“Sergeant, look at the wound. That iron can stay in my leg another day at the most, then it does its work and I’ve got blood poisoning. You know about that, right?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I’d be dead a day later. Either the arrowhead comes out or you cut off my leg.”
“I’m not a surgeon, sir. I respectfully tell you that Dr. Lassiter told me not to do any cutting like this. Said I’d botch the job and kill somebody. He ordered me not to cut. He’s a major, sir.
“I know he’s — ” Marcus Cavanaugh looked away. The rate of fire coming from the cliffs had slackened off. He could tell there were not nearly as many hostiles around the twin cottonwoods as before. The warriors were starting to drift off. “Sergeant, could you get something to soak up some blood so I can see what I’m doing. I’ll cut the damn iron out myself. You stand by to help me. Can you do that?”
“Yes, sir.”
The enlisted medic dug in his shoulder bag and came out with a square of white cloth.
“It’s clean, sir. I’ve been saving it.”
He huddled near the commander, who held the open straight edge razor.
“I ... I might not be speaking plainly after I start to cut. What I intend to do is to cut down a little wider than the slice the arrowhead made. You spread back the muscle and flesh and mop up the blood. When I get the outer prongs of the arrowhead free, you yank that shaft with all your might and pull it out of there. Understand?”
“Yes, sir.” The sergeant looked up. “Sir, do you want somebody to hold your leg still?”
“I’ll hold it still, Sergeant.”
“But ...”
“Think about it, Sergeant. It’s like a beaver that gets caught in a trap and chews off its own foot. I either go in and get that iron out of me — or I die where I lie, and damn soon. Let’s get started.” Lieutenant O’Hara had heard most of it. He pushed up and lay on the other side of the captain.
“I might be able to help,” he said. “Put your kerchief in your mouth, sir, so’s you won’t bite off your tongue.”
Captain Cavanaugh nodded at him, stuffed the material into his mouth, then squinted slightly as he lay the straight razor on the end of the gash on his upper thigh. He took a deep breath, then gasped as he forced the razor into the wound the arrowhead had made and sliced it a half-inch wider on each end. A low strangled moan seeped out of the gag. Sweat popped out on his forehead. His eyes went wide, then he let out a long breath through his nose.
Sergeant Foland gripped the sides of the cut and forced the flesh apart. Lieutenant O’Hara did the same on the other half of the wound. Blood rose like a spring, soaking the white cloth in Foland’s hand. The captain used the razor again, slicing deeper in the flesh along the wider line. Captain Cavanaugh shivered uncontrollably for a moment. He let go of the razor handle and Sergeant Foland caught it.
The captain took a long breath, his nostrils flaring, then took the razor and finished the slice on the three-inch-long cut. Blood surged again. Sergeant Foland soaked it up and let O’Hara hold the flesh apart.
“The arrowhead point missed the bone, sir,” Foland said.
Sweat ran down Captain Cavanaugh’s face and into his eyes. Sergeant Foland had been watching. He patted the captain’s face with his sleeve.
“I’m gonna try the shaft,” Foland said. Cavanaugh nodded.
The medic touched the shaft that extended five inches out of the leg. He closed his fingers around it carefully without any sudden movement, then gave a sudden pull upward. His hand slid off the thin willow stick.
Captain Cavanaugh grunted with pain. He shook his head, spit out the gag, and moaned terribly.
The blood came again, more this time. It flowed out of the trough and down Cavanaugh’s leg. Foland tried to sponge up the blood but the entire cloth was saturated. He folded it and wrung it out on the ground, then soaked up more blood from the open wound. The moment he moved the cloth, Cavanaugh pushed down the razor and cut again.
He screamed. As soon as the razor came out, Sergeant Foland had grasped the shaft again. This time he pulled slowly, but steadily. The shaft moved up an inch.
Captain Cavanaugh stiffened. His face and shoulders shook with the terrible pain. He looked away, his head trembling hard, his eyes now closed tightly.
