Buffalo Trail

by Jeff Guinn

  “Let them go. If you plead with Lone Wolf, that would show weakness, and leaders can’t do that. We’ll take everyone left, your people and mine, and go finish the white men. Then we’ll talk about what to do next.”

  • • •

  WITH THE LOSS of all the Kiowa, the war party was significantly depleted, but the remaining force still totaled nearly three hundred. The sun was midway through the afternoon sky. There was still time to finish this fight before dark, Quanah thought. Kill all the whites, take their ammunition and other supplies, and then maybe give some of the spoils to the Kiowa, win their allegiance back. It stuck in his throat to forgive Lone Wolf for leaving, but that insult could be overlooked for the present. After the whites were driven away, there would be plenty of time for Quanah and the People to deal with the Kiowa. The important thing was that Isatai, not he, had been blamed for everything that went wrong.

  The guards reported that some of the whites had moved back and forth between their huts, but nothing more. None of them had tried to flee the meadow. They were all back inside now. Quanah and Gray Beard agreed they’d retain the same strategy that had come so close to working before. Some groups would fire long-range and keep the whites at bay in their huts, while others would use ground cover to move up close and overrun them.

  Quanah knew it was critical for him to demonstrate courage and leadership, so he said the Cheyenne should supply the cover fire while he himself led the warriors of the People in on the huts. He told his warriors to hand over their remaining shells to the dog soldiers; when they got inside the white huts, they would kill the enemy with knives and war clubs. “Everything in there will be shared equally,” he assured Gray Beard. He refrained this time from promising too much.

  Quanah tried again to take off the Cheyenne headdress. Its feathers were tattered now, stained with dirt or torn and hanging loose. But Gray Beard said he should keep it on: signs of brotherhood were more important than ever.

  The war party surrounded the camp again. The Cheyenne unleashed a volley at the three huts, and Quanah’s men dropped down and began inching forward. There was steady return fire from the whites, but in his gut Quanah felt that it was almost over, that this fight would be won. As he crawled through high grass toward the hut farthest to the south, he hissed back over his shoulder for the others to keep up, keep moving, and someone called back, “Lead us,” and he did: it was exhilarating. In fact, he was probably moving too fast—the others might not be right behind. There was a large, jagged rock sticking up just ahead and he decided to pause there and let everyone else make up ground. When they stood up and charged, they needed to be together. The hut was twenty or thirty paces ahead. The whites in it were trying to shoot out the windows, but the gunfire from the Cheyenne kept driving them back.

  Just as Quanah reached the stone, the trailing feathers of his headdress caught on something. He reached back and tugged, but it didn’t come free. He wanted to take the headdress off, just leave it there in the high grass, but he’d promised Gray Beard to keep wearing it and he didn’t want to break his word. So Quanah paused by the stone, yanking at the tail of the headdress and waiting for the other belly-crawling warriors to reach him.

  THIRTY-SIX

  McLendon thought the increasingly lengthy pauses between attacks might be worse than the fighting itself. In the chaos of battle, at least there was little time to think about dying, about all the terrible ways the Indians might choose to end his life.

  “What’s keeping them?” he complained after half an hour had passed since the early afternoon assault. “There’s so many of them: Why don’t they get it over with?”

  “Be glad they’re taking all this time,” Bat said. “Maybe these delays will give the Army time to get here.”

  Jim McKinley snorted, though feebly. Fear made it hard to catch his breath. “Forget the Army. They got no idea of what’s happening here. MacKenzie’s got ’em all down in Mexico anyway, protecting foreigners instead of us from the savages.”

  “I agree we’re on our own,” Billy Dixon said. “We need to use this quiet to our advantage if we can. What’s the situation out there?”

  Some of the others gingerly peeked out the window openings. There were some scattered Indians a few hundred yards away, maybe a dozen in all, spread out along the perimeter of the meadow. Of the others, there was no sign. Bermuda Carlyle speculated that they’d gone back beyond the creek to get water and plan new devilment.

  “I never seen Indians acting so,” he said. “Thirty years on the damn frontier, and this is the first time I’ve encountered tribes aligned in one big war party. Co-manch, Cheyenne, Kioway, I guess maybe some Arapaho, who knows?”

