Shadow Riders, The Southern Plains Uprising, 1873

by Terry C. Johnston

  The guns opened up in a sporadic rattle of fire within the ring, warriors screaming in victory, ponies whinnying. The mules braying as the first fell.

  The red bastards were shooting the mules.

  Then Thomas saw one of the two bodies moving out on the Salt Plain, there in the tall grass. Slowly crawling, crawling toward the trees.

  A blast from a bugle drew Brazeale’s attention from the wounded teamster in the grass. By lord, he prayed—it might be soldiers!

  But as the huge, stocky, bare-chested Indian rode into sight and reined up, Thomas saw the bugle hung from the war-chief’s neck. Whoever he was, he was shouting orders, stopping the slaughter of the noisy, scree-hawing mules.

  Overhead the storm clouds had rolled in so quickly that Thomas had not even noticed. Black, roiling, fluffy and full of terror. The kind of clouds a twister would drop out of—

  His attention was brutally yanked back to the grassy plain where three warriors had discovered the wounded teamster among the tall grass. With a shriek from the white man, the three dragged their captive back toward the wagons, shouting joy at finding one of their enemy alive.

  Thomas swallowed hard, choking on the sour ball in his throat. He understood enough to know why the warriors were celebrating now. It wasn’t for the wagons and their booty. It wasn’t for stealing the mules. No … instead, they had them a white man now. Alive.

  Young Brazeale squeezed his stinging eyes shut and turned around to find the other four teamsters gone. He could not hear them answer when he whispered for them. Thomas could not see them anywhere in the shadowy timber nearby. Gone.

  But that’s where he wanted to be.

  Long gone from this bloody meadow …

  * * *

  “Looked like Spencers, sir,” gulped the young Texan.

  General William Tecumseh Sherman fumed to his core as he tore his eyes from the young teamster’s face.

  Just minutes ago the civilian had stumbled into Fort Richardson on foot, grimy and soaked to the hide with the driving rain, his eyes wide with fear, wide with what he had witnessed. Telling any and all listeners about the raid on Henry Warren’s wagon train some twenty miles back on the Jacksboro-Belknap Road.

  Shadows lengthened in the room with that first fuzzy texture come to early evening here on the southern plains, the air stirring enough to cool things quickly what with the passing of the noisy, crashing, prairie thunderstorm. Sherman had to admit, he liked the weather farther north. Farther still than St. Louis, where he had moved his command headquarters after he found his craw filled with that strutting peacock of a Secretary of War Belknap and the rest of those starched collars who sucked up to one another like a bunch of gelded, bawling calves.

  “How many, son?”

  The teamster shook his head, swiping his rain-dampened hair from his eyes as the post surgeon gruffly attended to bandaging the gash the youngster had along his side. “Don’t know, General. A lot.”

  “Colonel Mackenzie,” Sherman said grittily, turning to the commander of the Fourth Cavalry headquartered here at Richardson, “those red sonsabitches got those Spencers up on the reservation—or Bill Sherman doesn’t have balls. By Jupiter, we’ve got to cut off this trade in weapons and powder—but first, we’ve got to get you following these murderers.”

  “Yes, sir,” answered the tall, handsome, mustachioed Mackenzie. “From what the civilian here tells us, there were between a hundred and a hundred fifty warriors. I’ve already sent my adjutant to have four companies stand ready to horse, General.”

  “Good. Pack thirty days rations,” growled Sherman, stuffing the damp stub of his cigar back in his yellowed teeth. He gazed at the young teamster a moment, then his eyes found Mackenzie staring at him. “You know, Colonel—I passed that train with my escort minutes before they were jumped.”

  Mackenzie nodded. “It must surely have a sobering effect on you, General. To think that those raiders could be carrying your scalp on their belts now.”

  Sherman snorted, running a hand over his thinning hair, half-bald already, what there was turning to gray bristles on top. “Shit, Mackenzie. I thought these Kiowa and Comanche down here were warriors. This scalp of mine isn’t fit for a real fighting Injun’s lodgepole!”

  “We don’t find a trail to follow, you want us to stay out for the thirty days, General?”

