the Ferguson Rifle (1973)

by L'amour, Louis - Talon-Chantry

  Frogs down below, and the usual coyotes, but the light is deceitful. You'll have to keep a wary eye for trouble." Taking my rifle, I went out to the perimeter of the knoll and looked down over the prairie below.

  All seemed to be empty and still. In the darkness a good bit was yet visible, and I walked slowly, halfway around the camp, then quickly doubled back and came around from the opposite direction.

  Heath added a few small chunks to the fire to keep the coals alive for morning, then turned in.

  The camp was still. If an attack was to come, the obvious place was from out of the creek bed where nothing could be seen. One by one I checked off the sleeping positions of my friends. Talley, Ebitt, Sandy, Kemble, Shanagan, Heath, and the Otoe.

  The time drew on, and my ears became attuned to the night. I moved off, never circling the same way twice, never completing a circle, for I wished to establish no pattern, no way I could be timed. In the far off east there seemed to be a lightening of the sky, but it was early for that.

  For several minutes I was conscious of something wrong before it occurred to me that the frogs had ceased their endless croaking. The night was suddenly silent.

  Near a boulder I squatted, one toe slightly behind the other, listening.

  Nothing... no sound.

  I turned my head. Should I awaken them? I did not want to make them lose their sleep because of my own foolishness. I could awaken one of them... Talley, perhaps.

  Talley... Ebitt... Sandy.

  Kemble... Davy Shanagan, Isaac Heath, and the-- The Otoe was gone!

  Horses... first they would stampede the horses. That much I had learned. Swiftly, I ran to them. They were nervous, heads up, nostrils distended.

  "Shanagan," I said.

  And a shadow moved... a horse snorted, and I sidestepped as a darker shadow lunged toward me. There was the gleam of firelight on a knifeblade, and I chopped, short and hard, with the butt of my rifle.

  He was coming low and fast and the butt thunked against his skull and he went down hard. Turning swiftly as another came in over the low mound, I fired.

  My shot was from the hip, for there was no chance to aim. It caught the Indian and turned him but my hands went automatically for bullet and powder.

  All was suddenly still. Unused to combat, I had expected the clash of arms, the scream of wounded, the stabbing flame of shooting... and there was nothing.

  Stepping back among the horses, I went from one to the other, whispering to quiet them down. From where I stood, I could see the beds of the others, all empty.

  Something stirred near me and I turned swiftly. Davy's voice was scarcely breathed. "You all right?" "The Otoe was gone. I went to the horses, thinking they might try to stampede them." "You done right." He could see the body on the ground about a dozen feet away. "You got one?" "Two, I think. I shot one over there." I started forward and Shanagan caught my arm.

  "Uh-uh. They'll still be out there." There was a faint lemon tinge to the far-off sky now. We stood waiting, listening.

  An owl hooted... inquiringly. After a bit, the same owl.

  Davy's lips at my ear whispered, "Wonderin' where this one is." The sky lightened, red streaks shot up, and high in the heavens a cloud blushed faintly at the earth below.

  We waited, not moving, not knowing what might come. The Indians might press the attack, might draw away to wait for a better moment. The red man is under no compulsion to continue a fight. He does not insist upon victory at any cost, and he has time. He is under no compulsion to win now.

  Now the sky brightened quickly. We moved to the perimeter, seeking firing positions. The plain below was innocent of life.

  Degory Kemble moved over to us. "There's nobody in sight," he said. "My guess is they've pulled out." He saw the Indian lying in the dust and moved over to him. With his toe he turned him over, holding his rifle ready for a shot if the warrior proved to be playing possum.

  He was quite dead. One side of his head was bloody, crushed by my blow. I turned away, and looked out over the prairie.

  "You want his hair?" Davy asked. "He's yours." "No," I said. "It's a barbaric custom." "This here is a barbaric land. You get yourself a few scalps and the Injuns will respect you more." "Take it if you wish." "No. By rights it's yours." Kemble carefully broke the dead warrior's arrows, then his bow. His knife he tossed to me and that I kept. "Trade it for something," Kemble said. "It's worth a good beaver pelt." "I thought I shot one," I said. "He came in right over there." "They're like prairie dogs," Talley commented. "If you don't kill them right dead, they're gone into some hole." We walked over to where I'd seen the Indian, and suddenly Talley pointed. "Hit him, all right. See yonder?" There was a spot of blood, very red, splashed upon a leaf. Just beyond we found two more.

