Dying Thunder

by Terry C. Johnston

“Here?” someone asked from the darkness across the room.

  “No—here at the two posts,” Seamus replied.

  “Twenty-five or so,” Leonard spoke up.

  The clerk would know, Seamus thought. A man precise with numbers. “Now with those two gone…”

  Donegan did not want to finish his thought. “Well, that just about takes the rag off the bush. Looks like our work’s cut out for us, fellas.”

  He turned back to the wall, shoved loose some chinking between the tall pickets and pushed the blued barrel of the Henry through.

  “Virgin Mary, full of grace … hear me in my time of need…”

  15

  June 27, 1874

  Billy was certain the sonsabitches were going to come hurling in through the doors of the saloon at any moment.

  Outside, the warriors closed to within an arm’s length of the walls, backing their ponies up to the doors, driving rifle butts and buffalo lances—hammering, pounding, screeching like banshees at the door of Hell itself.

  Others, hundreds strong now, closed within a pistol shot’s distance in the next six heartbeats. For those first frantic moments at Adobe Walls, it was the white hunter’s sidearms that held against the red onslaught while the horsemen pressed their advantage of surprise. Before the hunters could even think of scrambling for their rifles, they yanked pistols from gun belts hurriedly buckled over long-handles, then fired into the painted faces of warriors no more than three arm lengths away at most.

  So close a man could almost smell the grease and sweat on the bodies. Damn near close enough in the murky, semidarkness to smell that morning’s jerky breakfast on the breath of every warrior.

  While some two dozen of those most brave dared make it all the way to the earth walls, most chose to drive their ponies in a wild, furious circle, ringing the buildings, slipping down the off side of their animal, hanging on with only a heel locked on a rear flank and a hand caught up in the mane, firing their pistols and rifles from beneath the heaving ponies’ necks. Scalp locks of brown and red and blond fluttered from bridles and the rims of shields or at the muzzles of their rifles. In the coming light of day the many-colored hues of horse and warrior streamed in a brilliant blur like watercolors splattered in the first moments of a thunderstorm as the ring tightened around those hide men outnumbered more than twenty-to-one.

  Still, some of the finest marksmen at that time on the frontier grimly set about to defend those three earth buildings at Adobe Walls that hot June day in 1874. Men who made a living truly knowing their weapons. Men who cast their own bullets, loaded their own shells, treated their buffalo rifles like a friend. These were men used to killing at long range. These were men truly in their element, men who time and again would turn the onrushing red tide throughout this long day.

  “Ain’t this something? Look at all of this,” Dixon said, flannel-mouthed in wonder, and under his breath just loud enough that the young hunter next to him heard.

  “Your brains must’ve seeped out your ears,” Masterson replied, chewing his tobacco like a glass-eyed cow. “You getting all such excited to see such a thing—when here we are about to lose our hair!”

  “Good shot, Jimmy!” someone shouted as another of Hanrahan’s bullets hit their mark. He was hell on those horsemen with that pistol barking steadily in his sure hand.

  By laying down a heavy, concerted fire, the riflemen in Hanrahan’s saloon momentarily parted a thick phalanx of brown riders making a second charge on the building.

  “Whoeee!” shouted skinner Oscar Sheppard. He stood and pranced light-footed for a moment as if he were jigging on a flint hide stretched flat upon the prairie. His right arm went out. “Gents to the right.” Then his other arm swept in a wide bow. “Ladies to the left!”

  The saloon defenders laughed wildly, like men staring death in the face yet still able to enjoy a joke made by one of their own, a joke that drew up images of the raucous saloon-hall dances in Dodge.

  Then more bullets slammed against the thick earthen walls, smacked the wood frame of windows, splintered thunderously at the door planks. A few stray shots made it through the open window, splattering lamps and bottles and china cups in a tinkle that served as a counterpoint to the roar and shriek and scream and fury.

  Damn, but he prayed this wasn’t the cork in the jug for them.

