Massacre of Eagles

by William W. Johnstone

  Although they were completely surrounded, outnumbered, and more than 30 miles from any hope of aid, the brave soldiers did not despair. During the night they much improved their breastworks. So efficiently did they do so that yet another attack by the Indians the next day was, as had been the previous attempts, turned back, this time without a single loss of life to the men of the Ninth.

  Then the Indians tried a new tactic. They presented for the defending soldiers to see another soldier, not colored as were they, but a white man previously captured by them. This was Sergeant Lucas Depro. A threat was made to kill Depro if Sergeant Major Coletrain did not surrender his men, but Falcon MacCallister and Sergeant Major Coletrain foiled Mean to His Horses’ plan with their excellent marksmanship. With unerring aim, Coletrain and MacCallister killed the two Indians in whose grasp Depro found himself. Then, following quickly with a second shot from his repeating rifle, MacCallister killed Mean to His Horses. A volley from the other defenders killed more Indians and the remaining savages lost all desire to continue the attack.

  Subsequent to Lucas Depro’s rescue, it was discovered that he has been facilitating the renegade depredations by supplying them with guns and ammunition. Major Benteen issued an order for Depro’s arrest, but the villainous sergeant has disappeared.

  Dance to Honor Militia Cancelled Parade and Picnic to Honor Buffalo Soldiers

  The celebration plans have been changed. While it would be unseemly to hold a dance for colored soldiers, there being no colored women in town, Mayor Cravens and the DeMaris Civic Association have agreed to hold a parade and picnic in their honor.

  The order of the parade is thus: Mrs. Foley’s Grammar School students, DeMaris High School Cadets, the DeMaris Volunteer Fire Brigade Pumper, the Fire Brigade Band, followed by Major Benteen and the mounted troopers of the Ninth Cavalry.

  After the parade, there will be food tables featuring fried chicken, baked ham, potato salad, cookies, pies and cakes, all furnished by the ladies of the town. In addition there will be ice cream, provided by the DeMaris Civic Union. Mayor Joe Cravens will give a speech.

  Mme. Mouchette’s House for Discriminating Gentlemen

  Although Madame Mouchette advertised her establishment as a place where gentlemen could “engage in stimulating conversation with well-mannered and attractive young ladies,” it was a whorehouse, pure and simple, and everyone in town knew it.

  At the moment Sam Davis and Sergeant Lucas Depro were in the lobby of the house, waiting for Lee Regret, who was upstairs with one of the “well-mannered and attractive” young ladies. Both Davis and Depro had already had their “stimulating conversations,” and were reading the latest copy of the DeMaris Springs newspaper.

  “Hey,” Davis said. “Depro, have you read this? They’re sayin’ what happened out at the village was a massacre of Injuns. Bellefontaine ain’t goin’ to like this. He ain’t goin’ to like it that they’re callin’ it a massacre.”

  “Well, that’s what you done, ain’t it?” Depro asked.

  “Maybe so, but there ain’t no call to put somethin’ like that in the newspaper. It’s Cody and MacCallister that’s causin’ all the trouble. What’s a minion?”

  “What?”

  “It says here that Cody and MacCallister are goin’ to see to it that Bellefontaine and his minions will be brought to justice. What’s a minion?”

  “I don’t know,” Depro said.

  “I don’t know either, but whatever it is, it probably ain’t good.” Davis said.

  “Sum’ bitch!” Depro said. “Davis, did you tell anybody I’m the one sold them guns?”

  “No, why would I do that?”

  “It says here that they know I’m the one that sold the guns to the Injuns. Only it warn’t just me, it was me, you and Regret. And I ain’t plannin’ on takin’ all the blame my ownself.”

  Upstairs at Mme. Mouchette’s

  As she poured water into the basin, the girl saw Regret staring at her from the bed. She picked up the basin and started to step behind the dressing screen.

  “Where the hell do you think you are goin’?” Regret asked.

  “I’m going behind the dressing screen for my ablutions,” she answered.

  “For your what?”

  “To wash myself.”

