Battle Fury

by Matt Chisholm

  There were more where that one came from and Joe heaved the pony’s head around savagely and leapt into the saddle. The others were upon him as he kicked the little horse into a run. It was then just a matter of who could make a horse go the faster or who could shoot straighter from the saddle. The pony Joe was on boasted neither stirrups nor saddle. There was nothing more than a red blanket strapped to the animal’s barrel. Joe got a tight grip with his knees and made out the best he could. The animal was a runner and no mistake, but he wasn’t apparently a better runner than a couple of the horses behind. Neither was he faster than the horses of some of the riders who had skirted the motte. For Joe had no sooner burst from the trees than two Indians rode down on him from right and left, one loosing off arrows as fast as he could lift the hafts from their quiver and notch them to the string, the other slamming away with a musket that possessed a bore as large as a cannon.

  The ball passed between Joe and the neck of the horse, one arrow sang past his ear and the other buried itself into its haunch. The little horse didn’t go down, but he leapt into the air so violently from the barb in him that Joe was nearly unseated. There ensued a pitching contest that was witnessed by several yelling Utes who circled man and horse shooting lead and arrows at the rider.

  Either Joe’s guardian angel was watching over him or the devil looked after his own that day, for the only casualty during this little episode was one Indian who rode into a comrade’s arrow and received a barb in the fat of this rump. Then the pony Joe bestrode decided he would rather run than pitch and headed as fast as he could run in the direction of Joe’s own horse. Joe had little hope of reaching the animal alive and indeed the Indian pony went from under him when he was some fifty yards from it. As good luck would have it, Joe anticipated this event and managed to land on his feet and, being on his feet, he used them. He ran as he had never run before. He was now in sight of his own horse and could see the animal’s frantic attempts to break loose and flee from the approaching Indians.

  He in fact did this as Joe reached him and it was more by luck than anything else that Joe managed to grab the apple and swing himself clumsily into the saddle. As the man’s butt hit leather the animal was doing its best to run and was stumbling over a loose line. Joe reached down, scooped up this line and urged the horse forward.

  The Indians were now down on him and he ducked under a thrown spear, fired his carbine once across his body and saw an Indian reel in the saddle. The horse veered off to one side.

  It was then a matter of who had the best or the freshest horse. Joe had both and it told. Just the same, the Indians chased him all the way to the diggings on Broken Spur creek, but Joe had warned the diggers of his approach by his rifle-fire and there were several of the miners firing on the Indians by the time they came in sight of the creek. The Utes immediately broke contact and headed back the way they had come. Joe merely waved his thanks to the miners and headed on south for the divide. He knew that he might have raised some mounted men among the diggers, but he had no idea what their caliber would be. He wanted reliable men on sound horses for what lay ahead.

  He nearly killed that horse getting back to the Storm place. Upgrade or down, he kept the animal at full stretch until he dismounted in the yard and it stood with splayed legs and hanging head. The whole outfit, brought out by his warning shots was there to meet him. It didn’t take him more than a few words to tell them what had happened. In minutes men were in the corral roping horses. Arguments started about who would go and who would stay. So Mart took charge and started bawling the most vocal out. Clay, he said, would stay. Like Hell he would, said Clay—Will was his daddy and he had some say in this matter.

  ‘You have a wife and a kid,’ roared Mart.

  ‘He goes,’ said Sarah, Clay’s wife.

  ‘See?’ said Clay.

  ‘Aw, Hell,’ Mart yelled, ‘I don’t give a damn who gets his fool self killed.’

  In the end, Gregorio, threatened with his time if he didn’t obey, agreed to stay and young Jody, howling that he was always treated like a goddam child, was also prevailed upon to defend the home.

  ‘It ain’t fair,’ he cried. ‘There’s a hunnerd diggers down there who’d put up a fight for this place.’

  ‘This is a family affair,’ Martha told him.

  ‘When a white man’s took by Injuns, it’s the affair of every man on the frontier,’ Jody yelled back at her.

