Dying Thunder

by Terry C. Johnston

  White Wolf joined Otter Belt before Quanah. “We think the Kwahadi need first to wipe out the buffalo hunters gathered on the Canadian River. Kwahadi go do that first. Then your hearts will be ready for war. You kill all the buffalo hunters—then the Cheyenne follow you to war in Tehas. All our young men gladly follow you anywhere then, Quanah.”

  Otter Belt tapped a finger against his heart, then against Quanah’s. “In there, we both know the Tonkawas are no threat to our peoples. Don’t we, Quanah? In there, in your heart, you know the real threat to the survival of our peoples are the buffalo hunters. We stop them—then we stop the white man.”

  Quanah had to nod, almost reluctantly. The older Cheyenne had stripped it bare, like he himself did when he cracked open a large bone to expose the marrow. Gone to the heart of the matter. “Yes. We stop the buffalo hunters now. The rest will not bother us: these settlers and the workers for the smoking horse. We will fill the hunters’ camps with dead, bloating bodies until no white man will ever again venture onto the buffalo ground.”

  “What about the hunters’ camp I told you about on the Canadian?” White Wolf asked.

  “Your scouts have seen them?”

  “Yes. They come and go as if the land were theirs to use up and throw away,” Otter Belt answered for them both.

  “No!” shouted Isatai, leaping forward to confront the two Cheyenne war chiefs, his hand working like claws before him. “Forget those buffalo killers. We must first wipe out the Tonkawas—they are the eyes and ears for the soldiers who killed my father!”

  “The Tonkawas are not the cause of our problems, Quanah,” White Wolf repeated in turning away from Isatai. “You must stop the buffalo hunters first.”

  Otter Belt agreed, but with a reservation. “The white man will fight, staying hidden in those lodges he has raised with earth for their walls.”

  “The white man fights hard when he gets behind his walls,” Quanah reflected thoughtfully, then had his attention snagged as Isatai lunged toward the Cheyenne chiefs, his hands gripping and releasing, as if suddenly possessed, gesturing angrily.

  “Those walls are nothing to my power!” the young shaman growled. “Haven’t I told you of my recent visit to the Spirit Above? He told me he would put all the white men to sleep before our attack. Don’t you see?” he gushed enthusiastically. “Our warriors will only have to ride in and club them on the heads, like the white man’s stupid spotted buffalo are clubbed to death.”

  “Those hunters have guns that shoot a long, long way,” came a voice filled with doubt from the council ring.

  Isatai whirled on the doubter, slapping his chest with his two hands. “Let them shoot all their bullets at us! Do you dare talk against my powers? Do you doubt that I can make a medicine so powerful that it will protect our warriors as they ride down on the white man’s earth lodges? Tell me!” he shrieked, scurrying around the center of the gathering, yelling his words into the faces of the chiefs. “Do you doubt the power of my medicine to turn their bullets into water?”

  “No,” Quanah answered firmly. He had decided. It would not be the Tonkawas. It would be the white man. It had to be the white man. Down in the core of his marrow, Quanah knew he had to confront the white blood in him, and defeat it—as surely as he had to ride down on the white buffalo hunters and defeat them. One and all.

  When Quanah answered Isatai, the rest had little choice but to respond in kind. They muttered their assent to the plan the Kwahadi war chief now gave his strongest voice. “The tai-bo hunters will fall beneath our hooves and hands like newborn calves, their hearts turned to gall and their courage gone the way of winter breathsmoke.”

  “So you will wipe out the settlement on the Canadian?” White Wolf asked, stepping before Quanah in a challenging way.

  Surprising the Cheyenne warrior, Quanah snagged the front of the calfskin vest White Wolf wore and hoisted the warrior off his toes. “Do not play with me, Cheyenne. I am not so stupid nor am I a child, as you might believe. If your warriors are not the men they used to be before your people went to stay on the reservations—then move aside and let the Kwahadi and Kiowa pass through to drive the white man out.”

