The Stalkers

by Terry C. Johnston

  “Make the island!”

  Seamus was sure of it now. No mistaking that sound. Any soldier who had lived through four years of that hell back east knew the sound of thousands of hooves, this time hammering the sun-baked prairie. Coming out of the dark like some ghostly thing you can’t see—but you sense its coming before you ever lay eyes on your enemy.

  Having heard enough, he was up on the saddle. Feeling the ground tremble with the quake of their coming.

  The others were breaking out of camp, swirling around him, horses driven into the streambed, splashing across the shallow creek. In their midst stood McCall and Beecher and Grover, still on the ground, reins in one hand. Their pistols in the other. Ordering everyone across before they would close the file.

  A scattering of gunfire rattled round them.

  Seamus felt one hiss by his head as The General came around, fighting the bit. The last men left in camp were shouting. Wanting to know where the gunfire was coming from. A second bullet came whining in.

  And with it, Seamus recognized that unmistakable slap of lead against flesh.

  The General staggered sideways, thrashing his head. Fighting the bit. Rearing and bucking. A third slapped the big gray low on the neck, grazing Donegan’s arm where he gripped tightly to control the animal.

  For an instant as the horse settled to all fours and shuddered; Donegan saw him. And blinked. Not believing.

  A hundred yards downstream in the swamp-willow of the north bank stood the Confederate Smith, coolly aiming his Spencer at … at Donegan.

  Not one enemy warrior firing into the wild retreat to the island. Instead, for some murderous reason, the Confederate was flinging lead.

  “There they are! They’re on us now!”

  He heard Beecher’s high voice shouting down by the water. Then raked his heels into The General’s flanks as he watched the Confederate dive into the willows downstream, and splash across to the far end of the island on foot.

  “C’mon, Seamus!”

  O’Roarke was at the water with the three soldiers and Grover, all waving him on. Donegan was the last. Fighting The General around in a crazed circle. Blood drenched his left arm. Some his own, but mostly the big gray’s. It brightened the horse’s left flank like a dark patch, slick and shiny in the growing light of this new day. And Seamus recognized the lung-wheeze that told him the animal was going down.

  Not this horse! his mind cried out, the utter stupidity of it burning through him in angry draughts.

  He laid along the big gray’s neck, stroking, murmuring to have the animal make this one last run for it as he saw the soldiers and his uncle splash across to the island, spraying sand and water in rooster tails. The General pranced round, and as he came full about, Seamus saw them for the first time. He had seen Indians before. On that hot July day at the Crazy Woman Crossing.

  At the bottom of a crude jut of land on the far side of Lodge Trail Ridge.

  And during their nonstop charges on the hayfield corral.

  But none of that had prepared him for what materialized out of the west. Coming round the far bend of the river. Like disciplined cavalry. Row upon row upon row of the naked, gleaming chests heaving behind the bobbing, snorting heads of their ponies.

  And Seamus was the last left to cross.

  Suddenly the big gray settled, and shuddered, still on his legs. The General turned his head, snapping at the reins. Donegan fed the horse more, loosening his grip. Then he was off without having to nudge another heel into the bloody flanks.

  More lead sang overhead as he flung himself alongside the horse’s neck, hooves tearing into the sandy riverbed toward the shallow, beckoning water. More bullets from the Confederate, hidden now in the willows at the far end of the island.

  Mixed with more and more rifle-fire from some snipers who ran and shot, ran some more and fired again as they tore down the near bank.

  The horse stumbled, almost going down in the riverbed as it hit the soft sand. Spray and grit kicked up by the slashing hooves as it carried Donegan to the island. Closer and closer he could see Grover’s face. Uncle Liam’s in the growing light of new day. They were standing now, rifles at their shoulders. Covering his run for it. Shouting too, though he could not hear them. Many more of the scouts waving him on.

  He held tight to that horse. Feeling the life pouring from the animal as he strained for the island. Then suddenly sensed the sky scooping him out of the saddle as his hands ripped loose of the bloody mane.

