by Doug Thorne
She finished reloading the Henry, called her husband’s name and lifted the weapon towards him. ‘Here, William. Be careful!’
Panicky now, Olds turned at the waist, grabbed the rifle by its barrel and tried to pull it from her grasp – unaware that her right index finger was still curled around the brass trigger.
The Henry went off with a roar that drowned Olds’s cry. The bullet smashed up through his chin and burst out the top of his head, spraying gore everywhere. Again she screamed. ‘William!’
Beyond hearing, Olds dropped to the packed-earth floor beside her. That he had died almost instantly was and would remain little comfort to his stunned widow. All that mattered right then was that her husband was dead – and, dear God, that she had killed him.
The attack lasted maybe ten or fifteen minutes more, though it seemed a hell of a lot longer. Then the Indians turned and retreated back into the darkness. They did not return.
After a time, Oscar Sheppard whispered, ‘It’s over.’
But it wasn’t.
The Indians hit them again about an hour later, and kept hitting them, off and on, for the next three days.
Three days….
Seventy-two hours spent watching and waiting, with little or no water to slake a man’s thirst; of being cooped up in the saloon or the store or the smithy as the hard June sun hammered down and turned each building into an oven; of sharing space with the dead and having to listen to the sufferings of the wounded; of hearing Mrs Olds alternately weeping softly and asking her Lord for forgiveness and knowing there was nothing you could do or say that would ever make her feel any easier about what had happened.
There were great long stretches when nothing stirred and nothing happened. All the trapped hide men could do was watch and wait and starve and thirst and try to fight their gritty-eyed fatigue. Then the Indians were there again, this mix of blood-hungry Comanche, Kiowa and Cheyenne, as if from out of nowhere, sniping from a distance at first, to keep the defenders’ heads down, then right up close on horseback, hurling lance and hatchet through shattered windows and patched-up doorways, determined to pick off as many whites as they could.
It was in those moments that Hennessy and the other men came to life, when it was kill or be killed and there was no longer any time just to sit and ponder and try to ignore the all-too-obvious hopelessness of their situation.
Those sudden bursts of violence broke the monotony of just waiting to die. But for some, they brought death all the sooner. During one attack, Jim Mclnnery caught a hatchet in the face, made a strange combination of scream and gurgle, then staggered back, arms and legs twitching, until at last he stiffened, dropped and lay still.
The Indians suffered casualties too, of course. Out in the open, they made good targets by day, and the withering fire directed at them from Billy and the other men in Rath’s store, and those like Masterson and Carlisle and Mike Welch in the saloon, claimed braves and their mounts in about equal measure. Soon the area around Adobe Walls was littered with bodies, most of them red.
But there was no sense of triumph in the buffalo hunters. With little or no water to be had and their ammunition slowly but surely dwindling, they had to be content with simply staying alive, always in the hope that the Indians would give up, which was none too likely, or that someone would get through to Dodge and bring help – which seemed equally doubtful.
After dark, things grew even worse. The Indians could creep in close and hammer on the doors and shutters to keep their enemies awake and on edge. Once they tried to set fire to the smithy, but Hennessy and Oscar Sheppard managed to kill the Comanches and stamp out the flames before they could do much damage. But of course, it all served to wear them down, and by the morning of the third day spirits were low and tempers were short.
Hennessy sat at his small window, surrounded by spent cartridges, with the stink of the dead and the sharp tang of spent powder heavy in his nostrils, and tried to put himself in the Indians’ moccasins and imagine what they might do next. This thing hadn’t gone well for them. Losses had been high. And it wasn’t in their nature to starve the enemy out. They preferred quick victories, not the kind of drawn-out siege into which this particular affair had turned.
He was still considering the Indians’ options when he heard a sound off to the south-west. He stiffened, moved a little closer to the window and glanced outside. O’Keefe, noticing him, hustled over in a half-crouch, rifle clamped hard in his hands.
‘What is it?’ he asked. ‘What’s happenin’?’
‘It’s Billy.’
‘Billy?’
‘The crazy sonofabitch’s left the store. He’s looking around.’