  “It’s a puzzler,” Billy agreed. “Well, whatever their reasons, we’ve another respite. A few of us should run for the two stores, and the others need to man the windows and be ready to provide cover fire if needed. I expect I’ll go to Rath and stay: they’ll need some assistance there. Somebody else come, too, so you can return here with some boxes of shells.”

  “I’ll go, Billy,” McLendon said. Bat volunteered to run to Myers and Leonard’s. Hanrahan said he’d go to Rath, too, and return to the saloon with food as well as ammunition. They moved toward the door, and at Billy’s nod Frenchy swung it open. The men staying behind leaned out the windows and fired at the Indians standing watch. The Indians returned fire but it was just a few shots, and McLendon surprisingly didn’t feel in much danger as he darted along after Billy and Hanrahan toward the Rath store. The door there swung open and Jim Langton urged them inside.

  McLendon thought the interior of the saloon had been wrecked, but the condition of the Rath store was worse. Like the saloon, all its windows had been shot out, and sunlight leaked in from bullet holes and improvised gun portholes in the sod walls. But the people in the store had evidently tried to shield themselves with bags of flour, dry beans, and grain. Remnants covered the floor; every step kicked up clouds of flour dust and oat flakes. Someone had vomited repeatedly, probably from fear, and the sour smell hung in the warm air. The store’s defenders looked awful too. Tom O’Keefe, the blacksmith, had been cut over the eye and dried blood clotted the side of his face. Andy Johnson, Jim Langton, and George Eddy were merchants, not fighters, and there was an odd distance in their stares as they looked out the window openings, shoulders hunched as they anticipated imminent assault. William Olds sat slumped in a corner, coughing. He had a Sharps Big Fifty across his lap and the heavy gun jerked each time that his chest spasmed.

  Hannah Olds was across the room from her husband. She stood close to the wall but didn’t lean against it, her body stiff and straight. She was apparently screamed out, her throat too raw to continue shrieking, but the sound coming now from her was worse, a low snuffling moan that seemed more dull acceptance than fright.

  “Can you see to the lady?” Billy Dixon asked McLendon, who went over and tried to place a comforting hand on her shoulder. But Mrs. Olds shrank back.

  “The Indians are coming,” she said, her voice quiet and scratchy. “They’re coming back and they’re getting in here.”

  “Shhhh,” McLendon said, trying to sound soothing. “They’re not getting in here. We’re protecting you.”

  The woman’s bony body shuddered. “They’re coming. They’re going to do things to me.”

  “No, they’re not. They won’t.” McLendon tried patting her again, and this time she let his hand fall briefly on her arm.

  “Kill me before they do it,” she pleaded, and all McLendon could think of to say was “I will.” That seemed to comfort her a little.

  “Can you see to your husband?” he suggested. “He seems poorly over there.”

  Hannah Olds nodded. “I’ll help him,” she said, but didn’t budge. McLendon patted her arm one more time and went back to Billy Dixon.

  “She’s lost her mind,” he said.

  “Well, so long as she’
s quiet,” Billy said. “The screaming made us all feel more fretful.”

  Jim Langton said everyone in the Rath store was exhausted. “There’s only five of us, not counting the woman, and Bill Olds, soon as things commenced, he started hacking and couldn’t hardly hold up a gun, let alone shoot it. We others just did what we could. There were savages stacked against the windows and up on the roof. Say, what are you doing, Hanrahan?”

  Hanrahan had found a cloth sack somewhere. He was stuffing boxes of shells in it, and also containers of crackers and hunks of bacon.

  “I’m putting together supplies for the others back in the saloon. We’re out of ammunition, and hungry besides.”

  “Make a record of what you take, so afterward I can charge you properly.”

  Hanrahan’s face reddened. McLendon braced for some sort of violence, but instead Hanrahan said softly, “Tell you what. We survive a thousand goddamn Indians descending on us, we walk away from this goddamn place, and I will pay you every penny you want to put down on a bill. Agreed?”

  “Well, now,” Langton said, sounding aggrieved. “I’m just trying to keep track, is all.”

