” Quanah demanded as he angrily confronted Wild Horse, the warrior who’d led the would-be raiders.

  “I suppose so,” Wild Horse said. “We were on a hill about five or six bowshots away.”

  “You met them too close to the big white camp. They probably rode back there and warned them.”

  “So what? Isatai’s spirit magic is going to let us kill everyone there anyway.”

  • • •

  QUANAH’S INFLUENCE was now such among the Quahadi that there were no other raids while they waited for the full moon. The days dragged, and then Iseeo rode in to announce that the Kiowa were on their way.

  “We didn’t think you would be back this early,” Quanah said. “There is still some time before the full moon.”

  “Too many of our warriors are impatient,” Iseeo said. “They didn’t want to wait and started talking about attacking the big village whites call Dodge instead of waiting to fight with you at the hunters’ camp. So Lone Wolf and Satanta decided to bring them down here now.”

  “How many warriors are coming?”

  Iseeo flexed all of his fingers a dozen times. “That many, perhaps a few more.”

  “What happened to the rest? We need every man.”

  “They decided that they liked making little fights, not one big one. Lone Wolf argued with them.”

  “What about Satanta? Did he try to persuade them?”

  “He said that each warrior had to do what he thought best. If they didn’t want to come fight beside the Comanche, they shouldn’t. But when Bear Mountain asked Satanta if he was going, Satanta said that he was, and then Bear Mountain said all right, he would come too. So Satanta helped you.”

  • • •

  THE KIOWA CAMPED near the Quahadi village. At night they sat around their campfires and drank whiskey. Quanah thought that they drank too much. He spoke to Lone Wolf and Satanta about it. They told him that he should be happy their warriors were getting drunk. When they woke up in the mornings feeling soreheaded and queasy, it kept them from riding out, looking for trouble. Since the buffalo had arrived in the area, lots of small hunting parties left the white camp for days at a time, and these parties were the traditional targets of Kiowa raids.

  “Many of our men don’t want to wait for the big fight,” Lone Wolf said. “You saw that for yourself when you came to our village. Now every day they’re close to the small groups of white hunters who think only of killing buffalo, not of keeping watch for us. Of course, they are tempted. Aren’t you?”

  “I control myself,” Quanah said. “Why can’t the Kiowa do the same?”

  Lone Wolf’s eyebrows arched. “Are you saying that Comanche are better?”

  “No, I just don’t want our plan to be spoiled.”

  “Be sure to remember that it is our plan, that it belongs to all of us. But the white hunters’ guns will belong to the Kiowa.”

  • • •

  A FEW DAYS LATER, Lone Wolf and Satanta told Quanah that they needed to talk. Some of their young braves insisted on forming a war party to attack one of the small bands of white hunters who slept at night away from the main camp.

  “There will only be four or five white men, probably, easy to kill,” Lone Wolf said. “That will let the most eager young men get some scalps. I think it will keep them happy until it’s time for the big attack.”

  “It’s a mistake,” Quanah said. “The other white hunters will see what happened and prepare to fight. We need them to think only of the buffalo. Tell your young men not to do this, Lone Wolf.”

  “If I tell them that, they will ride back north. You won’t have any Kiowa left, except maybe Iseeo, because he loves your Spirit Messenger so much. We must let them do this small thing, Quanah, if you want their help with the big thing.”

  “I’ll have Isatai speak to them. Perhaps they’ll listen to him.”

  The young Kiowa listened politely to Isatai when he told them that the spirits didn’t want any premature attacks. Quanah thought that the fat man might have persuaded them, but then he began ranting that bes
ides waiting to kill white hunters, the spirits also commanded that skunks must not be shot. The Kiowa thought that was foolish, and a few of them said so. Isatai was offended and stalked off. After he did, some of the Kiowa daubed on war paint and prepared to leave.

  “Will you stop them?” Quanah pleaded to Lone Wolf and Satanta. They shook their heads.

  “It would be wise for you to ride along with them, Quanah,” Satanta said. “Lone Wolf is. The young men are going to do this anyway. They’ll be pleased to have you and Lone Wolf along. That will make them feel better about following you in the great fight that’s coming.”

  Quanah saw the sense in that. He put on his own war paint, the black style traditional to the People, and got his Henry rifle. Mounting one of his best horses, he joined the Kiowa as they rode southeast.

