Winchester 1886

by William W. Johnstone

  He knew where the vigilante was pointing, what he was thinking. If this Dehner McIntyre busted Danny Waco at a poker table, that wasn’t something that Waco would let lie. A man like Danny Waco would go after the gambler.

  “Do you know where McIntyre was going?”

  “He said Dodge City.”

  Dodge City. Wonderful. It couldn’t have been Coffeyville or Wichita, someplace close. Dodge lay about a nine- or ten-day ride northwest of Caldwell, but Jimmy had spotted a good-looking sorrel at the livery. He was sick of riding trains. Every face of every crewmember reminded him of Borden or Millard. Sometimes even his nephew, James. It was time to leave the rails behind and sit in a saddle. For if he caught up with Danny Waco, he’d likely need a horse when the chase really began.

  “You said Waco had two men with him,” Jimmy said.

  Mason’s head bobbed. “That we saw. Saddle tramp and an Indian. They rode out with him, of course.”

  “Did one of them have a big Winchester?” Jimmy asked.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Along the Arkansas River

  He hated this country. Flat. Windy. Hot, even for the Moon Of Lying Side To Side. Tall grass blew, and storm clouds to the north and west blackened the afternoon skies. The land was full of the indaaligande. And he hated the pale eyes.

  Among his people, the Chiricahua Apaches, he was called Yuyutsu. At first, the pale eyes had called him Eager to Fight—a good translation, for an indaaligande . After he had arrived at the hated school in the green state of Pennsylvania, a School Father had told him he could not be called Yuyutsu. He wasn’t even allowed to speak his name ever again in the dreary buildings at the place they called the Carlisle Industrial School. They wouldn’t even call him Eager to Fight. For four years, he had been forced to answer to the name John York.

  That wasn’t the worst of it, either. They had burned his buckskins, ripped the red calico band off his head, made him wash in foul-smelling water, and use brushes not fit to curry a horse, as one of the School Fathers had said, “to scrub the injun off your hide.” And his hair, his long black hair that glistened in the sun and fell below his shoulders . . . had been cut off.

  If he spoke the tongue of the Chiricahua, the School Fathers and School Mothers would crack his knuckles with a ruler. If he kept it up, they would beat him with the wooden paddles so he quit speaking it. They taught him English. Taught him how to read, how to add and subtract and multiply and divide. They taught him how to be a white man.

  And now, they were sending him back to the Comanche-Kiowa-Apache reservation near Fort Sill in the Indian Territory. They were sending him back in a gray suit that itched, and wearing things they called Congress gaiters that pinched his toes and left blisters on his heels. They were sending him to his people as John York, indaaligande.

  But Yuyutsu had had enough of being like the pale eyes. He would not go to the soldier-fort called Sill. He would go to his homeland. The land he remembered as a child, before the Long Knives had made Geronimo surrender and had shipped the Apaches off to rot in the stinking dungeons at the hot, wretched place called Florida. He would find his homeland. He would live—and this he knew all too well—and he would die in the Dragoon Mountains of the territory the pale eyes called Arizona.

  Only . . . he was far, far from home.

  He jumped off the train after it had pulled out from a city called Topeka and kicked off the Congress gaiters, replacing them with the moccasins made by his mother, which he had kept hidden from the prying eyes of the School Mothers and School Fathers at Carlisle all those years of being taught to follow the white man’s road. The moccasins were all he had left that said he was a Chiricahua. His hair remained close-cropped, but he ripped apart the cotton shirt they had made him wear, using the blue sleeve as a headband.

  He made his way to a pale eyes farm, where he stole some corn and ate the scraps the family had left for their dogs. He buried the suit there, but kept the blue vest. Finding a cowhide in the barn, he fashioned himself a breechcloth

  All Yuyutsu had was a knife, which he had stolen from a passenger on the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe who had drunk too much whiskey. A big knife, with a keen edge and long stag handle.

  Probably made by an Apache. He should have slit the drunkard’s throat with it.

  Yuyutsu had seen seventeen summers. Tall and sinewy, the Apache girls had considered him handsome before the spotted sickness—another gift from the indaaligande—had left his face pocked and scarred. He did not know how long it had been since he had jumped off the train, but he figured the School Fathers and School Mothers already knew he was not going back to Fort Sill. They would chase him. Likely, the Long Knives were after him.

