by Terry Grosz
Stumbling under the impact of the close-at-hand pistol shot, Gabe grabbed his own pistol from his sash and fired at a fleeting movement in the darkness next to his sitting log. “Uggghh!” went a human voice as Gabe’s pistol shot found its mark. Boom- boom! went two more rifle shots from behind Gabe, their heavy lead slugs tearing into his massive frame. Dropping to his knees under the impact from the heavy slugs, Gabe grabbed his reserve pistol from his sash but before he could unlimber it into a firing position, a tomahawk blow from in front cleaved his skull with a resounding whack! He, like his brother, was now among the Cloud People...
“I got him, Bill,” yelled an excited voice. “I kilt the son-of-a- bitch,” the voice at the edge of the firelight crowed in an excited, high-pitched tone.
Stepping out from the envelope of darkness, Black Bill Jenkins and his brothers, Lem and Stilt strode boldly into the campsite. Out from the darkness in front of Gabe’s body stepped Clio, the fourth brother, still grinning a toothless grin over his success in tomahawking Gabe.
“We finally got them dogging Missouri Constables who have been trailin’ us since we left home years back. We got them son-of-a-bitches!” added a very happy and much-relieved Stilt Jenkins.
Pow-pow! rang out two pistol shots from the women still cowering in the tent over the turn of events at hand. “Ugh!” shouted Clio, as one of the pistol balls nicked his leg while the other one’s ball whistled harmlessly off into the darkness.
“Get them squaws,” yelled Black Bill as Stilt and Lem ran for the tent before the women could reload. Soon screaming could be heard and then other noises of terror and discomfort were heard as the two women underwent a savage raping from the two Missouri outlaws. That was followed by more of the same as Black Bill and Clio took their turn and wrath out on the two defenseless women. Soon, only silence was heard from the tent as the men took the women’s lives as they had done to so many other women in Missouri earlier in their travels.
Then the men patched up Clio’s slight pistol wounds. The first from Gabe which had hit him in the hand as he was trying to reload his rifle. His hand was only scratched but the impact of the pistol bullet had smashed the lock on his rifle, making it useless. And the second wound from one of the women, which had grazed his lower leg, was bandaged as well. Finishing, they began going through the dead trappers’ personals.
“Will you lookee here,” said Clio. “This here rifle has one of the men’s names on it in German silver tacks in the stock just like some damn Indian. ‘G. Dent,”’ continued Clio’s voice. “Then lookee here. It has a heart with a woman’s and man’s name inside. And on the other side is a grizzly bear outlined in those shiny tacks. I be damned!” Happy with his find in a new rifle to replace the one shot out from his hands and wrecked by Gabe, Clio claimed this newfound and decorated rifle as his own.
“Well, well, well. These chickens has finally come home to roost. First we get these two Missouri Constables, who have been makin’ our lives miserable for all these years, and their furs. Then we get to make up fer our loss of furs from those two trappers we kilt a ways back after they had shot that elk. A loss when these two stuck their noses into that killin’ afore we could run off with those trappers’ furs. Then we find all those trappers’ furs here as well that these two carried all this way for us. Well, I be. Then we git their women in all their glory here tonight, and fine and wet they were,” said Black Bill with a huge grin. “I call that damn good lickin’s on our part,” he continued with a laugh. “When we get to St. Louie and sell this here property, we are going to be rich men. With that, we can return to our homes in Gideon, Missouri, and buy whatever we want,” he mused with an ear-to-ear grin through his massive black beard.
Then going through Gabe and Josh’s possibles bags, Black Bill came upon the two dead men’s silver Constable badges. “Well, lookee here,” he said as he held up the two shiny badges.
The others gathered around looking on and finally Stilt said, “Well, now we can relax fer sure. These two are no more, and now we can pretend to be Constables. Can you beat that, Brothers? Just think what we can do with these here badges once we get back to the Bootheel in Missouri!” he exclaimed in a knowing and leering sort of way. Great laughter arose over the discovery, and later the killers finished the meal the trappers had started. Gabe’s buckskin horse was still nervous and restless...
