by Zane Grey
Anderson drew a pistol on that bold savage and at the crack he appeared to step, to sag, then melt into the ground. Again Anderson flattened his body in the depression and stretched eager bloody hands to his rifle. At the same moment he became aware that the engagement had become general around the circle.
If cool judgment had not been Anderson’s before this moment, he became conscious that he possessed it now. His position was favorable for the time being, and owing to the depression in the ground, the broadwheel-tire and the ten-inch log that he had taken the precaution to lay against it, he did not run so great a risk of being hit. And before he was through he would account for a good many dead devils. Smith, too, was partially protected in the same way. Smith, however, was a younger man, and not well versed in savage warfare. He let terror and fury dominate him in turn. Whereupon Anderson, as a last admonition, reached a brawny hand to Smith’s back and pressed him hard, face and all, to the ground. That done, he grimly addressed himself to the fray.
Flares of light, red spurts, gliding black forms across the silver aisles of moonlight, and a now incessant thudding of lead against the wheels, hubs and bodies of the wagon attested to the swelling of the attack to a point where the inevitable rush was imminent. How wisely and evilly some chief or renegade had coached these Kiowa braves! Surely burning within them was the wild lust to rush to close quarters, to shoot and tomahawk and scalp, to revel in blood. It seemed long in coming, yet perhaps all the fighting had taken only a few minutes.
Anderson wasted no shots. As the savages grew bolder and more numerous he waited until one came into the moonlight, or slid crouching behind a tree trunk, or crawled closer to shoot within a few yards of the wagons. Then the frontiersman sent a hot slug through this Kiowa’s vitals. He alternated the buffalo gun with the seven-shot revolving Colt. And he kept the second Colt fully loaded, and his two pistols, ready for the onslaught when it came. If these Kiowas held off much longer, and if his comrades all around were doing stern execution, there might be a chance of driving them back. No Indians had ever long been proof against a steady withering fire. But there appeared to be a thousand of the red devils. Anderson piled dead Indians in a row along the front of his wagon. Smith, too, accounted for one out of every two shots. Anderson’s rifles grew hot. He sank back to load them and then pick up the second Colt.
Suddenly Smith let out so deep and horrible an utterance that Anderson heard it despite the roar of gun-fire. He sank back and down. Releasing his rifle, he groped a hand to feel for his comrade. But Anderson did not lift his face from the grass. When he touched Smith he felt a slight tremor pass out of the burly form. Anderson moved his hand, feeling for his comrade’s face. It came in contact, however, with his head, and then thick hair wet with something hot and slippery. Hastily Anderson snatched away his hand and wiped it on the grass. For a moment, stern, hard border man that he was, he quailed before the unknown which Smith had met and which soon must be his doom. Yet only for an instant. The unquenchable hatred of a Westerner rolled like a wave through his being and the deadly, cold sickness passed. He gripped his rifle again, raging and reckless now, and peered out into the smoky fire-spotted moonlit night.
He saw a dark round head protrude from behind a tree. It must have belonged to the Kiowa who had killed Smith. Swift as a flash Anderson aligned his buffalo gun with it and fired. Smoke blinded him but he heard a crack as of a melon being split open against the tree. A moment later, as the smoke drifted away, he espied a dark form huddled against the tree trunk, and the slant of a gun in the moonlight.
Then once more Anderson addressed all his faculties to what confronted him. Tongues of flame leaped out of the shade, out of the brush, out of the moon-blanched space. But he did not see any red gun-belchings from under either wagon to his left and right. Dead or driven back were those comrades who had helped him withstand the brunt of the attack on that side.
An almost unbroken, rattling, banging roar hung over the swale. It must have come from four times fifty rifles. Certainly it ringed the circle of wagons. The scout had expected to see a wagon with its inflammable canvas and bedding burst into flames. But this had not occurred. He kept taking snap shots at the flashes out there. Less deliberate, wearing under the strain but not breaking, Anderson fought on.