  His gut twisted in a knot, Billy didn’t know how long that first deadly assault lasted, those warriors daring to ride right up to the walls themselves. Inside there was a controlled, fevered pitch of activity while most of the white men piled what they could against the windows and doors: sacks of grain and flour, overturned tables and other furniture, barrels and kegs and saddles. That attention to barricading themselves finally assured, the hunters and the rest returned to their weapons, sorting through the various pouches of cartridges while Hanrahan distributed a limited number of pistols to the other eight men. If it came down to a close-quarters scrap of it, they would damn well hold back the red tide as long as any men could.

  Dixon turned at the same time some of the rest paused in their frantic activity.

  “You hear that?” Jim Hanrahan asked.

  The rest seemed to hold their breath. There it came again.

  “A bugle, by God!” Hiram Watson swore.

  They were peering through the loopholes with greater interest in that next moment. Trying to find the bugler.

  “You see ’im?”

  “Naw, he must be back there some—off a ways with the rest,” James “Bermuda” Carlisle growled. “Some bastard what knows how to blow—”

  Another blare of that brass-lunged horn rose over the meadow.

  “Sonuvabitch knows his calls,” Hanrahan commented. “That’s ‘assembly.’ He wants them bastards to pull back!”

  He ought to know, Billy thought. Jim would know bugle calls.

  “We got us some red bastard out there with a captured bugle,” Mike Welch moaned.

  “No. Not no red bastard. That there’s gotta be some turncoat renegade,” growled Oscar Sheppard. “Some soldier’s gone over.”

  “I heard tell there’s a Mexican greaser been living with the Comanche since the sixties,” Hanrahan told them. “Heard the story of it that he can blow a bugle good as you’ll hear on the parade at Fort Dodge itself.”

  The horn’s notes changed their call—from the plaintive cry for assembly to—

  “That’s a charge!” Hanrahan warned.

  “I knowed of a man said he visited the Kiowa back to ’sixty-six,” Carlisle replied calmly, his teeth the color of pin oak acorns. He eased over on his knees to peer through a loophole. “And he told of a half-breed Mex fella what blew the bugle—”

  “Here they come!” Billy Ogg hollered, announcing the next assault.

  By that time the warriors realized their element of surprise had been foiled and they would not be able to breach the walls of the sod buildings. Many of the horsemen decided to abandon their ponies and charged forward on foot.

  In anxious wonder Billy watched as first a handful, then a dozen and finally many more abandoned their animals, whirled and sprinted toward the saloon, zigging then zagging as they hurled themselves into the muzzles of the buffalo hunters guns. Those powerful weapons erupted in a spray of orange in the gray light of coming day, smoke filling the saloon, blanketing the province of no-man’s land just beyond the walls. Time and again a warrior fell. Some never to rise again, others crawling back to safety, still more who called out to others to come claim them.

  Again and again more of the hundreds flung themselves into the jaws of those terrible, powerful weapons put to work by the buffalo hunters. In wave after furious wave as the sun emerged red and angry from the bowels of the earth, the Comanche, Kiowa and Cheyenne sought to divine Isatai’s prophecy by sheer numbers alone. Flanks of brown bodies and screaming, wild-eyed ponies pressed out of the new light like a whirlwind of crimson death. Yet it was their bravery in the face of those buffalo guns that made Billy Dixon truly admire
his enemy this sultry morning already heavy with the stench of death.

  As many times as the warriors charged in on foot or horseback to rescue their fallen dotting the ground of that smoke-shrouded no-man’s land close to the walls, it never ceased to amaze young Dixon. This was true courage, he thought as he rammed home another cartridge in that .44 Sharps, true courage of the highest order. He doubted he would ever find men braver than these naked horsemen who had come riding out of dawn’s darkness.

  “Shoot that sumbitch!” Carlisle ordered as he fought to ram home more cartridges in the loading tube for his .56–52 Spencer.

  Out in the yard a few of the horsemen had grown very brave and pulled out of the circle of death ringing the saloon. Approaching daringly close, they yanked their breechclouts aside, exposing their manhood, turning to show their brown rumps, slapping their flesh and gesturing profanely.

  “They say we’re women,” Hanrahan explained.

  “Blow that’un’s balls off!” Welch demanded as he poked his barrel out the loophole once more.