  If there were any Long Knives left.

  Once, the bluecoats had been as many as the grass that grew in the worthless flat land. Yet a few nights back, Yuyutsu had slept on the floor in one of the abandoned buildings at a soldier-fort called Harker. The Long Knives had not been in the place for ages. He had been lucky to find a building with a roof to keep him out of the falling rain. Pale eyes had been stealing from the old buildings that had once housed Long Knives.

  He had listened to the rats chatter and the rain pelt the roof, and he could not recall seeing any Long Knives since he had reached the place called Kansas.

  He remembered one of the School Fathers back at Carlisle telling him and his classmates, a mix of Apaches, Comanches, Lakota, and Pawnees, that “the frontier has been declared closed.” Yuyutsu had not known what that meant, even after the School Father had explained that “all Indians are becoming more and more tame,” and “in a few years you will be almost as white as us. Isn’t that a good thing?”

  There had not been an Indian uprising, he had been told at Carlisle, since Wounded Knee in 1890, when the recalcitrant warriors under Big Foot had been shot down, and the Sioux had given up, returned peacefully to the reservation.

  A lie, a Lakota boy had told him. The Army had shot down women and children at Wounded Knee, and most of the Lakotas—even the men—had not even been armed.

  Yuyutsu smiled as he thought, Soon, the pale eyes will be saying that the last Indian war had been started not by a Lakota, but by a Chiricahua warrior who had lived up to his name Eager to Fight.

  But first, he needed a rifle.

  Pawnee Rock

  It wasn’t much of a landmark, Dehner McIntyre decided as he picketed his horse near what remained of the legendary citadel of sandstone. To hear the stories, Pawnee Rock had served as a lookout post for Indians. Not just Pawnees, but Arapahos, Cheyennes, and Kiowas had stood on the flat top and looked north, south, east, and west for wagon trains to attack and herds of buffalo to slaughter. Kit Carson had killed an Indian there, and emigrant after emigrant had carved his or her name in the sandstone.

  Taking the Winchester from the scabbard, McIntyre walked to what was left of the landmark along the Santa Fe Trail on the western side of the Arkansas River. Up close, he could still see some names, even a date as far back as 1848, carved into the sandstone, but much of Pawnee Rock had been chopped off and hauled away by settlers who needed rocks for their chimneys.

  A tree was growing from the top, and he made himself climb up the sandstone and get a good look at the country. He was a good ways northeast of Dodge City—he didn’t think he’d see dust from Danny Waco—and Hays lay only maybe three days from there.

  When he pulled himself up to the top, he looked in awe. He could see quite a ways from this perch, and it wasn’t as tall as it had been. He could see the cottonwoods, leaves now golden, along the banks of the Arkansas and the openness of the Kansas plains in all directions. He couldn’t make anything out, but he knew that just down the trail stood the remains of Fort Larned, and up northeast, the Cheyenne Bottoms.

  That was a bit out of the way, but he figured that the wetlands formed by Blood and Deception creeks would draw game—ducks and geese and probably even a mule deer—something to eat other than his hardtack and jerky, both
of which were running low—and rabbits, which he hadn’t seen much of since crossing the Rattlesnake.

  He hadn’t even had a chance to fire the big ’86 Winchester since he had missed that white-tailed doe just before he had reached the little settlement of Greensburg before turning north.

  He found an easier way off the rock on the other side, and could already taste the venison he’d be cooking at the Cheyenne Bottoms when he rounded the last chunks of sandstone and saw an almost buck-naked Mexican trying to slide up onto the back of his horse.

  “Hey!” McIntyre yelled, cursed, and saw the thin pup of a horse thief leap onto the blue roan with the gracefulness of a circus acrobat—which is when the gambler remembered the big rifle he held.

  Quickly, he brought the stock to his shoulder, thumbed back the hammer, and aimed. He didn’t remember pulling the trigger, but the roaring in his right ear told him he had done so. He stepped out of the smoke and cursed.

  That fine blue roan lay on the ground, kicking and snorting savagely, blood already pooling underneath the mare’s neck.