  Martha pursed her lips and declared: ‘Big as you are, Jode Storm, you raise your voice to me and I’ll put you across my knee.’

  By this time men were in the saddle. Joe was astride a fresh claybank. He bent from the saddle, slapped Serafina’s behind, and quirted the horse around the far end of the corral. Mart, on a leggy sorrel with good lines, took off after him. Then the rest streamed away after them, armed to the teeth and bristling for the fight ahead of them, but all of them horribly aware that if they didn’t make the right moves, there would be a new head of the Storm family.

  Kate came and put her arm around her mother’s shoulders—‘Ma, pa’s been in plenty of fixes before. He always came back.’

  ‘That’s what scares me, girl,’ Martha said. ‘How long can his luck last?’

  At the outset, there was no emotion among the Storm crew, except for a desperate need for haste. But they had no sooner reached the divide into Broken Spur and halted to allow the horses their first blow than they sobered and realized that, if they kept their present pace, their horses would shortly be of no use to them at all. As the horses blew, Mart said: ‘We must be crazy, comin’ on this kind of chase without spares.’ But they hadn’t brought spares and they knew there was little chance of them getting remounts before they came up with the Indians. If they were came up for them. Or if they reached them in time. Not a man there was not aware that Will Storm could be lying with his disemboweled body filled with rocks.

  Saul Hoddick said: ‘So we have to go to Brack’s place to pick up the trail?’

  Joe thought about that.

  ‘Saul,’ he said, ‘me an’ Mart’ll cut along the crick. Chances are, they went west. Maybe north, but most likely west. You take the rest and head for Brack’s place and follow along the sign.’

  Clay said: ‘I go with Mart.’

  Nobody argued with that. It was Clay’s right as Will’s son.

  Saul said: ‘Let’s go, boys.’ He led the way down onto Broken Spur and the others trailed after him. The remaining three turned to the westerly trail and rode down on the strung out camp of the diggers. They could see the fires burning as they went down and pretty soon they were loping their horses along the edge of the camp. It was full dark now and that was another worry. Saul and the rest of them most likely wouldn’t be able to make any headway until daylight. If the three of them met up with the Utes, they were going to be mighty short-handed. But they didn’t let that deter them, they were too intent on finding Will alive and doing something about it.

  At the northern part of the creek, where it turned west and disappeared into the hills bordering Broken Spur, they stopped at the tent of a Scottish gold-seeker and asked him if he had heard anything of a party of horsemen moving westward. He told him, he hadn’t heard a thing, but just before dark he’d heard distant shooting from the direction of Broken Spur headquarters. They pushed on, going directly north.

  They rode by starlight now and they didn’t hurry because the three of them were searching as best they could for pony sign. According to Joe there had been a goodly number of Indians and they must have left a trail that could be picked up by starlight. Yet, though they covered about five more miles, they found nothing. They stopped and discussed the situation and decided to go on to Grebb’s ranch which was no more than another three miles north-west of them. After about ten minutes, they reached the Denver trail and before long they drew rein at Grebb’s. Here they found the place in a state of siege and only by singing out loudly did they prevent the spooky men there from opening fire on them.

  When
the door was opened nervously, they were faced by about a dozen men who had stayed in the shelter of the road-ranch when they heard of the Indian scare. They bought drinks and listened to the talk. One of Grebb’s men who had been stationed with a gun on the far side of the corral to listen for approaching riders, said that he had heard a party of horsemen approach the road just north of the place about one hour after nightfall. He had heard the clatter of their horses’ hoofs on the road and thought they sounded as if they were unshod. In his opinion, they were Indians. He had heard them go north along the road for a mile and then turn off into the grass. But he couldn’t be sure.

  Mart asked Grebb if he would let them hire some spare horses, but Grebb said no, he wouldn’t risk his horses on no Indian hunt. Clay told him to go to Hell and they rode on, going north along the road, slowly, searching for the spot where the Utes might have left it for the hills.

  Joe, in the lead, found the sign,

  There was no mistaking it. A broad swathe through the long grass showed where the Indians had headed into the hills. They took time off to make a close inspection of the sign to check that they were after the right party. Joe risked lighting a lucifer.

