by Mike Blakely
“Boy!” I shouted. “Whose metal horn do you carry?”
“It is from the lodge of my grandfather, Dohasen.”
“Do you know who I am?”
“Yes, you are Plenty Man.”
“Your grandfather is an old friend. Will you give me his horn?”
“Yes, uncle.” He pulled the leather strap over his head and handed it to me as I rode near.
“Now, you must do one other thing for me. Walk my war pony until he is rested. He has one more charge left in him today.”
The boy grinned at the honor. “Yes, uncle.” He tossed buffalo robes and blankets off his lap and took the reins of my war bridle.
I raised the bugle and blew a short note that tickled my lips. Walking now toward the timber, I made horse noises with my lips to prepare my mouth for the tingle of the bugle. I slipped far enough through the trees that I could see the action on the field. A Comanche charge had just galloped past Kit’s front, north to south this time. The gunfire had ended, and the bugler played the advance. The soldiers rose from the places where they had hunkered in the grass and moved cautiously forward. I put my lips to my bugle and played the signal for “about-face.” The soldiers stopped, confused by my bugle call. Some actually turned about and marched back a few steps. Gunfire ceased on both sides and several seconds passed as a grin formed on my face. Now Kit’s bugler sounded “advance” again, and I answered with “retreat.” From the walls: “advance.” From the timber: “halt.”
I could hear the laughter of the soldiers as they realized an enemy bugler was mocking their own. I made the notes blend somehow with the orchestra still playing Vivaldi’s Four Seasons in my head. I played it allegro, like the third movement of Der Herbst. Vivaldi’s “Autumn” was almost over. Winter was coming.
The soldiers were still laughing and taunting me, when I saw the howitzer fire. The flying shell whistled, and I dove between the limbs in the fork of a fallen hackberry. That Pettis was quite an artillery officer, for he had sighted in on me by sound alone and his shell erupted not forty yards to my right and sent shrapnel ripping through the timber all around me. The second shell landed even closer to my left. I peeked over my makeshift battlements. The prairie stood motionless and silent, except for the ringing in my ears.
I put the bugle to my lips and began to play an especially mournful rendition of taps. Laughter rose all along the ranks of bluecoats. Then, in the middle of the call, I sprang to my feet and began to blow reveille, as if resurrected from the dead. The laughter of the enemy roared and some cheered and applauded my interlude.
But now the warriors charged again, at least four hundred strong, the riders streaming from the wooded creek far to my right. The bluecoats quit laughing and took up their arms. The timing was good for the Comanches, for the cannon had just sighted on me and fired and would take precious seconds to reload and turn and aim. Kit’s bugler sounded a retreat in the face of the onslaught, and I answered—out of pure orneriness—with the “charge.” The bluecoats backed away, firing into the Indians, succeeding in dropping several ponies and unhorsing a few riders. The Indian casualties were increasing with the boldness of the assaults, and bloody men—dead and wounded—being dragged back to cover became a commonplace sight.
Pettis had reloaded before the last of the charge swept past him. His first shot exploded among the horsemen and knocked down three Indian mounts, but all three riders rose and ran toward rescuers who came to pick them up. The second howitzer round actually hit a horse in the shoulder, right in front of the rider’s knee. The shell exploded inside the hapless steed, tearing the poor beast asunder and launching the warrior in an arch twenty feet above the prairie grasses. Two passing warriors reached low and grabbed the unconscious warrior, each by an arm, and dragged him to safety amid a hail of army bullets. I was shocked that the man had not been torn limb from limb, but it seemed the mass of the horse’s musculature had protected him.
I ran to the place where the man was dragged into the timber, and found that the rider was my friend Fears-the-Ground. He was moaning in pain, but still unconscious. I followed to the safe area beyond howitzer range. There I checked Fears-the-Ground all over and found him bleeding from several flesh wounds. Miraculously, he had survived any mortal injuries. The sheer percussion of the shell had knocked his senses from him, however, and would leave him almost deaf the rest of his life.
“Take him back to his lodge on a pony drag,” I told one of the rescuers. “His medicine forbids him to touch the ground, except in camp.”