  On and on went the daring, luring, provocative challenges of a few of the braver warriors. A time or two one of these courageous ones who ventured from the cover of wagons or hide ricks to provoke the enemy would end up getting knocked off his pony. Likely as not, they retreated unscathed after delivering their profane message to the white hunters.

  For those white hide men this was in no way qualified as a romantic encounter with the red cavalry of the southern plains. On the contrary, this was a bloody, terrifying, cruel and immensely ugly moment in their lives. If only he lived through it, Billy Dixon thought to himself as he tapped his finger on the Sharps barrel. Hot to the touch. If he lived through it, he would never glorify this day, nor the killing of Indians. Among these hardened men, Dixon knew that to be anxious, even scared of dying, was no sign of weakness. What mattered most at this moment, like many others to be faced in the life of a plainsman, was that these men did what they had to do.

  And for the moment Billy wondered if he would see his twenty-fifth birthday.

  * * *

  His nose stung with acrid gun smoke.

  It amazed Seamus how quickly the day was turning hot. Most of the defenders had not even dressed, sleeping and completely surprised when the horsemen rode down on the meadow. They sat at their loopholes now in their greasy long-handles and grimy underwear, ammunition belts slung around their bare waists or strapped over their shoulders. Little did it matter; no man seemed concerned enough to take the time required in searching for his britches or his shirt.

  With every passing minute the heat climbed. Both doors shut against the assault, little breeze could sneak through the Myers & Leonard store. In a matter of moments it had come down to close, hot, sweaty work—this business of death and dying.

  In those first few moments of fear and uncertainty, Fred Leonard had dragged out a sealed case of Sharps rifles. Using a huge butcher knife, the clerk cracked open the case, prying off the lid. The twelve shiny new rifles, still in their oil, were quickly passed around the smoky room. It was some time before the defenders loaded those rifles, however, interrupted as they were with the matter of close-quarters fighting at the pickets and in the stockade as the warriors swarmed over the walls.

  Outside, a few of the horsemen reined their snorting ponies to a halt beside the store walls then stood atop the horses to pull themselves to the sod roof.

  “Get in the bastions!” Leonard was shouting, nervously tearing open boxes of cartridges for the riflemen. He spilled a box at his feet.

  “Don’t go getting fouled in your own harness now, Fred. No man gonna try crossing that open ground,” sneered Old Man Keeler.

  “Them bastions is useless,” agreed Mike McCabe. “Worse’n tits on a boar.”

  Seamus paid little attention to the ill-tempered bickering between the sweaty gunmen. He and the rest were at the walls, knocking out some of the uncured mud chinking between the upright pickets. Shoving first one pistol out a loophole, then the other, the Irishman joined the rest in laying down a fire they prayed would keep the warriors from overwhelming them.

  “Listen, ever’body. Quiet, dammit!” Frenchy shouted, his chin climbing toward the ceiling, pointing overhead with his pistol.

  Donegan cocked his head, sorting out the sound. He rose quickly. Dutch Henry Born was slowly stepping across the room as well, listening to the sounds from the earthen ceiling. A sudden shower of dirt and grass rained down on Born as a warrior poked a hole through the roof.

  On instinct Donegan sprayed the hole with three quick bursts from his army .44. He watched the last hit the warrior for certain, driving the Indian backward, his face gone in a bloody spray. Then he made out the sound of footsteps hurrying to the side of the roof, a pause followed by a heavy thud that led Seamus to believe the warrior had fallen off the roof near the outer wall.

  More rooftop footsteps scurried out of hearing as Born swiped his eyes clear with a dirty hand, his well-seamed face now tracked with grime and sweat. He was cursing under his breath, eyes like huge white rocks in his dark face.

  “Shit!” cried Fred Myers. “Help me! Dammit, help me!”

  He sat crouched at the wall in the tattered rags of his old butternut uniform, the mark of a southern infantryman, his pistol stuffed through a loophole. The warriors banged at that very spot as Myers fired again and again into their faces. They were screaming at the white men, with Myers hollering back at them.

  Three others hurried over, ramming their muzzles through the flimsy chinking, firing as soon as they found a target. There was, for the moment, no problem of that. There seemed to be more than enough targets at the walls as the warriors hurled themselves against the sturdy pickets with unrestrained fury, only an arm’s length from the defenders.