  • • •

  THE SUN WAS SETTING when the war party approached the buffalo herd. There were scattered cracks in the distance—some of the white hunters were getting in last shots.

  Bear Mountain had assumed informal command. Now he impressed Quanah by saying, “We need to be careful. I think that there will be several small parties of white hunters all along the river here.” Bear Mountain told everyone else to graze and water their ponies while he and High Forehead went ahead to scout. It was completely dark when they returned to report that there were four separate groups in small camps within easy riding distance.

  “There are plenty of hills between them and the main white camp,” Bear Mountain said. “I don’t think the sounds of fighting will be heard all the way there. But when we attack, we don’t want the noise to alert the other small camps nearby. So we’ll have to kill quietly.”

  “But we want to play with them before they die,” complained a Kiowa named Good Talk.

  “I know,” Bear Mountain said. “I think maybe we will kill the whites in one of these groups tonight, and then tomorrow, when the buffalo are back on the move and making noise, we’ll kill some more and then it won’t matter if they scream.”

  Quanah wanted to say that killing one of the groups was plenty, but as he took a breath to speak he saw Lone Wolf staring at him. The Kiowa chief shook his head, and Quanah kept silent.

  High Forehead and Bear Mountain thought the most likely victims for the night attack were camped farthest below the river. “There were just three of them. But they each had good guns and long hair.” White Goose, the youngest in the war party, stayed behind with the horses while the rest went ahead on foot. It took a while because they had to circle well beyond the other three camps. Finally they saw flickerings of yellow and orange in the distance—campfire flames. The raiders approached with caution, crawling on their bellies over the last yards.

  “I only see two,” Quanah hissed to Bear Mountain. “Is the third out standing guard?” Bear Mountain motioned for High Forehead to creep around the entire periphery of the camp. When he came back, he said there was no sign of the third white man.

  “I looked in the bushes to see if he’d gone there to shit,” High Forehead whispered. “But he wasn’t anywhere. I think that he must have gone back to their big camp.”

  “Then let’s kill these two,” Bear Mountain said. At his signal, the raiders rose, rushed the camp, and fell on the white hunters sprawled in their blankets by the fire. Quanah and Lone Wolf lagged behind. In the few extra moments it took them to come up, one of the white men’s throats was slit and his heels kicked against the ground in death throes. The other woke up and tried to run. High Forehead caught him and dragged him back to the fire. The white man was too frightened to scream. The only noise was his bootheels dragging in the dirt. High Forehead strangled him. His victim’s eyes bulged and he shit himself just before he died. The Indians ripped off the two scalps. Bear Mountain claimed one of the big rifles for himself and handed the other to Quanah.

  “You didn’t want us to do this, but you came along like a good friend anyway,” he said.

  Despite his misgivings about the attack, Quanah was pleased. “Thank you, but I have a good gun,” he said, patting the stock of his Henry repeater. “Give that one to whoever needs it most.” High Forehead got the second rifle and nodded his thanks to Quanah.

  They wrapped the dead men in their blankets, then hid themselves in the shadows for a while, waiting in case the third white hunter came back. When he didn’t, some of the Kiowa dragged the bodies back into the open and systematically dismembered them. They laughed among themselves as they severed finger joints and genitals. After they finished, everyone enjoyed some dried fruit and bread that they found in the dead men’s packs. By then it was almost dawn, and Bear Mountain reminded the others that they wanted to attack another small camp.

  “Soon the buffalo will start moving, and then we won’t have to worry about noise,” he said.

  • • •

  THERE WERE FOUR MEN in the second group of victims. The raiders crept up on them quietly, but they could have been noisy and the whites still would never have noticed, so obsessed were they in killing and skinning buffalo. Two of them fired rifles, one ran to where the buffalo fell and skinned them, and the fourth, a very heavy man, carried the skins to a wagon. Quanah had never actually seen the white hide men at work and he found it interesting. There was no wasted time or motion—they were just as efficient as Indian women. The hides were removed with a minimum of fuss. He could have watched for a long time, but the Kiowa were impatient to kill again. Bear Mountain was just about to give the signal to attack when the wagon bed became full of hides and two of the white men, the heavy man and a skinner, began talking loudly, though not quite arguing, beside it. After a few moments the heavy man laughed and the skinner got up on the wagon, shook the reins, and urged the two-mule team forward. Some of the Kiowa twitched, but Bear Mountain held up a cautioning hand: Let that one go. The heavy man was picking at something on the bottom of his boot, but the other two remaining white men still had their rifles in hand and were looking back at the wagon as it rattled away. If the raiders charged at that moment, they would overwhelm the whites, but probably not before the riflemen got off shots. It was better to let the white man on the wagon get away than to have any warriors severely wounded or killed. There were always more white men to replace any that fell in battle. The Indians did not share that luxury.