  Helpless, he realized the gray had gone down and he was spinning through the air. The ground above and the sky beneath him as he hit the sand, tumbling into the brush.

  More lead sang into swamp-willow where he lay. From the far end of the island.

  Seamus painfully parted some of the brush and peered out. Seeing the Confederate’s dirty face and the stained-tooth smile disappearing behind some far willows a hundred yards away.

  Might as well be a mile now.

  Then he sighed, knowing for better or worse he had reached the island with the others. For the first time recognizing the pain shouting from every part of his body.

  Yet pain nowhere near what he felt in his heart as he stared thirty feet away, watching The General roll agonizingly on his side, legs thrashing, still galloping his way into death.

  Having carried his master this last, mad, throat-hollering charge into the face of the enemy. One last, bloody charge into the maw of death itself.

  Chapter 16

  Sergeant William McCall had to admit, it was one fine sight this new day, watching the sunrise play light off the lances and scalplocks and colorful streamers, feathers tied to rifle-barrels brandished by the warriors as they came on, circling the north side of the island, dropping to the far side of their ponies, hanging by a heel and a wrist tied in the mane, firing, yelling, lobbing hissing arrows among the frightened, milling horses.

  If he hadn’t seen it with his own eyes, the veteran wouldn’t have believed it. During the war McCall had reached the rank of colonel among his native Pennsylvania unit, breveted brigadier-general for gallantry in action during the siege of Petersburg. It was now as Forsyth’s first sergeant that Billy McCall was about to get a taste of just how bloody war on the frontier could get.

  Almost like the ground itself sprouted the hostiles. Appearing out of nowhere. Growing out of the thickets, from the streambed itself. Atop every hill, in every direction. Every mouth screeching their death-songs.

  Nothing but the echo of hammering hooves there one minute. The next, a riverbed filled with screeching, painted horsemen sweeping by the island. McCall thought he could actually feel the earth trembling beneath his feet, and wondered if it was the thousands of hooves. Or the rattle of his own knees.

  “Make every cartridge worth it, boys!” he hollered. “Make every one worth one of these screaming bastards!”

  Like the cool veterans they were, McCall and Grover and O’Roarke had covered the retreat to the island, carbines cracking on the still dawn air amid the noise of man and animal suddenly finding no place left to run.

  Near the upstream end of the sandbar, four of the scouts hung back, hugging the shadows beneath an overhanging riverbank. Harrington. Gantt. Burke. And old man Farley. They had chosen to remain hidden at the bank when the charge came.

  One by one as the men had reached the island, the scouts tied off their horses to the willow and yanked saddles from their backs as the first wave of brown horsemen barreled round the far bend of the river. Then hurled themselves down in the tall grass and swamp-willow.

  The wave split at the west end of the island, at a disadvantage as they had to veer north sharply to drop off the bank into the dry riverbed. In this first, circling charge, the trio of marksmen under the eroded bank did their worst damage, spilling half a dozen to the sand in the first explosion of rifle-fire. More in the second wave of horsemen. Brown-skinned warriors crawling, wounded and bleeding up the dry wash, into the willow and plum.

  Then as quickly
as they had come in a united front, the chargers pulled off, followed by riderless ponies still caught up in the chase. The scouts had broken the hostiles’ concerted charge. Dead and wounded warriors lay less than the length of two arms from the white men. The fifty had forced the horsemen back to their old way of fighting, the circle. Each warrior alone with his medicine against the white men hunkered down on the grassy island.

  “Dig in! Dig in, dammit!” Forsyth was hollering, as the bravest riders came round for a second trip along the north bank of the island.

  Beecher and Billy himself took up the call.

  “Two feet down! Two feet … keep digging!”

  Behind each horse and mule the men scraped at the sand, grabbing up chunks of grass and knotted roots to claw their way down.

  “Two foot deep!” McCall shouted at a group of riflemen. “Long enough for you to get down in!”

  Round and round the first wave circled the island: yipping like coyotes on a spree, waving blankets, firing their bows and rifles, the whole parade a blur of wild color.

