Come Sundown

by Mike Blakely

  “Exactly,” said Ben Roberts. “Our boys will fight them if we must, but, most important, we must deny the enemy our supplies. Frankly, that’s more important than killing them. Without stores, they are finished.”

  I grumbled and kicked at the gravel of the bulwark.

  “Do you have something to add, Mr. Greenwood?”

  “I agree with Colonel Roberts. No army can last without supplies. But these Texans will last longer than you’d expect. They already have. They’ve marched hundreds of miles on half-rations, covered in vermin, debilitated by disease and Apache raids, and they’ve come with lances, shotguns, and pistols, yet look at them begging a fight even now. Their clothes are threadbare. They’re making shoes of rawhide. They’re freezing and hungry and a quarter of them are sick, and they haven’t taken one step backward. If they successfully maneuver around Fort Craig, they will march all the way to Santa Fe, supplies or not.”

  Roberts snorted. “Not likely.”

  Kit warned me with a glance.

  “No disrespect intended, sir. That’s my opinion based on what I’ve observed. I’ve gathered that Sibley himself is drunk and ill, but their men look up to Colonel Green. There’s no quit in them.”

  Canby turned to Colonel Carson. “Kit?”

  Kit shrugged. “God only knows what a Texan can’t do. The thing we’ve gotta ask ourselves is, what is our duty? What is right? I believe it is our duty to turn back this invasion of Rebels on American soil. If we fail at that—and we may fail, boys, because those are some two thousand fightin’ Texans out there—if we fail at turnin’ ’em back, we’ve got to die holdin’ our supplies. That is, I believe, our duty.”

  Canby nodded. “Then that shall be our plan of battle. Repel them if we can, without undue losses in wounded and dead. If we fail at repelling them, we must fall back and hold the fort at any cost. Any cost whatever.”

  Colonel Roberts nodded grimly, and we watched the troops taunt one another for two glorious hours.

  Twenty-Four

  I spent the next three days in the saddle, flanking the enemy troops, and reporting back to Colonel Canby on their movements. I rode only the fastest mounts from the fort’s string of cavalry ponies. Should I get captured by the Confederates they would surely hang me for spying. After their big show at the fort, the Rebels had withdrawn to the south, then crossed the river and ascended the bluff to the east of the fort. They camped beyond range of our big twenty-four-pounders, but we all knew they would not remain in camp long. Their provisions were running low. The Texans had to make a move and get on with their invasion. When they made that move, it was likely to be swift and violent.

  Colonel Canby took his cavalry and Captain McCrae’s artillery across the river to attack the Texas camp, but Sibley had chosen the campsite well, in a mesquite grove on high ground. As Canby ordered skirmishers within rifle range of the Texas camp, the Texans answered with well-directed artillery fire, scattering a company of New Mexico volunteers under Miguel Pino. With darkness coming on, Canby decided to withdraw, but he wisely sent a company of regular infantrymen to hold the bluff that overlooked Fort Craig from the east to prevent the Texans from using that vantage to shell the fort.

  That night, I stood on the battlements of Fort Craig and looked east. I could see the campfires of the Federal troops that held the bluff, and far beyond them, on that high mesquite grove, I watched the fires of the Texans’ camp twinkle. The night was so still that I could hear voices from across the river. As I stood there watching, thinking about Westerly and my Comanche friends, worrying about war tearing the whole world apart, I heard someone walking up the gravelly breastworks behind me. Turning, I saw Captain Paddy Graydon climbing up to join me. Paddy and his volunteer spy company had been almost as successful as I had at following enemy movements and gathering information.

  “Kit told me I’d find you here,” he said. “Are you up for some entertainment?”

  “My violin’s at William Bent’s Stockade,” I said.

  He laughed. “That’s not what I had in mind. The quartermaster has given me two old broke-down mules, but I think they’ve got one last run left in them.”

  “And?”

  “McCrae gave me four boxes of howitzer shells that were damaged when a caisson rolled down an arroyo.”

  “Two mules and four boxes of shells,” I said, trying to piece his plan together.

