Dying Thunder

by Terry C. Johnston

  “Major—we don’t stand a chance out here in the open!” shouted Captain Stephens. “We don’t find cover—we won’t have the chance of a fart in a whirlwind!”

  Jones had to agree. Looking around, he saw that his men stood their ground on grit only, in the middle of that open, flat valley. The only cover was offered by the timber on the sides of the hills. And there just might be more of that on up the valley where it dog-legged to the northeast, following the narrow creek into the hazy distance. The only ground he knew for sure was back the way they came, what they had just crossed from the south.

  An arroyo he remembered. Little better than a hundred yards long, maybe all of five feet deep. They could get the horses down there, dismount and make a stand of it.

  “Back to the south, Captain! The arroyo!”

  But as he gave the order, the warriors swarmed around to the south, as if sensing the attempt at escape.

  Stephens’s horse was fighting its bit as the captain came up beside Jones. “We been siwashed, Major! We’ll just have to fight our way through the red bastards!”

  “Have at ’em, men—leg up and lay flat along the withers, boys … follow me!” Jones shouted, waving his pistol arm for the rest to follow.

  In a mad, noisy dash, the Rangers made good their bluster, riding straight for the warriors who stood between them and the arroyo. Like demonic eagle-eyed hell-winds, they drove the Kiowa back in a frantic retreat, the Indians finally taking momentary refuge behind a low ridge. Then of a sudden, the warriors regrouped and whirled back on the white men.

  Making it back to the ravine was not without cost to the Rangers. As the Kiowa regained their senses after falling back, and surged toward those white horsemen bringing up the rear, two more Rangers were wounded. Yet by some hand other than their own, most of the green recruits managed to stay in the saddle until they reached the edge of the arroyo.

  George Moore was one of the first to dismount on a run, whacking his horse on the flank with the flat of his pistol barrel, driving it down into the arroyo as he turned to cover the rest arriving on his heels. He knelt and fired, his bullet striking Red Otter’s horse squarely in the chest. As the animal keeled over to the side, Moore began to rise, covering the last of those who would make it to the ravine. A Kiowa bullet cut him off at mid-leg, shattering a knee and leaving him with a wound that would cripple the Ranger for the rest of his life.

  Jones was firing and counting, then fired again and counted more of those who dug in at the side of the arroyo with him. The major was still missing two … no, three of his own escort. Lee Corn and the man named Richard Wheeler. Along with Billy Glass.

  As a gust of hot breeze stirred some of the biting, gray gun smoke on his left, Jones caught sight of Corn and Wheeler making it into the timber more than eighty yards away, short of the arroyo and now on their own.

  Turning back to his right, Jones spotted the last Ranger. Several yards short of the ravine lay Billy Glass, stretched on his side. As Jones watched, some of the warriors dared rush in to raise the white man’s scalp, but gunfire from the arroyo turned them and put them to flight more than once.

  Glass seemed to come to, looking down at his shirt slicked with blood, bright in the afternoon light. With one arm that barely moved, Glass reached around his belt and pulled out his skinning knife. Afraid the young man was about to kill himself rather than fall into the hands of the Indians, Jones shouted, his words blown back at him on a hot, stifling gust of wind.

  Glass shoved the bone handle of his knife between his teeth and bit down as he lay among the dry stalks of buffalo grass.

  Jones felt his eyes sting for a moment. “By Jupiter, that boy’s got huevos the size of turkey eggs. Whatever you do, fellas—don’t let ’em near Billy,” he ordered.

  The rest nodded their heads. Without a word, they reloaded pistols and carbines, an assortment of Starrs and Sharps and Spencers among them as they held their ground and pushed back the warriors trying again for Glass’s scalp.

  In his breast, Jones felt his heart swell with pride as he tore his eyes away from the wounded Ranger with Stephens’s call.

  “Major! Them slippery bastards’re setting up behind that ridge,” said the captain, pointing to a nearby ridge at the right side of the valley.