‘What the hell does he think he’s playin’ at?’
Hennessy made a quick, concerned scan of their seemingly empty surroundings. ‘I think he figures they’ve given up,’ he murmured.
Now O’Keefe was joined by Oscar Sheppard. Olds’s widow, who had retreated into a world of her own, stayed where she was, curled up in the corner where her husband lay dead beneath an old, stained blanket.
Long moments passed as they watched Billy take one cautious step, then another, then half a dozen. Finally, he stood still among the bodies of men and mounts, and looked around. The silence was heavy, absolute, as each man watching braced himself for the inevitable gun blast that would tear Billy off his feet and signal a new and possibly final attack.
But no gun blast came. His appearance there in the grounds of Adobe Walls provoked no reaction at all from anyone who might be out there, watching for them.
Another taut thirty seconds passed, and at last Billy broke his silence. ‘It’s over!’ he yelled, and even from this distance Hennessy caught the barely suppressed sob in his voice. ‘They’ve gone!’
Hennessy thought he heard a tired cheer go up from the men in the saloon. For sure he heard his own companions muttering behind him, their voices tinged with a mixture of puzzlement and disbelief.
Gone? No, it’s a trick, it’s gotta be….
He pushed up on tired, stiff muscles, went to the big double doorway, lifted the bar and went out into the harsh morning light, squinting a little. Billy saw him, came trotting over as battle-weary men began to emerge from saloon and store alike.
‘It’s over, Cal!’ Billy called, his bloodshot, light-starved eyes narrowed against the sun. When he was near enough, he clapped Hennessy on one arm. ‘By God, we taught them heathens a lesson, didn’t we?’
‘I’d say they taught us one,’ Hennessy replied mildly.
Billy’s whiskery face clouded as he remembered the dead. He drew a breath, let it go in a soft sigh. ‘Well, they’ve gone. And we survived it. I reckon that’s all that matters now.’
Hennessy was about to agree when he glanced over Billy’s right shoulder and felt something in his pale blue eyes die. He swallowed, said softly, ‘I don’t think it is over, Billy.’
Billy read the look in his face and wheeled around with sudden urgency. There on a far distant ridge sat a small number of mounted Indians, fanned out in a ragged line, maybe as many as fifteen.
He swore, and his shoulders sagged visibly. They hadn’t gone, then. They were still out there, watching. waiting, plotting….
The strangled sound Billy made came from someplace deep inside his chest. His fists clenched, his shoulders bunched again, he glared at the distant war-party with teeth clenched and his every muscle suddenly locked tightly into place. Then whatever it was that held him there broke, and he looked around, saw Hanrahan standing nearby and started over to him, his stride fast, purposeful.
‘Jimmy!’ he barked, holding out his hands, ‘gimme that rifle.’
Hanrahan frowned. ‘Billy—’
‘Gimme that damn’ rifle!’ growled Billy, snatching the Sharps .50/.90 from the startled saloon-man’s grasp.
Hennessy followed him over. ‘Whoa, Billy!’ he said. ‘What do you suppose you can do from here? That ridge is about a mile away!’
Billy tu
rned on him. His face was heated now, his normally mild, good-humoured eyes round and a little wild. ‘What can I hope to do?’ he grated. ‘I’ll show you what I’m gonna do! I’m gonna show them red bastards that they messed with the wrong crew here!’
And so saying, he slapped the stock of the heavy buffalo gun to his right cheek and took aim.
This was not the way it should have gone. Their attack on the white man’s stockade should have been short and decisive, a complete and bloodless victory for Quanah and his allies.
But here they were, three days later, and the stockade still stood, was still in the hands of the whites, and Isatai’s promises of invulnerability had proved to be worthless.
Quanah, himself wounded, was no longer prepared to indulge the shaman. He simply could not accept that so many braves had doubted the Sacred Powers and been punished for it. And neither did those around him. In any case, the facts spoke for themselves. So far, upwards of seventy braves had died in this contest. Seventy! And still a mere handful of whites prevailed against a force of hundreds.