  “Why do you have to go behind a screen, just to wash yourself?”

  “Because I’ll also be washing . . .” she started then stopped in mid-sentence. “Because there are some things that a lady would like to do in private.”

  “You ain’t no lady, you are a whore,” Regret said. “I paid five dollars to be with you, that means you ain’t got no privacy around me. I want to watch.”

  “You didn’t pay for this,” the woman said, stepping behind the screen.

  “I said I aim to watch!” Regret said angrily, and getting out of bed, he padded naked over to the dressing screen, then knocked it down.

  The girl let out a short shout of fear, then cringed, frightened that he was about to hit her.

  “I ain’t goin’ to hurt you none,” Regret said. “I told you, all I want to do is watch. Now, you go on with your—ablutions.”

  The girl, cringing silently in fear and embarrassment, dipped the cloth in the water and continued to wash herself. There was a loud knock on the door.

  “Mabel, is everything all right in there?” Madame Mouchette called.

  “Don’t you be worryin’ none about Mabel,” Regret called back. “Me ’n her is gettin’ along just fine.”

  “Mabel?” Madame Mouchette called again.

  Regret walked over and jerked open the door. He saw the woman he had conducted the business with last night, the madam of the whorehouse.

  “Get on with you now,” Regret said. “I told you, there’s no need for you to be worryin’ none.”

  “You are naked,” Madame Mouchette said. “You should have dressed before you opened the door.”

  “You tellin’ me a woman what runs a whorehouse ain’t never seen a naked man before?” Regret asked.

  “I want to see Mabel.”

  “I tole you, there ain’t no need for you to be worryin’ about Mabel.”

  “I want Mabel to tell me that,” Madame Mouchette insisted.

  “Tell her ever’thing’s all right,” Regret called back over his shoulder.

  “I’m fine, Madame Mouchette,” Mabel said. “Really, it’s like he said. Ever’thing is fine.”

  “I thought I heard you call out,” Madame Mouchette said.

  “It’s nothing,” Mabel said. “I knocked over the pitcher and spilled water on me. That’s all.”

  “All right,” Madame Mouchette replied. The tone of her voice indicated that she didn’t quite believe what Mabel was telling her, but neither did she want to challenge it any further. “You call me if you need me,” she added, and again, the tone of her voice was in direct opposition to the words themselves.

  “Yes, ma’am, I will,” Mabel replied.

  “You satisfied?” Regret asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Good. Now, get on back to doin’ whatever you was doin’, and let us be. I got to get ready for the big celebration today.” Regret smiled broadly. “I’m one of them heroes the newspaper was talkin’ about.”

  When Regret turned around, he saw that Mabel was no longer squatting down over the wash basin.

  “What are you doin’?” Regret asked.

  “I’m finished,” she said.

  “You’re finished? That’s all there is to it?”

  Mabel nodded.

  “Hell, what was so damn private about that? You didn’t do nothin’ but splash a little water onto yourself.”

  “Do you want me to bathe you?” she asked, smiling seductively at Regret, trying to get him back into a less belligerent mood.

  “What?” Regret replied, as if surprised by the question. “No! Why the hell would I want that? I don’t need me a bath, hell I took me a bath not no more than two, maybe three weeks ago. And I d
one it all by myself, too. And whenever the time comes in the next two weeks or so that I’ll be takin’ me another one, why, I’ll take that one by myself too.”

  “Whatever you say,” Mabel replied.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Regret was still packing his shirttail down in his pants as he came down the stairs to join Sam Davis and Lucas Depro, who were both waiting in the lobby. Depro was no longer wearing a uniform.

  “Have you heard?” Davis asked.

  “Have I heard? Have I heard what?” Regret answered.

  “There ain’t goin’ to be no dance. Instead, they’re havin’ a parade and a town picnic today.”

  “Well, hell, that’s as good as a dance, I reckon,” Regret answered.

