Come Sundown

by Mike Blakely

While this went on, I rose just a bit higher to see the Comanche front. At least a hundred warriors had gathered for a charge, but the arrival of the artillery seemed to have made them uneasy. They milled about along Adobe Creek, waiting for some warrior to lead the charge. Beyond the creek, in the direction of the Comanche village, I caught glimpses of a great number of horsemen gathering, and I could even hear the shouts of the chiefs haranguing the warriors for the coming battle. I knew there were at least twelve hundred fighting men mounted on fine war ponies, and I knew that Kit knew it, too, for he could see the village of almost four hundred lodges in view through the bare branches of the timber.

  Kit’s Ute scouts had now ridden up from the captured Kiowa camp and had gathered between Adobe Walls and the Comanche front and were taunting the Comanches. At this moment, the skirmishers on both sides stopped firing for a few seconds, and Lieutenant Pettis’s voice bellowed: “Number one! Fire!”

  The blast lifted the muzzle of the howitzer and pitched it backward on its battered carriage wheels. Before the shot had landed, Pettis ordered, “Number two! Fire!”

  The first shell exploded just short of the Indians along the creek, and the second ripped through the branches over their heads.

  “Reload!”

  Some of the war ponies bolted in fear of the blasts, and the rest of the Indians just sat their mounts in utter awe of the thunder guns. The shouting of the chiefs from the timber had hushed, and even the Ute scouts seemed shocked into silence.

  “Number one, fire! Number two, fire!”

  When the fourth shot cratered the prairie just two horse lengths in front of the Indians, the Comanche front crumbled and commenced a wild retreat through the timber, back toward Kills Something’s village.

  I heard Kit chuckle. “Well done, Pettis! They won’t charge us for a spell now. Reposition your guns up here on this rise and stay ready.” He grabbed Major McCleave by the arm and started down the hill toward Adobe Walls. “Bill, post your skirmishers around those howitzers. We must protect them guns at all cost.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And have every fourth man unsaddle and water the horses, then stake them yonder to graze.” He pointed to the tall grass that hid me between the ruins and the creek.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “The boys can rest a while and eat breakfast. Directly, we’ll have us a council of war in the old fort. Pettis,” he shouted over his shoulder, “you’ll join us when your guns are in place.”

  “Yes, sir!”

  I shrank back into the grass and crawled carefully toward the ruins. By the time I got close enough to hear, the horses had been led out of the walls and taken past me to the creek. The surgeon and a few wounded men remained inside the walls, where they had been joined by Kit, Pettis, McCleave; Captains Birney, Witham, Fritz and Deus; and Lieutenants Taylor, Heath, and Edmiston.

  “We can take that village,” Captain Birney insisted, as I crawled within earshot of the council of war, listening to the talk come over a low spot in the crumbling adobe walls. “With Pettis’s support, we can capture the entire valley.”

  “I agree,” Lieutenant Edmiston said. “My boys didn’t march all the way from California to turn back at the decisive moment.”

  The other officers chimed in until everyone was talking at once, and Kit had to quiet them like a father taking control of his children. “Easy, boys. Let’s think this out. I can see a camp of four hundred lodges from here, and it disappears around the bend. Who knows how big that camp is. But there are at least a thousand warriors waiting in that village, plus three hundred or so we drove out of the Kiowa camp. We’re outnumbered at least four to one, and they’re well mounted. I know you boys want that camp downstream, but maybe the best thing to do is to fall back to the Kiowa camp and burn it, then decide if we should fight our way on down the river. We’ll know by then if our guns can hold back their charges. Pettis is good with his guns, but you boys have not even begun to see a real Comanche charge. And don’t forget about our supply wagons. We must protect our rear, boys.”

  “But we’ve demoralized them, sir,” Pettis complained. “Now is the time to strike.”

  “You’ve stunned ’em, Pettis. Maybe mixed ’em up for a spell. But they ain’t no more dee-moralized than a cornered grizzly. They’ll rally.”

