No Good Like It Is

by McKendree R Long III

  McDowell veered left and led his men on a quick charge to a gully near the hill, dismounted there, and moved forward firing, leaving two men with the horses.

  ***

  Melton mounted and rode to meet Rowe’s men and Phemister. “Keep moving, out to the right. You’re gonna flank ‘em. Swing wide, then come in behind their hill. I’ll take some men and go straight at ‘em.” He swung back to the head of the train, where the lieutenant was mounting up some men.

  “I need a couple of you to trade your carbines for shotguns, grab an extra Colt, and come with me,” said Dobey. “We’re gonna charge right up there, and put the shotguns to work. Finish ‘em with pistols.” He checked the caps on his Dragoon.

  “Me and Rock will go,” said Lumpkin as he took a shotgun and Navy Colt from a pilgrim.

  “Rock? Who’s Rock?”

  “Me, sir,” said Corporal Amick, a huge humorless man from New York.

  Bent Roof took a Dragoon from one of Potter’s men, and mounted. “I keep my Sharps,” he said, and wheeled around the front of the wagons, straight at the rocks.

  Melton arrived just in time to join them. It was a wild, screaming, short ride.

  ***

  Old Carlos Rangel was hunkered behind a boulder, ramming his charge for his eighth shot. Like most of the raiders, he had a .54 cal. Mississippi Rifle, model of 1841, and the barrel was hot enough to burn his hand. As he dug for a primer, a bullet hit the rock beside his head. The back of the rock. He looked to his right and saw some bluecoats moving up that side of their position. “Hey, Amigos. Yanquis on the right.” As he shifted to face the new threat, he saw Sour Johnson, Big John Zepke and some others mounting up behind the hill.

  He stood and yelled, pointing at McDowell’s men. “Hey. They’re over there. Ride them down like dogs.” Behind him on the forward slope, someone yelled, “Here they come.”

  Rangel started to face back toward the wagons, but saw a new group of Yanqui cavalry riding around their left side. “Hey,” he pointed, but something hit him under the right arm and knocked him down the back slope.

  He struggled to sit up, and watched Sour Johnson, Zepke, and three others thunder off the wrong way, into the arms of the Yanqui riders. Some of his own party ran by him downhill. They were all bleeding. Then more bluecoats ran after them, firing pistols. An Indian boy knelt beside him and fired a Sharps at the fleeing raiders. As he reloaded, he smiled at the startled Rangel and said, “You’re one of mine,” then moved off.

  Rangel made it to his feet, leaning on his rifle, but someone said, “Hey. Senorita Maria.”

  He turned, and said, “¿Quien? Who?”

  The bluecoat raised his carbine, and said, “Try this.” There was a blinding flash.

  ***

  As they herded the prisoners and horses back to the wagons, Corporal Amick caught up with Dobey and Melton.

  “Yo, Lieutenant. You think that Indian was telling the truth about Reid and Potter hanging us out to dry here?”

  “We’ll see. Why?”

  “’Cause I think they did. And I wanna tell you something, all right? Corporal Potter, he didn’t win that fight against McDowell fair. No Sir. He had a lot of carbine slugs in his gloves, sewed in the palms.”

  “Sergeant Reid checked both men’s gloves,” Dobey said, looking confused.

  “Sergeant Reid’s the one that fixed the gloves. Had me take ‘em to that fat laundry woman. I had Lumpkin put one on, hit me with it. It was like a goddamn hammer, sir.”

  ***

  As McDowell and his men walked back downhill to their horses, he asked Jones, “How come you sometimes call ‘em names?”

  The skinny private took off his hat and rubbed his curly hair. “They’s old women, Mac. They’s looking for mercy. I give ‘em justice.”

  Chapter Seven

  Black Bob Morrison was positively cheerful. They ran into his ‘relief column’ two hours after the fight. Reid, with Potter and his men, had been left at First Fort.

  “By God, Walls, what a coup. From what Sergeant Reid said, I thought I was coming to recover your bodies. Give me the count again?”

