by Doug Thorne
‘What has happened?’ asked Quanah.
‘A few days ago, a band of white men attacked our camp, killed three of our people and stole twenty and more of our horses, fine buckskins all. We have been tracking them ever since, and believe now that the trail leads towards the fort the whites call Adobe Walls.’
‘These thieves were buffalo hunters, then?’
‘This I do not know. We lost their trail in a dust storm. But what else can I believe? In any case, even if we are wrong there can be no denying that these hunters have stolen from us in other ways.’
Quanah nodded. ‘The land,’ he agreed. ‘The buffalo.’
‘Whether they killed our people and stole our horses or not,’ Wo’teen continued, ‘we are angry, and feel that we have taken enough from them.’ His eyes turned bleak as he concluded, ‘We – that is, those of us you see before you now – have decided to kill them all before they can steal any more. But we are small in number, Quanah. If you would join us, our victory would be the greater, and more certain.’
Quanah frowned. Was this another sign, he wondered, another way in which the gods were seeking to tell him the course he should take? Not knowing made him feel frustrated and helpless.
One way or another, however, the decision had to be made, and if he failed to make it or kept postponing the moment, he would lose face.
Glancing back at the canyon rim and seeing Eagle Hand staring down at him, he realized he might lose even more.
He looked behind him. His people and their guests had crowded into the canyon entrance to discover for themselves the reason for the Arapahos’ visit. He saw Satanta among them, and Lone Wolf. He saw the impassive Cheyenne chieftain Stone Calf and a scattering of other Comanche leaders, such as Grey Beard and Big Bow, White Shield, Mow-way, Tai-hai-ya-Tai, Wild Horse, Isahabeet and Howling Wolf.
And there, hanging back in the crowd, he saw also the long, skeletal face of Isatai, watching him curiously.
‘The crime against you is a crime against us, also,’ he said finally, turning his attention back to the Arapahos and weighing his words with care. ‘Our hearts, like yours, also cry out for justice – and so it is war, my brother!
‘Piece by piece we will destroy the whites together! Together we will destroy them all!’
Hennessy soon had Masterson pegged for a fool. In this country, where horseflesh was worth more than its weight in gold and a man afoot was a dead man who just didn’t know it yet, only a fool pushed his horse as hard as Masterson was pushing his right now. Billy noticed it too, and after a while called Masterson’s name.
Without slowing, the youngster hipped around. ‘What?’
‘This ain’t a race, boy. Go easy on your mount.’
Masterson faced front again, muttering darkly under his breath, but from that moment on he held his mount to the long, pacing stride of his three companions, and sometime around mid-afternoon Adobe Walls at last appeared on the horizon.
A few moments later they passed through the crumbling walls, and Billy dragged his Remington New Model Army .44 from his belt and sent a shot skyward to sound the alarm.
That brought hide men running from all points, and started the Newfoundland dog barking and turning excited circles over by the wagon owned by his masters, a pair of brothers named Isaac and Jacob Scheidler. After a while, Mike Welch pushed through the chattering crowd and grabbed the cheek-strap of Billy’s horse to hold the skittish animal steady, and all at once the babble faded to silence.
‘What is it, Billy?’ Mike asked in his slow, deep rumble. ‘More trouble?’
‘Could be,’ said Billy.
He told them all what Hennessy had seen, and what it most likely signified, and as they digested that, he added, ‘If you boys’ll take my advice, you’ll fort up here till we know how this thing’s gonna play out.’ He frowned suddenly, sat a little straighter and ran his dark eyes across his audience. ‘Who’s missin’, anyway?’
A man called California Joe Milner said, ‘Johnny Bourke and his crew lit out earlier this mornin’. Johnny said he wanted to get his skins to Dodge before the price dropped.’
Billy tucked his tongue into his cheek while he thought about that. ‘Well,’ he decided after a moment, ‘they should be safe enough, I reckon. That’s a seven-man crew Johnny’s got, an’ they’s none of ’em a slouch with a rifle. Anyone else?’
