Dying Thunder

by Terry C. Johnston

  30

  September 11–13, 1874

  Lone Wolf had to laugh. And it felt good.

  When the young red-haired Kiowa escaped his captors and slipped back to the Kiowa lines with his story of the white men wandering around in the dark, frightened by every sound as they looked for a water hole that wasn’t there and allowed the boy to disappear unnoticed, Lone Wolf found that very funny. Along with the fact that Tehan told them the white men were growing most desperate for water.

  Their siege was working.

  “And you got some new clothes for all your time and trouble among the soldiers, eh?” Lone Wolf asked the youth.

  Tehan twirled around, showing off his baggy soldier britches, cuffed at the ankles above his moccasins, proud of his baggy soldier tunic, also rolled up to the wrists. The brass buttons shone brightly beneath the starshine. “You do not mind if I keep them?”

  Lone Wolf laughed again, rubbing the youth’s head. “No, I do not mind. These soldier clothes you won in battle—the same as any weapon or clothing taken from enemy dead. You were brave and cagey like a fox—waiting for your chance to escape. Yes, I am proud of you, young one: convincing the soldiers you were glad to be back among your own kind.”

  Tehan beamed proudly, straightening his back. “I did not want to go back to live among the white men. My father would beat me again, and besides—I like eating raw liver.”

  “Go now. Get yourself something to eat at one of the fires, Tehan,” the Kiowa chief told him.

  After finding a quiet place where he could lean against a mesquite tree, Lone Wolf smoked his small pipe, finding that he was getting low on tobacco. Perhaps those wagons carried some of the white man’s tobacco cubes, he thought as he drew the heady smoke deep into his lungs, holding it there as he felt it seep into every corner and crevice of his chest, then slowly released its powerful aroma through his nose. This was one thing the white man was good for—he made good tobacco, Lone Wolf mused.

  And guns. The white man made guns and powder and bullets.

  Good for guns and tobacco. And little else, he brooded, his forehead wrinkling.

  The next thing he remembered was the cold breeze nuzzling the braid at the side of his cheek. Opening his eyes, Lone Wolf found the sky graying with dawn. He closed his eyes again until the first shots were fired, opening the third day of the siege.

  That morning the Kiowa and Comanche warriors again fought from their rifle pits, the white man from his. Then early in the afternoon as the sun slid out of mid-sky, a pair of Comanche scouts came riding out of the south and reined up before Big Red Meat.

  In a matter of minutes the Comanche chief strode over to Lone Wolf and Mamanti.

  “I am curious to know what your scouts have found out,” Lone Wolf told the Comanche.

  “They say there are two groups of soldiers nearing us now,” Big Red Meat informed them.

  “Where?” Mamanti asked.

  “North. And northwest.”

  Lone Wolf sighed. “Perhaps we have had all our fun for now?”

  Mamanti strode off to the shade of a mesquite tree, where he once more unwrapped the coyote bundle and brought out the stuffed owl. In a few minutes he was back with Lone Wolf and Big Red Meat.

  “Yes. The spirits say we should go before those soldiers get here to rescue the white men in the wagons.”

  Lone Wolf looked at the Comanche. “Your scouts found the soldiers. My war chief with the owl medicine tells me it is time to leave. Shall we ride away together?”

  Big Red Meat considered. “I am wanting to go to the pretty canyon where the water is sweet and the air cool in the day.”

  “Palo Duro?” Mamanti asked.

  “Yes.”

  Lone Wolf smiled. “It is a good place. Plenty of wood and grass. And we can be safe there. Yes.”

  The Comanche grinned. “Then we will ride there together?”

  The Kiowa smiled at the Comanche chief. “We are together in this war, are we not?”

  “Lone Wolf! Mamanti—you must stop Yellow Wolf!”

  They turned to find a warrior hurrying in their direction, shouting. Lone Wolf asked, “What is it I must stop him from?”

  The warrior was breathless, pointing to a group of others struggling to keep young Yellow Wolf from climbing atop his pony. “He wants to ride alone and attack the wagons. We have learned the news from the Comanche scout that more soldiers are coming—and Yellow Wolf wants to earn his glory before we leave.”