The man nodded his understanding and left with Fears-the-Ground.
“Nephew!” I shouted to the Kiowa boy who had been walking Castchorn. “My horse!”
The boy brought my war pony, and I formed up with the next big charge preparing to storm the army position at the walls. I happened to fall in beside young Quanah. Years later, Quanah would become a great Comanche leader, but I never heard any mention of his participation in this battle, though I know he was there. Quanah himself would never speak of it, simply because, I believe, he failed to accomplish anything worth bragging about in the fight. He was yet a young raider, only fifteen, still learning the violent ways of war.
Our charge was led by Kills Something himself, who had waited until now to lead what he intended to be the decisive assault on the invaders’ position. With only three hundred soldiers in the field, most wielding single-shot rifles, and well over five hundred Indian riders streaming by with hawklike speed, firing multiple arrows, using our ponies as our shields, the odds of getting shot were lowered, and we pushed the soldiers back all the way to Adobe Walls, where they began to cluster for protection.
Some of the Indians grew so bold as to ride between the walls and the artillery position on the knoll, creating a cross fire that endangered the soldiers as much as the Indians. I was one who was so bold, and I remember feeling bullets tug both ways at the hair that streamed behind my head on this ride. Buffalo Getter had to leap the body of a dead soldier that appeared suddenly in the tall, brown grass as I broke through Kit’s front. Those of us who had breached the bluecoat line rode a circle around the thunder guns on the knoll as the infantrymen protecting the artillery shrank back under a swarm of arrows. Lieutenant Pettis drew his revolver and railed at his scrambling men to reload the howitzers and stand their ground.
After galloping the symbolic conquering ring around the knoll, I peeled away from the rest of the riders behind Kit’s lines. In all the confusion, I was able to ride unnoticed into the timber of Bent’s Creek, where I had hidden before to spy on the enemy position. My pony was about done now anyway, so I walked him around in the woods a while to cool him down, then tied him to a tree. I was feeling reckless and bold after breaking through the lines and circling the big guns on the last charge. The spirit players echoed the allegro non molto in F minor, their music seeming to come up from the very earth. I was so exhausted, and my stomach so empty, and my nerves so wrought by excitement that I was nigh to having visions and hearing voices. I felt my powers of invisibility come over me again, and I began to walk through the woods toward the ruins of old Fort Adobe.
Coming out of the timber, I sneaked through the grass toward the walls. The dead grass was so luxuriant and tall here that a man as small as me could conceal himself in a crouch and approach the soldiers unseen. The soldiers had drawn closer together around the fort and around the artillery on the knoll. They all faced east, none thinking to look for an approach from the woods and bluffs at their rear. All the cavalry horses had been crowded back inside the fort ruins for protection, and it was toward this herd that I sneaked. I went quickly and fearlessly until I was close enough to hear the voices of the soldiers shouting to one another. Some of the voices rang with fear, but they were all about the business of surviving. Wounded men cried out in pain and others yelled for ammunition, water, bandages. Peeking over the tops of the blades of grass, I saw officers trotting toward the walls, and reasoned that another council of war was abo
ut to take place.
I ducked and walked in a crouch, coming as close to the fort as I could. Here, the grass had become trampled by men and beasts, giving the appearance of a dry moat around an ancient, embattled castle. Peering through the last upright stalks of grass, I looked at the backs of the soldiers and summoned my nerve. I decided to simply stand, and walk up to the west side of the wall. Should I crawl or crouch, I thought, my suspicious demeanor might attract attention from the corner of some soldier’s eye. So I stood and relaxed, and strolled not so quickly up to the adobe walls. I remember being spotted by a soldier turning to spit with the wind. Apparently, he mistook me for one of his own Ute scouts, for he only glanced, and never raised an alarm.
I walked right up to the west wall and stepped through the gap in the crumbling adobes that had left the wall only three feet high here. Here, a hundred horses concealed me, and I moved through them calmly so as not to spook them. I could hear the officers conferring at the southeast corner of the walls, and I slipped among the horses to better understand their words. I moved slowly, reassuring each mount I came to with a gentle stroke and a grunt of Comanche horse talk. The cavalry ponies among which I passed were so crowded into the protection of the walls that it was a wonder one of them didn’t step on my foot. When I could make out the conversation, I knelt among the shod hooves of the cavalry mounts and observed the blue-trousered legs of the officers as they reported to Kit.