  ‘Hey,’ he exclaimed after he had burned his fourth match, ‘you know what? They’s two white men. Both afoot.’

  Mart and Clay stared at the spot.

  ‘You’re right,’ Mart said.

  Clay said: ‘They’re bein’ drove hard. But it’s good. Them Indians will be slowed down considerable.’

  ‘Do we try an’ follow this by this light or do we wait for dawn?’ Mart asked.

  Clay didn’t hesitate.

  ‘There ain’t no time to waste,’ he said. ‘Let’s get on.’

  They mounted and pushed on slowly into the hills.

  At the Brack place, Saul and the others found the bodies. They were not a nice sight and young Riley Brack who wasn’t accustomed to such sights, brought up his supper. The others didn’t blame him. Inside the house, there were signs of light looting, but there was little damage. In Meredith Quentin’s opinion, the Indians had been in a hurry to leave. They must have guessed that Joe would bring a hot pursuit down on them.

  As they gathered in the yard, Saul Hoddick said: ‘Either they kill Will ’cause they wanta hurry or they save him as a hostage. It all rests on how the cards fall. A Hell of a note.’

  Riley, green around the gills and carefully not looking at the grisly sights in the starlight, said: ‘Do we bury these fellows?’

  ‘No time,’ said Saul. ‘This is one of them times when the dead bury their dead.’

  They mounted and rode an arc around the west of the house and came on the plain sign of the Indians going north-west. They halted and Saul said: ‘Boys, them Indians is headed toward the Denver road. My vote says we go fast as we can for that. It’s all luck from here on in, so I reckon we may as well chance it.’

  They agreed and they lifted their horses into a lope for the road.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Will woke. He felt stiff, cold, tired and old. He had slept in brief snatches through the night, short dozes allowed to him by the cold mountain air. When he moved, he groaned from the agony in his joints. The Indians had released his hands. Amazing.

  He looked around him. Brack lay snoring not a yard away, curled up and hugging himself against the cold.

  Will stretched out his arms and worked them a little, feeling the twinges of rheumatism that plagued so many men of his age living the life he lived. Get on your feet and run, he thought. Maybe they would shoot him down and maybe they wouldn’t. If they caught him he would end up the same way he would end up if he stayed here shivering. Dead, with his scalp missing and possibly a heap of stones in his degutted belly. He had a terrible vision of his dead and mangled body with the crows and buzzards at it, feasting, the coyotes circling and the flies gathering. He shuddered and drove the vision from his mind.

  He’d head down that slope there and into the willows near the water. And maybe he’d get stuck halfway as the rheumatics hit him.

  To Hell with it—he’d take the chance.

  He reached out and shook Brack. The man’s snore quavered. Will swung his hard fist into the man’s chest and clamped the same hand over the fellow’s mouth. Brack’s eyes came open, angry and startled. Will removed his hand and made signs that he was going to run for it. Brack sat up and looked around at the Indians. There were two of them lying between the two white men and the willows below.

  Brack looked at Will and Will was surprised to see a smile on the other’s face. Brack nodded. For once they were in agreement.

  They started to their feet and Will was alarmed by the terrible stiffness in his limbs. He seemed to be permanently doubled up at the hips. He put his hands into the small of his back and forced his back straight. The pain brought his lips back in a snarl.

  ‘You poor old bastard,’ Brack whispered.

  ‘I’ll reach the water before you,’ Will told him.

  ‘You’re on,’ said Brack.

  One more look around and then Brack was off, bounding forward on his short legs and, as he passed the nearest Indian, kicking the man in the head so that there was at least one of them out of action. Will thought this a good idea and jumped with both feet onto the belly of the brave lying next to this man.

  Neither waited to see the results of their violence. The steep slope was almost hurling them to its foot. They hit the willows one behind the other like small twin avalanches, tearing into them and then finding themselves abruptly at the edge of the water.

  ‘Stick together,’ Brack said.