  “The boys have fitted the shells with fuses and they’re loading them on the mules. If we get close enough to Sibley’s camp, we can light those fuses and run those mules in among the Texans. What do you say?”

  I began laughing. “Well, Paddy, that’s quite a plan, but I’ve come up with one of my own, and we just might be able to put the two together.”

  “What have you been scheming?”

  “I feel like a Comanche tonight. I thought I’d sneak into their camp Indian style and run off as many horses as I could. Their mounts have got to be thirsty, and it shouldn’t take much to get them running for the river. Your mule attack should provide just the diversion.”

  “Then you’d better get goin’ . The boys are cinching the panniers on the mules right now.”

  The post sutler was still in his store, selling vastly overpriced shots of bad, watered-down whiskey to the few soldiers who happened to have money. Most of the soldiers hadn’t been paid in months. I bought a hunk of beef tallow from the sutler and wrapped it in a piece of cloth. Nobody asked me what I wanted with the tallow, and for that I was grateful. They probably assumed I was going to fry something.

  I saddled an old cavalry mount that I knew to have an independent nature—one that didn’t seem to have much of a need to consort with other horses. This animal would keep quiet, I reasoned, if he caught scent of strange horses on the wind. I rode out of Fort Craig, crossed the river, picked my way up a steep arroyo, and hailed the sentries surrounding the camp that held the bluff. I received permission to enter the camp and spoke to a lieutenant, telling him of Graydon’s plan, and my own. When the horses came stampeding to the river I didn’t want these soldiers thinking they were under attack. They would help me gather the horses at the river and herd them into the corrals of the fort.

  Now I rode toward the Texans’ camp, but before I got close, I pulled my horse up in the desert and unsaddled him, leaving the saddle under one of the taller mesquite trees so that I could find it later. I also removed the headstall and bridle bit and replaced them with a simple Comanche war bridle which consisted of a rawhide cord looped about the mount’s lower jaw.

  The night was cold, of course, but I stripped naked and put on my Comanche breechclout and moccasins. I took the beef tallow from the cloth and rubbed the greasy substance all over my exposed skin, and even into my hair. Finding a patch of loose dirt, I lay down in it and rolled like a dog wallowing on a carcass, covering myself with dirt that stuck to the tallow. Now I could lie on the desert ground and disappear like a lizard. This was a trick I had learned from the Comanches, perhaps the best and proudest horse thieves the world ever knew.

  I mounted my horse bareback and rode Comanche style well around Sibley’s camp. The cold desert air crept into my skin like ice, but I remembered my Comanche training and took it with pride. The warmth of the horse felt good between my thighs. I knew from spying on the Texans earlier that day where they held their herds of loose horses, and how far out their sentries were stationed. I decided to raid the herd of the Seventh Texas Cavalry because they were camped farthest south and most vulnerable. I rode as close to the camp as I dared, holding to low ground where my silhouette would not stand out against the sky. Finally, I dismounted, hobbled my horse, and took the war bridle from his lower jaw. I crept ahead on foot.

  The fires of the Confederate encampment flickered in tiny sparks. They had probably burned up just about all the wood in the area. I slunk forward in a crouch, pausing often to watch and listen, knowing I could not pause long, for Paddy Graydon’s two shell-laden mules were bound to be storming into the T
exas brigade any minute.

  I could hear the horses snorting now, and milling about. The restlessness of the herd pleased me, because I knew now that the animals were indeed thirsty and already thinking of making their own break for the river. As I crept nearer to the remuda, I suddenly heard something thump in the dark to my right, and saw the outline of a sentry strolling my way, stumbling as he tripped over a rock in the darkness. I melted into the ground. Precious little moonlight filtered through the clouds, but a man could see the dark growth of brush standing out against the tawny soil of the desert floor. I had become part of that soil.

  This sentry trudged toward me, making his rounds. He would have been easy prey for Mescalero Apaches, had they chosen this night to raid the Texas camp for horses. He came closer and closer to me, and I began to get nervous. I feared he would trip over me and find me out. I didn’t want to have to draw my knife and kill him, but this was war, and I would do it if I had to. Three steps away, he veered just enough to keep from tripping over me, but he stepped on the last two fingers of my right hand—and stood there! Thankfully, he faced toward the horses and away from me, so he didn’t see me. I feared he would take a step backward and trip over my head. My heart pounded into the desert and I was sure he would hear it because the sound of the blood pulsing in my ears almost deafened me.

