Buffalo Trail

by Jeff Guinn

  McLendon saw that now the line of Indians was coming closer, perhaps two hundred yards away, and there were so many of them, seemingly from one end of the horizon to another. One end of the line, the left end, seemed to detach itself and flow above camp where the grazing horses were, and also some of the warriors in the center of the line moved that way. McLendon thought, Good, they’re only here to steal the horses, it was an odd thing how his mind was so nimble and his legs not at all. But only about a third of the Indians went that way. The rest were still bearing down on the camp. There were a few riding in front and these seemed to be racing right at McLendon. It occurred to him that he ought to at least draw his Colt and shoot at them, but his arms were as limp as his legs. In another split second he remembered the horrible torture Indians inflicted on their victims, and that finally gave life to his limbs and he began running, too, harder than ever in his life but not fast enough, hearing the pounding of hooves behind him, the screams of the Indians—how did they shriek so loud?—and in front of him he saw the Scheidler brothers’ wagon and Isaac and Shorty moving sluggishly under the tarp. They’d claimed to be heavy sleepers and now by God they were proving it. There was a lot of noise all around, the Indians coming up hard, and Billy Dixon and Billy Ogg shouting and the men in their blankets in front of the buildings rousing, scrambling to get inside.McLendon could see them ahead, yet so very far away, he would never get there in time to join them. He reached the side of the Scheidler wagon and Isaac asked an odd question, “Is it really Indians?” McLendon tried to answer but all that emerged from his throat was a strangled croak. It was at that moment he realized that he had run as far as he could for now, because the Indians were right on them. He had to turn around, draw his gun, and fight. It wouldn’t do any good but he had to try. In the camps, in the saloons, he’d heard the buffalo hunters and their crews talk about preferring to shoot themselves rather than be taken, he should probably do that instead of shooting at the Indians, but no matter what, he had to turn around and get out his gun. But when he turned, it got even worse.

  The Indians were on them, they were right there, and the leaders were coming straight for the Scheidler wagon. In the last moment before they got there, McLendon noticed things about them, one had his face painted black and wore a long headdress of white feathers, what a curious thing to wear in an attack. The Indian directly to Headdress Indian’s left was much smaller and had a knife, such a very long-bladed one, the blade seemed almost as long as the tail of the headdress, there were a few others just behind them but what caught McLendon’s eye, maybe ten yards farther back, was a huge Indian whose entire body was painted black. This one held a bugle to his lips and was blowing into it. The resulting bray was the loudest thing of all.

  McLendon managed to get his Colt from its holster, but before he could decide whether to shoot Indians or himself they were right there and it was all he could do to sag down weakly and roll just under the wagon, not far enough to miss seeing what happened next. Isaac, apparently still foggy with sleep, hopped to the ground. As soon as he did, Headdress Indian jammed his lance into the place under Isaac’s chin—how did he manage that angle?—and blood spurted. Isaac made a sort of convulsive hop and dangled there on the end of the lance. Headdress Indian seemed to be pushing his lance up rather than straight, so his victim’s toes scratched feebly in the dust. McLendon thought Headdress Indian must be very strong to support Isaac’s weight like that. Then the Indian tried to yank his lance free, but it seemed stuck on something inside Isaac’s skull.

  Then to McLendon’s horror, another Indian, one with yellow face paint, bent down and peered under the wagon. He saw McLendon, gave a triumphant howl, and pointed a gun. McLendon tried but couldn’t make himself fire his gun first, and he knew he was about to die when something huge and black launched itself from the wagon and onto the Indian, and the Indian was knocked back. Maurice the Newfoundland had his massive jaws locked on the Indian’s arm and McLendon wondered if the dog was going to bite right through the bones, but at that moment Shorty Scheidler finally made his way off the wagon and though McLendon knew that he ought to run or fight or kill himself, something, anything, he couldn’t look away from what happened next.