  We followed no farther for the trail of blood vanished into thick brush, and he might be lying down there, waiting for us.

  "Lung shot, I'd say," Kemble said. "You nailed him proper." He looked at me. "For a pilgrim, you sure take hold. That's as good shootin' as a man can do." "I didn't want to kill him," I said.

  Then I paused. That was not quite true, because I certainly had not wanted him to kill me, and it was one or the other.

  "If you'd not shot him, he'd have thought you a coward or a poor warrior. He'd despise you for it. You better think this through because there ain't no two ways about it. You got to be ready to shoot to kill or you better go back home." He was right, of course, and had not men always fought? We walked back to the fire where coffee was on. Bob Sandy came in. He had gone stalking and found nothing.

  "They pulled out," he said regretfully.

  "They're no fools. The Otoe probably figured with a tenderfoot on watch it would be easy." He grinned at me. "You fooled 'em, you surely did." "I was fortunate," I said, "and scared." "You bet you was," Sandy said, "an' you better stay scared. Time comes you stop bein' scared, you better go back east, because you won't last long after." We sat around the fire and ate, and looking around at their faces, I thought of Homer and the Greeks camped on the shore waiting to advance on Troy.

  These were men of the same kind, men of action, fighting men, no better and no worse than those.

  CHAPTER 4

  Nothing anyone can say can tell you how it was upon that land of grass. Horizon to horizon, upon every side, it stretched to infinity, and overhead the enormous vault of the sky.

  We plodded westward, and the land unrolled before us. More and more, as we moved away from the settlements, there was wild game, the buffalo in increasing numbers, and antelope often in herds of sixty or seventy.

  At streams where we stopped for water, we often found the tracks of bear, occasionally of lion.

  Wolves and the small prairie wolf called the coyote lurked in the vicinity of the buffalo, watching for a chance to pick off a calf or one too old to put up much of a fight.

  We rode warily, for there was no security even upon the open plains, because such openness was only seeming and not a reality. My boyhood became important, for then my eye had developed a quickness that became useful once more, and I was swift to perceive any unexpected and unnatural motion. My attention soon became adjusted to wind movements in the grass so that I would quickly note any other. Yet I looked for other things as well, for the scholar in me would not yield.

  For some time, being a student of history, I had been excited by the influence of climate upon history, and especially upon the movements of peoples. The sudden appearance of the Huns or the Goths in Europe, for example, and the earlier migrations of Celtic peoples... what occasioned these moves? Was it the pressure of other tribes, increasing in numbers? Or was it drought?

  Or the ever-present movement toward the sun?

  Several times we saw the tracks of unshod ponies, and from their direction and purposeful movement, it was easy to see they were not wild ponies, but ridden by Indians. During this time, I began to see that in the Ferguson rifle I possessed a kind of insurance the others did not have.

  Al
so I was having second thoughts about my clothing. I must have something more fitting for travel, but instead of discarding the clothes I wore, I must keep them for use on ceremonial occasions. The American Indian, I recalled, was ever a man of dignity, with a love of formality, and it behooved me to approach him in a like manner.

  The Otoe was gone, departed with his friends whom he had invited to the raid. I was still astonished at the suddenness of it, and the equally abrupt end. I had expected more.

  Since the beginning of time, men have been moving into empty spaces, and we in America were no different than those others, the Goths, the Mongols, the Indo-Aryans. We were but the last of the great migrations, and I wondered as I rode ... how much choice did we really have? Plants move rapidly into areas for which they are best adapted, and human migrations seem to follow the same principles.

  For three days we rode westward, and we left behind the long grasses. Not yet had we reached the shortgrass country that lay still farther west. The tall bluestem we had seen on previous days now disappeared except in the bottoms along the creeks. Judging by the grass, the climate was hotter, and much drier ... wheatgrass, little bluestem and occasionally patches of buffalo grass and blue grama.