“Pull, you sonofabitch!” Cavanaugh shouted. Blood flowed over the wound now. Sergeant Foland wiped the small arrow shaft free of blood, closed his hand around it, and then his other hand around the first, and pulled slowly again. Suddenly he jerked upward with his whole torso and arms. The bloody arrow point jolted out, its back wings tearing flesh on its way.
Captain Marcus Cavanaugh saw it, then bellowed in pain and victory as he doubled over in agony. He let out another terrible roar of anger and mind-smashing pain. Then he fainted. The medic lay him back in his shallow hole, took out a heavy compress and pushed it on the wound, then bandaged and wrapped the leg again. He put on another compress and wrapped it with a dozen more windings of what looked like officer’s sheets torn into strips.
“Never saw a man take pain like that,” Foland said as he stepped over the unconscious officer to wash his hands in the river.
“Ain’t many men like our Captain Cavanaugh in this man’s army,” Lieutenant O’Hara responded, still trembling from the ordeal. “Now get along to tend to the other wounded and — ”
Suddenly, two rifle rounds came in from the cliff and one of them hit the horse protecting Captain Cavanaugh.
“Let’s spread it out, Sergeant. We’re too good a target bunched up this way. Take it easy on your leg. We don’t want to lose you.”
“Couldn’t blast me out of here with a whole keg of black powder, Lieutenant.”
The day wore out and soon dusk came. The hostiles on the cliffs had fired only a dozen times all afternoon and there had been no new flights of arrows at all.
Most of the men had begun eating the salt pork. They let it heat in the sun in their big cups. It barely got warm and tasted like lard going down. The hardtack was gone. Raw horse meat was starting to putrefy, but still some men ate it. Half the troop who could eat had violent stomach cramps and vomiting. They cleaned out and drank as much water as they could hold as soon as it was dark.
“A man can live nine days on water alone,” somebody said, and the story shot around the camp. Lieutenant O’Hara found Captain Cavanaugh still asleep when he checked back. He let him sleep the night through.
They posted guards, but there was little need. There had been two or three hundred campfires the night before along both sides of the wide riverbed. Now they could see less than six, all on the right hand side looking downstream.
“Most of them are leaving,” O’Hara told the men. He went to the water’s edge, bent over, and waded out silently in the ankle-deep blackness until he found Lieutenant Winchester. He dragged him back to the shore.
“Don’t want some savage to claim his body tonight and desecrate it,” he told the medic.
Morning came, clear and warm. The chill of the night air was soon replaced with a warm September sun. Captain Cavanaugh sat up and stared at the cliffs. He hadn’t heard a single shot since the sun came up.
As the thought occurred to him, four rifle bullets slapped into the island. So the hostile snipers were still there. The bastards were leaving a rear guard to keep them pinned down and starve them out. Then, with everyone on the island too weak to lift a Spencer, two warriors could sweep in and finish off the survivors and claim all the weapons.
Damn sneaky.
Did Holder and his friend get through the Indians? The two men heading for Fort Wallace had been gone two nights and one day. Cavanaugh wondered how far they had traveled, or if they were even alive. This was the third day of the siege. Now it was a matter of survival. Eagle Feather found a spot where he figured was protected from the cliff riflemen. He made a small fire from dry wood, but now there was little food left. The salt pork had turned rancid and had to be boiled, then fried, to make
it edible.
Within minutes after starting the fire, three shots came slamming through the brush, nearly hitting Eagle Feather and he gave up the idea. There was really nothing to cook anyway.
Virtually every trooper on the island was wounded. One man had broken his leg diving into a hole, once when the arrows had come. He’d made a splint for it himself out of plum wood branches. Five sticks each about an inch thick were placed around his lower leg and tied securely with strips of cloth.
On the fourth day, the wails from some of the wounded came more often. Foland had few supplies left to help them. They needed proper medical attention and food.
A coyote wandered onto the island and was shot and skinned. Eagle Feather worked up another fire, and this time it escaped detection. He fried the coyote and each man got a small portion. It was little more than an appetizer, but it perked up the men’s spirits some.
