Dying Thunder

by Terry C. Johnston

  Once the store was erected and stocked with approximately twenty thousand dollars in trade goods, a private privy for Mrs. Olds was constructed to the west some distance across the meadow. Only then did work begin on the Rath & Company corral itself. For weeks now the men had expected the appearance of Indians, but as each new day failed to bring a showing of feathers, the men grew more and more relaxed. Rath suspended work on the corral when the sod walls were but three bricks high.

  Tonight, Seamus promised himself, he would again drag his aching muscles back to the ruins by starlight and once more walk among those walls, now no more than some four to five feet tall. Digging here. Digging there, in the silence of the night when none of the others knew of his absence.

  Perhaps, he likewise vowed, one of these nights he would be rewarded by the glint of something shiny beneath the blade of his shovel. And then—by the saints—yes, then … Seamus Donegan would no longer have to worry about using his muscles to make a living.

  * * *

  The cold rains had started in the waning days of winter and continued into the spring. Not the sort of thunderstorms the Kwahadi had come to expect out of the season. No boiling black clouds racing overhead, gone as quickly as they came. Instead, this was a time of cold, endless gray days. The prairie sucked at a pony’s hooves and a man’s moccasins. Children cried in the lodges. And the buffalo had not returned.

  Quanah Parker prayed.

  It was the first time in his young life that he had asked the Grandfather Above for answers. About the rains. About the cold. About the buffalo not coming back when they should. But mostly Quanah asked those questions he did not give voice. He wanted to know about Isatai.

  From a different band of Comanche, and nearly the same age as Quanah, this young shaman was not yet a rising star among his people. Yet when two of his major predictions came true, word of Isatai began to spread across the southern plains. Just last spring a fiery comet had burned its first path across the night sky. For three more nights it made its appearance before the young medicine man predicted that the comet would perform its nightly fireworks five more times then return no more. The fire-tailed comet had obeyed Isatai.

  Not long afterward he predicted the beginning of a great drought that would parch the southern prairie and especially the Staked Plain. Creeks dried up. Game wandered far in search of water. The sun seemed like a dull, brass button suspended overhead as each day seeped into the next with no relief from the blistering heat. Isatai told the people to hold on, the winter would bring rain—before another great time of dryness.

  The rains had come. As if the skies were obeying the shaman. Here in the waning days of the Moon of Geese Coming Back, Quanah prayed, asking for answers.

  Isatai. His name meant “coyote droppings” to some, “ass of wolf” to others. Of late he had claimed not only to control the elements, it was said he was curing the sick and raising the dead. Then, a few days ago, word came to Quanah’s band that Isatai had performed the greatest of all miracles—proclaiming that it was time to finish off the white man, he had then vomited up enough rifle cartridges to fill a wagon.

  Unable to believe this great feat, Quanah had questioned the message bearers. Yes, they had seen it with their own eyes.

  “Does Isatai now possess those cartridges?” the Kwahadi war chief asked. “Will we use them against the white man?”

  The message bearers shook their heads and one replied, “Isatai swallowed the bullets again.”

  “The whole wagonload?”

  “He said he would produce them again when the time came to make war on the tai-bos,” answered one.

  The second message bearer nodded. “And he will make medicine to keep the tai-bo guns from doing our warriors any harm.”

  “How is it he can do these wonderful things?” Quanah had asked, not really expecting an answer.

  “Once Isatai was sleeping when he was taken into the spirit world of the sky by the Grandfather Above and told he would be given these powers to help our people,” the young Comanche went on. “His rising to the sky to talk with the spirits was witnessed by many. When he returned, Isatai said the Grandfather Above wanted all his children to do as Isatai would command them.”

  With that invocation, Quanah had grown suspicious. Any man wanting too much power of a proud and independent people like the Kwahadi aroused his gravest doubts. And of late, Isatai was not only demanding obedience of the Comanche, but attempting to spread his influence over the Cheyenne and Kiowa as well.