***
One week later, Black Bill and his brothers, now proud owners of a passel of horses and numerous packs of beaver pelts, took refuge for the night along the quietly moving Missouri River. Setting up camp, the men built a roaring campfire and began roasting freshly killed buffalo meat over some sharpened green willow sticks.
“What think you, Brother?” Clio asked Black Bill. “What be the first thing you are going to buy with your share of the money once we sell these here passel of furs in St. Louie?”
“First, I am go in’ to get a hot bath and pour lots of that sweet smellin’ lilac water all over me. Then, I am a-goin’ looking for the prettiest girl I can find and bed her all night,” he grinned. There was a roar of laughter as the rest of Black Bill’s kin had thoughts along the same lines.
Zippp-thump! went an arrow into the throat of Clio as he looked up to see why Gabe’s buckskin was now getting all riled up. He gurgled frantically grasping at the arrow’s shaft. As he began bleeding out, blackness closed in causing him to plunge into their campfire headfirst and started to cook himself...
“Indians!” screamed Black Bill as he went for his rifle only to have an arrow strike him squarely in his left eye. Screaming at the top of his lungs, he rolled around on the ground in abject pain. Two more steel-tipped arrows plunge deeply into his rump and back. The one striking his back slid deeply into the man’s heart. His agony was short-lived...
Boom! went Stilt’s rifle shot as his ball sailed harmlessly over the head of a firelight-exposed Cheyenne Indian brave drawing back on his bow. However, the brave’s arrow did not miss as it slammed into Stilt’s middle, eliciting a horrendous scream as it tore through his blood-rich organs. That scream was cut short as the Cheyenne brave followed up his arrow with his leap over a log, followed with a smashing tomahawk chop to the face of Stilt. That ended Stilt’s agony and concerns over what he was going to do with his share of the loot once he got to “St. Louie”...
Lem, in panic, took off running and ran into two other Cheyenne braves who buried their lances deeply into his chest and stomach. Screaming out in pain, his noises soon turned to gurgles and cries for his “mother” as the braves let him quietly bleed out.
Then, like the Jenkins clan had done earlier, the Cheyennes celebrated their successes by tearing through the men’s belongings and removing that which caught their eyes. Two braves in particular discovered the shiny silver Constable badges. They soon festooned their buckskin shirts in gay decoration with the badges. Another brave discovered a fine rifle with German silver tacks tacked into the stock spelling out the name “G. Dent,” the heart and the grizzly bear. That quickly replaced the man’s bow and arrows since he had no rifle before that evening. A fourth discovered a pocket watch with a long golden chain on the body of Bill. That shiny prize soon festooned that brave’s jacket for everyone to see, and on it went, as primitives of the day were wont to do. The four brother’s scalps went the way as did their personals...
***
Five days later, Tom Warren and his two keelboats floated lazily down the placid Missouri in the late summer. Smoking his pipe as he sat on the roof bastion of the keelboat, Tom noticed what appeared to be a band of Northern Cheyenne Indians riding along the east bank of the Missouri. They were trailing a very long string of horses and pack animals heavily loaded with what appeared to be bales of beaver plews. To his way of thinking, there was no way so many furs had been taken naturally by that group of Indians. His thoughts after that were that a mess of fur trappers had run afoul of that bunch of Cheyenne and, in so doing, had lost their race with time...
“Dang,
” he said. “Lisa, you need to come up on deck,” yelled Tom. Lisa was sleeping below decks, and upon hearing his name, awoke and stumbled out into the light of day. After all the hides and furs had been loaded earlier at Fort Raymond, Lisa decided he would accompany the keelboats back to St. Louis. He had been at the fort since 1813 and felt it was time to come back home to his family and business for a short stay. Then he would go right back into his fur-rich domain. Rubbing the sleep from his eyes, he observed the band of Indians riding along the shore trailing long pack strings and gesturing madly to the keelboats that they wanted to trade. Like always, a chance for more fur trading was one not to be passed by, even though most of his trade goods were still back at the fort. But as usual, he always carried some goods back with him just in case a situation like the one greeting his eyes arose. Then another thought crossed his mind. Their two keelboats were already overloaded with the furs and hides he had gathered up from earlier trades at his fort. But being the “horse trader” and greedy as he was, he was reluctant to pass by the possibility of another good trade deal, overloaded boats or not.