  Shorty had a Colt in his hand and he aimed it at Headdress Indian, who was still trying to yank his lance out of Isaac’s head. But before he could fire, the smaller Indian who’d also been in front jumped on him and buried the long knife in his shoulder. Shorty screamed and dropped the Colt. He fell on the ground close to McLendon, who got a good look at the small Indian. Despite the yellow and blue face paint, it was obvious this one had been in a recent brawl, because his right eye was swollen shut. Enough pure hate and rage radiated from his left eye to make up the difference. Small Indian wore a dangling breastplate. McLendon wondered exactly what that garment was made of, and then as it swung to the side he thought he glimpsed an actual breast, what was this? And then Small Indian and Shorty and McLendon all realized who the other was. Shorty just had time to scream once before the woman he’d brutally raped and beaten began cutting him up, filleting him with swift strokes, white teeth gleaming against tawny lips as she smiled. She sliced so deep and fast that Shorty’s guts were spilling out even before he knew it, except he must have known it because his shrieks got louder and more horrified. Sadly for Shorty, he didn’t die quite yet. He was still breathing when she yanked down his pants, cut off his pecker, and waved it in his face. His own severed penis was surely the last thing Shorty Scheidler saw before he expired in god-awful pain.

  While this was going on, the rest of the Indians swept past, but to McLendon there was nothing now but the Indian woman and her bloody knife. She turned her attention to him, some of Shorty’s blood was actually dripping from the knifepoint. McLendon didn’t want to die the way that Shorty did so he made himself raise his gun to his head. But she was quicker. Before he could pull the trigger she swung her knife arm at him, he expected the pain of being stabbed, but all she did was knock down his arm, banging her wrist against his. Then, to McLendon’s amazement, she gave a barely discernible jerk of her chin in the direction of the camp buildings. He didn’t understand. Behind her, something was going on with Maurice and the Indian he’d chomped down on, they were still rolling around, and there was an Indian behind them who saw McLendon and aimed a rifle, but the woman saw him, too, and took a step to the right, she was between them, and she jerked her chin at the buildings again, more adamantly this time, and finally McLendon got it, or thought that he did. She wanted him to run, and he did, though he thought she might be playing with him, drawing out the pleasure until she hacked him up like she did Shorty. He turned and got going, faster with each stride, finally running hard again and damned if she was not right there behind him, practically herding him, he expected the knife in his back any second but it didn’t happen. There was plenty of other danger, bullets everywhere, they made curious crackling noises when they whizzed by close, and some of the fire was coming out of the buildings at the Indians. Cash ran through it all, confused as hell, and somehow found himself by the front door of Hanrahan’s saloon. He looked behind him and the Indian woman was gone. He pounded on the door and yelled, “It’s McLendon, let me in.” The door opened briefly and Bat Masterson hauled him inside.

  THIRTY-THREE

  Things immediately went wrong. As Quanah led the war party around the trees and at the white hunters’ camp, what he initially saw was a few of the white men walking out to where their horse herd was grazing. That meant two things: first, that Isatai of course had been wrong when he promised all of them would be asleep, and this was no surprise to Quanah. The second thing, the real problem, was that unless they killed these three quickly, they would raise an alarm and rouse the rest of the camp.

  So Quanah turned his galloping pony directly at the three men, but the distance was too great. They saw the war party and began to shout and run, two of them anyway, and so there was nothing to do but sweep down on the
camp and kill everyone outside the buildings that they could, then take the time necessary to finish off the others who got inside. As long as the war party remained in one group, it would be possible to storm those places and overwhelm their defenders with sheer numbers.

  Then another bad thing happened. The Kiowa on the right side of the line began veering off in the direction of the horse herd, and some of the People in the center did the same. They did this out of habit, Quanah realized, this was the traditional way when attacking big white camps, stealing the horses first so there would be booty afterward no matter what the outcome of the fight. He thought he had made the battle plan clear in advance, but in the actual moment there were those who reverted to the old ways; he should have expected that. Now there was nothing to be done, and a substantial portion of his fighting force was out of the immediate attack.