  Perhaps he was only jealous of such great power in the hands of another, Quanah brooded, here beneath the first stars emerging from the deep purple of twilight above the multihued canyon walls. Eight hundred feet, some higher still, those walls rose above him and the camp of his people here among the trees and brush and gurgle of the spring-swollen creek.

  Yes, he was suspicious—for it seemed to Quanah that Isatai had in his heart not the good of the people, but the burning need for revenge. Many moons ago, in the time of the Deer Shedding Horns, Isatai’s uncle had called together a few young Comanche and a handful of Kiowa warriors to follow him on a raid into Mexico. Upon their return with horses and captives, the soldiers discovered the war party and attacked. Among the dead who were reluctantly abandoned on the battlefield were the Kiowa sons of Lone Wolf and Red Otter. Seven more lay mortally wounded as the survivors rode off and escaped—among them Isatai’s uncle.

  But, in his heart, Quanah understood revenge. His father, Peta Nocona, had taught him that well enough. Since that winter when the Tonkawas and white Tehas rangers had recaptured Quanah’s mother, Peta Nocona wandered in search of Cynthia Ann, his blond wife known as Naduah among the Comanche. It was a search that eventually brought death to the Kwahadi chief. But not before Quanah had learned the value of fury and revenge, of lifelong love.

  He shivered with the chill wind knifing through the canyon, the smell of rain heavy on the air in its passing. Quanah would soon make his way back to the warmth of his lodge and the smooth heat of his wife’s flesh. Nothing warmed him so like driving his own hard lance deep within Tonarcy as they tumbled and grappled and scratched and bit in a furious dance of coupling. Quanah Parker knew love.

  If he did not always understand the ways of men and magic and making war, he did understand women and making love.

  And perhaps even more, Quanah understood himself. He realized he could enlist Isatai’s help in fighting the white man. If the shaman’s powers were not real, no more than breathsmoke in a winter wind, then at least Isatai had proved his worth by bringing together the warrior bands of all the tribes to wage this last great struggle to drive the white man from the land that had belonged to Quanah’s people since time began its journey across the stars.

  And if the shaman’s power proved to be real—so much the better.

  All the better too that Isatai had called for the first-ever sun dance to be held by the Kwahadi. True enough, they had visited the Kiowa and Southern Cheyenne and had witnessed the great sun-staring dance for many generations. But Isatai had announced it was time for the Kwahadi to hold their own, in preparation for the last great fight against the white man. Such was the power of the young shaman’s medicine.

  Eager to do anything that would hasten along their plans to make war on the hunters and soldiers and settlers, Quanah had immediately dispatched pipe bearers to all the bands of Comanche and Kiowa, Cheyenne and Kiowa-Apache, carrying word in every direction. From the reservations to the far reaches of the Staked Plain the word was raised: war was coming.

  “Come join us in driving the white man far from the buffalo ground. Bring your fastest ponies and your weapons—we will kill as many whites as we can, and those we don’t kill, we will drive beyond the rising sun.”

  His words ringing in their ears, Quanah had watched those pipe bearers ride to the four winds with the Kwahadi call for a sun dance and war.

  Powerful medicine.

  Alone now with only the land and the wind, Quanah
vowed, “Together, Isatai—we will see the buffalo hunters fall and the white ground-scratchers driven from our hunting ground. We will watch the soldiers’ hearts turn to water, and the white hunters soil their pants in fear of our power.” His voice was seized from his lips by the cold wind as quickly as his words were uttered.

  “Our power comes from the heart!” Quanah flung more words into the face of the first drops of driving rain hurtling down from the rim of the canyon. “Hear me, white man! This simple Kwahadi warrior knows the power of love. As well, he knows the power of hate.”

  8

  Moon of First Eggs, 1874

  Stone Calf was doing his best to walk the white man’s road in order to keep his people fed. But his heart remained out on the prairie.