  “Tell his brother to keep him from leaving.”

  As Lone Wolf was turning away from the scene, he saw a lone, young half-breed warrior preparing his bonnet with earth paint, tying a white sash about his waist. Motioning the shaman to join him, Lone Wolf strode over to Mamanti’s nephew. “This one, he is your brother’s son?”

  “Yes,” Mamanti answered. “His mother is Mexican. A captive who is a good woman.”

  “Will you let him ride into the face of the soldier guns, Swan?”

  Mamanti nodded. “He started life with a curse against him—his Mexican blood. If today he makes a name for himself by bravely riding … perhaps dying … then that curse will be lifted.”

  Botalye stopped his pony by the war leaders. “They stopped Yellow Wolf. But I am going. I am going to see how much power these rifles of the white men have. Wish me well, Uncle?”

  Mamanti held his hand up. They clasped wrists. “I wish you all the power I have to give.”

  “Keee-yiii!” the youth shouted. “Then I will be successful!”

  He reined away, pounding his heels into the pony’s ribs, racing out of the trees straight for the rifle pits, intending to ride right over the white men burrowed like rabbits in their holes. As he left the brush, the Kiowas and Comanches opened up on the wagon corral to cover his approach.

  The white men, soldiers and civilians, returned the fire, a few of them realizing that a solitary warrior was racing their way, carrying nothing more than a long wand in one hand, a rawhide circle suspended at its apex where was tied a long, brown scalp. No weapons, only that sacred rawhide medicine wheel as the young Botalye came screeching at the top of his lungs, his face contorted in both fear and excitement.

  In three leaps he cleared the trenches, bullets whistling all about him. Frightened that his pony had been hit, Botalye brought the animal about in a broad circle, patting its neck, cooing to it as the pony snorted and stamped, nostrils flaring. On the far side of the corral the Kiowa and Comanche were standing, jumping, cheering his success. On this side too the rest of the warriors were hollering at him—singing of his bravery.

  But Botalye was not yet done. Again he hammered the pony’s ribs. For an instant the animal fought the single rein, then leaped away again, once more racing straight for the black muzzles of the white man’s rifles, which began to spit more orange and yellow flame as he vaulted over their crude trenches.

  After that second charge, the warriors on all sides of the wagon corral were growing wild with celebration. Mamanti was running toward him, holding his powerful owl medicine aloft, yelling something. Botalye could not understand, could not hear for all the noise of cheering pounding his ears.

  Yet it was not only the loud voices singing in his ears. As his heart throbbed in his throat, the youth only knew he had this act of bravery to complete.

  As Mamanti lunged for his nephew’s rein, Botalye pulled away, lunging along the neck of the pony.

  “Come back, nephew! Do not do this!” Mamanti shouted.

  This time the youth watched the eyes of the soldiers as he rode over them. He was not sure, but on some of the young, pink faces he thought he read some envy, perhaps something akin to admiration.

  The warriors on the far side of the corral were around him now, touching his leg, his arm, singing his praises. This was an unheard of thing: to charge into the white man’s guns unarmed. Only one other Kiowa in the entire oral history of the tribe had ever done it three times before. And that was long before any man now alive co
uld remember.

  Tilting his chin to the sky, Botalye said his prayer, urging his pony out of the crowd.

  They grabbed for his rein. Lunged for his foot, grabbed for an ankle.

  “Come back—no one has ever attempted four charges!” they yelled at him. “No one!”

  This time the white men were standing, throwing their rifles to their shoulders. They would not make it easy for him, his mind raced. Botalye would have to part them the way a fighting fish parts fast water to swim upstream.

  A bullet clipped the single feather he wore tied at his scalp lock. A second burned a furrow along his flesh as it sang past. Another struck his hand gripping the rein close to the powerful pony’s neck. But the animal did not falter. A final bullet whined past, clipping the knot tied in the white sash at his waist.

  And then Botalye was among the enemy—through them—and clearing the far side of the trenches.