  This land must have seen few Indians until the arrival of the horse, for the distances were great and water was increasingly scarce.

  We rode to the Platte for water. The riverbed was wide and sandy, the river itself was shallow, and the water somewhat brackish. We drank, then rode back from the river and camped in a small cluster of trees on rising ground with a good field of fire in all directions.

  While the others made camp and Sandy went with Heath to graze the horses, I cut out my hunting jacket and a pair of leggings. The buckskin was not properly prepared, nearly impossible to do while on the march. At home there had been a smooth log over which to throw the skin when scraping away the fat and membrane. On the trail I had to make do as best I could with what offered. Nor could I soak the hide in water and wood ashes for three days or so. I did put the hide to soak each time we made camp, and then scraped the hair loose as best I could. We had kept the brains of the antelope and these had been dried. Now I stewed them with some fat and rubbed the mixture into the hide. When that was completed, I stretched the hide and then rolled it carefully to keep for a couple of days longer before I finished it with scraping and smoking.

  This was done by Indian women in the villages, but I must do it myself or go without, and I wished to save what clothing I had for those special occasions. The life of the Indian, whether man or woman, was never easy. To subsist in wild country called for much work, and for the squaws at least it was an unceasing task.

  Degory Kemble rode into camp just as the sun had set, bringing with him the best cuts of meat from a buffalo calf.

  When he was squatted by the fire, gnawing on a bone, he glanced up. "I saw something yonder," he said, "that shapes up for trouble." We waited, looking at him. He chewed for a moment, then said, "Moccasin tracks... boots among 'em. Maybe three white men, Spanish men, I'd say." "What's that to us?" Heath asked.

  "They don't look kindly on folks coming into theirthe neighborhood," Talley explained.

  "Bonaparte sort of took Louisiana from the Spanish, then sold it to us. The Spanish have a settlement or two

  own yonder and they throw anybody into prison who comes into theirthe country." He swept a hand in a wide arc.

  "They claim most of this here, an' nobody ever did decide rightly where the boundary was. I heard of some French soldiers in Colorado ... hunting gold. The Spanish set the Utes on them." "Then we had best be careful," I suggested.

  "Do you think they've seen us?" "Doubt it," Kemble commented, "but there's a big party, maybe forty in all. One of them might have hunted far enough east to see us." We ate in silence, for there was much to think about.

  We were far from others of our kind, and could expect no help if trouble developed. The Spanish and the Indians had villages not too far off, but we were seven men alone, as if on another planet.

  Yet there is a strength implicit in such a situation, for having no one on which to rely, we relied upon no one. Our problem was our own, and what must be done we would do ourselves, and looking about me, I decided that had I selected each man, I could have done no better.

  These men were typical of what I had seen among those floating down the Ohio, crossing the Alleghenies or the Appalachians, coming west by whatever means... they were men who had chosen themselves. Each in his own mind had made the decision to go west. No king, no queen or general or president had said "Go west," but each man in his own way had decided, and finding what they faced had not turned back.

  Looking upon these men, I knew that I, who had attended lectures at the Sorbonne and Heidelberg, who had himself lectured at Cambridge and William and Mary, I who had lunched with President Jefferson, who was a friend to Captain Meriwether Lewis, Henry Dearborn, Dr. William Thornton, Gilbert Stuart, and Count de Volney, I had at last come home. These were my people, this was my country.

  Isaac Heath turned his head to me. "Is that true, Chantry? Is there no border?" "None has been defined. That's one reason for the Lewis and Clark expedition. Not only to see what lies out there, but to establish our presence in the area." Davy Shanagan appeared at the edge of the firelight. "Somebody comin'," he said softly.

  "Five or six, maybe." His words were spoken over an empty fire, for each of us vanished ghostlike into the surrounding darkness. I, fortunately, had the presence of mind to retain my coffee. With the Ferguson rifle in my right hand, I drank coffee from the cup in my left.