  McIntyre cursed again. Then he saw the Mexican, only he knew it was no Mexican.

  An Apache, wearing nothing but knee-high moccasins, a breechcloth the color of a brindle steer, and a thin blue headband, swept his right hand toward McIntyre’s belly.

  The gambler jumped back, only then seeing the flash of sinking sunlight against something metal. He heard the cloth of his frock coat rip.

  The knife came back. McIntyre just managed to avoid seeing his guts spill to the ground. The Indian—a kid, probably not even out of his teens—came back, brought the long knife over his head, sliced it down savagely, grunting.

  McIntyre brought the Winchester up, holding the stock and the barrel. The blade clanged against the barrel, just in front of the rear sight. He thought he saw sparks fly, but knew that had to be his imagination.

  He jerked his left hand up, pitching the Indian to the ground and backed up. He worked the lever and fired from the hip. The gun roared, and the stock slammed into his shoulder, bruising the bone. Big-bore Winchesters—especially .50 calibers—weren’t meant to be shot like that.

  Hitting the ground hard, McIntire tried to roll over. Already, he had cocked the rifle.

  The horse began screaming in pain.

  The sun had disappeared behind Pawnee Rock.

  His chest heaved. Heart pounded. It was October, yet he sweated as if he were back in Savannah in August. He swept the barrel around, but couldn’t find that little Apache. Apache? What in blazes is an Apache doing in Kansas?

  He jacked the lever again. Saw the shell fly out and land in the drying grass.

  Dehner McIntyre cursed his luck. He had just wasted a shell, had forgotten he had already cocked the rifle—and as big as the .50-caliber cartridges were, the ’86 didn’t hold that many rounds in its tube. His head jerked left, right. The Indian was nowhere.

  His horse had stopped its throes and lay motionless in a lake of blood.

  Something sounded behind him. A stone, tumbling off Pawnee Rock. He spun around, saw the figure at the top, let the Winchester roar again.

  Immediately, he realized his mistake. He had just put a .50-caliber chunk of lead into that tree that was growing atop the monument of a rock. Again, he turned back, trying to work the rifle’s leather, but felt the breath knocked out of him.

  He went backwards, landed with a thud. Tried to push the Winchester up, but it came down, crushing the breath out of him, bruising, if not cracking, his ribs. He could make out the Apache kid with the pockmarked face, eyes full of hate, hands locked on the rifle.

  “This can’t be . . . happening . . .” McIntyre managed to say. “For the love . . . of God . . . this is . . . 18 . . . 94.”

  The ’86’s forestock had slipped to his throat, and the Indian pressed down with all his weight. For such a puny boy, the kid had muscle. McIntyre tried to breathe, yet couldn’t find air. His throat was being crushed, the world was turning black, and Dehner McIntyre realized his luck had finally run out.

  He awoke to the light of the moon. “I’m . . . alive.”

  “Not for long, white man.” Moonlight bathed the young Apache’s face as he stood over the gambler.

  “You speak English?” the indaaligande said.

  Yuyutsu did not answer such a foolish question. He knelt before the pale eyes wearing the pants with stripes of many colors. The man’s feet were bound and staked into the ground. His hands were likewise wrapped in rawhide. Spread-eagled. If the wolves did not come to him tonight, he would wish they had come by the afternoon.

  “Do you feel the necklace I have given you?” Yuyutsu asked.

  The white man swallowed. Fear shown in his eyes.

  “The rawhide is wet. Very wet.” Yuyutsu looked at the sky. No stars. Cloudy, cool. Maybe it would rain again. “It will stay wet on this night, I think. But come tomorrow, when the sun rises, it will not stay wet. And as it dries, it will become tighter . . . and tighter . . . and tighter. And you will find breathing harder . . . and harder . . . and harder.”

  He rose and held out the Winchester rifle. “I thank you for this present, indaaligande. Do not look so sad. When they teach more of our people at your Indian school in Pennsylvania, they will teach them of Yuyutsu, the last warrior of the Chiricahuas. Who killed many, many, many pale eyes with this fine rifle.” Lowering the rifle, he grinned at the white man.

  McIntyre knew that he would soon be dead.