The Indian leading the band of horses and men signaled in sign once again that he wanted to trade with the keelboats. With that, Tom stood up and made the sign of peace back to the Indians as he carefully looked over the rag-tag band with all their packs of beaver plews. Then he spotted several things that caught his practiced eyes! Looking more carefully the second time and satisfied at what he was seeing, he turned and hand-signaled the trailing keelboat to come alongside. A hurried conversation took place between Tom and one of his boatmen as a concerned Lisa looked on in a questioning fashion. Separating once again, the two keelboats continued slowly along their ways as Tom, ignoring Lisa’s questioning looks, kept intently looking over the group of Indians on the shore. Once again, the Cheyenne Indian leading the band of men and heavily loaded pack horses signaled he wanted to trade. With that, he gestured towards a nearby sandy beach along the river. Tom, looking back at Lisa for the go-ahead, signaled back he would meet the Indian band there and began moving the two keelboats closer to shore so they could beach the boats. Once there, Lisa could trade the Indians what goods they had left on board for the furs the Indians were trailing.
Earlier on the trip, Lisa had instructed Tom to stop at a certain bend on the Missouri where they were to meet a group of trappers. Those trappers had prearranged with Lisa to meet them there in the fall to trade their plews for their next year’s supplies. Then Lisa made sure Tom’s boat carried those supplies in addition to the lot of furs and hides he carried from Fort Raymond. When Tom and Lisa arrived downriver at the designated spot to meet the trappers, all they discovered was one man. Starving and haggard, the trapper told a tale of Indian ambushes and the loss of all his partners and their furs. Not wishing to continue trapping, he had boarded Tom’s keelboat for the return trip to St. Louis. Now Tom had that trapper’s group of supplies still left on-board, and Lisa decided he would use those and his extras on-board in trade with the band of Indians heading for the beach.
Tom, spotting something else that gave him pause, called over two of his men on his boat and had a quiet but hurried conversation with them. They, in turn, hand-signaled the other men in the trailing keelboat. One had to always be prepared when stopping a keelboat along the river to trade with Indians, and Tom was no fool. On each of his keelboats, Tom had mounted two swivel cannons fore and aft. One was mounted on a palisade and the other on the roof bastion on each boat. Quietly and without fanfare, Tom had his men load both swivel cannons with iron balls of shot on each boat. To avoid hitting any rocks or sunken trees, Tom had the keelboats slowly maneuver towards the sandy beach. By now, the beach area was crowded with expectant Indians and milling pack strings of livestock carrying their packs of furs. When the first keelboat was about to ground itself on the beach, Tom gave the sign of peace once more to the Cheyenne Indian leader who returned the same. Just as Tom’s keelboat touched the sandy beach, Tom hefted a keg of whiskey on his broad shoulder and splashed ashore. Placing the keg on an old cottonwood stump in front of the excited Indians, he turned and called to one of his men.
“Toss me a mess of cups,” he instructed.
Soon, the cups were parceled out and the Indians hurriedly crowded around the keg of whiskey as it was opened for the good times it was soon to produce. Just as the Indians began to celebrate, Tom made a cautionary sign for Lisa to remain on the boat. Then he took a walk around the group of Indians and their horse herd looking things over. Once again, he spotted several things that he had observed from the keelboat as he had moved in closer to the band of Cheyennes. Satisfied, he moved slowly back to his boat and instructed the remaining boat in the river to also beach itself alongside the first. Once both boats were side-by-side, Tom jumped back onto the deck of the closest boat turned and gave a loud, surprising order, “Fire! ”
Boom-boom-boom-boom! went the four swivel cannons upon his surprising command and pounds of hot steel balls of canister from their barrels tore into the tightly packed group of Indians around the whiskey keg and their horses! Heads exploded off Indians hit by the close-at-hand massed firepower, horses went to thrashing and screaming to the ground with broken legs, blown-off arms and legs flew into the air, and packs of beaver plews blew off and flew into the air in furry pieces. Numerous rifles and other metal items held by the Indians exploded on impact from the flying shot from the swivel guns, and the whiskey keg exploded, spewing its essence into a thousand places. When the clouds of black powder smoke had rolled off the beach so one could see, only carnage remained!