  “Yeah, well, there’s more to it,” Davis said. “The picnic ain’t for us, it’s for the colored soldiers. And the reason they canceled the dance is ’cause the coloreds couldn’t come on account of they ain’t goin’ to let the coloreds dance with the white women. And now, they’re plannin’ on celebratin’ the coloreds killin’ Mean to His Horses.”

  “Well, I don’t see why they couldn’t have a picnic for the coloreds, and go ahead and have that dance for us,” Regret said. “That way, we could go to both of ’em.”

  Davis shook his head. “Ain’t goin’ to be nothin’ for us—’ceptin’ maybe jail if Cody and MacCallister have their way.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Read this,” Davis said, showing him the paper.

  “You know I can’t read.”

  “Yeah, I forgot. All right, what it says is that Cody and MacCallister went out to the Injun village to have a look around, and now they’re tellin’ the whole country that what we done was just murder a bunch of Injun women and children.”

  “How can you murder an Injun?” Regret asked.

  “Ain’t that pretty much like steppin’ on a bug or somethin’? It ain’t like they was white or anything. I ain’t never heard of no one gettin’ in trouble for murderin’ an Injun.”

  “There’s more,” Davis said. “They know that me and you and Depro sold the guns to the Injuns.”

  “Damn!” Regret said. “They know that? How the hell do they know that?”

  “I don’t know,” Davis replied. “But it don’t matter none how they know. The point is, they know.”

  “We need to get out of here,” Regret said.

  “Won’t do no good to run,” Depro said. “It won’t make no difference where we go. I know both MacCallister and Cody, and believe me, them two can track a fish through water and a bird through the air. If they are alive, they’ll find us.”

  “If they are alive,” Davis said.

  “What?”

  “You said if they are alive,” Davis repeated. “Seems to me like you just come up with the answer. If they are alive they’ll find us, if they are dead, they won’t. So, the smartest thing we can do is to kill them before we leave. That way we can go somewhere else and not worry ’bout being found.”

  “Yeah, well, killin’ ’em ain’t goin’ to be that easy,” Depro said. “Like I said, I know them two.”

  “Besides which, we ain’t got enough money to go anywhere in the first place,” Regret said.

  “Don’t worry about the money, we’ll get it,” Davis said.

  “How we goin’ to get any money? You plannin’ on robbin’ a bank or somethin’? ’Cause I ain’t goin’ to do that. A man can get hisself kilt, doin’ somethin’ like that,” Depro said.

  “We’ll get it from Bellefontaine. He owes us,” Davis said.

  “Maybe he owes the two of you, but he don’t owe me nothin’,” Depro said.

  “Sure he does. When you got them guns from the army, you was doin’ that for Bellefontaine.”

  “Yeah,” Depro said. He smiled. “Yeah, I was, wasn’t I?”

  Bellefontaine’s office

  “You are mistaken, gentlemen, I don’t owe you anything,” Bellefontaine said. “If you wish to run, feel free to do so. But I have no intention of leaving. Not now, not when I have everything going just the way I want it to go.”

  “You ain’t got nothin’ goin’ the way you want it to go,” Davis said. “Didn’t you hear what I just said? The paper says what we done out at the village was a massacre.”

  “There are those who said the thing about Chivington at Sand Creek, and about Custer at Washita. But today Chivington is still a respected man in Colorado, and no one is more honored than Custer. I have no intention of letting a negative newspaper article change my plans.”

  “Yeah, well maybe that works for you,” Depro said. “But it’s different with Davis, Regret, and me. We sold guns to the Injuns. If they catch us, we’re goin’ to jail for that.”

  “Then, gentlemen, I suggest you start running.”

  “Yeah, that’s what we’re going to do, as soon as you give us enough money to get out of here.”

  “And how much do you consider to be enough money?” Bellefeontaine asked.

  “I’d say about a thousand dollars apiece,” Davis said.

  “A thousand dollars apiece?” Bellefontaine laughed. “You must think I’m a fool. Get out of here. You are on your own.”

  “You can’t turn your back on us now, not after all we’ve done for you,” Davis said. He drew his pistol, then pointed toward the safe that sat against the back wall. “Open that safe and take out your money. We would’a been satisfied with a thousand dollars apiece. Now we want all of it.”