  “Them, sir? Seven dead, eight wounded and captured, two missing, thirteen horses taken, ten rifles, three Hall carbines, two shotguns, eight revolvers, three Johnson pistols. Turns out, a lot of them were wounded by buckshot, when the civilians were spraying the hill early in the fight.”

  “And the butcher’s bill?”

  “Two civilians and five troopers wounded, one trooper died of wounds. No weapons lost. Four horses killed or destroyed. And we did butcher them. We can have meat tonight.”

  “How you going to handle Sergeant Reid?”

  “He should have supported us. He ran. There’s got to be an inquiry. Do I arrest him now, or when we get back?”

  “He says you signaled him to go for help.”

  “You buy that, Captain?”

  “Not for a single minute. He should have sent a rider to me, and supported you. Your call, but I’d arrest him. Maybe he’ll run, and we can shoot the bastard.”

  “Well, sir, turns out this ain’t all. He sort of rigged that fight between Potter and McDowell.”

  “McDowell threw that fight?”

  “No. No sir. Potter had loaded gloves.”

  “Any proof?”

  “I’ve got the man who fixed the gloves, on Reid’s order. He’s kind of upset about Reid and Potter leaving us swinging in the breeze.”

  “Humph. We’ll arrest both of ‘em. They’ll be lucky to make it to trial. Lot of men lost money on that fight.”

  ***

  They closed First Fort before dark, and after posting guards, Dobey and Melton went looking for Reid and Potter. A buffalo hunter said that he thought they were at the stable. Dobey took the stable, and sent Melton to try the main cabin.

  The culprits had already left the stable. Dobey hurried to the cabin, and walked in the back door just in time to see Melton hit Potter in the mouth. There was the crunch of metal on bone. As Potter dropped, Melton removed the brass knuckles, stuck them in his shirt pocket, and kicked Potter in the head.

  Before Dobey could shout for Melton to stop, Reid stepped behind Melton and hit him with a sap. Melton went down on his hands and knees and Dobey found himself pointing his cocked Dragoon at Reid. “That will be enough. You’re under arrest, both of you.”

  “Me and Melton?”

  “You and Potter. Cowardice, abandoning your post, lying to an officer…I could go on … and I know about the gloves.”

  “Don’t know what you’re talking about, Lieutenant, and you got no proof.”

  Facing Dobey’s pistol and stuffing the sap in the back of his belt, Reid didn’t notice Captain Morrison and his troop sergeant come in behind him.

  “My word against yours, and the word of an experienced sergeant means something out here. Ain’t no West Point, no siree Bob. And an inexperienced lieutenant has to be real careful out here . . . look out for accidents and such,” Reid sneered.

  Captain Morrison nodded to his troop sergeant, a big Swede named Wenstrom, and the Swede swung his carbine barrel. Reid heard movement, started to turn, and took the blow over his right eye. He staggered back three steps, hit the bar, and fell on his face.

  “I’ll have my money back, Henry Reid,” Wenstrom said to the unconscious man.

  Black Bob lit his pipe. “Heard him threaten you, Lieutenant Walls. Thought he was going to attack you. We’ll get Chouteau to keep ‘em now ‘til we get back here. Then put them in your wagon for the trip home. Or they can walk behind it. Have your men ready at dawn. We’ll have a little ceremony before we hit the trail.”

  “Ceremony, sir? What’s that for?”

  “You’ll see.”

  ***

  One of the raiders died during the night.

  Sergeant Wenstrom led the other seven wretches tied together onto the plain, barefoot and in their underclothes, and had them face the rising sun. Their clothing and boots had been sold to
Chouteau and the money turned over to Dobey’s wounded.

  One section from ‘M’ Troop faced them—nineteen men, carbines at low port. Wenstrom strode to join them as the doomed men shielded their eyes from the sun’s fresh glare, trying to see what was happening.

  Wenstrom cocked his Sharps and said, “All right, boys, show these ‘L’ Troop bums that we can shoot, too. On three, now …”

  Zepke fell to his knees, and another raider began screaming, but every one heard the count, and the volley was one to be proud of. Wenstrom had assigned three shooters to each of the standing prisoners, and he and Corporal Shealy shot Zepke.