Wounded horses squirmed and crawled away in pain on broken limbs and gutted bodies. Injured Indians tried to crawl away from the keelboats, only to be stopped by the now massed rifle fire from the keelboatmen shooting into the Indians with their rifles. Lisa stood on the keelboat in shock not knowing what had just happened to his anticipated trading session. Soon, other than crippled horses, little moved along the crowded beach area. Blood from the animal and human carnage freely flowed off the sandy beach into the Missouri and was swiftly borne downstream. Soon, all was quiet as the keelboatmen looked to Tom for answers for the fatal orders he had quietly given.
Tom stepped lightly to shore and began walking among the dead and dying. Walking up to a badly crippled buckskin that he knew at one time had belonged to his friend Gabriel Dent, he put a bullet into its brain case to put it out of its misery. Alongside that buckskin lay another that he knew had belonged to his friend Josh Dent, now of late, Tom assumed... As Gabe had said many times before, the only way to get that horse away from him was to kill him in the process...
Following Tom’s lead, his boatmen did the same as they searched the beach area and put animal and Indian alike out of their misery. Tom also took the time to detach the Missouri Constable badges off the bloody buckskin shirts from two of the dead Indians, knowing full well they had belonged to the Brothers Dent. Then reaching into a mass of broken and bloody Indian bodies, Tom retrieved a rifle with a German silver-tacked name of “G. Dent,” along with a heart and a grizzly bear outlined on the stock. Upon seeing that, tears came to his unashamed eyes. Again, he looked over the pack animals as they lay strewn over the beach just to make sure. As he had done earlier when he first walked the beach, he personally identified six of the animals that he knew belonged to his old friends, Josh and Gabe.
Returning to the keelboats and the still-questioning looks from his men, Tom quietly explained to his men why he had ordered the swivel guns shot into the crowd of horses and men. As he explained, these men had killed his friends based on the evidence he had seen and observed upon closer examination as he walked the beach before ordering the firing of the swivel guns into the unsuspecting Cheyenne Indians.
His friends had deserved better than to die violently. And not seeing any of their wives, Tom figured they had been killed as well by this pack of savages. Tom did not know of the sequence of events leading up to his actions. He just suspected the Cheyen
ne were responsible for the deaths of his close friends. Such was the life on the frontier but his friends had deserved better. And to his way of thinking, they had now been avenged. With Tom’s quiet explanation to his boatmen, all questions as to the slaughter they had initiated upon his command vanished.
Unable to hear the softly spoken reasons to the boatmen for the killing, Lisa asked Tom, “Why did we slaughter these men and their valuable horses?”
For the longest time Tom said nothing, and then he pointed to the buckskin bleeding out his last. Looking directly at Lisa, Tom said, “See that buckskin, Lisa? That horse belonged to a very close friend of mine. That is the same one you lost your bet to me over back at Fort Raymond. That is Gabe Dent’s horse and one that he said he would never part with unless someone killed him first. Then I saw those six matched black horses with the white fetlocks with the special deerskin-covered pack string of furs. I knew they once belonged to my friends, and they would not part with those horses unless someone helped themselves to them. Seeing that they had been killed, I figured it was the least I could do to avenge their deaths by killing those responsible. That is why I had my men load and fire the swivel cannons into this mess of trapper-killing savages.”
Continuing, he said, “I also spotted those bucks wearing the two Missouri Constable badges. Badges the Dent Brothers always carried in their possibles bags. There is no way they would have parted with them unless they had caught them killers from the Jenkins clan. And then it was their plan to throw them away. So how did them bucks get them? They had to kill my friends in order to get them. When I walked around that passel of Indians, I saw one of them carrying Gabe Dent’s rifle. You know, the one in which he had ‘tacked’ his name, his parents’ heart and the grizzly bear on the stock.” Whereupon he lifted that same rifle high in the air for all to see, emphasizing his point. “Gabe loved that hard-hitting rifle and told me many times he would never part with it unless someone took it from his cold and dead hands. With that evidence, that is why I ordered the firing of my swivel guns into that pack of savages because they had killed my friends and stole their goods.”