“ … none killed; two wounded, sir,” the shaky, boyish voice of some young officer was reporting.
“Pettis?” Kit said.
“One killed, six wounded, Colonel.”
“Every man’s accounted for, then?”
A general “Yes, sir” was the answer.
I saw Kit’s squatty legs shift, his heel digging in the dirt. Beyond him, the surgeon knelt over a wounded man who was moaning, half-conscious. Grim-faced, the bloody medic turned and glanced at the officers, and would have seen me had he really looked. But, shadowed among the legs of the ponies, I was invisible, like a spotted ocelot peering out among cattails.
“What’s your opinion, Bill?” Kit said to Major McCleave.
“We came here to punish the devils, and I recommend we follow our orders.” The words said one thing, but the tone of McCleave’s voice was nowhere near as sure as it had rung earlier in the day.
The rest of the men grunted in support. It was funny to watch the men’s boots twist and shift. You can read a lot about a man’s mind and heart by watching the way he stands. Though all the officers voiced agreement with McCleave, a couple of knees almost buckled.
“You mean attack the next village?” Kit asked.
“Exactly,” McCleave said.
“Captain Witham?”
“Attack the devils,” said a young voice, without hesitation.
“Fritz?”
There was a pause. “Attack. Of course, attack.”
“Pettis?”
“Get my guns past Adobe Creek, Colonel, and I’ll shell the daylights out of that camp. We’ve let them pin us down here long enough.”
“Did we come here to shell women and children?” Kit growled.
“What would Captain Pfeiffer say if he was here?” Pettis asked. “He watched his wife, a servant girl, and two soldiers killed by Indians at the Hot Springs.”
“Those were Mescaleros,” Kit said, dismissing the argument. “Are we to punish these Comanche women and children for something some Mescaleros did hundreds of miles away? I don’t think our orders say that.”
At this moment, I saw a pair of moccasins and deerskin leggings step over the lowest part of the south adobe wall, and I cringed, for I knew those trappings belonged to Buckskin Charley, Kit’s chief Ute scout. Worse yet, he squatted, Indian style, some distance away from the soldiers. I looked away from him, knowing he would feel my gaze should I stare at him.
“Colonel, if I may,” said Major McCleave. I watched him take a step toward Kit. “These boys have come a long way. They will fight. A victory here would make history.”
Kit chuckled. “History, huh, Bill?”
“It could turn the tide in the Indian wars.”
Kit faced left to speak to Buckskin Charley in Ute, asking his opinion. To my relief, Charley stood to answer, saying that the Kiowas were steadily removing their things from the village already taken, depriving the Ute scouts of their well-earned plunder, for they had entered the village first. Kit acknowledged this and turned back to his officers. Buckskin Charley squatted again, and I closed my eyes so as to make myself invisible with my medicine. Vivaldi’s warrior-fiddlers played a hushed largo.
“I admire your sand, boys,” Kit began, “and it’ll be noted in my report—if I survive to write one.” He dug his heel in for his argument. I didn’t see this, for my eyes were still closed, but I heard his spur rowel ring as he stamped. I stroked the foreleg of a cavalry mount so that the horse would let me become part of him, hiding me.
“Now, let’s think this through,” Kit continued. “Our orders said to punish the Kiowas and Comanches for raiding. We have taken a Kiowa camp and killed several of their men. By my count, we’ve killed about thirty Comanche warriors and wounded a good many more. Agreed?”
The men grumbled their “yes-sirs.”
“But … We still have to burn the Kiowa camp. That chore’s gotta be done, or capturing the camp means nothing.”
“We can go back and destroy it,” McCleave said, “after we rout the Comanches.”