Someone offered Milt Hagerman’s name, and Mike Welch added, ‘Hank Ketchum’s party, too.’
‘Ketchum? Where the hell did he go?’
‘Reckons he found hisseif a middlin’ herd about fifteen miles south-east. Figured to get out there today, see if he could make a decent stand of it.’
‘When did they leave?’ demanded Billy.
‘First light, thereabouts.’
‘You reckon they’ll be awright, Mr Dixon?’ called Mrs Olds, who was standing beside her husband on the far fringe of the crowd, twisting worriedly at the material of her apron.
‘The only thing I’d say for sure,’ replied Billy, ‘is that we can’t afford to lose three more men. If this thing comes to a fight, we’re gonna need every gun we can get. Which means,’ and here his voice dropped a notch, because he didn’t like having to say it any more than the men around him were going to like hearing it, ‘someone better go fetch ’em in while they’ still there for the fetchin’.’
The assembled men glanced uneasily at each other, and Hennessy saw that they were at last starting to realize that what had happened to Dudley and Williams the day before hadn’t just been an isolated incident after all: that the arrival of even more Indians in these parts today had suddenly made the possibility of an Indian attack seem altogether more likely. That being the case, few of them wanted to leave the relative safety of Adobe Walls right now, especially for the likes of Hank Ketchum and his crew.
Hennessy couldn’t blame them. These men weren’t fighters by profession.
They only shot at critters who couldn’t shoot back. But Billy had a point. Three more guns could make all the difference if it came to kill-or-be-killed.
As the heavy silence stretched into half a minute, he blew air through his nose. ‘All right,’ he said, telling himself he really ought to know better. ‘I’ll chance it. Anyone game enough to go with me?’
‘I’ll go,’ said Masterson.
Hennessy shook his head. ‘Thanks, but no thanks.’
Masterson went stiff. ‘The hell you say!’
‘You’ll stay put, Bat,’ snapped Billy.
‘I’ll do it if you’ll give me one good reason why!’
‘ ’Cause right now you’re about as green as unsunned pumpkins, boy, an’ that’s the truth of it,’ Billy told him evenly. ‘If Hennessy does this, he’ll need men to back him, not a kid to nursemaid.’
That was too much for Masterson. For a moment his eyes went wide and he looked as if he might throw himself at Billy. Instead he yanked his reins around and spurred his horse through the crowd and over towards Hanrahan’s saloon, where he dismounted and stamped angrily inside.
When he was gone, Bermuda Carlisle shouldered forward and said, ‘You can count me in, Hennessy.’
‘Me too,’ said a bull-necked hombre Hennessy knew as Harvey O’Neal.
Hennessy nodded tiredly. ‘Obliged,’ he said, and meant it.
It took only minutes for him to switch horses, and for his companions to grab their guns and cut out a pair of strong mounts for themselves. When they set out again, following the tracks left by Ketchum and his wagon, Hennessy allowed himself a fleeting smile and a weary shake of the head. Funny how things worked out sometimes, he thought. Yesterday he’d whupped Ketchum good, before Ketchum could whup him. Now, as hot and pained and tired of violence as he was, he was risking his life to save that of the self-same man.
Could be that Masterson wasn’t the only fool in these parts.
There was one brief moment on the journey out from Adobe Walls when Hank Ketchum thought he’d made a mistake in coming out at all. Th
e day was shaping up to be hotter than Hell’s hinges, and the beating he’d received the previous evening had taken more out of him than he’d realized.
But the feeling didn’t last long. Money was money, after all, and for the tall, white-haired Ketchum, that’s what this business was all about. A natural competitor, it was one of the reasons he liked to get first claim as often as he could: so’s he could kill more buffalo and make more money than the other feller.
For as long as he cared to remember, it had always been his practice to scout around for handy little bonus herds, and he’d been scouting for one – without noticeable success – ever since he’d brought his crew out to Adobe Walls a few weeks earlier. But the previous day he’d finally chanced upon a seep that dribbled between layers of exposed rock to feed a thin stream, and something had told him his luck was about to change.