  “You do that,” Hanrahan said. He slung the bag over his shoulder. “Billy, still staying here?” Dixon nodded. “You, too, McLendon? Then I’m going back to my saloon. Good luck.”

  Tom O’Keefe barred the door behind Hanrahan and Andy Johnson asked, “Why don’t we all get into one of the buildings, make our stand there? More firepower.”

  “No,” Dixon said. “That would let the Indians concentrate on just one point of attack. It’s better to keep them spread out like they are.”

  George Eddy, staring out a back window, said, “Get ready, looks like they’re back and starting up again.” Moments later, there were crashes of fire as Indians hundreds of yards away began shooting.

  “Look lively, that’s cover for others coming forward through the brush,” Billy said. “Damn the angles from these windows—I can’t see much.”

  “You might climb the ladder, Billy,” O’Keefe suggested. “There’s a small window up there with a better angle down below. We tried it a few times but the fire from the savages drove us back.”

  “All right,” Billy said. O’Keefe, Langton, Johnson, and Eddy began firing out. William Olds stayed coughing in his corner, and Hannah Olds shrank to the floor and tugged a half-empty flour sack over herself. McLendon didn’t think it would stop a bullet, but maybe it made her feel marginally safer. “Come on, C.M., come up with me,” Billy said. “I’ll bring my Big Fifty; you get some shells.” McLendon fetched the shells and also a Winchester he saw lying beside the store counter. He clambered up the ladder after Billy. They found themselves on a wide shelf meant for storage. There were sacks of food stacked to the side. It was very hot up there. Sweat dripped onto McLendon’s split lip and it stung. He’d forgotten about it. The injury from Shorty Scheidler’s punches that had been so bothersome not long before seemed insignificant now. The lip would heal if he lived.

  “This is a fine angle,” Billy said. “I can look a little down now, see the bastards as they try crawling up.” He gestured. McLendon looked, and it seemed to him that fifty yards away he could see the tips of the high grass stalks quivering from movement below rather than the breeze.

  “Turkey shoot,” Billy said. “Let me get this Fifty loaded and sighted in. You give them some what-for, C.M., but aim at the ones standing back. I want these crawling sons of bitches to think they’re goddamn invisible to us.”

  McLendon leaned past Billy, pointed the Winchester out the window, and blasted several shots. He didn’t think he hit anything but it was satisfying to try. “There seem to be a lot of them coming, Billy,” he said.

  “Let ’em come,” Billy said, and took a look. “Okay, over there’s a bunch. See all the grass move? What’s that up in front? Feathers? Shit, one of those bastards has him a fancy headdress.”

  McLendon looked hard. He saw the grass moving but no feathers. “If you say so.”

  “No, see that rock? The big one? Right in front.”

  There was a flash of white, a flicker against the yellow-green grass. “Yes, now I see them, the feathers.”

  “Well, watch this.” Billy aimed and fired, but it wasn’t his best shot. Instead of hitting the Indian, the heavy Sharps slug ricocheted off the rock with a sharp clacking sound. “Goddamn,” Billy swore. He ejected the spent shell so he could load and fire again. The thick grass boiled with movement and it seemed to McLendon that a dozen Indians popped out. He recognized one, who staggered to his feet. Why was that?

  “The one there by the rock, the one with the headdress,” McLendon said. “I saw him kill Isaac Scheidler—I think he’s their leader. Shoot him, Billy, do it fast!”

  Billy had the Big Fifty reloaded and swung it back out through the window. “Turkey shoot,” he said again, and squeezed the trigger.

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  When the bullet ricocheted off the big rock, Quanah felt a terrible impact to his back between his neck and right shoulder blade. The pain was awful and he couldn’t stifle a scream. His right arm flopped limply at his side. The shock caused him to rise up on his knees, which lifted his head and chest above the high grass and, he instantly realized, made him a conspicuous target to whoever was shooting from inside the earthen hut. He wanted to duck back down—he tried—but he was in agony. His body writhed independently from what his mind commanded it to do.