The time came when he could no longer hear. Then he remembered a slight sensation, as if he had knocked his head against the wagon-bed. He felt light and queer. Meanwhile he could see as well as ever, and knew that another stage of the attack was under way. Dark forms flashed across the moonlit aisles, too fleetly for him to get a bead on. The Kiowas were running, darting, gliding along the side of the circle. He saw them flash by with incredible fleetness, firing under the wagons as they ran. He knew they were yelling now, though he could not hear a sound. What strange silence locked him within its walls! His hearing had gone. Then he felt warm blood creeping down his neck.
The devils raced to and fro, from black shadow to silver lane. Anderson cursed his clumsy aim. His hands felt thick and slow. But he fired as fast as he could aim and work the infernally awkward gun. Presently he would leap out there in the open and club some of those gliding demons to death. Closer to the wagons they ran. They would burst out of the shade into the moonlight and be gone as swiftly. Most of these fleeting Indians were armed with bows and arrows. Anderson felt the wrench of an arrow as it tore through his coat. He became aware then that the increasing flashes of red came from the grass and brush, low down, and that the running lines of savages were back of the line of fire. If he had only guessed that sooner! The dizziness persisted. Closer crept the red-spurting line, and puffs of powder smoke almost reached the wheels. The Indians were crawling up on the wagons. There were enough of them to form a compact line of attack and still leave numbers to run and race and shout from behind. The end seemed near. Anderson rallied his clouding faculties to meet it. He thought only to kill more of these ruthless foes. They were closing in. The red flashes crept out of the shadow into the moonlit space between wagons and timber. Anderson emptied his Colt, and dropping it he drew his six-barreled pistols and emptied them. That left him a seven-shot Colt rifle fully loaded. While he fired this he felt the rend of hot lead in his flesh somewhere. But neither strength nor will was impaired.
Turning the heavy weapon, he seized the hot barrel with hands that made of it a willow wand and crawled out from under the wagon. Leaping erect he made at the dark rising figures and swung upon their shining skulls. But he seemed to have leaped violently against a wall. The brilliant moonlight strangely changed. Where was the clubbed rifle? His nerveless hands! A staggering shock! What?—The moonlight failed—all black—night!——
Cynthia Bowden crawled under her cot inside Bowden’s big canvas-covered wagon. She had just had sharp words with her uncle. Anderson and the men expected an attack from the Indians. Cynthia had been affronted and disgusted at Bowden’s offer of gold to Anderson. All day Bowden had been drinking heavily from a jug he had in the wagon. But liquor had not given him false courage. He was a coward and these Westerners had recognized it.
“To hell with you an’ your gold!” the scout had said in scorn. And now Bowden was crawling about under the wagon, drinking and cursing, raving that he would hitch up and drive back. At last some stern call reduced him to silence.
Cynthia lay there with her head near the foot of the wagon and she listened with palpitating heart. Silence appeared to be settling down. Black shadows of branches of trees barred the moonlit canvas cover. From under the cot she could see out of the rear opening of the shelter. Bowden had forgotten to close it. Stars were shining. Tips of foliage looked silvered; the top of the next wagon loomed close over her head. What would become of her if the men were all killed? It could happen. Anderson had felt it might. Cynthia had liked and respected this rugged, uncouth plainsman. She could read his mind. She knew what would happen to her if she were carried into captivity. Horrible! She would take her own life. There was a pistol somewhere in the wag
on. But could she commit what her religion held a sin? Cynthia wavered and resorted to prayer and hope.
All silent outside! How boding, formidable, hateful! She could not bear to lie there waiting, waiting for she knew not what. Bowden bumped around under the wagon. Perhaps he was feeling for the false bottom that contained the gold. Fool! Could he not feel the imminence of some terrible thing?
Cynthia’s delicate sensitiveness registered many sensations—the smell of smoke from afar, the faint whisper of men on guard, the rattle of a little stone falling, the splash of a fish in the brook, and vague undefined sounds and feelings she could not name. Like a heavy blanket these sensations weighted down her breast. They gave a tangible substance to the brooding, charged atmosphere. Something awful was about to come. What Anderson realized from his knowledge of the West she felt with all a woman’s inscrutable power of divination.
So her waiting, surcharged faculties were prepared for a sudden bursting gun-shot, almost under the wagon, then a second bang, and a racking strangled scream from Bowden. Involuntarily she let slip a piercing shriek. Then she lay stiff with horror listening to her uncle’s boots playing a tattoo on the wagon wheel, in his death agony.