  Mamanti was grabbing at the bridle, Lone Wolf was pulling, urging him off the pony. There was singing and dancing. Somewhere the old men were pounding drums. A few women were coming forward and trilling their tongues in ancient praise-giving. All were singing of his unheard of courage. His name would go down in the legends of their people.

  “Are you hurt, young one?” asked the oldest chief among them, Poor Buffalo.

  Botalye looked down at his body, smeared with sweat and furred with dust, searching for wounds. But he was not hurt. Still, his heart would not get out of his throat to allow him to speak.

  Poor Buffalo cried out. Lone Wolf answered with a victorious cry of his own. The whole valley rocked with the raucous cheer of hundreds of throats.

  “No more are you the Mexican half-breed called Botalye,” declared Poor Buffalo. “I give you a new name. From this day forward, you will be known as ‘He Wouldn’t Listen to Them’!”

  * * *

  Yesterday, the eleventh of September, not long before the lone warrior rode back and forth over the rifle pits, the men had greedily broken into the supplies they were hauling to General Miles. Not only were the wounded moaning pitiably for water—every man inside that wagon corral was in a bad way because of thirst.

  James McKinley couldn’t remember who came up with the idea, but it had been one of Lyman’s men. God bless him, McKinley thought again now. Those cans of fruit they opened, hungrily, thirstily sucking down the juice, licking the inner crevices of each can opened—that had saved Lyman’s little command.

  Today at dawn the sun never rose in the sky.

  It was funny for McKinley to think of it like that, but it seemed it happened just that way. Heavy banks of clouds had gathered themselves overhead sometime overnight, obscuring the rising of the sun.

  “Looks like they’re pulling back!” someone shouted from the far side of the corral in that diffuse, gray light of predawn.

  And as soon as he had said it, gunfire erupted from the Indian positions ringing the wagon train.

  But despite the fact that a few warriors were left behind to keep the white men occupied, it wasn’t long before it became apparent that the majority of the horsemen had pulled off. Where they had gone and if they would stay gone were the two main subjects of whispered discussion that morning until Lyman called an officers’ conference to decide on a plan of action.

  Lieutenant Frank West volunteered to take his dozen cavalry, riding out to clear what warriors still remained to harass them. It was another pretty show, filled with flurries of gunfire and wheeling about into line for another wild charge echoed by war whoops and more gunfire, so that eventually it truly seemed the white men were alone here by Gageby Creek.

  Lyman immediately ordered half of the able-bodied to rush to the nearby pool a quarter mile away and fill canteens and mess kettles with fresh water. Everyone celebrated in his own way, blessing the water—finally, plenty of it.

  “Damn, but that do taste good,” muttered the soldier down on his hands and knees beside James McKinley.

  “Don’t it?” McKinley said, the precious moisture dripping like dew off his ragged chin whiskers.

  “We got ’em now, don’t we, mister?” asked the soldier. “Got them red sonsabitches four ways of Sunday.”

  Then not long after the darkness of night’s retreat had spread itself into a pasty, gray light, the undergut of the sky split itself, opening on the white men and soldiers huddled in their rifle pits. Whereas yesterday and the day before had been unmercifully hot, with little breeze stirring—this day proved to be even more miserable as the men sat in the puddles found gathering at the bottom of every pit. They shivered with every gust of wind that shouldered out of the northwest, reminding them autumn was clearly on its way.

  Some of the men even lapped at the muddy rainwater collecting around them in depressions in the red-tinged, sandy soil, scooping with their hands in futile attempts to empty their pits. Others sat stoically in the water, knowing at least that they could warm it with their own body heat while they waited out these final hours of the siege.

  No one really doubted that the Indians were only pulling back to regroup. No man there within that miserable wagon corral dared allow himself to think they had driven the warriors off.

  That same morning, buffalo hunter Schmalsle reached Fort Supply not long after the gray rising of the sun behind the thunderclouds. Minutes before noon Lieutenant Henry Kingsbury loped away to the southwest, leading forty-five troopers, seven scouts and the post surgeon to attend to Lyman’s wounded.