  Two were still squirming as a fresh breeze blew the acrid smoke away. The Osage relief party cheered and started some sort of dance, and Shealy, on a nod from Wenstrom, walked out and finished the two wounded with his pistol.

  Reid and Potter stood watching, squirming themselves. “What happens to us, Cap’n?”

  Black Bob lit his pipe and let them stew. “Oh, if you make it back to Fort Gibson, there’ll be a trial. These men attacked the U.S. Army, without benefit of flag or uniforms, and were not entitled to trial. Nevertheless, I would have made them walk to the Santa Fe Trail and back to Fort Gibson for their execution, ‘cept they’d have slowed us down. Reid here will prob’ly be shot too. You, Potter, I’d guess you’ll get twenty, maybe thirty years, hard time.”

  “Cap’n, I’m thirty-nine years old. I doubt that I’ll live that long.”

  “Well, Potter, you’ll just have to give it your best effort.”

  Chapter Eight

  “We’ll leave your wounded here with Reid and Potter. Chouteau and his squaws

  can look out for ‘em while we hurry these pilgrims on up to the Trail, and we’ll pick ‘em

  up on the way back.” Captain Morrison poured out the dregs of his coffee and stood up.

  Dobey did the same. “Yessir. I gave old Chouteau some money from the dead

  men’s traps to look out for our men, and Melton made it clear that Reid and Potter had

  better not escape. Chouteau seemed to take Melton serious.”

  Morrison grinned. “Well, at least you now got Melton for troop sergeant. Let’s

  ride.”

  ***

  “Person didn’t realize that you was just a dumb ass shavetail, they might think you actually knew something about using a Paterson shotgun,” Melton offered. ‘L’ Troop was riding drag again, behind the wagons.

  Dobey smiled. “Why would they think that?”

  “I seen how you handled it. You and Amick and Lumpkin fair scoured that hill face with them shotguns. Let us get right in among ‘em with our pistols. Hell, it was over, then. Am I right?”

  “Yeah. Yes, I did use one before. Back in ’53 at Fort Motte. Using it here made me think about that all over again.”

  ***

  Fort Motte was typical of many early forts: no palisade, some crude barracks, a guardhouse, headquarters buildings, and the sutler’s store and corral. Dobey’s father was killed the year before, and the sutler took in Dobey, his mother, and his brother and sister.

  He did so, he said, because he needed help running the store. He was a rarity. Many sutlers, if not most, ran operations not unlike the company stores of mining fame. Blackbeard and Henry Morgan, those princes among pirates, would have blushed at the greed at many forts. Timothy Balliett, however, was honest, despised graft, admired soldiering (having done it), and had been in love with Annette Walls since first he saw her. Six months after Mac Walls’ death, they married.

  The fort’s commander went hunting several times with fourteen-year-old Dobey, or Tom as he was known then. When he was comfortable with young Tom’s handling of the Paterson shotgun, he made a gift of it. It was an old Model 1839 sixteen gauge six-shot revolver with a twenty-four-inch barrel. An incident with it soon saved several lives, took several others, and won Tom a four-year trip to West Point.

  The incident began when the Indians, over two hundred of them, swarmed over and through Fort Motte at about ten a.m. of a cool spring day. Two of the fort’s three mounted rifle companies were on long patrol, as the Indians well knew, leaving about fifty fighters at the post.

  Five soldiers and two civilians were caught by the stables and slaughtered immediately. All the horses were taken, but then brisk defensive fire from the barracks and headquarters area staggered the attack. In the sutler’s store about seventy yards away were Balliett and his bride Annette, her two sons Tom and Tad, and three soldiers. Annette’s daughter Becky, age eight, was in the outhouse.

  Balliett passed out an assortment of weapons, and they drove off the first charge. Then things went to pieces.

  When Annette realized her daughter was missing, she tried to run to the outhouse. Balliett pulled her back, and armed with a Hall carbine and a Paterson revolver, had tried it himself. One soldier with a Dragoon Colt ran with him, but they were both pierced by arrows and pinned down by the water trough, halfway to the outhouse. Seven Kiowa warriors raced to the corral, dismounted, crawled through the fence, and charged across the open area, determined to finish the two men with tomahawks and clubs.