“Quiet, Major. You’ve had your say. Now, say we attack the Comanches. We’re outnumbered five or six to one, boys. Maybe ten to one. Our mounts are jaded and some are hurt, while them Comanches have got more ponies than Mexico’s got sticker patches. Our ammunition is low, and that camp is full of weapons and bullets, for sure, the way they’ve been firing on us. You want to shell the daylights out of women and children, Pettis; well, I don’t have the stomach for that.
“And, for Christ’s sake, have you forgotten about Colonel Abreu? Francisco’s back there in our rear with only seventy-five men guardin’ the supply train. When those Indians discover him—and they will—they will slaughter those boys and take our provisions. Where will that leave us, men? Two hundred miles from civilization without a bullet or a bean.”
I could hear the collective sigh of the officers, some in relief, some in disappointment.
“Now, what is the right thing to do here? Don’t answer, because I’m fixin’ to tell you. We will form up and pull back to the Kiowa camp and burn it to the ground. Then we will commence to fight our way out of this bear trap. It won’t be easy, boys, and you will realize how loco it would have been for us to attack that next village. You want history, Bill? Gettin’ three hundred men massacred would sure enough make history. The enemy wears moccasins. We’re the ones with boot heels, and they’ve sure got us on ’em. Come sundown we had better be back at our supply train, or we’ll be history.”
At this point, Kit started giving orders on how the men would proceed back to the Kiowa camp, and the first order was to remove the horses from the walls. “Form a column of fours, Bill—dismounted. Every fourth man will lead four mounts. Lieutenant Edmiston, deploy the infantry along both flanks and on our rear. Pettis, keep your guns in the rear, and keep them firing. We’ve got to save those howitzers at any cost, gentlemen.”
The men dispersed to follow their orders, and I knew I had to get out of the adobe ruins before the soldiers came to get their horses. I slipped among the mounts, heading back to the hole in the west wall. Just before I stepped out through the hole, I got a wicked idea. Kit had ordered the horses led out in fours, so I took the reins of the four nearest to me and led them out, each pony stepping obediently over the low spot in the wall and following me onto the prairie. I led them casually toward the woods along Bent’s Creek, hoping no one would make a complaint. In this, I was disappointed.
There was a ring on the cavalry saddle of the day where the reins of one mount could be tied to the sa
ddle of the next, and that was how the horses were supposed to be moved—one tied to another. I, on the other hand, had simply grabbed four sets of reins in two hands and started walking. This unconventional way of moving the horses was what attracted Kit’s attention.
“Hey!” came the shout. I pretended not to hear. “You, soldier! Tie them horses together the right way!” I walked on a few steps, and he shouted, louder, “Halt, there, soldier!”
I was halfway to the timber, so I sprang into the saddle of the mount nearest to me, and gave a Comanche war yell. “Come sundown, Kit!” I yelled, pointing up the valley. I screamed my war cry again and ran the ponies to the timber. I looked over my shoulder once and saw Kit standing with his hands on his hips. He was some distance away, and I was on a galloping horse, leading three others, but I will always believe that I saw a smile on his face.
“Let him go,” Kit yelled, as I gained the timber and began picking my way through the trees and underbrush, back toward Castchorn.
Fifty-One
My Comanche pony did not like being led along with the captured enemy horses at first, and he kicked and bit the one nearest to him. I admonished him in a stern voice, and he accepted his lot for the time being. I rode north, out of rifle range, and crossed the prairie in sight of Pettis’s gunners with the stolen horses, screaming the “yee-yee-yee-yee!” of a successful Comanche horse thief. When I made my way back to the Comanche village, I found another party forming to make a charge on the soldiers, but I convinced them to wait until we had held a council of war so I could report what I had learned inside the walls.
Kills Something and the other chiefs gathered in the middle of a huge crowd of warriors and listened as I told them of my stealth and my invisibility among the horses. Burnt Belly was there, looking quite pleased with me for all that I had learned from him. I told what I had heard about the way the soldiers would retreat now, but I took my time in telling it, so that Kit would have time to form his column and get moving back toward the Kiowa village. I ended my tale by bragging about the four horses I had stolen right out from under the noses of the bluecoats. A great victory cheer rose to congratulate me, but when it died down, I again heard the wails of mourning women who had already lost husbands or sons in this battle.