  “Kit,” Major McCleave said. “Let us at least hold this ground and this fort for now. We can observe the enemy tactics a while and then decide whether to attack or fall back to the Kiowa village. But to fall back right now would dishearten the men.”

  Kit considered the idea for a moment. “All right, Bill,” he finally said. “We’ll hold what we’ve got for a spell. But come sundown, I aim to have all the boys safe in camp.”

  Kit sent his subordinates to see after their own units then stepped outside of the walls to watch the cavalry horses graze, and to think. I could have hit him with a rock. I watched him for a while, reading the expression in his eyes. I could almost hear his thoughts intermingling with Vivaldi’s third concerto. Adagio molto. He was actually considering taking the Comanche camp. He was thinking of his legacy. Kit was fifty-five years old and almost used up. A last great victory? He rubbed his left shoulder and winced. His breath came in short rasps.

  Something came over me, and I felt my voice leave my body to cast itself against the adobes behind my old friend. “Kit.”

  He turned as if he would find me standing behind him. “Who’s there?”

  “It’s me.”

  “Kid? Where the hell are you?” He wheeled about and looked for me.

  “I am invisible.”

  Kit marched to the corner of the fort and looked around it, expecting to find me standing there. I was throwing my voice against the walls, as Burnt Belly had tried so many times to show me. Now, I was just doing it.

  “Don’t play games, Kid. Where the hell are you?”

  “Go home, Kit. Save your boys. Don’t go down the river.”

  “Where the hell are you?” He looked more afraid than I had ever seen him. Nothing much spooked Kit, unless it was something from the spirit world that he didn’t understand. He had spent enough time with the Indians to know about dreams and visions and spirit voices.

  “Come sundown, Kit. You’d best be gone come sundown.”

  “Kid, show yourself!”

  “Come sundown.”

  The surgeon looked up from a badly wounded man. “You talking to me, Colonel?”

  Kit wheeled and glanced all about the fort and prairie, expecting to find me. But I was transparent. “No, George. Just talkin’ to myself.”

  THOUGH RATTLED BY my visit, Kit went back to his business of war, and I crawled back to the creek and walked to my horse. Returning the way I had come, I found Kills Something, One-Eyed Bear, Little Bluff, and some other chiefs in a heated council, surrounded by their most experienced warriors and by the elders and shamans. I left Buffalo Getter with Fears-the-Ground, who was listening from some distance away, still mounted. On foot, I pushed through the circle of warriors and forced my way to the center. Kills Something was trying to gain control of the excited men, but talk of the thunder guns had everyone alarmed.

  “My brother!” I said to Kills Something.

  The Indians fell silent at my arrival.

  “Plenty Man. Speak.”

  “I have ridden to the enemy like a spirit stalker. They could not see me. I could hear their words and walk among them, and they did not know I passed there. I know what is in the hearts of our enemies.”

  Burnt Belly moaned in approval, and smiled, for he had schooled me in the ways of the spirit world and he admired this kind of talk, though he surely knew I was exaggerating my accomplishments.

  Kills Something spoke: “Tell us what you have learned, my brother, so that we will know what to do.”

  “Little Chief is courageous. There is no fear in his heart. But he is careful. He is old and wise. He knows we number more than his bluecoats, but he does not know how many more. He thinks f
our to one. But he cannot see how far this village goes down the river. You know, my brothers, that we number ten warriors for every bluecoat.

  “Now, the younger men under Little Chief want to fight. They want to attack this village with the thunder guns. If we do not make a great show of power now, they will convince Little Chief to do it. We must gather three thousand warriors and more. Mount your men on the best horses and make charge after charge.”

  “But the thunder guns!” said a warrior who had been fired on with the howitzer. “They shoot twice.”

  “Those guns are big, but they are heavy and slow. If we ride along the front line of the enemies, from north to south and from south to north at great speed on our ponies, the thunder guns cannot take aim on us. No one swats bees with a lodge pole.”

  Chief Little Bluff of the Kiowas laughed at the image.