As the sun went down on the fourth day, they could see no warrior fires. Only a few calls came from the cliffs from one side to the other.
There never had been any thought on the captain’s part of walking out of the fortress they had made of the small island. On foot and away from what protection they had on the island, his tiny force could be run down and slaughtered by only ten or twenty warriors.
Private Fred Holder sat up under some brush near a creek and looked at the sun. It was three hours since he lay down to rest. Enough. He drank his fill at the stream, topped off his canteens with fresh water, and struck out southeast toward Fort Wallace.
He had been on the way for almost three full days and was coming up to the fourth night. He hadn’t seen Kincaid since they split up as they left the stream back in the Arikaree valley. Holder had pushed himself, walking twenty hours a day and allowing himself four hours to sleep. An hour later, crossing the hot grasslands, he shook his head and closed his eyes. He was seeing double. He took a drink of water and kept his eyes closed for a minute. When he opened them his vision was normal again. The next river he crossed had to be the southern branch of the Smoky Hill. All he had to do was follow it downstream to Fort Wallace.
That night he shot a jackrabbit and ate until he couldn’t swallow another morsel. He slept and when he woke, ate the rest of the roasted rabbit before heading off again, hoping that would be enough to last him to the fort.
The sun was an hour from going down when he saw what he thought was another brush line ahead. A river? Or just a small creek feeding into the Smoky Hill? He wasn’t sure. His eyes filmed over and he wiped them, but still he couldn’t see clearly. He stopped and gently splashed his face with water from his canteen.
Trudging slowly, wavering now and then, he saw buildings in the distance. He walked forward but found he was veering to the left in a slow arc. He stopped and stared at the buildings. Was it a farm? Or was that the officers’ quarters?
Holder figured he was within a quarter mile of whatever it was. Then he stumbled and fell. It took all his strength to stand. When he finally did, he was facing the wrong direction. Three precious steps later he realized it and turned slowly. He took another dozen steps before he stumbled and dropped to his knees, then slowly fell on his shoulder and rolled to his back.
It took Private Holder five minutes to sit up. His eyes misted over again. He pulled out his revolver and pointed it into the air and fired three times, then bent forward and slid to the ground. He was tired, so damn tired, he thought he could sleep right there in the grass for a week.
16
The fifth day of the siege, Captain. Cavanaugh woke up screaming. His leg was on fire. He had a fever. When the captain controlled his agony, he realized something was different about the valley. Birds were singing. No shots came from the cliffs.
Sergeant Foland crawled up, his leg dragging. He looked at the bandage on the captain’s leg and relieved some of the pressure.
“That should make the leg more comfortable.” “Thanks, Sergeant. Not one hell of a lot we can do about it right now. Other times, we hold our lives in our own hands, but not this time. We’re depending on the two men we sent out. Either they made it or they didn’t.”
Lieutenant O’Hara joined the two men and looked at the cliffs. “Sir, I haven’t heard a single shot so far since daylight, have you?”
“I think the hostiles have given up and left the area.”
“We must have discouraged them a little in their group effort,” Lieutenant O’Hara continued. “I mean, if eight hundred of them couldn’t even whip forty-eight cavalrymen, what hope do they have?”
“Not a snowball’s chance in hell.”
It wasn’t until that afternoon that the men of Able Troop fully realized that the Indians had left. The hostiles had removed all of their dead during the previous nights. Men began to sit up, and then stand and wander around the island.
“We should bury our dead,” Captain Cavanaugh said. “But I know we don’t have any tools. We’ll wait. Take a good count, O’Hara. I want to know casualties, and how many men with no wounds at all.”
There was plenty of time to get the count. Lieutenant O’Hara walked from area to area, making marks on a small pad he carried in his shirt pocket. When he came back, he brought the captain a canteen of fresh water.
“Captain, sir, we have fourteen dead, two seriously wounded who can’t last more than another day. We have six wounded who can’t walk, and we have fifteen walking wounded. We have a seventy-seven percent casualty rate.”
“Damn. Even with the hostiles gone, we can’t march out.”
