“That one!” Garth shouted when he saw Jeb and Cora trying to make a run for it. “She’s mine!”
In the midst of the horrifying sounds of the slaughter—gunfire, hysterical screaming of the women and horses, and blood-chilling war whoops of the Kiowa—Jeb tried to calm his terrified horse long enough to get his rifle from the saddle sling. With the weapon halfway out of the sling, he looked up to see Joe Leach charging through the milling mass of Indian ponies, straight for Cora. An instant later, Jeb was knocked back a step by the impact of a rifle slug in his chest. Grabbing the saddle horn to keep from falling, he managed to get off one shot with his pistol. The bullet caught Joe in the shoulder, causing him to howl in pain. He jerked on the reins, veering away to avoid a second shot from Jeb.
Fit to explode with anger upon seeing Joe wounded, Garth put another bullet into Jeb’s chest. “Damn you!” he roared as Jeb released the saddle horn and slid to the ground. Cora, screaming in terror, dropped to her knees beside him. Her actions further incensed Garth. He had promised Joe that he would get her back, but seeing the girl lamenting so over Jeb infuriated him. “Get her!” he commanded as his brother, Jesse, rode up. Laughing like a child at the county fair, the simpleminded Jesse dragged Cora from the mortally wounded man. “Is he still alive?” Garth demanded.
Jesse looked at Jeb, then reached down and pulled the pistol from his hand. When Jeb made a feeble attempt to resist, Jesse grinned back up at Garth. “He’s still alive,” he said gleefully, “but not that much.”
With the general roar of gunfire now tapering off to only random shots, Garth looked down the line of wagons, satisfied that the massacre was complete and no witnesses remained to tell the tale. “It’s time for Cora and her sweetheart to pay up,” he said. Spotting a gully cutting into the side of the ravine, he said, “Drag both of ’em over to that gully.” A moment later when brother Ike joined them, Garth said, “Better go see how bad Joe’s shoulder is.” He hesitated a moment when he saw the Kiowa scalping the dead and plundering the wagons. There were more important concerns than Joe’s shoulder at that time. Nodding toward Jeb’s horse, he said, “Best grab ahold of that sorrel there before them crazy Injuns get it. I fancy that saddle.”
Taking an ax from Jacob Freeman’s wagon, Jesse busted a couple of boards from the wagon box and split them up for stakes. At Garth’s direction, he staked Jeb and Cora out on the ground. “That oughta hold ’em for a while,” Garth said. “Long enough for us to see if there’s anything in them wagons we can use.” Standing over Cora then, he said, “You be thinkin’ about what you throwed away when you thought you could run off with this piece of shit.”
In the saddle since well before daylight, Tanner figured he might have to ride a good distance to find buffalo, and he wanted to make it back to camp before dark. He was following a hunch that he would be successful in finding his prey south of the river. There had been obvious sign of buffalo in many areas that he had scouted north of the Arkansas, but no actual sighting of the massive animals. They were there, he concluded. He had just been looking in the wrong place.
The sun was already high overhead when he first saw the herd. Cresting a long ridge, he jerked Ashes to an abrupt halt, stunned by the scene below him in the shallow valley. All the tales he had heard about the sheer spectacle of a herd on the move failed to prepare him for the astonishing sight that met his eyes. The entire floor of the valley was filled with a black, bobbing stream of dusty grunting bodies, seeming to slowly flow like a mighty river toward the far end of the valley. There were so many that he laughed when he thought, If I can get alongside, I won’t even have to aim, just shoot in the general direction of the mob and I’m bound to hit one.
He continued to sit there watching for a few minutes before making his move. The flow of heaving, bouncing bodies seemed endless, but finally the last of the herd moved into the valley. Now he loped along the top of the ridge, leading his packhorse, keeping pace with the animals below him. After deciding where he was going to intersect the herd, he stopped long enough to tie the packhorse’s reins to a clump of sage, then jumped back into the saddle, drew his rifle from the sling, and gave Ashes a nudge. The big gray bounded down the slope toward the valley bottom.