  Quanah’s eyes lifted toward a window opening high up on the wall of the hut. It seemed to him that a long gun barrel was being poked back through it and swinging toward him. He couldn’t look away. Then, from behind, hands pulled at him, making the injury to his back hurt even more. Warriors were all around him, dragging him away. There were shots from the hut and some of the ones trying to save Quanah went down themselves. He was sure it would soon be his turn to be shot again, he just couldn’t move quickly, but there was the drumming of hoofbeats behind him and then he was being hauled up on a horse behind someone and they galloped off, riding away from the hut and its hateful guns. Quanah made a great effort and twisted to see his rescuer. It was Medicine Water. It occurred to Quanah that not long ago he was plotting to steal away the Cheyenne dog soldier’s wife, and now here he was saving Quanah’s life.

  When Medicine Water thought they were a safe distance away, he brought his pony to a halt, dismounted, and helped Quanah down.

  “Let’s see your wound,” he said, and Quanah sat on the ground. Medicine Water examined his back and said, “Good, there’s no open wound. The bullet hit you but did not enter your body. You’re not even bleeding. It will hurt you badly but in a few days you’ll be able to use your arm again.”

  That was a relief. “I’ve seen such wounds,” Quanah said. “I’ll be all right. Let’s get back to the fight.”

  “What fight?” Medicine Water asked. He gestured back toward the white camp and Quanah saw that the warriors of the People who’d been crawling toward the huts were now on their feet, retreating. Behind them, the Cheyenne no longer provided covering fire. Some of them had their bows out and were arcing arrows toward the huts, but these stuck harmlessly in the outer earthen walls.

  “Why have they stopped?”

  “We’ve used our last bullets. Now everyone wants to get away from the white guns.”

  “But we were so close! We can still fight, we can still kill all the whites.”

  “Perhaps,” Medicine Water said. “Can you get back up on my pony with me? Gray Beard is calling us all together at the end of the meadow.”

  The remaining members of the war party, numbering perhaps two hundred and fifty, gathered northwest of the white camp at the base of some low hills. They were a dozen bowshots or more away from the huts. Gray Beard summarized the situation. They had no more ammunition. Because the huts were impervious to arrows and lances, and since the defenders had too many bullets to c
ount, it would be foolish to keep charging. They might be able to overrun the huts with sheer numbers, but in doing so too many attackers would die. But there might be a better way. The fight could still be won.

  “These whites have no way of escaping their camp,” Gray Beard said. “All of their horses are dead. They could try to walk or run, but there are enough of us to make a circle around this valley and stop anyone who tries. We have our bows, and if they try to get away they have to come out from behind their earthen walls and we can kill them then.”

  Wild Horse, who came from the same Quahadi camp as Quanah, asked, “What if the whites never come out? They can just stay inside and laugh at us.”

  “They’ll come out,” Gray Beard said confidently. “They’ll want to get away from here. Look, some of them are coming out now.”

  Down in the white camp, a few figures emerged from the huts. They talked and one pointed across the meadow to where the war party was gathered below the hills. Some of the Indians couldn’t resist screaming insults. In response, the whites raised their rifles.

  “They’re too far away,” someone said, and there were puffs of smoke, and even as the crack of the shots reached their ears, two Cheyenne were knocked from their horses and one of the People swayed as a bullet tore through his shoulder.

  “Move back!” Medicine Water shouted, and they did, galloping across the creek toward the high bluff. Several of the Cheyenne paused to help their fallen tribesmen, and one of these would-be rescuers was killed by another long, accurate shot.

  Quanah still rode behind Medicine Water. When Mochi rode up beside them, Quanah said, “They’re hunters, they can shoot very far.” Mochi didn’t reply. She looked furious.

  The war party made its way up the bluff and stopped at the top. They were far enough away from the white camp now that it was impossible for bullets to reach them there. It was close to sunset and shadows cut across the floor of the meadow. Quanah dropped down from Medicine Water’s side and slumped on the ground. His back hurt terribly. Some of his friends among the People bent and whispered words of encouragement, but in general everyone seemed discouraged. They’d expected to win easily, then they fought all day, and now they’d been driven up the bluff and the white men walked freely out in front of their huts.