  But most of the People were still in place, and all of the Cheyenne. Discipline enforced by Medicine Water and his dog soldiers on their tribesmen could be thanked for that. So Quanah led on, and in moments he and Mochi were close to a wagon on the north end of the camp, there were white men stirring in it and also one of the original three who’d been walking toward the horse herd. Quanah momentarily wondered why this one hadn’t run. Perhaps he considered himself such a great warrior that he wanted to stand and fight. That might be a grand thing, to begin this battle in hand-to-hand combat with the finest fighter among the white hunters, he could beat him and enhance his own reputation. But then another white man, a tall one, jumped down from the wagon and he was closest, so Quanah instinctively lowered his lance and shoved it under the man’s chin, that good soft place, and felt the point push through and up, what a glorious sensation, next he would pull it free and use it to skewer the brave one who wouldn’t run. But the spear was caught on something in the first man’s head, Quanah tugged and it wouldn’t come loose even though the body of the dead white man jiggled up off the ground. Quanah let himself become too absorbed in getting his lance free, and a second smaller white man came off the wagon and pointed a gun at him, he was going to shoot and Quanah would die. Quanah began singing his death song but Mochi was there, she got her knife into the small man, and then for some reason took a while to kill him. At the same time there was motion directly to Quanah’s left. He looked and saw a dog, a big black one, savaging his Cheyenne friend Spotted Feather. So Quanah finally let go of his lance—the body of the white man stuck on the end of it crumpled to the ground—and in one swift motion pulled the white tool he used as a war club from his belt and smashed it into the back of the dog’s head. The beast yelped. Spotted Feather managed to pull his mangled arm from its jaws. Then he pointed his small gun at the animal and shot it in the head.

  Now Quanah could turn his attention to the remaining white man, the brave one, but Mochi already had him, she stood right in front of him with blood dripping from her blade, and Quanah waited for her to plunge it into her second victim, good for her, but Mochi did not. The white man raised his gun and Quanah lifted his Henry rifle, but Mochi didn’t need help, her knife arm finally flashed, but instead of stabbing the white man she knocked his gun arm down and why did she do that? Very strange. Co-bay, a warrior of the People, was right there and he raised his rifle to finish off the white man. When Mochi took a step to the side, it was clear to Quanah that she deliberately got in Co-bay’s way, and with that the white man finally turned and began running the rest of the way into camp, Mochi on his heels. By now the rest of the war party that held the line had swept down on the camp and were milling around the huts where the remaining whites had taken refuge, so this last fleeing man ran right into that. Anyone could have cut him down but Mochi was right there with him and he was clearly hers, so the other warriors chose different targets. Quanah thought that Mochi must be toying with the man, waiting until the last moment to kill him, but then the door to one of the huts briefly popped open, someone dragged the white man inside, and Mochi turned away, coming back toward the wagon and her horse.

  “You let him get away!” Quanah shouted. “Why?”

  Mochi unslung her shotgun. “He’ll die with the rest of them,” she said.

  “But you could have killed him right now.”

  “Are we going to talk or fight white men?” Mochi asked. She leaped on her horse and charged at the biggest hut.

  Quanah took a deep breath and assessed the battle so far. Warriors swarmed around three of the four huts. The one they ignored was the small wooden one; looking through the gaps between its wooden walls, the attackers could see that none of the whites were in there. The places where they had taken refuge were the substantial huts made of dirt and earth, frustrating the warriors because they would not burn and were impervious to arrows because of the thickness of their walls. They could be penetrated by bullets, though, and so all of the attackers were shooting, there was no helping it. Quanah wished they would fire less randomly, because until they won and had access to the stores of ammunition inside, their supply of bullets was limited—but of course they were frustrated. They’d been promised sleeping victims, playthings to torment in inventive, entertaining ways, and instead only two white men and a dog were dead for sure. Warriors in pitched battle wanted to kill. They had to. The attackers jammed their guns through window openings and fired inside, or else stood back a few paces and blasted away—it was impossible to tell to what effect. Everyone was shouting, Indians and whites alike, and there was constant gunfire. Bear Mountain never stopped blowing into his metal horn, but it was annoying rather than inspiring. Every once in a while Quanah thought he could hear a woman shrieking inside the hut farthest to the south, it had to be the scrawny old woman he’d seen while scouting the white camp. Perhaps she was wounded. Then Quanah saw that the defenders had begun to fire back effectively; the first members of the war party began to fall, not many, but a few—he recognized Crippled Foot and Wolf Tongue as they both sprawled on the ground. Of course, any Indian too badly wounded to save himself, whether one of the People, a Kiowa, or a Cheyenne, was immediately pulled to safety by someone else. That meant the whites eliminated two Indians for every one they shot—a dilemma when part of a small group, but less of a disadvantage for such a large war band.