  I could feel this sentry shiver through the worn soles of his boots. Now, suddenly, I understood why he had stopped here. The man was urinating on a cactus not four feet from my head. I felt a droplet or two splatter the tallow-caked dirt that covered my outstretched arms. Finally, the sentry finished his ill-timed business and trudged on around the horse herd he was guarding. That man would never know how close he came to getting knifed that night in the desert, for I had not signed on to the spy service to be trampled and pissed on.

  When the sentry faded into the dark, I crept forward more quickly, knowing I was inside the perimeters of the camp now. A horse sensed my approach and flinched, his four hooves pounding once in unison on the ground. He lowered his head and let a low rolling snort rattle from his nose. I crouched and made a soft grunting sound the Comanches used to charm horses, hoping to make friends with some mount I could catch and ride out of here.

  The horse stalked downwind of me and flinched again when he smelled me. I’m sure the scent of the tallow must have confused him. I grunted again and moved just enough for him to see me, hoping I would not send him running prematurely. The horse raised his head and warned his equine companions again with that rattle. Some of the other horses began to investigate my presence, and one calmer fellow approached cautiously, his head low, his breath blasting the ground. I kept grunting, and he came closer.

  “Hey, Billie!” The voice came from behind me, some distance away. “What are them horses snortin’ at over there?”

  “Hell, I don’t know. Some booger they made up, I reckon.” This had to be the voice of the sentry who had stepped on me. He was closer than the other voice.

  “Well, why don’t you walk over there and calm ’em down? We can’t have ’em stampedin’ the whole remuda.”

  I grunted and reached for the horse. The old mount saw my hand and stretched his neck to get a smell of me.

  “Why don’t you walk over there and calm ’em down your own damn self?”

  “Why don’t I walk over there and bust you upside the head?”

  The horse sniffed my finger. I moved my hand, and he let me stroke his muzzle.

  “I’d save myself the walk, if’n I was you.”

  I rose slowly, grunting to charm the horse. Though his herd mates backed away and made more snorts, he stood still and let me stroke his jaw and neck. That Comanche horse grunt, if you knew how to use it, could sure charm the fear out of a well-chosen four-legged.

  “You meet me over there where them horses is about to booger, and after we get ’em calmed down we’ll see if we can’t find us a way to settle whether or not I ought to whip your ass.”

  I had the rawhide cord around the horse’s neck now, and was slipping the loop of the war bridle between his teeth to tighten it around his lower jaw.

  “I’ll settle the question for you, by God.”

  I stroked the horse on the withers as the two sentries walked toward me. I grunted at that horse and petted him and he stood there and those sentries got closer and closer. I already had the reins gathered in my left hand, along with a handful of mane. I knew I had better mount and spook the herd toward the river, and hope I did not get shot in the process. Then, a rumble of hooves came from a mile away on the other side of camp, and the sentries stopped twenty steps from me.

  “What’s that?” said Billie.

  “Hell, I don’t know.”

  In the distance, through the high, dry desert air, I could hear men hollering at the tops of their lungs, and could only surmise that Paddy Graydon’s boys were spooking the mules into the Sibley brigade. All the horses around me had their heads high in the air, and one let out a whinny so close and loud that it hurt my ears.

  “We’re under attack!” Billie said.

  The rumble of the hooves seemed to fade a little, and then a far-off blast shook the cold air—a peculiar blast, unlike any artillery shot ever heard—the blast of a bunch of howitzer shells chain-firing a hapless mule into the Shadow Land. Horses and sentries flinched, and I swung up behind the withers of my captured mount and dug in my heels. I just flat-out screamed—releasing all my spring-loaded tension in one madcap Comanche battle cry. Instantly, I was galloping all along the fringes of the remuda, spooking the horses toward the river. The second mule exploded in the distance, and one of the sentries took a shot at me, shouting something about Indians. I don’t know how close he came to hitting me, but I was clinging to the off-side of my horse like a Comanche raider, so the Texan had little chance of killing me anyway.