“I could take three men and head for the fort. Once we get away from here we’re sure to find some game.”
“Don’t even think about trying it. But game is an idea. Send Eagle Feather and that other Crow out to bring back some game. Now we can have a fire and cook something. The horses are too far gone, but fresh game! Get them moving. Yes, they can use their carbines to hunt.”
In the next few hours, Lieutenant O’Hara organized the island into four sections. Each section had two men who were not wounded to take care of those not able to move or who needed help. They cut plum branches and made shade for two men and the captain. Late that afternoon, Eagle Feather and the other scout brought back six jackrabbits.
Most of the game in the area had been frightened away by the gunfire, but jackrabbits seldom tend to wander more than a hundred yards from their home place, even when chased by a coyote. It means they run in circles and are easier to catch.
The big jackrabbits yielded plenty of meat for the men. The rabbits were cut up, and those who could cooked for themselves. No man went without.
After five days in the hot sun, the horses’ dead bodies had begun to stink. The men that could walk moved off the island as often as they could to avoid the stench. Some sat with their feet in the cool water during the day, and some of the unwounded splashed in the water and washed the week’s grime off their bodies, using sand as soap.
The sixth day passed with still no sign of a rescue party. Eagle Feather had to go out hunting with one of the soldiers because the other Crow scout’s arm wound had turned sour. The hunters returned with only two rabbits and one pheasant.
Captain Cavanaugh’s fever grew worse. Foland was by his side constantly now. He wet a blouse from one of the dead men and used it to sponge off the captain’s face and chest. His leg had swollen again. Twice the captain screamed out in delirium. Lieutenant O’Hara had temporary command of the troups until further notice.
On the seventh day, Eagle Feather came back limping. He had not found any game. Two more of the wounded died, bringing the death count up to sixteen.
“If we don’t get help within two days, the captain isn’t going to make it,” Sergeant Foland told Lieutenant O’Hara.
“He’ll make it, Sergeant. He hasn’t lived this long to die a day before the relief column gets here.”
“Sir, there’s at least a fifty-fifty chance those men didn’t even get through the Indians. They both might be hanging over some Cheyenne roast
ing fire head down right now.”
“I can’t believe that, Foland. But if I want to maintain control of myself, I can’t dwell on it. You and I still have thirty-two lives in our hands. Let’s not lose any more of them.”
Eagle Feather could not hunt on the eighth day. Lieutenant O’Hara sent two privates out instead. Both had been hunters in Tennessee. They came back at noon with four squirrels, a pheasant, and a jackrabbit. The men ate everything but the fur and bones.
Captain Cavanaugh threw off the fever for a while. He approved of what O’Hara had done, but two hours later he slipped back into the high fever and wandered in and out of consciousness.
A light sprinkle of rain ushered in the ninth day before the wind blew away the dark clouds and left fluffy balls of cotton high in the sky, and a bright, warm sun that dried off the valley. Eagle Feather’s leg was better, so he took the two hunters from the day before and went in search of game.
Later that morning, Lieutenant O’Hara saw movement from the ridge of hills to the southeast.
“Look alive, men!” he bellowed. “Riders to the south and east on the ridge.”
They all strained to see, but all they could make out were figures on horseback.
“Build a fire!” Lieutenant O’Hara roared. He helped, and they put green plum branches on top to make smoke. “The Indians know where we are already,” the officer said. “If that’s a friendly force, we want to be sure they can see us.”
The fire blazed up and a smoke column went skyward. A moment later they heard the sterling notes of an army trumpeter blowing the charge call.
Tears streamed down Lieutenant O’Hara’s face. Some of the men ran into the shallow water toward the stream of horsemen that worked down the slope and raced along the river toward them.
Captain Cavanaugh rose and stared at the men. “Lieutenant, what is going on? Maintain some discipline with these troops.”
“Captain, they’re here. A relief column is coming downstream. We heard a bugle call. They should be here soon.” Captain Cavanaugh blinked back tears, then let them come. He rubbed them away and pushed back the shelter the men had made for him to keep the sun away.
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