  “We must not surround them,” I continued, for I still hoped to leave Kit a way out. “The ground behind them is no good. We must hold to the open ground between them and the village where we can ride with antelope speed. Those thunder guns must not roll one step closer to this village. If the bluecoats get those guns any closer, they will rip our lodges apart like a hailstorm tears the leaves from a tree. We must hold the ground before us and drive them back up the valley the way they have come. I will lead the first charge. Who will ride with me?”

  A moment of silence passed, then my brother, Kills Something, raised his rifle. “I will ride with the slayer of the white buffalo.”

  “And I will!” shouted Fears-the-Ground, still mounted and holding Castchorn for me some distance away.

  A dozen more warriors shouted their willingness to ride. Then a score, twoscore, and within seconds a hundred men were ready to brave the guns that shoot twice. By the time we reached the creek, two hundred had joined. I stopped outside of howitzer range and looked at the warriors around me. I was about to lead a charge on the soldiers of my own friend. But I had asked myself, as Kit had taught me, Is this right? And I knew it was. All the while, I knew he believed his own actions right, as well, and I wondered how two men, so alike in values and temperament, both true of heart, could end up pitted against each other in battle.

  “If you stand still, you are a target for the thunder guns,” I reminded the riders.

  “Then why do we not ride?” insisted old Chief Little Bluff.

  I smiled at him. “It is time.” I loosed a war cry that had been building in me since Kit’s soldiers killed All Horse and beat the hell out of me back in New Mexico. Buffalo Getter leapt sideways in excitement as the din of battle yells rose around me, then he led the charge across the creek. I held my mount back as we ran through the timber of Adobe Creek, then gave him his head as we reached the open prairie.

  The view ahead of me was one of the finest sights I have ever seen. Painted and feathered Ute warriors on horses milled about in a line before the old fort. Three hundred soldiers in blue coats stood behind them ready to meet our charge, spaced several paces apart in a semicircle that embraced Adobe Walls and the artillery position on the knoll. The sun painted the old adobes a golden hue that complemented the tawny field of tall grass across which I galloped. To the right and a little beyond the fort, a cluster of bluecoats danced around the two howitzers perched on the rise.

  I had forgotten how fast Castchorn could run. I felt amazed at the speed at which we flew over the prairie. Nothing but cold winter air stood between me and the enemy’s guns. I thought about the gunners taking aim, and suddenly veered directly in toward the Utes, running for fifty yards before I dashed back away from the enemy’s front, riding in irregular sawtooth jags to constantly vex the gunners. Angling back in toward the enemy, I dropped to the right of my mount, using his neck as my shield. I did not even draw a weapon, for it was my job to lead the charge at top speed, evading enemy gunfire. The warriors behind me would fling plenty of lead and arrow points.

  The muzzle of a mountain howitzer sprouted a white cloud of smoke, the air whistled, and a second later the prairie soil behind me erupted. I glanced behind and saw two ponies down, but knew the men in the rear would pick up the riders, dead or alive. I dashed away from the enemy line, Castchorn finding new speed in escaping the gunfire. Bullets were cutting the grass all around me, and the shell from the second gun exploded to my left. Now I knew I had a few seconds while the gunners reloaded, and I veered toward the soldiers, screaming a war cry that tore at my throat like a storm wind.

  “Shoot them!” I yelled to the closest warriors behind me, and the men began to rain their fire into the ranks of the enemy. The Utes were riding along with us, though they could not match our speed, and I saw one grab at a wounded arm, though he managed not to fall. A bluecoat rose from the grass and fired, only to catch an arrow in his leg, forcing a scream of pain and horror from his mouth. The bugler signaled for the soldiers to fall back. Probably, I thought, to keep them away from the cannon fire to come.

  Now my pony danced under me in a feint to my right, then left, then right again as I evaded the rifle balls and the artillery shells I knew were coming next. I flew past Adobe Walls and recognized Kit at the corner, calmly shouting orders to his officers and men. Recklessly, I swerved directly toward the guns on the knoll, my intention being to get inside of the range the gunners had sighted. I knew my maneuver had worked when one shell, then another, whistled harmlessly overhead. The infantrymen around the gunners raised a severe defensive fire, and a bullet cut hair from Buffalo Getter’s mane. I pulled myself upright on my pony and shook my fist at the soldiers as I led the riders behind me out of range toward the timber of Adobe Creek.