  When the wagon was out of sight, the white shooters laid their guns aside. As soon as they did, the raiders burst from cover, shrieking and brandishing lances, knives, and war clubs. Quanah and Lone Wolf again stayed back. The white shooters went down fast, gore gushing from dozens of wounds. The heavy man took longer because the Kiowa played with him, leaning in to prick his body with knife- and spearpoints. Mostly he screamed, but sometimes he yelled a strange-sounding word, “Bruddas,” over and over. Finally Man Who Walks Above the Ground tired of the sport and rammed his lance through the heavy man’s heart, having to push hard because the chest wall was so thick. Then all three dead men were scalped and mutilated. High Forehead, yelping with glee, tore a branch from a tree, sharpened one end to a point, and pushed the branch up the anus of one of the shooters. The point eventually emerged from his belly. They took the guns—two very good rifles, one older one, and four pistols—as well as some canned goods and blankets. The canned goods were special prizes. Back in the Quahadi village, they would be opened and whatever juice was inside would be shared around. Then the cans themselves would be cut up and the sharp metal pieces used for arrow points. Lone Wolf found a wooden device with four taut strings along one side and up the handle, and also a long, thin thing that looked like a bow, but one too fragile to shoot an arrow. The four strings on the wood thing made pretty sounds when they pulled at them. Everyone wanted the wood thing. Lone Wolf kept it for himself.

  “Was that enough?” Quanah asked Bear Mountain as they rode back west.

  The Kiowa smiled. “Enough for now,” he said.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  The Billy Dixon
crew moved its camp north of the Canadian. For several days they enjoyed the finest shooting yet. The buffalo herd was expansive, more than a dozen miles in length. The hides they took were thick and relatively unscarred. At night the sky was clear, and they drank coffee and gorged themselves on Frenchy’s fine cooking. One night Charley Armitage walked out to take a shit and came back with several plump quail. He said they came up near where he was squatting and practically begged to be shot. Frenchy served them with boiled greens, and there were canned peaches for dessert.

  As much as Cash McLendon wanted to be on his way to Arizona Territory and Gabrielle, he still found himself enjoying the hunt, mostly because he was making fine money. With Billy and Charley knocking down a buff with every shot, and with Bat and himself killing seven or eight each day, McLendon averaged twenty dollars a day. He calculated that by mid-July he would have enough to quit, hitch a ride back to Dodge on one of the freight wagons, then travel by train and stage to Mountain View. Billy would understand, he felt certain.

  On June eleventh they had enough hides to overflow the wagon bed. Billy said that he’d run them back to Adobe Walls. “You come with me, C.M.,” he said. “Two of us can get the wagon unloaded quicker. We’ll take a nice meal from Old Man Keeler or Mrs. Olds, enjoy some fellowship in Hanrahan’s saloon, then set out on the return trip at daylight. We’ll be back here in camp by mid-afternoon.”

  “You ought to take me instead, Billy,” Bat argued. “I’m far more sociable than McLendon, and I’m eager for a drink besides.”

  “No, you’d end up talking so much that I’d waste additional hours tearing you away from conversations. I mean this to be a reasonably prompt trip there and back.”

  Billy and McLendon set out, with Fannie the red setter trotting alongside. Billy put his Sharps Big Fifty in the wagon bed, and McLendon did the same with the older rifle that Billy had lent him. McLendon had his Colt in a holster on his belt, and had his razor-sharp skinning knife too. Billy took up the reins of the two-mule team. It was a hot day, and McLendon felt sweat trickling down his chest and sides underneath his shirt. Billy didn’t seem especially talkative, and McLendon didn’t mind. He’d decided to send another letter to Gabrielle, this one promising to be in Mountain View by the end of July, or early August at the latest. McLendon was mentally composing just the right romantic message when Billy said, “Lord, look at the water rush in the Canadian.”