  In slowly lowering the Cheyenne war chief to his feet and smoothing the calfskin vest, Quanah continued, his words barely audible at the center of that great assembly. “This will be great sport, this challenge you present us, White Wolf. This is the land of my people, where the Kwahadi ride free and proud—ever since life was in the womb of time itself. But, we have seen too much sorrow in recent winters, so Kwahadi hearts are ready for this fight. Where once the great herds roamed and drifted before the seasons, I now see only death, White Wolf. While our children and old ones go hungry … the bellies of the big-winged predators grow so heavy with rotting meat that the birds cannot fly. I myself have stood and looked down on a field of death that stretches far beyond where my eye can see. My nose has so filled with the stench that my heart becomes angry, thinking of the little ones.” His eyes narrowed on the Cheyenne chief. “Do you have little ones gone hungry in your camps placed in the shadow of the white man’s forts, White Wolf?”

  “The flour does not come,” replied the Cheyenne. “When it does, the sacks are filled with weevils and dead mice. There is never enough of the white man’s spotted buffalo to feed our families. Many of those who live on the reservation are too old or sick to hunt for themselves. They are reduced to begging at the back doors of the kitchens from the soldiers at Camp Supply. No—you do not hate alone, Quanah,” White Wolf growled. “I am sorry if I offended you. I knew of your white blood, and distrusted it. Forgive me: White Wolf wanted only to be sure it would be your Comanche blood that would guide your heart in the coming fight.”

  “Quanah?”

  They both turned, finding the old and venerable Comanche chief hobbling into the bright firelight.

  Ten Bears said, “Paracoom is dying, Quanah. Chief of your Kwahadi band. It now falls on your shoulders to lead this fight. Take not the counsel of the shaman or the owl-puffing wizards. Listen only to your heart, young one. And do what it tells you.”

  The strength of the old chief’s words filled him with the power of prairie lightning. “I will do this for my people, Ten Bears.”

  “When the white man wanted to put us all on a reservation, six winters ago—he wanted us to live in one place as he does.” Ten Bears licked his dry lips, the pink tip of his tongue flicking out between gaps in his worn teeth. “I do not want a house like these buffalo hunters build for themselves. I was born on the prairie, where the wind blows free and there is nothing to break the light of the sun. I was born where there are no enclosures and every living thing draws a free breath. I want to die here, and not within walls.” His old eyes grew moist as he peered up at the young war chief. “Make this so, Quanah.”

  “No Comanche must die a captive of the white man. A warrior dies on the prairie, Ten Bears. He dies riding into the face of his enemy. We will take the magic of Isatai with us to the buffalo hunters’ settlement. But we will also take our weapons as well. The white man’s days on the prairie are numbered.”

  Quanah slowly made a tight fist before the old man’s smiling, watery eyes. “I hold those last days of the white man in my hand.”

  10

  Early June 1874

  Billy Dixon was not the kind to sit on his thumbs, or to grovel in the dirt and sod when there was money to be made shooting buffalo. But that was just the problem. The buffalo had been slow in moving north that spring.

  Almost from that thud of the first hammer or the grating of the first saw, Dixon eagerly pulled his three-man outfit from the meadow beside Adobe Walls Creek and headed south to scare up the herds. Instead, all they got for their two-week, wide-ranging trip were some saddle galls and a few bulls.

  Billy tried to explain his view of things to his skinners in a way that would keep them from losing heart. “Season’s too damned early for the cows and bulls to start mating and running together, boys. We’l
l be in better shape soon.”

  Buffalo outfits ranged in size from the sort of man who was a loner, bent on doing his own hunting and skinning, to outfits numbering several hunters who would join together in one base camp, then each of whom would range out in different directions every day of the hunt. Most hunters could easily keep three to four skinners busy as they worked through a sizable herd.

  Usually able to get no closer than three or four hundred yards to a herd before the sentinel bulls grew restive, a hunter would belly down in a likely spot with his canteen to cool the big-bore barrel and cartridge belt and often an extra rifle should the one become overheated. Then by carefully selecting his targets on the fringe of the herd, or by putting down those animals that were tending to wander away from the stand, the hunter could keep the dull-witted beasts confused as one after another of their kind collapsed onto the prairie. And such work always made social misfits of the skinners, working up to their elbows for weeks at a time in the blood and gore, their unchanged clothing time and again soaked with tallow and slicked with blood. A gamy sort of character that most men kept downwind.