  “I want you to do your goddamndest to find the red bastards! If you can do it, and strike them hard inside those thirty days—then do it. Cut those warriors off at the knees!”

  “I’ll send word back when I’ve found them.”

  “Where will you head from here, Colonel?”

  Mackenzie did not hesitate. “There’s only one direction that bunch will go, I’m afraid. They’ll ride north.”

  Sherman fumed, his ruddy cheeks puffing. “Back to the God-blamed reservation?”

  “Yes, General. Back to Fort Sill.”

  Chapter 3

  May 27, 1871

  “This New York paper claims I should be President, Mr. Tatum,” announced the graying General Sherman as he laid the Herald on the civilian’s small desk in the middle of his cramped office.

  Lawrie Tatum, agent for the Kiowa-Comanche reservation located just outside Fort Sill, nodded. He was Society of Friends—a Quaker. “Yes, General. If the Almighty has that in His plans—you will be President of the United States.”

  The civilian watched the easygoing Sherman wrinkle his eyes at that and step over toward the window, gazing out on the wide, tree-ringed meadow. Agency storehouses stood in a short row to his right, a small chapel to the left of this tiny clapboard office house built for the government’s agent.

  “Grant may like you Quakers,” Sherman said with his back to Tatum, “but—for the record—I don’t.”

  “It’s plain to see, General.”

  “These bands don’t respond to anything but force. And when they don’t respond to that, then they must be eliminated.”

  Tatum coughed nervously, swallowing down his temper. He could feel his ire rising, and reminded himself to stay calm. This was one of the most powerful men in Washington City, well known for his strong, unvarnished views on dealing with the western tribes.

  “Then we know where we both stand, General.”

  Sherman turned. “Yes we do.”

  “You don’t like the President’s policy of dealing even-handedly with the tribes, do you, General?”

  “Haven’t I made that abundantly clear?”

  Tatum nodded. “You have. But I don’t think you’ve given Grant’s and Secretary Delano’s policy time to work.”

  Sherman snorted, yanking the cigar from his teeth and patting his pockets for a sulfur match. Disgustedly, he waved an arm out the window. “You tell me … just try to tell me, Mr. Tatum, that you have control of your goddamned wards.”

  “I … I can’t—”

  “Damned right, you can’t!” Sherman shouted. “Both the Kiowa and Comanche are free to jump this reservation whenever it pleases them to. I heard reports from at least a hundred civilians down in Texas regarding depredations committed by your wards on this peace-loving reservation.”

  “Do those people have proof it was—”

  “To hell with proof, Mr. Tatum!” Sherman snapped. “Mackenzie rode in here yesterday morning with enough proof for me—for any right-minded man, by God. That teamster roasted alive over a fire … every one of the bodies unspeakably butchered. Good God, man! You heard the colonel’s report same time I did. And you still don’t think it was your Kiowas?”

  Tatum felt like a cornered rabbit. How he had prayed to make this a model of reservation life since the day he had arrived here from the east, 1 July 1869, relieving General William B. Hazen from what had been a temporary civilian post. In a flurry of activity and stoic Christian resolve, Lawrie Tatum had immediately let contracts to have several stone buildings erected for the agency, before hurrying east to Chicago where he purchased a steam engine, a shingling machine and other ma
terials to construct a sawmill, along with huge millstones for grinding corn. With the power of his love and his faith in God alone, Tatum believed he could bring his wards away from the blanket and to a pastoral, farming life.

  Whereas Hazen was a military man who had run his Indian affairs from his headquarters at Fort Sill, Lawrie had located his agency buildings on high ground overlooking Cache Creek. It was there he built the first schoolhouse for teachers Joseph and Lizzie Butler, after completing living quarters for agency employees. From the ground up, Lawrie Tatum had built a small community he prayed would forever remain rooted in love between red men and white.

  There was no fear in the man. Some might look at Lawrie Tatum and say it was because he was Quaker. But those who really knew him realized the agent was a courageous soul in his own right. Time and again in his two years here, the Kiowa and Comanche chiefs and warriors had tried bullying and bluster, if not outright intimidation. None of it worked. Tatum, the man the Indians nicknamed “Bald Head,” would not be bullied. Instead, they had grudgingly come to respect him in their own way, knowing Bald Head did not lie, and never skirted around the truth.