  A voice called out... in Spanish, and I replied in the same tongue, stepping quickly to the right as I did so. No shot was fired, and we heard the riders coming nearer. Two Spanish men, and four Indians.

  Stepping into the firelight, I invited them to dismount. They did so, striding up to the fire. The man in the lead looked at me coolly. "I'm Captain Luis Fernandez!" he said. "I'm an officer of Spain." I bowed slightly. I could see he was somewhat surprised at my garb. "It's a pleasure to meet you, se@nor," I replied, "so far from home. On behalf of the American people, I welcome you to our country." There was nothing to be lost, I decided, in landing the first blow. That he was shocked was obvious.

  "Your country?" he exclaimed indignantly.

  "But this is Spanish territory!" The others of my party moved in from the shadows, all except Shanagan and Bob Sandy, who wisely remained on watch.

  "Will you join us in some coffee, captain?" I suggested. Then I added, "I wasn't aware that your king's claims extended so far. In any event, the Louisiana Territory has been sold to the United States by the Emperor Napoleon." He stared at me in total disbelief. Yet my assurance left him somewhat uncertain, as he accepted the coffee. Glancing from one to the other of us, he suddenly burst out, "I don't believe it! It's impossible!" "It's true," I replied, and then added, "Under other conditions, captain, I'd resent your disbelief, but I'll overlook it under the circumstances." Before he could continue, I went on. "By the secret Treaty of San Ildefonso, the territory was returned to France. My government learned of this and began negotiations with the emperor. As you know, the slave revolt in Haiti and impending war with England left him in need of funds. The Senate approved the treaty and on the twentieth of December 1803, my government took formal possession.

  "To repeat, Captain Fernandez, we welcome you as our guest." His face flushed with irritation. Ebitt was grinning openly, and both Kemble and Talley had difficulty in restraining their amusement.

  "Nonsense!" he exploded, then added quickly, "In any event, this isn't a part of the Louisiana Territory. It's administered from Santa Fe." "I understand your surprise, captain," I replied gently. "In such wide open country, one often rides farther than one realizes, but you're now well within the territory of the United States." The captain was not pleased. He had come, I was sure, to order us out of the country or to place us under arrest. Communication was slow and must come by sailin
g ship from Spain to Mexico, from Mexico City to Santa Fe, and no doubt Fernandez had been absent several weeks.

  "I believe none of this," he said sharply, "and in any event, you're under arrest. You'll be taken to Santa Fe where your case will be disposed of.

  in due time." I smiled at him. "Under arrest, captain?

  I could as easily arrest you, but the offense is trivial. I'm sure the amount of grass your horses have eaten will not cause us to suffer too much, but as for arresting us, you cannot. And captain, we will not be arrested." He threw his cup to the ground. "You'll surrender, or be taken by force!" "Take us, then." Solomon Talley spoke quietly. "Take us, captain." "I have forty men!" Fernandez threatened.

  "Surrender at once or we'll kill you all!" I smiled at him, then glanced at Kemble and Talley. "Forty? The number won't divide evenly, Kemble, so I guess it will be first come, first served." "I'll get my share," Ebitt said.

  Fernandez turned abruptly and strode to his horse. The others had said nothing, but as he turned to go, one of them lifted a pistol.

  "I wouldn't," Heath warned, his rifle on its target. "I just wouldn't at all." The pistol was lowered, slowly, carefully. Then they rode away into the darkness.

  "I hate to leave such a good camp," I said.

  "Leave it? You don't figure on runnin'?" Ebitt demanded.

  "No, I don't. Right yonder"--I pointed back of us--"ab forty yards back there's a few big, old cottonwood deadfalls. They fell just right for a breastwork. I ran upon it while I was gathering firewood.

  "There're several living trees, and there's room inside for ourselves and our horses, a kind of natural fort. I think it might be wise to leave our fire burning and just pull back." We did just that, and at the lower end of our natural redoubt, we found the ground fell away slightly in an area where the thick branches of two trees met. There was room enough to hide our horses there, out of sight and safe from stray bullets. In a matter of minutes, we had moved, added fresh fuel to our fire, and settled down behind our breastwork.