  Still, the attackers were used to avoiding any unnecessary loss of life. Quanah decided it was time to lead an assault that would end the still-uneven fight. All they had to do was break inside the huts. How hard could that be when they were so many and the defenders so few? Quanah dug his heels into the ribs of his pony and galloped straight at one of the huts. Like the others, it had a wooden door, secured, he knew, from the inside. He wheeled the pony, yanked on its tether, and backed its legs into the door. Panicked, the pony lashed out with its hooves, which battered into the wood. Quanah was sure the wood would splinter, but it didn’t. He howled in fury and kicked the pony’s ribs again. It fought him, trying to move away from the hut, but he sawed on the hide tether, cutting the pony’s mouth. It kicked at the door again and again but the door held. Unlike white men, the People had no obscenities in their vocabulary. Quanah howled again and gave up. He hopped off the pony and clambered onto the dirt roof of the hut. Then he pointed his Henry down and fired through the dirt down into the hut, certain he would hit someone inside. Other warriors followed his example. Within moments, the roofs of all three huts were occupied by Indians firing down, hoping to annihilate the whites inside.

  Then a curious thing happened. There was a puff of dirt by Quanah’s feet and a bullet clipped feathers from his headdress. It happened several more times before he realized that the whites inside were now shooting up through the roof: he was as vulnerable as they were. On the roof of an adjacent hut, a warrior screamed and fell, rolling off the side and tumbling to the ground. “Get down, get down from there!” someone screamed, and Quanah and the others did, scrambling down and flattening themselves against the earthen walls, but that wasn’t safe, either, because now the crafty white men poked the barrel
s of their guns through the walls, making little holes through which they could fire point-blank. They weren’t just shooting back through the broken windows anymore. More warriors fell, too many, and though most were picked up and dragged to safety, a few were obviously dead and left in the dust.

  How are they still alive in there? Quanah wondered. We’ve fired so many shots. How can this be?

  For just a moment, the attack flagged. The war party didn’t retreat, but they hesitated. In that moment, sustained fire poured out of the three huts, through the windows and the walls. Serpent Scales, one of the Cheyenne dog soldiers, shouted something incoherent and ran straight into the gunfire, somehow surviving, not even hit once. He took his small gun in his hand and thrust his arm right through one of the window openings, firing until the hammer clicked on an empty cartridge, and that was when a white bullet obliterated his face. But his courage inspired everyone. The rest of the war party rushed the huts again, everyone screaming and shooting, but they could not break down the doors or get through the windows despite their great numbers. The fire from inside the huts was constant and too many warriors fell. There was great confusion. Quanah, caught in the middle of it, was startled when Gray Beard appeared at his side and shouted, “We need to get everyone back, too many are getting hurt!”

  “No,” Quanah protested. “We can’t give up.”

  “We’re not giving up, we just need to think of another way. Now get everyone back,” Gray Beard insisted, and when Quanah didn’t immediately agree, the Cheyenne chief signaled for the dog soldiers to organize the fallback. Medicine Water, some bright blood on his shoulder from a slight wound, barked orders and gradually all of the attackers withdrew back across the meadow toward the creek, some still firing at the huts, some scattered shots coming back. Angry and frustrated as he felt, Quanah was pleased to see Mochi was apparently uninjured. In the sudden quiet he heard a new sound, a high-edged sort of keening, and he looked to see Isatai high atop the bluff. The fat man was still painted bright yellow. He had his arms spread wide and was chanting. What a fool.