  For many moons the white horse thieves had come and gone at will, slipping across the unguarded boundaries of the Cheyenne Reservation. The outlaws laughed in the face of the army’s puny efforts to protect the Indians’ herds. Men like Jack Gallagher and Robert Hollis, and the most infamous of them all—William A. “Hurricane Bill” Martin. It was his bunch that rode down out of Kansas early in March, striking Little Robe’s herd.

  Turning the stolen ponies north toward Kansas, Martin’s men began their escape while Little Robe and other warriors caught up what horses they could to pursue the white thieves. Even though they were driving the stolen ponies before them, Martin’s gang nonetheless began to widen the distance, causing Little Robe to call off the chase.

  Angrily, some of the young men refused to give up the pursuit of the white men. Chief among them—Sitting Medicine, Little Robe’s son.

  When they found themselves unable to catch the thieves, who had escaped well into Kansas territory, the young warriors decided they would lick their wounds by doing a little raiding themselves. They struck the first settlement they happened upon, stealing some horses and cattle, along with making a lot of noise. They succeeded in turning south without harming anyone.

  That all changed when the victorious warriors bumped into some cavalry under Captain Tullis Tupper out of Camp Supply. In the brief but hot skirmish, the stolen horses and cattle were recaptured by the buffalo soldiers, and two warriors were seriously wounded.

  Sitting Medicine was barely able to stay atop his pony by the time the young warriors limped back to the reservation.

  Among the various camps surrounding the Darlington Agency, the word quickly spread. Retaliation was called for. The army was clearly protecting the horse thieves instead of the victims. The same army that had guaranteed food for the hungry families was slowly starving the proud Cheyenne.

  In an electrifying council little more than a moon ago, the chiefs met and argued which path to take. But in the end the Southern Cheyenne tore themselves apart. Vowing to stay on the reservation where the army would not hunt down the Cheyenne, Stone Calf was joined by White Shield and a reluctant Whirlwind.

  “You are old women!” Gray Beard had shouted into the faces of the three peace chiefs. “You sit here while Cheyenne horses are stolen and are offered for sale to the buffalo hunters on the streets of Dodge City. You are worse than women. You are fools too! Open your eyes and see the destruction brought us by the white whiskey traders who sell their poison on the outskirts of our camps. Our warriors are no longer allowed to be men who can hunt and raid—so they drink to fill that hole inside them where their spirit used to be. And when a man is no longer a man, he no longer feels the need to feed his family.

  “I am taking my warriors away from this slow death,” Gray Beard vowed. “No more will we sit by while the white man poisons us with his whiskey. No more will we numbly watch our people starve because the agent and army don’t keep their empty-mouthed promises. And we will hold onto our ponies. My warriors will ride them when the buffalo return north this season. We will ride our ponies when we drive the white man far from the Indian country. Sit on your hands if you will. But as for me—my hands are raised to fight!”

  While the promised rations were in short supply on the reservations that winter and into the cold, wet spring, the trade in guns and ammunition flourished. Not only did Gray Beard’s warriors seek revenge, but young warriors from the other bands hungered to even the score by crossing into nearby Kansas. The chill winds of spring brought with them the stench of blood and death.

  Three white teamsters were butchered near Medicine Lodge, where seven winters before the tribes of the central and southern plains had signed a momentous peace treaty with the white man.

  A few days later, another group of teamsters were corralled on the road between Fort Dodge and Camp Supply and overwhelmed by a large Cheyenne war party.

  Detachments of cavalry traveling the road to and from the Territories were struck, raids made swiftly before the warriors disappeared, leaving wounded and dead soldiers in their wake.

  More and more, small groups of buffalo hunters sighted or even skirmished with war parties of feathered, painted warriors roaming the country between the reservations and the Staked Plain.

  Stone Calf lay awake most nights in his lodge now, listening to the hard rain falling against the hides like the soul-numbing rattle of gunfire.

  He saw their angry faces in his mind. Said their names in his heart. Those young warriors who, one by one, left the reservation nearly every day. Riding off to the west to join the war parties, to live the free life that had been his own as a young man. Only in the darkness of the lodge, with his wives and older children all asleep, did he allow the tears to come. Knowing not what else to do, Stone Calf wanted desperately to believe the white man would keep his word and keep the Cheyenne fed.