  The herd was in an all-out stampede for the river, a hundred horses strong, and the Texas camps were in chaos. I rode behind the remuda and screamed once more, then curled back to the place where I had left my horse from Fort Craig. I jumped off and removed his hobbles so he could follow back to the fort, then I rode like a racehorse jockey through the cold dark night, thundering with pure, unbridled exhilaration across the rough desert ground. I could not wait to get back to the fort and write of my exploits in a lengthy letter to Westerly. She was going to be so proud. A hundred horses!

  Twenty-Five

  When I caught up to the confiscated horses, the Union soldiers were holding them at the river, letting them drink. By this time, I had gathered my saddle, bridle, and my clothes, my intention being to wash the dust and dirt from my skin before dressing. I announced my presence before I rode in among the Union soldiers, for I did not want them mistaking me for an Indian or a Confederate soldier. Only a couple of them got a good look at me in the dark as I rode upstream. Some private, who was closest to me, said, “What in the hell happened to you?”

  I simply answered, “I went Indian a little while.”

  I rode to the river above the herd, where the water would run clearer. I waded into the shallow stream, and with a chunk of lye soap I had brought with me in my saddlebags, I began to scrub the dirt and tallow from my body and my hair. This was a slow process, and the night was cold, and the water was colder. But I had seen Comanches lower their children into holes stomped through the ice of mountain streams to steel them to a lifetime of harsh winters. I knew I was tough enough to take it if they were.

  Still, it felt good to get into my clothes and coat and hat and gloves, and better yet to get in front of a fireplace in Kit’s quarters at the fort. Before long, Paddy Graydon came knocking on the door, anxious to debrief after our joint missions. I told him of my successes as he and Kit laughed about the Texas sentry standing on my fingers while he relieved himself. I asked Paddy how his boys had fared, and he shook his head rather sheepishly.

  “Everything was going so well,” he began. “We found where the Fourth Texas was holding their mounts. We g
ot close, up the head of an arroyo, without being spotted by their guards. We lit the fuses on those shells, and spooked those old mules out of that arroyo and got them running at a gallop toward the camp. We were downwind, so I figured those mules would smell the Confederate herd. We’d stumbled onto a pretty good gap between the sentries, and there was nobody there to even shoot at us. So we ran those mules as close as we dared, then pulled rein and turned tail.

  “I was already cackling to myself. I just knew those old mules would lope right through their camp and explode all over those Texans on their way to join the remuda of the Fourth. But when I looked back, I swear, the damned old beasts had decided they didn’t want to secede after all, and they were following us back to the fort! I told you those mules had one more good run in them, and I was right because they were gainin’ on us! Those burning fuses just seemed to get closer and closer in the dark. We had to do some tall ridin’ to stay out of range of the explosion, and I’m sure we came closer to killing ourselves than we did any of the enemy.”

  I sat on the hearth and laughed until my stomach hurt, and that felt good. “Well, it was the perfect diversion for me,” I finally said, trying to ease Paddy’s embarrassment.

  “I reckon, but it just goes to show you, a man cannot trust a mule to follow orders,” he mumbled.

  I GOT A few hours of sleep that night under warm blankets, but I was awake well before daylight, so I took a hot bath to wash away the remnants of the greasy tallow still clinging to my skin and hair. Then I dressed for battle, ate some breakfast, and went out into the dark to saddle a horse. I rode my mount out of the corral and up onto the earthen bastion to the east, where I remained a short while, preparing myself in the Comanche way to get wounded or killed, giving it all over to the spirits to decide so that I wouldn’t have to worry about it. The charcoal sky hung cold and cloudy, but the desert can charm a soul in any kind of weather, especially from the back of a good pony. Looking over the faintly lit valley that lay between the two armies was like watching a mountain lion sleep at my feet. It was beautiful and peaceful, but I knew when it awoke, it might rip me to shreds or snap off a leg in a moment of fury. Today I would see what war between white men was all about.