  From there, the major knew, the Indians could pour down a heavy fire on the ravine—keeping his men pinned down as long as they wanted. Time—and they really didn’t have much to spare. That and water. Jones scuffed his boot into the dry, flaky bottom of the arroyo, hoping it would give him hope. Nothing but a gauzy dust. No chance of burrowing for water here.

  “Are these Comanches, Captain?” asked Jones. He knew Stephens would know—this was his territory, and these were his Indians.

  The captain wagged his head. “Look like Kiowa. Probably jumped the river for a little raiding. Still—I don’t figure it can be the same bunch hit Loving’s ranch.”

  “Right now, I suppose it doesn’t matter much a damn who they are, does it? Just, well—a man likes to know what red bastards got him pinned down under this sun with no shade.”

  “Major!”

  Jones and the rest heard Wheeler’s call from the brush off to their left. The warning was enough to catch the flicker of movement among the timber. Two warriors were coming, darting from tree to tree, heading for Glass.

  “They want Billy’s scalp mighty bad,” Jones said. “Keep ’em back, boys!”

  By some power other than his own, Glass became aware of his danger in that next moment. Dragging himself along with one arm, he began crawling toward the arroyo, kicking up tufts of dry grass and spraying dust with his boots as he inched pitiably toward his comrades.

  “Don’t let ’em get me!” he whimpered as he struggled through the brittle grass. “My God—don’t let ’em get me!”

  Stephens yelled, “Major Jones! That’s—”

  “I see him, dammit,” Jones growled, whirling away from his captain. He crabbed down the dusty arroyo as he shouted above the racket of gunfire. “I want three volunteers,” he asked them. “One to go get Glass. The other two will cover the first. Who will go?”

  A dozen hands shot up, then more. Jones took the first three he had seen volunteer. He wanted them out of the arroyo and moving before they had a chance to think about what they had just agreed to do.

  “From here we’ll keep those two by the trees at bay—now, go!”

  Ordering the rest to lay down a covering fire that would hold the two warriors behind their trees, Jones turned back to watch the rescue of Billy Glass. All three reached the wounded Ranger, one man immediately grabbing Glass’s arms while the other two flanked him, slowly, calmly firing toward the trees.

  After what seemed like a month of Sundays, the Rangers had Glass over the lip of the arroyo and down into the dust of the bottom.

  As soon as he knelt over Glass, Jones knew the youth had received a death wound.

  “I’m gonna be all right, ain’t I, Major?”

  He nodded, working his words past the sour ball at the back of his throat. He patted Glass’s shoulder gently. “You lay here till we get these red bastards drove off. Then we’ll get you saddled up and off to a doctor.”

  “I’ll be all right—you just get me a drink of water, sir.”

  With his eyes, Jones told another Ranger he was to see to Glass’s thirst. Then he scooted back through the dust to the side of the ravine where the scared and inexperienced gunmen were nonetheless holding the Kiowas back. What they needed more than anything at this moment was encouragement. Pulling himself up the back wall of the ravine, Jones brazenly exposed himself to Indian fire as he strode up and down the length of the arroyo, cheering the young recruits, ordering them to spread out, keeping them from bunching themselves too closely out of fear.

  “They can’t overwhelm us, boys,” he told them. “Not if we stay spread out. Just think about what you’re doing each time you take a shot—and they damned well won’t chance overrunning us.”
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br />   As the bullets rattled and ricocheted around him, the major pressed his field glasses against an oak tree to steady his view of the distance. Watching as best he could every action of his enemy.

  When the Kiowa gunfire increased, Jones was immediately suspicious. In minutes he realized the reason for the covering fire. The warriors were circling back behind the arroyo. They had gained the timbered slopes behind his men, where they began to open up on the exposed Rangers. Unless he did something now, the warriors were likely to take the day.

  “You—Lewis and Robertson. Come with me!” he hollered at two of the Rangers. Although none of them had been under any enemy fire until this day, Jones figured William Lewis and Walter Robertson might just do because they were a bit older than the rest. He led them scrambling up a bare knoll where stood a scrawny scrub oak tree about 150 yards from the arroyo.

  “There,” he said, pointing to the Indians’ newly-won position as they fired down into the arroyo. “You two stay here … until they get you or the fight’s over.”