Poor as it was, the water supply had led him on to a well-worn buffalo trail, the trail on to an area which had been substantially grazed, and about an hour after that he had finally come upon his elusive bonus herd itself.
The buffalo were stretched out across a shallow bowl of grassland fringed by scrub and stunted cottonwoods, rolling or flicking their tails to dislodge pests, or simply chewing the cud, and a rough tally had told him that there were between eighty and a hundred of them.
So he’d returned to Adobe Walls in good humour and told his two skinners, gaunt-faced Daniel Garland and Avery Hicks, a beanpole of a fellow with pale skin and a constantly bobbing Adam’s apple, to have the wagon loaded and ready to move by sun-up, ’cause they’d be pulling out just after first light next day.
Of course, he hadn’t figured on getting the worst of his run-in with Hennessy first. Rolling out of his blankets this morning, he’d found himself stiff as a board and hardly able to move for the pain it caused him. But there’d be time to settle things with that bastard once the bonus herd was taken care of, and that prospect, even more than the money he stood to make, made his assorted hurts a mite easier to carry.
Ketchum’s modest crew and his seen-better-days light wagon, loaded down with all the tools of their trade, induding spare ammunition, extra guns, skinning blades, chains, sledgehammers and grindstones, had quit Adobe Walls a little after sunrise, and Ketchum, riding ahead astride a mercifully docile buckskin horse, had led the way out to the bonus herd.
Now he was ready to spend the morning killing as many buffalo as he could.
With the wagon parked well back from the herd, Garland and Hicks got a fire going and started boiling coffee. There’d be no skinning work till the killing work was done, so all they could do was wait. Moving carefully in order to favour his bruises, Ketchum himself collected his gear, a long Sharps .50/.90, the iron fork upon which he would rest and steady the weight of the heavy weapon, and a bag of greased metallic cartridges, which would not only put a buffalo down if you hit him just right, but would keep him down, too.
‘Well,’ he said at length. ‘Let’s go get rich.’
And as he nodded, ‘So long’, he saw his own rising blood-lust reflected in the faces of his skinners.
He found good cover in a run of saltbush, from which he had an unobstructed view across the bowl of land in which the herd had settled. The buffalo were completely unaware of his presence. As he studied them through his cool green eyes, all Ketchum felt – aside from the heavy excitement that always came before the slaughter, of course – was an overwhelming sense of contempt. Look at them, he thought. Ignorant of what was about to happen, and so stupid that the survivors wouldn’t even learn from it. Big, shaggy bastards, they deserved all they got.
He went down on his belly, a big man with long, heavy arms and legs, shoved the iron fork into the ground before him and settled the Sharps’s long, octagonal barrel into its supportive V, then took a while observing the conditions, mentally calculating angles to compensate for windage and elevation. When he was satisfied, he reached into the bag and brought out a single centre-fire cartridge that was almost three inches long. He loaded it into the Sharps, then, scratching thoughtfully at his curly, iron-grey beard, he studied the herd some more.
Bulls, dams, calves – it made no never-mind to Ketchum. He’d make money from all of them. But what he was looking for now was the nearest thing the big shaggies had to a leader, the one who was just canny enough to sound the alarm before Ketchum had killed enough of them.
He settled eventually on a big old bull grazing on the far edge of the herd, who constantly raised his massive head so that he could keep a watchful eye on their surroundings. He was the one. And that meant he must be the first to die.
Ketchum sighted along the weapon, searching for the right spot for his bullet, the spot that would put the bull down swiftly and without fuss. He waited until the animal was broadside on to him, chose a point just beyond which the animal’s ribcage ended and then gently squeezed the trigger. The Sharps gave a roar and punched back into his right shoulder. He took it with a curse, watched just long enough to see the bull collapse in a heap, shot through the lungs and already bleeding from the nose, then calmly reloaded.