  Seamus watched one attacker bend over and brazenly peer between the pickets into the interior. The Irishman jammed his pistol into the loophole and watched the enemy’s face disappear in a spray of gun smoke and crimson as the warrior brought his hands to his eyes, turned and stumbled off. He crumpled to the ground a few yards from the store, dead before he hit the grass.

  “I need one or two of you sonsabitches over here with me!” Keeler growled like a buffalo bull with his bangers caught on some cat-claw brush.

  Seamus rose and in a crouch scurried to the west wall of the store where the old cook was busy having a private duel of it with some warriors swarming over the stockade wall. Every last animal in the corral was already down, bleeding and screaming, thrashing in pain. Or already lying still in silent, sudden death.

  “That goddamned corral is proving to be more cover to them red bastirds than it helps us,” Donegan commented as he shoved another sixteen rounds in the Henry’s loading tube, then suspended another four more between the fingers of his left hand like long brass pods.

  “We gotta try to get to that bastion at the northwest corner!” Leonard hollered through the smoke and heat-haze and clamor. “Who’ll try with me?”

  “I’ll go!” declared Billy Tyler, a young hunter.

  Leonard looked at Donegan and Keeler hunkered at the wall. “Cover us, boys!”

  Then the clerk was gone out the west door into the stockade, on his heels the young buffalo hunter with his brand new Sharps .40.

  “You heard the man,” Keeler snapped, putting his Remington pistol to use.

  Seamus covered them as best he could, glancing once then a second time to see the two men dancing across the open ground, small eruptions of dirt kicked up around their boots. A bullet smacked into the north wall inches from Leonard’s nose. In less time than it would take to light a damp cigar, the clerk suddenly turned about-face and bumped into Tyler as he scurried back to the store. Behind the pair, coming over the west wall, a warrior dropped to the ground with a screeching war cry. More shots came whining past, fired from the direction of the nearby corral.

  Tyler wheeled, trying to find Leonard, who was sprinting like a hellion for the store. He whe
eled about in time to find the warrior dashing for him, arm cocked, a pistol held at ready. Tyler fired, then fired a second time. Each of the bullets collided with the brown body, the first stopping the warrior in his tracks, the second knocking him back a step. He looked down at his chest, then crumpled.

  The young hunter darted for the body, grabbing the warrior by the long hair gathered at the nape of the dead man’s neck. Setting off for the store, Tyler was lunging forward as fast as he could in a crouch, dragging the bloody warrior like a prize he would not relinquish, when he reached the doorway. He straightened of a sudden, arched back with a face gone white … then crumpled to his knees, swiping at his back with his left hand as he fell forward across the sandy threshold.

  Seamus dropped the Henry and pulled the second of his .44s. He had it barking the moment it hit his palm while he settled over Tyler, grabbing the back of the hunter’s belt to drag the wounded man inside the store.

  “Goddamn! Goddamn!” Keeler muttered, pulling his knife from his belt and stabbing a long slit in Tyler’s shirt.

  “That shot came from your corral, Leonard,” Donegan said, turning to glare at the clerk as the old salt sting of temper passed over him. He glanced down at Tyler for a moment, then over the others. “I don’t know how—but before this morning’s done, we’ve got to get that corral cleaned out. That—or we’ll bloody well be cleaned out ourselves.”

  “They got ’im in the lights,” Keeler said. He was a frosty-browed man who in his long life had likely seen his share of death already.

  “Likely he’ll be drowning in his own juices soon,” Leonard groaned, his eyes going from man to man.

  “No,” Donegan said quietly. “Get ‘im sitting up—so his chest don’t fill so fast. He might last.”

  The young hunter’s eyes fluttered open a moment, and although glazed, they found and held on the Irishman as Seamus pulled the body upright against the mud wall.

  “Thanks…” Tyler murmured, pink froth seeping from his lips. “Tell … tell Bat for me—”

  Then Tyler seized up with a coughing spasm that brought up more fluid and a chunk of lung. His head rolled to the side as he fought for air. Donegan turned away.