  Both nodded wordlessly before Jones turned and scurried back down the bald hill.

  “Major Jones,” called Lieutenant Hiram Wilson as Jones returned to the arroyo. “It’s Glass.”

  Jones came down the length of the ravine and knelt over the body. The eyes were closed. There was a look of peace on the face.

  “He’s dead, isn’t he?”

  Wilson nodded.

  “At least he’s out of pain now,” Jones said. “God bless his soul.”

  “God bless us all, Major,” whispered the young lieutenant.

  As the long summer afternoon dragged on, the heat began to do terrible things to those Rangers exposed beneath the midsummer ravages of the sun. Their eyes stung with sweat, objects in the distance swimming. Their lips cracked and mouths grew parched until Jones showed them how to take a small pebble and put it in their mouths to stimulate some saliva. One young Ranger, no more than eighteen at most, refused to give up on finding water and dug a hole in the floor of the ravine, as deep as his arm. At the bottom of the hole he pressed his swollen, bloody lips to the moist sand, hoping for some relief.

  Soon, Jones knew they would need water. Cameron Creek, with its cool trickle and beckoning pool, lay so close, yet so far.

  After better than two more hours of fighting, two of Captain Stephens’s company announced they were going for water. Jones stood before the pair, Mel Porter and David Bailey, unable to come up with one good reason to try stopping the men as Porter and Bailey scooped up empty canteens and climbed into their saddles.

  “You remember seeing that pool?” Jones asked them, grabbing Porter’s bridle. When the young Ranger nodded, Jones continued, “About a half mile, to the north.”

  “We’ll be back, Major,” Porter replied. “Cover us best you can.”

  He watched the tired horses claw their way up the side of the ravine with dust flying in clouds from every hoof. Then Jones turned back to cover the two. And started to wonder why there wasn’t much gunfire coming from the Indian positions.

  24

  July 12, 1874

  Across the time it would take the sun to travel from mid-sky to halfway toward the western horizon, the Kiowas had attempted to pick off the white men in the arroyo and on the hillside. But they weren’t having much luck.

  Then Lone Wolf suggested something to Mamanti: the white man would soon be in great need of water. The taibos were not like Indians who could endure long periods of thirst. And, if the Kiowas were to slow their riflefire, it might appear to the white men that the Indians were retiring from the fight, giving the white men a chance at making it to the inviting pool in the nearby creek.

  Mamanti smiled. “Then we will attack, and put the fear of the rabbit in their hearts! It is a good plan, Lone Wolf.”

  The old chief knew Mamanti would like it. After all, Mamanti liked laying traps. More than that, he liked springing the traps. It did not take long for them to pass the word to the rest. Mamanti took about a dozen of the warriors to the west with him in a wide, circling movement that brought them to the top of a ridge northwest of the cool, beckoning pool formed by Cameron Creek. Lone Wolf led another two dozen warriors and hid in the thick brush and mesquite above the creek bank itself. When Mamanti’s warriors struck, Lone Wolf’s group would close the trap and prevent any escape. But for the time being, some of the warriors armed with far-shooting guns began aiming at the horses the white man had tied in the brush. Every now and then one of the animals would fall, thrashing and screaming out in pain until it died. The thrashing frightened the other animals. At this rate there soon would be no more horses for the white man to ride away from this place.

  His heart was again in his throat, waiting. His belly wriggled with the anxious flutter of unseen insects. Lone Wolf did not like this waiting. Even though it had been many, many moons, he had been patient, eager to avenge the death of his son and nephew. His chance would soon arrive.

  It wasn’t long before the white men grew daring and two of them mounted up, sprinting for the creek bank.

  The first rider, ahead by more than fifty yards, dismounted and waded into the cool pond, gulping frantically as he pulled the stoppers from two canteens and plunged them beneath the rippling surface while his chin lapped hungrily at the water. After several moments crawled by, the white man whirled at a sound come from behind him. Instead of finding the second rider, the white man saw more than twenty painted warriors bearing down on him—screaming their war cries, weapons raised in the still, hot air.