  Reaching the cover of the trees, I turned to see how the Comanche and Kiowa defenders had fared. I saw several horses being ridden double, and one slain body being dragged toward me between two men. As they came closer, I recognized the dead warrior as young Battle Axe—the man I had myself rescued from a fallen pony once already today—and I knew he would not now be singing my praises in council.

  “Throw him over my pony,” I said. “I will take him back to the village.”

  In spite of Battle Axe’s death, and several other men having earned bullet wounds, the scores of warriors who streamed into the protective trees glared with pride in their attack, and their morale remained fevered.

  Back at the walls, the bugler blew the advance, signaling the soldiers to retake the ground they had given up during our charge.

  “Keep moving!” I ordered. “The big guns can reach this timber.”

  The two warriors threw Battle Axe’s body across my thighs, and we weaved our two hundred and more ponies through the brush and across the creek at a trot. A shell ripped into the branches at our rear and splintered a hackberry, killing the last pony in line with shrapnel and bloodying its rider with a flying tree limb that split his scalp.

  From the prairie, I heard another huge charge of screaming Indians leaving the timber, and knew Kit’s soldiers would finally be absorbing the dread of a true battle in hostile country right about now. Theirs was no longer a surprise attack at dawn, through an ill-prepared camp of waking Kiowas. They were aiming into the ranks of the greatest horseback warriors ever known to the world, and the most fearless fighters—men who believed that surviving to a ripe old age was an embarrassment, no matter how many battle scars they gathered or scalps they took. Attack these thousands of warriors with a mere three hundred soldiers? On their own ground? Outnumbered almost ten to one? Spraying bullets and cannon shell into the villages where their children played yesterday? Unless Kit proved to be one of the greatest military leaders of the Indian wars, his troops would fall like the autumn leaves fluttering down even now, bloodred, from the flame-leaf sumac thickets on the rocky slopes.

  I heard Kit’s bugler sounding the retreat again as I left the body of Battle Axe with his pregnant wife and his mother, both of whom began to wail piteously. I turned away before they could begin slashing their own arms and breasts with knife blades in the throes of their anguish. T
heir keening only stirred my desire to ride again before the gun sights of invading soldiers.

  As I walked Buffalo Getter back toward the enemy, allowing him to cool slowly and rest for another charge, I came across Chief Little Bluff of the Kiowas, checking the wound of a bullet that had grazed the top of his war pony’s rump.

  “Uncle!” I shouted, riding to him as he remounted. “I know how to take the Utes out of this fight. Send some of your warriors around the soldiers and back to your village. Tell them to carry away everything of value that they can take from their lodges. When the Utes see this, they will not want to fight anymore, for they will want to go back and protect the things they thought they captured at dawn.”

  Little Bluff smiled. “You are wise, nephew. But slower than this old man.” He tapped his chest, for the Indians believed that thoughts came from the heart rather than the head. “I sent the younger boys back to the village after the charge you led.”

  I nodded at the wisdom of the old Kiowa leader. “Then it is time to make another charge on the soldiers.”

  “Yes. This time, I will lead. Will you follow behind the great old warrior Dohasen?”

  “It will be my honor to follow such a great leader.”

  Fifty

  Within the half hour, Little Bluff and I had recruited a hundred warriors for our charge, and we rode again under the fire of the rifles and thunder guns. On this charge, I noted that Kit’s Ute scouts had fallen back behind the blue-coated skirmishers, and seemed more intent on watching their spoils evaporate from the Kiowa village than taking aim at the mounted Comanche and Kiowa defenders. I even saw the Ute scout Buckskin Charley conferring with Colonel Carson at Adobe Walls, no doubt begging Kit to fall back and secure the booty in the Kiowa camp.

  Returning from this charge, my mount now covered with a lather of sweat, I noticed some of the young Kiowas lugging buffalo robes and other goods to the safety of Kills Something’s camp. One of them, I noticed, had a bugle strapped across his shoulder.