  He was exactly the sort of man the Society of Friends had cast their nets for when the newly inaugurated President Ulysses S. Grant accepted the Quakers’ peace plan. Grant had begun by appointing as Commissioner of Indian Affairs a full-blooded Indian, Brevet Brigadier General Ely S. Parker, an attorney who had served on Grant’s own staff during the Civil War. Parker’s board of commissioners was established to advise Secretary of Interior Columbus Delano on appointment of agents for the western tribes. From their own headquarters at Lawrence, Kansas, the Society of Friends operated under the watchful eyes of Enoch Hoag, who firmly believed, like Tatum, that the red man would respond to love and respect if treated with sympathy and dignity.

  Over time, Tatum believed, his Kiowa and Comanche wards would come to the light of God’s path, living by Christian virtue. It was a policy and a belief that often put the Quakers at direct odds with Grant’s War Department and the no-nonsense commander of the army itself: General William Tecumseh Sherman.

  “Mr. Tatum?”

  Turning, the agent found one of his civilian employees at the open doorway, pulling his hat respectfully from his head.

  “Yes, Ross?”

  “The chiefs are here, Mr. Tatum.”

  “Chiefs?” Sherman asked, his interest suddenly pricked as he strode from the window.

  Tatum nodded. “It’s time to hand out the annuities, General.”

  Sherman sputtered. “Annuities? To these murderers?”

  How Tatum wanted to tell the unpolished general what he thought of his bluster and his tobacco-reeking mouth and the way the general openly drank his whiskey—like the rest of those soldiers he had met in the past two years he had spent out here.

  “Surely you understand the women and children must live on something—”

  “By damned, you’re right, Tatum! They’ve got to have something to live on while their men are off raiding and stealing, killing and raping and kidnapping.”

  Tatum suddenly leaned forward on both arms, elbows locked as he rocked forward across the small, wobbly desk. “Listen, General—if I believed as you did, no one would be trying to do what’s right out here.”

  “Tell me, Mr. Tatum—what’s right?” Sherman scoffed.

  “Your government’s clearly failed in its job, General. As many soldiers as you want to send out here—you still can’t get the job done. Now shut up and let me talk!” he growled sternly when Sherman opened his mouth. “I didn’t come here to make my fortune, like most agents could do before the President turned over control to the Quakers. Corruption, bribery—it’s all plainly here for the man who wants to make a quick fortune, General. But if I did not believe that virtue is its own reward, I would not be here trying to help these Indians, trying to work with your soldiers.”

  “Then help me round up the troublemakers—”

  “I’m not finished, General. Just look around you. Look at these luxurious accommodations I live in. You think I’m here, like the others, to divert money from this agency into my own pockets?”

  “I haven’t accused you of—”

  “By rights you’d better not! A man out here will never eat high on the hog, General.” He turned to his employee. “Mr. Ross, be sure everything is prepared in the warehouses for the distribution. Set up the tables, then return here for the rolls.”

  Ross had disappeared before Sherman strode purposefully to the desk, his eyes narrowing beneath the bristling eyebrows. “You’re still going to issue the goods to these people?”

  “That’s my job, General. Our government wants these people to live on these reservations, far from the buffalo they want and need to hunt for their subsistence, to turn themselves into farmers. I must do my part in seeing that I smooth the road to a farming life for them—”

  “They don’t stay on the reservations, can’t you see?” Sherman asked, sweeping his hat from Tatum’s desk. He appeared to pause for an answer, and when one was not forthcoming, the general strode to the open doorway. “I’ll be at the post. Colonel Grierson’s office—should you decide you have need of more frank talk, Mr. Tatum.”

  “You’re not staying to witness the issuance, General?”

  A dark look crossed the soldier’s face. “The only thing I want to give these Kiowa is an empty bowl and a hanging rope.”