A hoarse whisper, not too faint for Cynthia to detect its grim portent, came from under the next wagon. She wrung her hands in despair. She gasped. Her heart seemed to swell and labor over its function. Her blood flowed sluggishly and cold. What could she do? Why in God’s name had she ever come on this mad journey? And into her consciousness flashed a thought of what might have been, a futile remorse which only her present misery could ever have wrenched from her. But if she had only listened to Stephen when he had come to her, shamed with his guilt but manful enough to confess it, and importuned her to elope, to trust him. In this menacing moment Cynthia saw her brother in as evil a light as he had forced her to see Stephen Latch. If she had only listened to the voice of love instead of pride and jealousy! Had it only been two brief years since she had flayed Latch and driven him away? And here she, Cynthia Bowden, heiress and beauty, a runaway from home and courtiers, lay wretched and terror-stricken in a wagon out on the wild plains, surrounded by blood-thirsty savages! It was inconceivable and insupportable. But the hands that dug into her breasts proclaimed the truth.
She thought that she must scream out to rend the unbearable silence. But as she bit her lips to hold back another shriek there rose out of the night stillness a cry so wild and weird, so ringing and sharp, swelling and sustaining its tremendous note of doom that it curdled her blood and froze the marrow in her bones. It shocked Cynthia into a dazed state if not an actual faint.
Reports of guns sounded far away. They came closer and clearer, until she localized them all around her. The attack had begun. Anderson’s judgment was vindicated, as had retribution overtaken Stover and Bowden, upon whom rested the responsibility of this massacre. For how could a handful of white men hold out indefinitely against hundreds of savages? Cynthia heard the fire of guns increase, the ping of bullets, and the quivering thud of something into the sides of the wagon. She heard the canvas rip and rip. Some kind of missiles went tearing through the cloth. Forcing herself to face the dreadful issue, she decided that she must find her uncle’s pistol and hold it in readiness to destroy herself when all hope failed. Whereupon she crawled out from under the cot to get to her hands and knees. It was almost as light as day under the canvas. Rents let in glimpses of the moon. She saw an Indian arrow sticking under one of the wooden hoops. This spurred her on to a frantic search for the gun. She could not find it and soon the increasing reports of firearms and the tearing of missiles through canvas drove her back under the cot. Here she was reasonably protected, for the sides of the wagon were heavily boarded. And with eyes tight shut and hands clamped over her ears she lay flat.
Then followed a hideous period of increasing terror. With no means of suicide she had no hope except that a merciful arrow or bullet would find her. Then suddenly a calmness of despair settled over her. What avail all this torture of spirit? She crawled from her covert and sat upon the cot, expecting surely a death-dealing missile would find her there. But not one of the hissing things touched her.
All at once the shots of guns were drowned in a sound so sudden, unexpected, and terrible that she fell flat, as if actually struck a blow. It was not like any sound she had ever conceived. But it issued from throats—from the throats of men, of human beings, of these wild savages. It was the concatenated, staccato mingling of hundreds of shrieks, all different, all pitched high to the limit of vocal power, all pealing forth the same note, a monstrous and appalling revenge. This must be the notorious war-cry of Indians. Cynthia recognized in it the great vengeful cry of a tribe that had been deceived, wronged, robbed, murdered. So Bowden’s caravan and many others as weak, must die for the deeds of white men who had crossed the plains and left havoc in their trails.
Cynthia had the strength to peer out through the slit in the canvas door at the rear. The circle enclosed by the white-tented wagons appeared as light as day. Slim, nimble dark forms were darting here, there, everywhere. Savages! She clutched the flaps to keep from sliding out of the door. And for the time being she was so paralyzed with a new and mortal fright that she could only gaze with magnifying eyes.