Incredibly, the animals milling around the old bull paid him no mind, and showed no signs of panic. One of them poked curiously at the dying beast with its moist snout, then simply moved on. Having had little if any previous contact with man, they simply didn’t have the first clue as to what had just happened – or what was still to happen.
Over the next hour or so, the morning peace was shattered time and again by the steady, rhythmic tattoo of the big man’s rifle: huge, rolling reports that carried for a mile or more on the hot, still air, and after each crash a buffalo dropped, quivering, to the valley floor, fatally wounded or killed outright.
A calf about the size of a large dog finally sensed that something wasn’t quite right and started searching for its mother. But the dam, so alive just moments before, now lay motionless on the ground, bleeding from a large, ragged wound in her side that was already filling with hungry flies.
A second later Ketchum claimed the calf as well, the force of the bullet slamming right through the creature and flinging it to one side.
Gunpowder and blood began to foul the air as the slaughter went on and the buffalo continued to fall. Load, aim, fire, reload…. On and on it went, until at last Ketchum’s trigger-finger started to blister and his rifle barrel grew so hot that he had to climb stiffly to his knees and urinate on it to cool it down again.
In almost no time, the better part of fifty buffalo lay dead or dying, but the rest of the herd was finally starting to turn restless and fidgety. Any minute now they’d start moving, ponderously at first but then with greater urgency, as some vague, half-understood sense of alarm at last communicated itself to them.
Ketchum shot another three buffalo, and then the rest began to mill around and gradually break into an aimless, shuffling run.
Slick with sweat, he ran a sleeve across his whiskery mouth and watched them go. They’d run for a time, but they’d not go far. When he and the boys were finished here, they’d catch the herd again and then he’d see the job through to the end.
He shoved himself erect, grunting with effort, and bawled, ‘All right, fellers – time to earn your pay!’
And while he stretched and walked around awhile to ease the knots in his muscles, Garland and Hicks set to work, bringing up the wagon and then picking their way from body to body, making sure the buffalo each man was about to skin really was dead, and not just wounded or still in the process of dying.
One or the other of them would make a close inspection of the beast and, if in doubt, would use a knife to finish it off. Then he’d make his first cut from the lower jaw, down the neck and straight along the belly until he reached a spot just below the tail. He’d score the inside of each leg then, and finally begin the business of peeling the hide back with a knife specially curved for the purpose.
Both men worked swiftly and without error. They’d done this so many times, they could have
probably done it blindfolded. At last, with the carcass rolled over and the hide all but removed, all that remained was to tie a line around the skin still attached to the buffalo’s hump and then use one of the team-horses to tear it free.
The hide was rolled then, and thrown into the back of the wagon. Later, when they got back to Adobe Walls, it would be stretched or pegged out, meat-side down, to dry. While he was about it, Garland also cut several heavy slabs of tender hump-meat for Mrs Olds.
Ketchum helped himself to a mug of stewed black coffee and blew steam off its surface. The bowl of land before him was littered with bodies, most of them pink and hairless now, glistening red in the hard sunlight and crawling with flies.
At length he set his mug down, spat into his palms and rubbed them together. He’d go give the boys a hand, just to speed things up, and then get back to the killing.
But just then his buckskin stopped grazing, looked up and shook his big head. Ketchum frowned at the animal, wondering what he’d seen or smelled to make him fret. He threw a brief glance southward, the direction which seemed to have claimed the horse’s interest, and was just about to turn his attention back to the horse when he suddenly froze.
Holy mother of Christ.
Sky-lined on a ridge about half a mile away sat twenty mounted Indians armed with lances, bows, hatchets, handguns and rifles.
SIX
They sat absolutely still, just watching, and allowing the vague breeze to stir their feathers and ruffle their horses’ manes, and Ketchum, suddenly unable to tear his eyes away from them, felt something heavy and nauseating settle in his stomach. How long had they been there? And what did they have in mind for when they were all through watching?
Carefully, he reached into his bag, brought out a greased cartridge and fumbled it into the Sharps, all the time edging towards the valley rim. ‘Garland!’ he called in a weird sort of half-shout, half-whisper.