The animals bringing up the rear of the herd started to run when Tanner pulled up beside them, causing a ripple in the dark stream of bodies as those ahead began to run in response. Tanner selected a medium-sized cow and, holding the reins in his teeth, leveled his rifle and took aim. Two shots behind the front leg brought the buffalo down and tumbled her, head over rump. It would have been easy to shoot five more with his remaining ammunition, but one buffalo was all he needed. He pulled Ashes aside, and headed back to butcher his kill.
Butchering his kill was not an easy task. It took him most of the afternoon to skin the animal and load as much of the meat as he could carry on the packhorse and Ashes. There’s gotta be a knack to this, he thought, one he would have to learn. He felt certain the Indians must surely know a faster method. In spite of this, however, he felt satisfied with himself and the hunt. There was a lot of meat packed away. It would be well received by Jacob’s company.
Taking a look at the sun, he set a course he figured to be a good bet to intersect the wagon train near the end of its day’s travel. It was a long ride back to the Arkansas and the Santa Fe Trail, a lot of time to consider the recent change of events that had taken place in camp. He still found it amazing that Jeb had apparently found true love at last. The thought almost brought a chuckle—Jeb Hawkins, finally tamed by a female. It was going to take some getting used to, having a woman along on the trail.
It was getting on toward dusk when he saw the smoke. It struck him as odd that there appeared to be more smoke than the campfires would ordinarily generate. Still at least a mile or two distant, he nudged Ashes to a comfortable lope, hoping to gain the camp with his fresh meat before the evening meals were prepared. Unable to see the camp after riding about a quarter of an hour, he realized that it was hidden from his view on the other side of a low ridge.
Driving Ashes straight up over the ridge, he pulled the horse to a sliding stop at the top, unprepared for the grim sight that met his eyes. Below him, in a narrow ravine, the wagons of Jacob Freeman’s company sat idle, not in a circle as customary but still in line of travel. Horses and mules lay slaughtered in their traces. The ravine was strewn with the bodies of the company at various distances from the wagons, testimony to unsuccessful attempts to escape by some, while most were slain right there in the wagons. The smoke that had led him to the scene of the massacre had come from the smoldering ruins of several of the wagons.
The ghastly sight was almost too much for him to comprehend, and it took a few moments before he could realize the full meaning of it. When his mind began to function rationally again, his first thought was of Jeb. Kicking Ashes hard, he dropped the packhorse’s rope and descended into the ravine at a gallop. At the bottom, the grisly scene only became worse. The dead were strewn everywhere, hacked and mutilated—men, women, and children. None had been spared.
Dismounting, he hurried to a wagon he recognized as Jacob Freeman’s. Climbing up on the wheel, he was stopped abruptly by the sight of Jacob lying behind the seat, his bloody face sagging from the loss of his scalp. Behind him, at the back of the wagon, was Ida’s body, a bloody clump of torn clothing. He felt a sick churning in the pit of his stomach when he thought of the horror the gentle woman had endured in her final moments. He looked around him, searching for Jeb, puzzled that the wagons showed no signs of bolting out of line. Wagon sheets were riddled with bullet holes and an occasional arrow shaft lay broken beside a wagon box. It was as if they had simply sat there to be massacred. He stepped down from the wheel and began a wagon-by-wagon search of the train.
It was a carnage he had not seen since Waynesboro, and it was magnified in horror by the inhuman mutilation, for the evidence pointed to an Indian massacre. Still, there was no sign of Jeb. Had he managed to escape
? he wondered. He did not see the sorrel Jeb rode among the slaughtered horses, so there was some hope. As he searched the wagons for sign of survivors, he realized that he had not found Cora either. This fact served to encourage his hopes, for if Jeb had had a chance to escape, he would have taken Cora with him.
His hopes were destroyed a short time later when he came upon a gully near the head of the train. There he found Jeb and Cora. Both were staked out flat on the ground, Jeb with a dozen or more bullet holes in his body, Cora with her throat gaping crazily from the slash of a knife. From the slashes on Jeb’s face and arms, it appeared that he had been subjected to a great deal of torture before his execution. The same could be said for the hapless girl.