  At that point, Tom advanced on the Kiowa, firing that shotgun. He hit all seven of them. Balliett and the soldier undoubtedly hit some of them too, but there was no question that what dropped them was the six blasts of buckshot from that old Paterson, coming from the side.

  Tom had grabbed the pistol from his wounded stepfather to cover their retreat to the store, when his sister decided to make a break for them, running screaming from the far end of the corral. That attracted the attention of three more Kiowa, as well as that of brother Tad, who was reloading carbines for the two soldiers still in the store.

  Tad rushed out with a 10 gauge double but took an arrow through his cheek and a musket ball in the knee before he could fire.

  Tom picked up the big double gun and accidentally touched off both barrels simultaneously toward the attackers. The recoil dislocated his right thumb and shoulder and blackened his eye, but when the smoke cleared there were no more Kiowa standing near the corral.

  Back in the store, they beat off two more half-hearted charges, but the Kiowa had lost enough men and captured enough horses so as to bring hostilities to a sudden end.

  ***

  “That was why I got to go to West Point, more or less,” finished Dobey.

  “Well, I ain’t surprised, after all that. I’m just surprised they’s still any hostiles left for us to fool with.”

  “Nobody likes a smart-ass, Melton. Remember, you’re not a real sergeant yet.”

  Melton grinned. “Where’s the family now?”

  “Baby sister died of a fever the next year. The rest of ‘em are still at Fort Motte.”

  “You sure? I heard they was closing.”

  Dobey pulled up, stunned. “Jesus Lord, I feel like I been hit in the chest. I mean, what would happen to…? Where would…? Damn, Jimmy, I haven’t seen my mother in over five years as it is, and now…” He nudged his horse back into motion, easing up beside Melton again. “I was hoping to get a furlough, and go see her…”

  Melton said, “I’m sorry, Lieutenant. You miss her most, I guess?”

  Dobey nodded. “You got to know her to understand. That Kiowa raid? I told you my brother was shot in the knee? Part of the ball stayed in. We put him on a table. My stepfather held his shoulders, me his legs, and ma cut open his knee, dug out that fragment. Well, I fainted. Right on him.” Dobey blushed, then shrugged. “Ma got her elbow under my chin, hooked my legs from under me, and dropped me on my butt, on the floor, out cold. Lucky for him, my brother passed out then too, prob’ly from me falling on his legs. Ma was crying the whole time, ‘My baby, my baby.’ ‘Course he wasn’t the baby, Becky was, but I guess we were all her babies. God Almighty, I hope she’s all right.”

  Dobey suddenly stiffened and took a deep breath. “Hell, I sound like a little girl. It’s just that…” He trailed off again. Melton rode silently,
leaving Dobey to his thoughts.

  By the fire that night, Melton said, “You was some embarrassed today. Don’t be. Hard as it might be to believe, some other of us dog-assed soldiers had mothers too.” He poured Dobey some coffee.

  Dobey stared at him a moment. “Oh. I guess I was on a pity streak. You said ‘had’?”

  Melton nodded. “Mine died of the bloody flux when I’s fourteen. Felt like I’d been gutted.”

  That night, Jimmy Melton found Swede Wenstrom by his wagon.

  “You find out where they hid the fight money, Swede?”

  “No. But I will beat it out of them before we get back to Fort Gibson. Then we don’t need them no more. Found the gloves, for sure. In Potter’s saddlebags.”

  “I was thinking. They must have won near two hundred dollars. Hardly nobody bet on Pudgy Potter. They wouldn’t of left it at the fort. You searched ‘em good?”

  “Buck-ass naked, I did.”

  “Where are them saddlebags?”

  Apparently the fat laundress had been busy. There were false bottoms sewed in both men’s bags. Potter had over fifty dollars, Reid one hundred twenty-eight. There were also three pocket watches, some rings, silver belt buckles and four gold crosses.

  Wenstrom took a five-dollar bill and stuffed it in his shirt. “How much did you bet? We gonna give this to the ones that bet on McDowell?”