  “White man, what is your name?”

  He had to ask the fool indaaligande again. The man managed to choke out an answer.

  “Good, Dehner McIntyre,” Yuyutsu said. “I am glad to know this, and maybe they will teach your grandchildren’s grandchildren your name. You will be famous. But always they will mention your name. I have given you honor. Because you, Dehner McIntyre, will be known by your people as the first man Yuyutsu killed on his great raid.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Dark as those clouds had been off to the west, Jimmy Mann had expected to find himself drenched to the bone. But, typical for western Kansas, the storm had kicked up a lot of wind, only to release nary a drop of rain or stone of hail. Morning dawned clear and bright, the skies a pure blue, not one cloud, black or white, in the air.

  Something else in the sky, however, caught his attention.

  Seeing the buzzards circling a few miles off to the north, Jimmy spurred the roan colt into a trot, pulling the ’73 Winchester from the scabbard as he rode, thumbing back the hammer as had been his practice since he first pinned on a badge.

  In Dodge City, he had found nothing. No cardsharp named Dehner McIntyre. No .50-caliber Winchester repeater. No Danny Waco. No Gil Millican. No Tonkawa Tom. So he had gambled, deciding to light out toward Kansas City, a big city, certainly, with plenty of law, but a man like Danny Waco could find plenty of brothels, gambling dens, and hideouts on both sides of the Kansas-Missouri line. Jesse James and others had hidden out in the city or the surrounding farms, unmolested by peace officers. A long shot, Jimmy knew, but he had to do something, go somewhere. He had to keep looking.

  The turkey buzzards kept circling, even as he neared the sandstone landmark along the Santa Fe Trail. That might have meant whatever the carrion had spotted wasn’t quite dead. Then again, it could also mean that the wolves or coyotes hadn’t finished with whatever lay near Pawnee Rock.

  What caught his attention first were the colors. Dark red, gold, and stripes. He knew for certain then that what lay in the grass was no animal.

  Jimmy swung down from the roan, keeping reins and Winchester in his hand, lowering himself to a knee, watching, and patiently waiting. His eyes scanned across the top of Pawnee Rock, down toward the scrub, the grass, the rocks. Not until he felt certain no ambush awaited, did he wrap the reins around a rock, and move toward the colors.

  When he saw the man lying there, spread-eagled, arms and feet staked to the ground, a leather piece of string tightening around the throat, Jim
my let out a short breath, and again looked across the countryside. He thought the man was dead. He had to be dead. Then the eyes opened, and his swollen, cracked lips parted.

  Instantly, Jimmy went to him, lowering the hammer on the rifle, before easing the Winchester to the ground. He drew the Barlow knife from his vest pocket. The blade opened, and he gently slid the metal between the man’s sunburned neck and the rawhide. He cut the cord free, and the man sucked in a ragged breath.

  “I’ll be right back.” Before he had even finished, Jimmy was up, Winchester back in his hands, heading for the roan.

  “No . . .”

  Even though the word came out as a ragged whisper, Jimmy caught the fear in the voice. He didn’t stop, though. Didn’t answer. He found the horse, grabbed the canteen, and ran back to the man.

  He lifted the man’s head gently, let a few drops of water trickle down the throat, and slowly lowered the head. In the clearings around the rock formation, Jimmy could see signs of a struggle, but no horses, nothing left of whoever had waylaid this stranger with outrageously striped pants. The pants were all he wore. Other clothes, including some worn boots, a gold ascot, and a crimson vest lay nearby. So did one sock. He could see other clothes that the wind had scattered during the night.

  Jimmy also saw a few playing cards stuck in the grass and rocks. He took a guess. “Your name McIntyre? Dehner McIntyre?”

  The man’s eyes widened. His head barely nodded.

  Without speaking, Jimmy moved to the gambler’s bare arm. He cut it free.

  Immediately, the gambler brought his hand over, massaging his throat. Once the man’s bare feet and other wrist had been freed from the bindings, Jimmy removed his bandanna, soaked it with water, and handed it to McIntyre, who placed it on his throat.

  The gambler stared at the canteen. “Please,” he whispered. His tongue was so thick that he could barely wet his lips.