  ‘South,’ Will told him and they stared through the shallows, hearing the alarm explode behind them. Men yelled.

  They had covered no more than twenty yards when they heard the whicker of a horse. Will stopped and Brack ran into him, cursing him heartily.

  ‘Their horses’re up yonder,’ Will said.

  ‘Let’s go get ’em,’ Brack said.

  Indians were running down the hillside and it sounded as though some were racing along parallel to them and above them. Will picked up a couple of rocks and, as a dim figure appeared above them, he hurled one with all his strength. Brack immediately followed his example. An Indian shouted in fright and a gun boomed as loud as a cannon. Lead tore the willows, hit rock and sang away into space. Both white men started up the steep slope toward the horses.

  A man ran at them from the north, coming full-tilt, club swinging. Brack ducked his head down, met the man in the belly with his massive shoulder and tore him from his feet. They hit in a tangle, Will found the Indian’s head by the two eagle’s feathers sticking from its band and clipped it neatly with a rock. Gray figures of Indians appeared in the dawn light. The smudged paint on their faces showed like the crude designs of grisly clowns. They swarmed all over the two white men. Sticks, rocks, clubs, bows were all used to beat the escapees into submission, all laid on with pleasure as if to vent the early morning temper of the warriors.

  Now they kill us, Will thought.

  But they didn’t.

  Not even when Brack broke free and lunged for the horses, scrambling on hands and knees up the steep slope, did they dispatch him. They dragged him back to Will by the hair and belabored the pair of them thoroughly, laying on with a vicious enthusiasm.

  But not even that beat the orneriness out of Brack. Once more, he was on his feet and running.

  Will yelled: ‘Come back here, you goddam fool, they’ll kill you.’

  A young man caught Brack and dragged him back by one ankle. This time, they beat him nearly insensible. When they drove him back to the camp up the hill, he could scarcely walk. He sat down and Will squatted near him. The Indians stood around, looking pretty mad and there seemed to be some sort of an argument going on. Will reckoned there was one party voting for cutting their throats and another, for some reason or other, who wanted to keep them alive. He knew which side his vote was on. Brack had his head in his hands. After a while,
he looked up at Will and said: ‘I ain’t beat yet, so don’t go thinking I am.’ Will thought the sentiment was praiseworthy, but a mite foolish.

  Will said: ‘Just stay alive till Joe brings help.’

  ‘If that Negra’s still alive,’ Brack growled.

  An Indian, the one in the silk hat with the feather in it, came and stood in front of them with his arms folded. For the first time, Will realized that the man understood and spoke English. Of a sort.

  ‘You run,’ he said, ‘—kill. Kill good like Ute. You know? Rocks in belly. Eye on groun’. Live long time. Die goddam long time. You know?’

  Will nodded.

  ‘I know,’ he said.

  The Ute grinned.

  ‘Go now,’ he said.

  A young man came driving the horses. This time, both white men were mounted behind an Indian. Brack didn’t like this. He said the Indian he held on to stank. Will grinned and said maybe the Indian thought he stank too. Brack snarled.

  The Indians were in a hurry now and they started to attempt to cover their tracks. They seemed torn between hiding their trail and getting ahead fast. They argued about it among themselves and Will started to think that they were aware that a pursuit had been mounted. Will prayed that Joe had made it to Three Creeks and was behind with some of the boys. He doubted Joe would make a try in daylight and that meant keeping alive until the following dawn. It depended on the country they went through. If the terrain was right, Joe just might manage to get ahead and lay an ambush. It would be terribly risky for the prisoners, but maybe Joe relied on Will to show his initiative once the shooting started.

  They rode on through the day, losing their tracks when they could in water, occasionally doubling back on themselves and a lot of the time keeping the animals at a mile-eating trot. If Joe and the boys were following, their horses would be suffering by now. They drove on this through the day, not stopping to noon, except to allow men and beasts to drink. This time, the two prisoners were permitted to slake their thirst and both of them filled their bellies to capacity, for they had no idea when next they would have an opportunity.