  What made Lawrie Tatum shudder as he watched Sherman stomp away to rejoin his escort and ride off to the fort was that the agent was afraid he understood. While he and the Indian Bureau might feed and clothe these Kiowa and Comanche, Lawrie Tatum and the rest were nonetheless powerless to make their wards behave.

  He stood at the window, watching the white employees, good Friends all, shuffle supplies and tables into place. Stacks of blankets, piles of sugar and coffee, canvas britches and cotton shirts, bolts of cloth and fifty-weight of flour. In the agency corral stood some skinny cattle that would soon be nothing more than bone and gristle as the hungry Kiowa butchered their allotment.

  The women and old ones and children were the first to appear from the trees this morning. It was some time before the warriors stepped from the leafy shadows. The chiefs came only when all were settled on the ground before the tables.

  “Mr. Jones,” Tatum called out as he stepped onto the porch. Colonel Grierson’s Kiowa interpreter, Horace Jones, came over. “Tell Satanta and his head men I want an audience with them in my office. Right away.”

  Jones gestured vainly at the distribution tables. “Now?”

  “Now.”

  Tatum retreated into the shady, spring coolness of his tiny office and shuffled papers on his desk, his back to the door of purpose until he heard Horace Jones’s boots on the floor behind him, a gentle cough announcing their arrival. Then he slowly turned.

  “Satanta!” he said enthusiastically, trying to hide his anxiety at the prospect of having this Kiowa chief lie to his face. “It is good to see you!”

  Tatum stepped to the stocky chief and shook hands. Down the line he went, shaking with Big Tree, Lone Wolf, Eagle Heart, Big Bow, Woman’s Heart and Satank, the oldest of them all, who sported a scraggly mustache while every other Kiowa plucked facial hair, even eyebrows. He thought it such a savage custom.

  “Please, sit,” he told them.

  When Jones made the translation, the chiefs spread blankets and settled to the agent’s floor.

  “I do not want to smoke with you this morning,” Tatum started abruptly. “And what I have to say will not take long—but it is of great importance … to us both.” He drew himself up and sighed. This was already proving extremely hard on him.

  “The soldiers have told me of a wagon train that was raided a few days ago. Down in Texas. Seven white men were killed—horribly tortured and mutilated.” He waited for the interpreter to catch up as he watched the Kiowas’ eyes for any betrayal.

  “I know you were off the reservation, Sa
tanta. Perhaps the rest of your chiefs as well. The soldiers have asked me if you have been gone from this place—and I cannot lie to them. Tell me, from your own lips so that my heart will be at rest. Tell me you did not have anything to do with this raid on the white man’s wagons.”

  An immediate rustle of shock went through the chiefs, and suddenly Satanta arose before any of the rest could speak.

  “My heart is strong,” said the Kiowa leader. “So I too do not lie. I will not lie to you, Bald Head.” He tapped his broad chest. “I led that raid. Again and again I ask for weapons and powder and lead—but you do not give it to us. We ask for other things that are promised to us by the white treaty-talkers. But the white man keeps his hands closed to the Kiowa. You keep your ears closed to our pleas.”

  “You do not need the guns if you will only grow crops and raise the cattle.”

  Satanta sneered. “We do not want your skinny spotted buffalo! We will hunt buffalo the way we always have. But now the white man is laying the tracks for another smoking horse to cross our buffalo land to the south. We will stop these men who lay the iron tracks. I—White Bear of the Kiowas—I took these other chiefs,” and he swept a thick, muscular arm toward the open door, “and those young warriors out there … I took them all to Texas to show them how to fight the white man!”

  Tatum felt his heart seize in his chest. “You led the raid on the wagon train?”

  “I did. And I watched my young warriors count many coup.”

  “The rest—these went with you?”

  Satanta appeared to strut standing there before the agent, proud to anoint himself the leader of the whole thing. “Yes. They went with me: Satank, Big Bow, Fast Bear and Big Tree. We killed seven of theirs,” as he held up the fingers. “But they killed three of our warriors and wounded two more. We call it even now.”

  Then Satanta walked over to Tatum and clamped a dark hand on the agent’s shoulder. “But do not worry, Bald Head—we will not be raiding around here this summer. We will only raid into Texas. To stop the white man and his smoking horse.”