Quanah sat his horse on a rise overlooking Adobe Walls. At this distance, the stockade looked tiny, inconsequential. Sitting their mounts alongside him were Satanta and Lone Wolf, Stone Calf, Grey Beard, Mow-way, Wild Horse and others, all equally disappointed, equally angry, equally sceptical now of Isatai.
For his part, the medicine man faced them from beneath lowered brows, feeling their fury and mistrust, and trying hard to curb his own growing self-doubt.
‘So,’ said Quanah, breaking the early morning silence. ‘What have you to say for yourself, Isatai? Or do you have no explanations?’
Isatai was about to respond when a scar-faced Comanche, unable to maintain his place in the ranks behind them any longer, suddenly ran forward, his right cheek twisted by an old bullet wound that had healed to form a livid spider-shape. The brave was heavy-set, about forty or so, and clearly tormented.
‘He has no answers!’ he cried. ‘You know, Quanah, you know that no one had a stronger belief in the Sacred Powers than my son, my beloved Tahkay! And yet he now lies cold and dead down there! And for what? Will Isatai tell us that the gods made a mistake? Or is the only mistake ours, in that we ever trusted his assurances at all?’
Quanah turned his attention back to Isatai, who seemed to wilt beneath his burning gaze. ‘What do you say to that, holy one?’
Isatai, the hollow-eyed living skeleton, drew himself up only with effort. ‘Sometimes the gods feel it is necessary to test us,’ he began.
But that was as far as he got. Tahkay’s father suddenly screamed out, stiffened, then spun around and fell to the ground, clutching at a shallow, bloody furrow in his back.
A second later, they all heard the distant boom of a heavy-calibre rifle.
The assembled chiefs fought to bring their startled horses under control. For a moment spooked animals swapped ends, back-stepped and bumped into each other. When order began to return, Satanta stared at the distant stockade, now populated by a gathering of ant-sized figures, and asked, ‘What magic is this?’
Lone Wolf shared his unease. ‘How can we fight men who can so easily harm us from such a distance?’
Gamely, Isatai gestured at the fallen man, who was now slowly climbing back to his feet, and said, ‘This man spoke out of turn, and the gods chose to punish him for—’
All at once Quahah was a rush of movement. He heeled his horse forward and lashed out, silencing the shaman with a furious back-hand slap. The red blood that trickled from Isatai’s split lip contrasted starkly to the yellow paint in which he was covered.
‘No more of your lies!’ Quanah hissed. He pulled an Army Colt from his sash and stabbed it into the other man’s face, thumb-cocking the hammer as he did so. The other chieftains watched on, eyes lit with approval and anticipation.
But a moment later Quanah let the gun drop from Isatai’s fear-frozen face and he shook his head in disgust.
‘Where is the justice in sparing you the fate you so richly deserve?’ he asked quietly. ‘Go from this place, Isatai. Go and be forever shunned, for the story of your lies will go ahead of you, and you will be spurned by all.
‘That is your punishment, holy man – not a quick and merciful death, but the long and lonely life of an outcast, exposed for the liar and trickster you are, and justly despised for it!’
Mouth agape, Isatai looked around, found Eagle Hand among the warriors crowded behind them and raised his eyebrows. Eagle Hand, once his biggest admirer, shook his head and spat off to one side. Clearly he could expect no support from that quarter. No support from any quarter.
‘But I proved it to you,’ he said, returning his attention to Quanah. ‘The bullet Eagle Hand fired at me—’
‘—was most likely emptied of all but enough powder to make it fly from the gun that fired it,’ Quanah snapped with a sudden flash of insight. ‘Another ruse to lend credence to your claims.’
He sighed, suddenly tired beyond belief. ‘Go now, Isatai. Find a place in which to live out the remainder of your life in peace … if you can. And as for the rest of us….’ He hesitated, glanced to left and right, at his fellow chieftains. ‘There will be other battles, my brothers. But there will be no more fighting here. Here, we are finished. Here,’ he whispered bitterly, ‘it is over.’
Two days after the Indians pulled out, a mixed force of some one hundred men, alerted by Shaun Millican’s dramatic arrival in Dodge, galloped into Adobe Walls. They were eager for a fight, but found the fighting over – at least for now.