  Major John Jones had watched Mel Porter sprint into the pool and guzzle water, knowing any second the attack was sure to come. When it did, David Bailey was just reining up, entering the brush along the creek bank. At the first war cry and gunshots, Bailey sawed the reins about savagely, kicking his horse into a blur of motion.

  But instead of circling a little east of the arroyo, Bailey aimed directly for the ravine, galloping south. Which is why he ran right into Mamanti’s warriors.

  Jones watched more than ten of them suddenly appear from the brush and frighten Bailey’s horse. The Ranger halted in a spray of dust, attempting to turn around, but he was surrounded. Able to fire only two shots before he was impaled on a fourteen-foot buffalo lance and dragged from his horse, Bailey tumbled to the ground beneath the onslaught as the men in the ravine watched helplessly, able to do nothing but fire at that feverish knot of screaming, victorious warriors.

  His Rangers were shouting too—in anger, disgust, frustration, perhaps some swallowed-down fear that the very same fate awaited them. Jones turned to find Mel Porter had dropped the canteens and leaped to his saddle. Kicking his horse furiously, Porter galloped north as two Kiowa warriors on fresh ponies broke from the brush on the creek bank, hot in pursuit. The ponies gained steadily on the Ranger’s fatigued mount. As the pair of warriors neared their quarry, they whooped their joy, ready to count coup. Porter emptied his pistol at them, then flung the weapon at the closest warrior in sheer rage.

  Just as the warrior was swinging his long lance down, Porter turned in the saddle, slipping off the horse and spilling into the brush and grass near the edge of the creek. As the warriors argued momentarily over the possession of the white man’s bay horse, Porter dove through the brush, his arms churning like the wings of a prairie swift, and jumped into the creek and swam downstream, careful to stay beneath the surface for as long as he could.

  When he poked his head up to suck in a breath, the water around Porter came alive with bullets smacking the surface. Behind him the pair of warriors turned to flee at the gunfire. Confused and bewildered, Porter turned back to face downstream again and realized he had discovered the hiding place of Lee Corn and Richard Wheeler—beneath some overhanging brush at the creek bank. He was staring point-blank into the muzzles of their pistols.

  “By God—it’s me: Porter. Mel Porter!” he shrieked at them.

  “Get on in here,” Wheeler growled. “We thought you was a Injun coming fo
r us.”

  As far as Major Jones knew, his command had been whittled down through the afternoon: Corn, Moore and Glass. And now Porter and Bailey gone. The odds weren’t in their favor, but those odds didn’t appear to be any the worse than they had been when the afternoon skirmish had begun.

  They could wait out the warriors. And with all but three of the horses run off or shot, there was little choice but to wait out the siege.

  John B. Jones had never liked being forced into a corner.

  * * *

  Lone Wolf quickly slid from the back of his pony and strode triumphantly to stand over the white man who had been captured by the Kiowas. His eyes had grown as dark as the sap that leaks from hillside pine each spring. For so long he could not utter the names of the dead. But now, in sudden triumph, he shrieked to the sky, raising the brass pipe-tomahawk he held glinting against the sun, shouting the names of his son and nephew.

  “Tauankia! Guitain!”

  When he peered down at the white man’s face, he saw nothing but fear. Surely his manhood was shrunk up to the size of rabbit berries. Such fear disgusted Lone Wolf.

  With a mighty heave, the Kiowa chief brought the tomahawk blade down into that face. The blood and gore that splattered him only fed his rage as he yanked against the resistance to free the tomahawk. The white man was still alive, screaming, thrashing, blinded and struggling with bloody hands to pull the weapon from his tormentor.

  Lone Wolf hurled the tomahawk down again. And again. And one last time before the enemy’s body ceased all movement. He wiped the brass blade across the white man’s splattered britches then shoved it in his belt, where he pulled free a curved skinning knife. Its blade he plunged into the enemy’s bowels below the ribs on one side of the body, then yanked across the entire width of the abdomen. With the tip of the blade he pulled some of the greasy purple gut-coil from the long slit. Then more and more, until a mound of it lay quivering in the hot dust.