  “You’re making a mistake,” Bellefontaine said.

  “Not as big a mistake as you just made,” Davis said. “Now, open that safe like I told you to.”

  Bellefontaine walked over to the safe. “What makes you think I have that much money in this safe?”

  “It don’t matter to me how much money you have. However much it is, we’re goin’ to take it all,” Davis replied.

  Bellefontaine opened the safe and stuck his hand inside, then, so quickly that he almost got away with it, he spun around with a pistol in his hand.

  “You didn’t really think I was goin’ to let you steal my money, did you?” he shouted.

  But, though he was quick, Davis was quicker. He pulled the trigger and the bullet from his gun hit Bellefontaine in the forehead. He fell, dead before he hit the floor.

  “See how much money he has, Depro,” Davis said.

  Depro looked into the safe, smiled broadly, then stuck both hands in and turned back toward the others with both hands filled with money.

  “Look at this! There must be ten or twenty thousand dollars here,” Depro said.

  Davis looked at Bellefontaine’s body. “The dumb son of a bitch should have give us the money,” he said. “All we was askin’ for was a thousand dollars apiece.”

  Quickly, the three men began taking money out of the safe and stuffing it down into their clothes.

  Out on the main street, the air was redolent with the aroma of fried chicken, and freshly baked pies, cookies and cakes. But no one was eating yet, because all the people of the town were lined along both sides of the street to watch the parade. Mayor Joe Cravens had invited Falcon, Cody, and Ingraham to sit on the reviewing stand with him as the elements of the parade marched by.

  First came Mrs. Foley’s Grammar school, thirtyseven children from the first to the eighth grade. All were excited at being in the parade and they were waving flags they had made as a part of their school projects, ranging from no more than a few marks on a piece of paper the efforts of the first-graders, to genuine works of art among the eighth-graders.

  Next came the eleven high school students, the excitement replaced by embarrassment. They were followed by the brand new pumper, consisting of glistening polished brass, the machine being pulled by six uniformed firemen. After the pumper came the Fire Brigade Band, the music of the tuba and the flute being the most noticeable.

  Finally came the mounted members of the Ninth Cavalry, riding in a column of twos, led by Major Benteen. The soldie
rs were perfectly aligned, impeccably uniformed, and staring straight ahead as the sound of the horses’ hooves echoed back from the buildings that lined both sides of the street.

  “Ladies and gentlemen!” the town auctioneer shouted through the megaphone he was using. “Here are the heroes of the Stinking Water River fight! The officers and men of the Ninth Cavalry!”

  The citizens of the town applauded, then gave the soldiers a loud cheer, notwithstanding the fact that they were black.

  Very soon after the parade broke up, the word began passing up and down the street, moving with telegraphic speed.

  “Pierre Bellefontaine is dead!”

  “Bellefontaine kilt himself!”

  “He must’a read the newspaper article.”

  “He didn’t kill himself, someone kilt him.”

  “How do you know?”

  “’Cause his safe was open and all his money was took.”

  “Bellefontaine is dead.”

  “Wonder who did it.”

  Eventually, the rumor reached even the reviewing stand, and Falcon, Cody, Ingraham, and Mayor Cravens wondered about it, as did everyone else. That was when Mayor Cravens asked Buffalo Bill if he might come to his office for a few moments.

  “I want to speak to you about your town,” Cravens said.

  “Are you going to try to talk me out of building it?” Cody asked.

  “On the contrary, sir. Especially if it is true that Bellefontaine is dead. I want to examine the possibility of becoming a part of your new enterprise,” Cravens said.

  “All right,” Cody said. “Falcon, would you excuse me for a while?”

  “Take your time,” Falcon said. “The aroma of all this food has been driving me crazy all morning, and I intend to try some of it out.”

  Climbing down from the platform, Falcon recognized Juanita Kirby, Gary, and Abby behind one of the tables. Smiling, he walked over to the table and touched the brim of his hat.