Instead they found the survivors of what would go down in history as the Battle of Adobe Walls getting ready to quit the stockade for good. The arrival of the buffalo hunters in these parts had lit the fuse to the Indians’ anger. But the explosion, the real explosion, was still to come. They didn’t care to be around when that finally occurred.
Hennessy stood out front of the bullet-scarred saloon, in the sunshine of the new day, and checked his cinch. Billy stood to one side, watching him prepare to pull out. Around them the other buffalo hunters were all of the same mind. Teams were being hitched to surviving or repaired wagons loaded down with skins, and hunters were packing their belongings away before beginning the long journey back to Dodge.
‘A sad day,’ said Billy. ‘Hate like hell to turn my back on such rich pickin’s, and I suspect the rest of these boys feel much the same way.’
Hennessy nodded, until his pale blue eyes happened to fall on a single, lonely figure standing, head bent, outside the eatery. Such was the pain and bewilderment in Mrs Olds that he could almost feel it himself, even from this distance.
‘Not everyone’ll be sorry to see the back of this place,’ he noted.
Billy nodded soberly. ‘Yup,’ he agreed. ‘There’s more’n a few who’ve lost just about ever’thin’ from this business.’
‘Well, you’ll get over it,’ Hennessy said encouragingly. ‘You and all these other fellers’ll head for Kansas or Colorado or the Panhandle and start up again, and before you know it, it’ll be business as usual.’
‘And the Indians?’
‘They’ll be right behind you, Billy, waiting to finish what they started here.’
He took one final look at Adobe Walls and shook his head. ‘This way of life’s more or less finished, Billy. There’s not the demand there used to be, and nowhere near the money to be made. Sooner or later you men’ll have to start looking for a new line of work.’
‘Got any suggestions?’
‘As a matter of fact….’
‘Go on.’
‘Cattle,’ said Hennessy. ‘Think about it. You’ve more or less starved the Indians out of these parts and pretty near finished off the buffalo doing it. That leaves a hell of a lot of range open for the taking, and it’s the cattlemen who’ll claim it.’
‘You sayin’ I ought to go push cows for a livin’?’
‘That’s for you to decide. But even that’s a better way to live than the one you’ve been foll
owing.’
Billy considered that for a while. At length he said, ‘You fancy comin’ along for the experience?’
‘Not me, Billy. I’m too damn’ fiddle-footed to stay in any one place for long. There’s a lot of country out there, and I aim to see as much of it as I can. But maybe Masterson and Sheppard would care to give it a whirl.’ He spotted the Newfoundland dog sitting beside the fire-blackened wreckage of the Scheidler wagon. ‘Take that crazy hound with you,’ he said. ‘He could use a new owner.’
Billy nodded thoughtfully, then offered his hand. ‘Well, I won’t say it’s been a pleasure, exactly, but it’s been good to see you again, Cal. For all your damn’ sermonizin’.’
Hennessy smiled at him. ‘I’ll see you again sometime,’ he promised as he swung into the saddle. ‘Next time I figure your conscience needs a little pricking, maybe.’
As he gathered up the reins, he felt a curious sense of sadness coupled with relief. Relief that what had happened here was over, sadness that it had ever had come to this in the first place.
Still, it would be a long time before the buffalo in these parts heard the chilling thunder of a Big Fifty again. For now, at least, the slaughter of man and beast was over. And if it came to that, so too was the brief moment in history when white men had dared to invade Comancheria and call this place east of the Santa Fe Trail and south of the Canadian River home.
Copyright
© Doug Thorne 2008
First published in Great Britain 2008
This edition 2011
ISBN 978 0 7090 9610 8 (epub)
ISBN 978 0 7090 9611 5 (mobi)
ISBN 978 0 7090 9612 2 (pdf)
ISBN 978 0 7090 8661 1 (print)
Robert Hale Limited
Clerkenwell House
Clerkenwell Green
London EC1R 0HT
www.halebooks.com
The right of Doug Thorne to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988