Staggered by the brutal slaying, Tanner took a few steps backward and sat down on the side of the gully. “Damn, Jeb…” he moaned. “Damn. I wasn’t here to watch your back this time. I’m sorry, partner.” He sat there for a long time, until the fading light of evening stirred him to move. Trying to understand the reasoning God employed when allowing such things to happen, he was at a loss as to what to do. Revenge? That was his thought. But against whom? The Indians? Which Indians? Kiowa? Comanche? Cheyenne? He shook his head in sorrow. He couldn’t seek revenge against a band of Indians.
With darkness coming on, he cut Jeb and Cora loose from the stakes. Finding a shovel in one of the wagons, he went to work digging a grave, determined to at least give his friend a decent burial. He dug it big enough to put Jeb and Cora in together. When it was finished, he tried to say a prayer over the grave, but ended it rather abruptly when he began to choke over the words.
With his friend in the ground, he paused to consider what he should do about the rest of the wagon train company. He wasn’t prepared to dig graves for that many people, so he decided to gather all he could find, lay them in rows in the wagons, and set them ablaze. He decided it was the best he could do, better than simply leaving them to be eaten by scavengers. With a full moon ascending over the ridge, he set about his grim chore.
It was a sorrowful task. He couldn’t be sure he had accounted for all the members of the train, and he wasn’t familiar enough to know who was married to whom, or which children belonged to which adults. So he laid them all in the wagons, and set one wagon after another on fire. It was close to sunup when he lifted the last body he could find into the one wagon left to burn. Shaking the can of coal oil he had taken from one of the wagons, he was wondering if there was enough left to start a proper fire when he heard a faint murmur.
Grabbing his rifle, he dropped to one knee and listened. After a moment, he heard it again, but this time he identified it as a human voice, a woman’s. Straining to see through the darkness outside the glow of the fires, he called out, “Where are you? It’s me, Tanner Bland.”
“Here,” came the weak reply.
He quickly followed the sound to a gully grown up with sage. There, lying against the side of the trench, he found Janie Reece. Bloodied and battered, she had been partially scalped, and when Tanner tried to pick her up, she screamed in pain. More dead than alive, she protested, begging to be left where she was. Tanner saw no choice but to do his best to comfort her final passing, for it was apparent that her moments were short.
“Floyd,” she forced painfully. “The others, anybody alive?”
“No ma’am,” Tanner replied gently. “You’re the only one alive.”
“It was the Leaches,” she gasped, each word seeming to require all her strength.
“What?” Tanner blurted in shocked surprise. “The Leaches? You mean they did this?”
“Them and their Injun friends,” she answered in between labored breaths. “We thought they wanted to trade, but they just started shooting. We didn’t have time to defend ourselves. They just started killing everything in sight.” Exhausted with the effort to talk, she sank back against the side of the gully.
Burning with the merciless image of the massacre in his mind, he fought to remain calm. “You just lay still now. I’ll go fetch some water and we’ll see if we can’t tend to your wounds.” She said nothing in response, but her eyes opened wide, seeming to stare at him. He left her then and went down to the river to soak his bandanna in water. When he returned to the stricken woman, he found her still staring up at him with eyes no longer seeing. She was dead.
Janie Reece’s body was the last one he laid in the wagon. When it finally caught fire after several attempts to start it, Tanner sat down wearily to consider what had taken place on that day. The early-morning light was eerily enhanced by the glow of the burning funeral wagons. He supposed it could be seen for miles, but he was too tired to care. He continued to sit there for a while, thinking about his carefree partner, lying with his newfound love in a shallow grave some thirty yards away. Then he turned his concentration toward the murderous creatures who were responsible for this massacre of innocent people. The thought of Garth Leach and his brothers turned his blood to molten lava in his veins, flowing hot for revenge. Montana goldfields would have to wait. He knew where his trail had to lead.
The incessant whinny of his horse reminded him then that he had left the gelding to stand saddled all night. Forgotten until that moment also was his packhorse, laden with fresh-killed meat. With his mind clear now, he got up to take care of his horses. After pulling the saddle off Ashes, he untied the buffalo meat, letting all but a portion of it drop to the ground. The buzzards can feed off this, he thought. He cooked some of the meat for his breakfast before closing his eyes for a few hours’ sleep.