  Down they tore into the riverbed, racing past the north shore of the island, across the riverbed to leap their ponies onto the south bank. Up the south bank and into the riverbed once again. Firing from beneath their snorting ponies’ necks. Arrows, but mostly rifle and pistol-fire. Each one hanging from the far side of his little pony.

  While the scouts’ repeaters kept up a steady racket, hooves pounded the dry riverbed in a thunder of terror and noise, screeching matched only by the cries of the wounded horses as the animals reared and fought their handlers with each new bullet wound. Amid it all the mad curses muddied with grunts of angry, scared men, scrambling and scratching at the sand.

  “Dig in while we still can!” Forsyth continued to instruct.

  “Drop the horses!” Beecher was coolly hollering. “Drop the damned horses!”

  Squeals of the frightened animals blocked out most sound now as the horses struggled, bolted, tearing back, kicking up sand as they went down.

  All along the length of the island cracked the sharp blasts of the Colt pistols. Eerie, humanlike screaming of horses as their riders shot bullets into their heads, bringing the big animals down in a gritty spray of sand. One by one the men fought alone. Leading more of the fighting horses up to the selected place, each animal bolting against the smell of blood, eyes rolling, nostrils flaring. Biting, flinging phlegm and piss as they went down in the sand. All legs still fighting as a second bullet crashed into their brains.

  “Watch the legs! Outta the way of the legs!” McCall ordered, watching as two of the scouts were sent sailing into the shallow river by kicking legs.

  “Better hurt by them horses than them red niggers!” another scout growled at McCall as he danced his way between the struggling legs of a mule and hunkered down behind his Spencer.

  McCall scampered away through the tall grass, reaching Sharp Grover’s side. He collapsed behind a dying horse, plainly hearing the slashing quirts slapping pony rumps as the horsemen tore past. More sound now. Frightened voices filling the air above the island. Profane, desperate prayers. The cries of men hit and bleeding.

  Billy figured the odds were damned good there were some of these good men dying, if not already dead.

  “They got us outnumbered ten to one,” McCall growled as he watched the young Irishman come tumbling to rest in the brush, the gray stallion half in the stream, thrashing at the sand and trying to rise as its blood seeped from half a dozen holes into the shallow water.

  Beyond Donegan, others continued to struggle to bring their rearing, plunging animals down to form breastworks. These cries of wounded horses, the old cavalryman again marveled, so much like a child’s cry of terror.

  Sharp Grover snorted and tore loose a big cud of tobacco from a dark-leafed plug. “More’n likely, Sergeant—we’re on the downside of twenty-to-one odds.”

  “Damn!” McCall whispered as he turned away, watching more of the scouts plopping down behind their dying horses, laying their hot-barreled Spencers over the quivering bodies of their weary, lathered mounts. Powdersmoke and clouds of spurting, yellow dust, punctuated by jabs of muzzle-flash obscured his vision for a moment.

  Another group at the end of the island shouted.

  “Hold your fire!” Forsyth was up and yelling.

  His voice was all but drowned out by the growing shouts of the Indians.

  Then McCall stood, hurrying among the men, joining Lieutenant Beecher, ordering the men to hold for the command.

  “Volley-fire when ordered, boys!” Billy was shouting, thinking back on how time and again he had watched disciplined infantry hold against bloody Confederate cavalry charges. “Reload! Full magazines, goddammit!” Knowing in the pit of him they could hold their own. Knowing they had to. Sensing that they would find out within a matter of seconds. “When the major hollers, fire by volley!”

  Liam brushed past McCall as the sergeant scanned the far shore and the brown bodies dotting the ground of the first skirmish.

  “You don’t keep down, they’ll have to fit you for a new hat-size, O’Roarke!”

  The big Irishman snorted as he skidded to a stop beside his young nephew, lying dazed in the willow and high grass at the side of the island. Craning about, he flung his bull-bellow at the sergeant.

  “Jest like Roderick Dhu’s whistle raised his army of Highlanders from the ground itself, Sergeant McCall!” Liam announced. “These red bastards spring from nowhere like Dhu’s fighting Scots!”