  But more and more he was beginning to see this was not only a matter of the belly, full or not. This was becoming a matter of the spirit. To have the warrior spirit meant to ride away from this place of despair before the white man fully crushed what little fire he and the old ones still possessed.

  True enough, a flame still lingered in his old breast.

  “The buffalo herds do not survive where the white man builds his cities, lays his railroads, plows his fields,” Stone Calf had admitted time and again in council. “First the buffalo hunter comes. Behind him the railroad and then the settlements. Spreading from those settlements are the houses of those white men who scratch at the earth.”

  “To me it is clear,” said young Red Moon, a warrior of note who had early on slipped away from the reservation. “Clear to me that to stop the earth-scratchers, the city-builders and the railroad men—we have only to stop those who clear the way for all the rest. We have but one choice—and that is to stop the buffalo hunters.”

  In the night silence of his lodge, Stone Calf’s tears burned his cheeks, for he knew the young warriors were right.

  From the buffalo the Indian drew his physical and spiritual existence. From head to tail, the Cheyenne and the others realized if the buffalo were driven from the plains—so too would the Indian cease to exist. Horns were boiled to fashion spoons and combs. Those shaggy hides the white men stripped from the warm carcasses provided clothing, lodge covers, rawhide shields, and wrapped their infants in cradleboards. The long hair they wove into rope, while his people used tendons to sew clothing and fashion sturdy bowstrings. Hooves provided glue to strengthen the war shields of the young warriors. Liver and brain were pounded to a pulp to soften hides. Paunch and bladder were dried to serve as containers. Even the tails served as fly swatters.

  Little went to waste. And what was left behind by the women and old ones on the prairie after a hunt served to feed the carrion eaters in the great circle of life.

  “The circle has been broken,” Stone Calf whispered in the darkened silence of his lodge, listening to the rain beating on the side of the buffalo hides like the hammering of pony hooves in the chase.

  His first wife turned against him, nuzzling her head into his shoulder, grunting in her sleep. Her breathing soon became regular and deep.

  Stone Calf wondered about his friend, Ben Clark, the army sco
ut who had long ago married one of Stone Calf’s sisters. He was a man who could be trusted, although many of the young warriors never would forgive Clark for acting as one of the scouts who led Yellow Hair Custer to Black Kettle’s village on the Washita many winters before. When soldiers would attack a sleeping village camped under a peace chief—there was truly no peace left for any of them, he decided.

  Ben Clark had quit scouting back then and now worked only as an interpreter out of Camp Supply. Time and again through the terrible winter he had visited his wife’s people at the agency, his own eyes saddened by the great hunger he saw. What ponies weren’t being stolen by white horse thieves, the Cheyenne had to butcher to fill the empty bellies. Clark understood why the young men were leaving the reservation, most abandoning their families to hunt and make war on the buffalo hunters and soldiers.

  “Yet I hear that White Horse has come in with his band,” Clark had said during his last visit with the aging chief at the Darlington Agency.

  Stone Calf had nodded. White Horse, the chief who four winters ago had assumed leadership of the most feared of the Cheyenne warrior societies—the Dog Soldiers. At the battle of Summit Springs, the famed Tall Bull had been killed by Bill Cody, the warriors scattered to the winds by the Fifth Cavalry.* White Horse and his band had held out as long as possible.

  Stone Calf remembered the sadness he had clearly read in Ben Clark’s eyes when the white scout learned that even the famed Dog Soldiers had no option left them but to come in to the agency in order that their families would have food for their bellies.

  I only pray the agent can feed us all, Stone Calf brooded in the cold of his lodge. More than five hundred lodges of Cheyenne and Arapaho now. And Agent Miles complains that he does not have enough coffee and sugar and flour to go around. There has been no beef for so long, I forget the way it tastes. How the white man’s food hurts my teeth.