He awakened with the sun high in the morning sky. Irritated that he had slept so long, he saddled Ashes and hitched the lead rope for the packhorse to the saddle. After watering them, he left the horses to graze while he searched the ravine for tracks. It was not difficult to see that the raiders had descended into the ravine from the same ridge as he had the night before. He had not been looking for tracks, or he might have noticed. Now he was more intent upon seeing which direction the raiders had taken. The trail was easy enough, once he found which end of the narrow defile they had exited.
Judging by the multitude of tracks, it had been a sizable raiding party, and they had left the scene of the massacre to head north. On foot, leading his horses, he started out after the war party, closely scouting the trail until he found the confirmation he sought. Scattered among the many unshod prints were tracks left by shod horses. How many horses had been stolen was hard to tell, but he felt secure in speculating that some of the shod tracks were left by the four men he hunted.
He followed the trail for most of the morning before reaching a stream where the war party had obviously paused for a short time before changing directions and starting out again back to the east. Tanner started to follow, but then noticed that a small number of shod horses had split out a short distance from the main body. He interpreted that to mean the four white men had a tendency to ride together, apart from the Indians. In his mind, he pictured the four Leach brothers, the three youngest trailing Garth, a pack of wolves that even the Indians had best beware. With now only one purpose in life, to kill this pack of wolves, he followed the wide trail over the grass-covered hills.
Chapter 10
Garth Leach felt well pleased with the results of the raid on the wagon train as he rode back between Ike and Yellow Calf. Primarily instigated for revenge purposes, it had provided some surprising gains. True, he had derived a certain amount of pleasure in the punishment of Cora and Jeb Hawkins, but the real bonus came with the acquisition of Hawkins’ saddle. Fine Spanish leather, it was too fine for the likes of a drifter like Hawkins. He probably stole it, Garth thought. It fits my fanny just right, too. The real surprise came with the discovery of the canvas sack in the saddlebag. If I’d known that jasper was carrying a sack of gold coins, he’d have been dead a long time ago.
“What are you grinnin’ about?” Ike asked, noticing the unusual expression on his brother’s face.
Garth gave him a wink. “I’ll tell you later,�
�� he said under his breath. As yet, no one else knew about the gold coins, and he preferred not to tell the Kiowa chief riding beside him. Yellow Calf might want him to share the coins, and Garth knew the savage chief had no notion of the value of the gold. He might want them just because they were shiny. Besides, Garth thought, Yellow Calf ought to be pleased enough. The raid had resulted in horses and some additional weapons, as well as food supplies and tools. All things considered, everybody should be pleased with the raid, except Joe, who was shuffling along behind him, moaning over the bullet in his shoulder.
“Damn fool,” Garth blurted, causing Ike to give him a puzzled look again. Before Ike could question him, he said, “Joe—damn fool for gittin’ hisself shot.”
“Well,” Ike grunted, “he ain’t got a helluva lot more sense than Jesse.” He rode on in silence for a few minutes before voicing another concern. “I’ve been wonderin’ about that other feller, that partner of Hawkins. I’m wonderin’ where the hell is he? He oughtn’t a’been too far away—mighta heard the shootin’.”
Garth grunted, unconcerned. “Hell, what if he did? Even if he finds ’em, there ain’t nobody to tell him what happened. He’ll just think it was Injuns.”
“Maybe,” Ike conceded, “but I’da liked it better if he had been there, so’s we coulda put his ass under with the rest of ’em. I don’t trust that feller. He’s too damn quiet and a lot more dangerous than his partner.”
“Hell, he ain’t nothin’ to worry about,” Garth scoffed. “I expect he’ll hightail it outta these parts when he finds his friends layin’ there with their topknots missin’.”
When they approached the ribbon of trees that lined the banks of the river where Yellow Calf’s village lay, the chief rode on ahead to join his warriors’ triumphant return. As Garth had said, Yellow Calf was greatly pleased with the success of the raid. He had suffered no losses, and only a few wounded. The massacre added to his esteem as a war chief.
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