  McCall whirled, hearing Forsyth arguing with a handful of those hunkered close by. They pressed the major to look at his options. But one way remained open—the narrow gorge through which they had entered the valley. Make a run for it now. When Forsyth had him enough of their whimpering, he calmly shouted them down as the circling horsemen tightened their noose.

  “Damned evident that our enemy wanted us to head that way, isn’t it?”

  McCall watched a lot of the faces turn sheepish.

  “They left us that way to escape, can’t you see? Good chance of a deadly ambush in that damned gorge.”

  More of them grumbled, some turning back to their breastworks.

  “We’ll stay here, Major!” Fred Beecher shouted.

  “Damn right we will——” Forsyth whirled about with the rest of them when the faint bugle call sounded upstream.

  “Must be soldiers in the——”

  “——stupid horse’s ass!”

  “Ain’t n’other white men ’cept’n us!”

  “——white renegades, ’swhat it is!”

  “We may be cornered, boys—but we aren’t beaten … not by a long chalk. Besides, we’ve got plenty of water here.”

  “Don’t waste your time arguing—use it to dig in, men. Pair up, covering one another—and finish digging in while you can!”

  Then McCall understood why Forsyth had suggested digging in. The ground trembled beneath McCall, causing him to look upstream to the west. Another charge was coming.

  “Shit!”

  “Look at them fancy red bastards, will ye?”

  “Holy … holy Keee-rist!”

  Downstream floated the clear, brassy notes of a cavalry charge. No mistaking it.

  “Some white bastard’s gone over to the blanket!” Grover hissed angrily. “Heard them Arapahos had a renegade with ’em, Billy.”

  “Knows his bugle calls, don’t he?”

  “Let’s hope I get a chance to stare that bastard in the eye!” Sharp growled, the warriors less than three hundred yards away. “I’m going over with those boys in the riverbank yonder. Over there the bastards will ride close enough to shake hands.”

  “You’ll get your shot at that bugler.”

  “Damn right I will,” Grover spat as he crabbed off across the grass and sand, splashing water at the edge of the river.

  Savage war-cries hit the island first. Then McCall watched the Indians open fire as Grover reached the riverbank. A concerted, sustained rifle-fire as d
isciplined as any infantry unit could boast.

  On the upstream end of the island, the bullets began falling among the last few horses and pack-mules tied within the willow. Some of the brown-skinned horsemen had abandoned their ponies, preferring to dive among the reeds and willow along both sides of the sandy riverbed. Stamping and snorting, crying out and fighting their restraints, one by one the horses thrashed on the bloody grass in the soft new light of coming day.

  Yet the scouts had exacted their pound of horseflesh as well. Out on the sandy streambed and in the river itself lay the dying, squealing war-ponies. From time to time a scout brought down an unhorsed warrior as the Indian attempted to scamper to cover.

  “Culver’s dead!” a voice called out. “Bullet in the head.”

  From here and there on the island, men shouted that others nearby had been hit. Or a wounded man himself cried out in his private pain above the noise of the rifle-fire and orders and warrior chants and screams of the dying animals.

  “I ain’t gonna stay here and be shot down like a dog!”

  McCall wheeled, finding Nichols shouting at Beecher as the lead from creekbank snipers flew overhead.

  “C’mon … any of you! Try for the bank with me!” Nichols implored, flecks of spittle dried at the corners of his fleshy lips.

  “I’ll go!” shouted one.

  “Me too!”

  “I’m goin’—we stay here, we’ll get burned alive for sure by these bastards!”

  “Let’s git!” hollered another.

  And just as there was a dozen of them rising from the grass and swamp-willow, Forsyth rose amid the hail.

  “Stay where you are!” he hollered above the tumult, waving his pistol. “It’s our only chance.”

  “We’re going!” Nichols screamed, turning to leave.

  “I’ll shoot any man who attempts to leave the island!”

  Nichols wheeled, his carbine ’volving up at his hip. Quaking dangerously.

  “I’ll shoot any deserters the major misses!” McCall hollered as he scrambled up on the other side of the group. “You try for the bank—you will be roasted on those bastards’ fires!”