  After having left Adobe Walls and swinging as far east as Cantonment Creek on that first sojourn, Dixon brought his crew back in to the meadow to find most of the buildings nearing completion, and Charlie Rath’s store not lagging far behind. It proved a joyous few days that third week of April: drinking, singing, dancing, regaling one another with their stories of past hunts or bloody battles fought in a faraway war not quite ten years gone. Indeed, it was good to see new faces, and those familiar, like Donegan’s—but again, after only two days of company, the boredom became nettlesome to Dixon and he itched to ride out once more.

  Having had enough company to last him for a while, Billy headed west up the Canadian this time, as far as Hell’s Creek, where they caught up the Old Fort Bascomb Trail and followed it as far as Antelope Creek. Near there Dixon ran across the path he had taken the previous winter. Taking it, they recrossed the Canadian and marched north to Grapevine Creek, running across small bands of bulls along the way. Some they shot, mostly for camp meat. But, for the most part, Dixon did not disturb the few buffalo they found as he pushed his outfit eastward while the lengthening days took them into the month of May and the weather invigorated the randy blood of the young men.

  From time to time Dixon or the others would find a patch of lamb’s quarter where they made their evening camp. They ate wild greens most every night as the stars came out to sparkle against a brilliant, nighttime canopy. And every morning they arose to the smell of coffee brewing as the sunrise splayed orange lances into the sky from somewhere still far to the east.

  Eventually deciding not to push their luck by pressing farther south than they already were on the North Fork of the Red River, Dixon led his wagons north by west, returning a second time to the sod buildings of the settlement at Adobe Walls. Yet once more the boredom wore on Billy after no more than a week. That, and the unaccounted absences of the Irishman each evening. Donegan just up and disappeared not long before nightfall—to where, no man seemed to know.

  “Being downright unsociable,” Billy had muttered to himself more than once when gone in search of the Irishman, asking after Donegan at each of the buildings. “Not like him at all,” he decided. Not like Donegan to miss out on the drinking and singing and dancing in such a way. Something was clearly amiss, and it bothered him not a little. Almost as much as not finding the herds. Getting later and later the way it was …

  The end of May, Dixon pulled out again.

  On this third trip, with but two skinners along, he struck due south for the mouth of White Deer Creek, following it until the stream took him directly into the heart of the plains. There was no doubt of it—the place even had the smell of it: they were in buffalo country, when the buffalo decided to come back north. But, they were undoubtedly in Indian country.

  Finding a place that offered good grass, water and firewood, Dixon proposed making a permanent hunting camp. Not only was Frenchy a skinner, but camp cook as well. The trio was rounded out by another skinner, Charley Armitage, recently arrived from England to immerse himself in the life of the American frontier.

  For three days now Billy had been riding far out to the south in a grand circle trying to locate the herds, without success. But as coffee water boiled that fourth morning, the summer sun rising early out of the east, the low, thundering rumble came carried to him on the clear prairie air. For any hide man who had ever heard that sound, he instantly knew in every fiber of his body that his time was at hand.

  “You hear it, Billy?” Armitage asked, kicking on his leather-split broughams and standing in the crumple of his blankets, looking like something a dog would drag in off the prairie.

  “They’re coming, boys,” Dixon replied. “Keep an eye on that pot and I’ll be back shortly.”

  He strode off on foot to the south, ascending to the highest hill. There his eyes strained into the early light streaming across the wide, rolling land. Still nothing. He waited, listening through those long minutes. While his eyes failed him, his ears did not. The buffalo were coming.

  By the time he was back at camp, Frenchy had some meat frying in one pan, a Dutch oven with johnnycakes browning nicely. Dixon hurriedly shoved his breakfast down, swallowing several cups of coffee before he swiped a hand across his shaggy mustache and saddled up.