Red bursts of flames and puffs of smoke blotted out a part of the silvered circle, and then, as they vanished there, they appeared at another part, at the far end, along the opposite line of wagons, and again in the center. Boom and crack of guns, no longer incessant, were emphasized by being segregated from a whole. She could see along the curve of the inner line of wagons where here and there the wild dark forms came into sight. Some ran out, others to and fro. Four or five dragged something heavy and struggling from under the second wagon next to Bowden’s. Horrid cries pierced her ears. She saw a white man’s face in the moonlight The fiends dragged him, threw him, to stand over his prostrate body and hack with hatchets. Then they closed into a compact bunch, hiding the wretched victim, tore and fought over him, suddenly to leap up and run, waving arms aloft.
Cynthia saw everything at once, like a boy at a circus, only under a vastly different kind of emotion. She was witness to a massacre. She could not move nor even close her eyes. Every instant the number of moving figures increased within the circle. Other white men were dragged out before her horror-stricken gaze, butchered and stripped and left stark in the moonlight. Fewer and fewer grew the red spurts of guns. The battle now had changed again. Bowden’s men, those that were alive, were driven from their posts into the open, there to contend in a hand-to-hand struggle, a few against many.
From under the wagon next to hers, on the outside had burst a continuous fire. Streaks of smoke kept shooting out from the wheels. Then through the narrow gap between the wagons, she saw out on the other side, where a giant leaped into sight, swinging a gleaming object upon savages that rose right out of the ground. Yells and shots did not drown sodden hollow cracks. Her distended sight and stunned faculties still retained power of recognition. That giant was Anderson beating at a pack of savages, like a stag bayed by wolves. Then he ceased his gigantic swings, swayed, and fell, to disappear under a swarm of wriggling Indians.
Suddenly Cynthia’s hands were rudely wrenched from the flaps of canvas. They were spread wide. In the aperture appeared lean dark arms, dark nude shoulders, dark small head. The moonlight fell upon them and upon a barbaric visage—bronze, cruel, sharp features of a savage. His eyes roved from upward glance to downward, then fixed upon her—eyes black as coal, yet burning with a terrific light.
Those hellish orbs and the dark face blurred and faded. Cynthia lost her senses.
When she recovered consciousness she heard and felt the familiar action of the wagon in motion. She opened her eyes, awakening to thoughts: Where was she? What had happened? Why did she lie prone as under a weight on her breast? The canvas let in the sunlight; day had come! Rents and slits in that white canopy showed glimpses of blue sky. She saw an Indian arrow stick
ing in one of the hoop supports. Ah! All flashed into memory with almost stultifying vividness. Her eyes fell shut as if leaded. The wagon train! The still brooding moonlit night! The awesome suspense! The murder of her uncle that initiated the attack of the savages! The stillness changed to internal din—and the massacre; then all returned with violent and unquestionable distinctness. But she had escaped massacre! She felt herself alive. And she opened her eyes to verify that strange idea. She lay on her cot, with feet and hands securely tied, and a scarf bound round her mouth. Captive! Worse than dead! But voices outside, from the driver’s seat, suddenly dispelled memory and its consequent despair. Surely these voices were not the jargon of Indians. She listened, to feel her sore slow heart leap with a wild hope.
“Sprall, I hate to admit it, but the chief, once he had his way, planned and executed a great raid.”
These words were undoubtedly spoken by a well-educated American, and the leisurely drawl and accent proclaimed him a Southerner.
“Wal, he’s got brains, shore, pard Leighton,” replied the man called Sprall. “But I give most of the credit to old Satana—bloody devil that he is. We shore didn’t git off without a scratch, as my own hurt testifies. I’ll be laid up for weeks,—— ——the luck!”
“Man, we got off easy,” scoffed Leighton.
“Say, what you call easy? Waldron daid—an’ I shore wondered how thet chicken-hearted Yankee bank thief got in front of a bullet…. Nigger Jack killed. Keetch crippled, Creik shot through the hand, Augustine packin’ an arrow haid in his thigh, Cornwall hurt—an’ gloryin’ in it—he’s shore a strange boy; an’ Mandrove bad hurt, but he’ll live; an’ Black Hand nursin’ an’ cussin’ a bullet hole…. Let’s see. Thet leaves only the boss an’ you, an’ our rival gunfighters, Texas an’ Lone Wolf, without a scratch…. Altogether, as a band I’d say we got a pretty hard knock.”