  In the afternoon mist and murky haze left in the wake of the bone-numbing storm, some of the men on the west side of the corral believed they saw objects moving in the distance. The alarm went up and the corral prepared for a renewed attack. With the rainstorm rumbling on east, they were certain the Indians had returned.

  “No Injun likes the rain,” McKinley told the young soldier in the pit beside him.

  “Shit. I don’t like the rain,” growled the trooper, his lips blue with cold, his clothing soaked as he shifted in the puddle where he sat, shivering uncontrollably. “Just a fire. Just a little, goddamned fire is all I want right now.”

  For some time Lyman watched the distant objects himself through field glasses and determined those riders marching in from the west might be some relief. To attract the rescue party, he ordered three volleys fired by ten of his infantry while he sent another group to a nearby hill to watch the strangers’ movement. After less than thirty minutes it appeared the distant column was veering off sharply to the north for some reason, refusing to investigate Lyman’s volleys.

  The soldiers fired another succession of volleys, but the marching column disappeared beyond the far horizon that much quicker. Some palpable despair settled over the cold wagon corral that afternoon as the sun slipped momentarily beneath the far western clouds, making quite a brilliant show of itself before twilight swallowed the day and night descended on the Texas Panhandle. Except for the moaning of the wounded and the officers constantly moving about checking on the men keeping watch at every side of the corral, there wasn’t much noise, and even less talk. Wasn’t much use in talking, and nothing else to do but for a man to brood on their condition here halfway between Fort Supply and Colonel Miles’s base camp. Besides, there were two dead and three wounded. McKinley knew if two of those wounded soldiers didn’t get attention soon, there’d be two more bodies to wrap in blankets.

  Without much trouble, McKinley remembered that first night at Adobe Walls. How Jimmy Hanrahan had opened up his best stuff for those in the saloon and let them all have a taste of good whiskey, chased by a little sweet brandy. They had saluted one another, and roundly toasted their holding the day against the horde of horsemen. That had been a shining time, that night—yes, it surely had.

  It made McKinley wish all the more that he were someplace else, anyplace with some of those buffalo hunters.

  From time to time he slept, awakening to the sound of thundering hoofbeats, only to find it had been his own snoring, or that of the young soldier shivering besi
de him that had snapped him to. James fell back into a fitful sleep again and again until the moon sank a couple hours after midnight. He was trying to make a soft place for his shoulder against the side of the rifle pit when he heard what he took to be the faint chink of a bit chain.

  With the hair rising on the back of his neck, McKinley pulled up his Sharps and pointed it at the inky, starlit darkness, searching the east side of the corral. Something stirred out there across that open ground—something back in the trees. He made a rest for the rifle, boring his elbow into the sodden soil, ready—

  “Ho! The train!”

  A voice hollered from the northeast, back in those inky trees.

  “Captain!” shouted some soldier in a pit not far from McKinley’s.

  “Captain Lyman? You there, Captain?” a voice called from the dark treeline.

  James couldn’t be sure, but it sort of sounded like that voice belonged to Billy Schmalsle, a fellow buffalo hunter. The one who had balls enough to slip away into the darkness and ride alone through the red gauntlet to—

  “I brought the help you wanted, Captain Lyman!”

  James turned as the rustle of men and motion swelled like a living thing all around him of a sudden. Soldiers and civilians crowding to the east side of the corral now. More noise a’rustle from the timber.

  “Is that you, Schmalsle?” Lyman asked, his voice booming into the night.

  “Damned if it ain’t, Captain!” Schmalsle replied. Then it sounded like he flung his voice behind him. “Y’all c’mon now, Lieutenant. I told you I’d get your men here in the dark, by damned. I told you I could do it.”

  “Yes—please. Come on in, f-fellas.” Lyman’s strong voice cracked now. “We’d … we’d sure appreciate the company.”

  31

  Moon of Scarlet Plums, 1874

  Despite the miles traveled and the days put behind him, Medicine Water was still suspicious of some of the strange things the wagon men had been carrying with them when his Cheyenne warriors had attacked the whites three weeks before. One after another, his war party had discarded the papers and poles, chains, corner markers, leather and wooden boxes, and all the rest of those shiny objects, coming to believe that these too might prove to be evil.