  No more than five miles south of their camp, Billy ran into the first small bunches of buffalo—bulls. Migrating slowly to the north, each and every one eating and bellowing as they plodded their way in the seasonal imperative. It was now the breeding season, when the bulls roared and snorted and raised their challenges to the cloudless summer sky.

  His heart leaped in his chest the farther south he rode. Another eight miles and Billy Dixon reined up suddenly atop a low knoll. Below him, in all three directions, stretched a brown-black carpet undulating gradually to the north. The excitement of this great land and of the life he had chosen once more sang through his heart, causing his limbs to tingle as he sawed the horse about and raced back to camp to spread the news.

  Before noon, within sight of their tents, Billy dropped forty buffalo, putting Frenchy and Armitage to work with their long-bladed skinning knives. By sundown the fringe of the herd had begun to pass within a gunshot of their camp.

  At work by first light the next morning, it took little time for Dixon to shoot enough buffalo to keep his pair of skinners busy for several days before he hitched up the mules to one of his light wagons and pushed north, heading back to Adobe Walls.

  “What brings you back here, with that shit-eating grin on your face?” asked Charley Rath as Dixon tied the reins around the brake handle and hopped down from the wagon. “You found some buff, didn’t you?”

  “Damn if I didn’t, Charley!” Billy cried.

  “Whooeee!” Rath hollered as more of the settlement’s inhabitants hurried to gather close. “They’re coming in, boys!”

  “Where’s Donegan?” Dixon inquired, craning his neck.

  “He’s coming over now,” Billy Tyler said, pointing across the meadow as the tall Irishman loped up.

  “Say, Donegan!” Dixon hollered. “I need all the hands I can get. You want to make some good money skinning for me?”

  The Irishman bellowed loudly at that as he came to a halt. “You’re bleeming daft, Billy Dixon! That’s what you are. If you think I’m going to squat my arse down in blood and splash that blood up to my elbows day after day—you’ve gone out on the prairie without a hat one too many times, you have!”

  “Money’s good,” Dixon tried again. “More’n enough to keep any dozen of you busy under my gun.”

  “Just the same, I’ll stay here until my plans change, Billy.”

  “What is it you’re planning on doing—if not eating and drinking and sleeping away the summer?” Dixon prodded, both his hands on his hips.

  Seamus leaned in, a wide smile cracking his well-seamed, wind-eroded face. “
Just what’s so bad with a man spending his days doing nothing a’tall?”

  Dixon laughed, then asked the group, “Any of you? Want good money? Twenty-five cents a hide. That’s top money for skinners. I need you and I need you now.”

  “I’ll go with you,” replied one man.

  “What’s your name, mister?”

  “Sewell,” he replied. “But I can only go for a few days. Got a partner coming in with a full load of hides, and then we’ll be taking off for Dodge City soon’s he gets back.”

  “You’ll do. I’ll bring you back here in a week or so, if that sets with you,” Billy said, turning from the new man. “How ‘bout the rest of you?” His eyes scanned the silent crowd.

  Rath clucked sadly. “The rest that was here a day ago heard the same news, I s’pose.”

  “Yeah,” agreed Charlie Myers, who was edging up to the circle. “Every outfit that could hit the prairie has already took off. We won’t see nobody back in here till they’ve got wagons swaybacked under hides. Ain’t that right, Rath?”

  “By damn—won’t it be a pretty sight when them hide wagons start wheeling in here, groaning under all that pretty flesh? We’ll punch some life into this settlement real soon, we will!” Rath exclaimed as the rest cheered the arrival of the herds.

  Dixon quickly worked out a trade with Charley Rath for some more lead and powder, flour and coffee, along with some tinned vegetables and fruit before he and Ned Sewell climbed aboard the light wagon and turned the team south.

  For more than a week Billy worked his three harder than he had worked any of his skinners: rousting them out of their blankets in the predawn darkness so that they could have breakfast eaten and be at the killing ground before the sky had turned gray. And he kept them at it, not bringing the wagons back around for the bloodstained trio until the last vestige of light had drained purple from the evening sky.