Dying Thunder

by Terry C. Johnston

  He had watched enough men die. In that bloody war of rebellion fought from the valleys of Virginia to the ridges and forests of Pennsylvania. Seamus knew that look, the pasty feel of a man’s skin when the body is down to its last few minutes. Tyler didn’t have a chance.

  And for a moment as he rose, hurrying for the east wall, Donegan wondered if any of them had a chance.

  “That’un Billy killed,” Keeler said to them as he peered through one of the Comanche slots he had poked through the wall, “damn sight looks like Stone Calf’s son.”

  “The Cheyenne chief?” asked Henry Born, his voice filled with wonder. “I figured him for a peace chief.”

  “Not no more.” Keeler nodded, wiping some blood from Tyler’s chin. “Sumbitch—but don’t you know his son getting killed gonna make them Cheyenne brownskins fight hard now.”

  16

  Moon of Fat Horses, 1874

  Quanah glanced over his shoulder now, finding Isatai still sitting upon his horse atop the hill, out of range of the taibos’ far-shooting guns.

  He swore at the shaman. Just as he had cursed Isatai throughout the first hours of that long, long morning. Painted all in yellow, with his sacred war bonnet of sage sprigs tied around his head, Isatai had never charged down on the white man’s earth lodges. Instead, he had ridden into the meadow at the far right side of the line, then quickly made his way to the crest of that nearby knoll.

  At the first of the white man’s earth lodges they came upon, Quanah and many others reined off from the main sweep of the charge. Timbo continued on with the rest.

  Furiously driving his heels into the gray horse’s flanks, the Kwahadi whirled the animal savagely just before he collided with the plank door. Obediently, the horse backed again and again, hurling itself against the door as Quanah attempted to drive it in on the defenders. The door held.

  His blood hot in failure, the Kwahadi reluctantly galloped away from the walls of the earth lodge, emptying his pistol into a nearby window. He joined those forming a tight, red noose circling the building where the hated taibos cowered out of sight. Only sporadically did the white men fire back at Quanah’s screaming warriors.

  Having a sudden inspiration, he called out to another Kwahadi to follow him in tearing away from the maddening, noisy whirl. Quanah led Wolf Tongue to the wall of that first earth lodge, climbed to the back of the tall gray horse and pulled himself atop the grassy dirt the white man had spread over the roof of his building.

  As he and Wolf Tongue reached the middle of the roof, Quanah heard another blast of the mulatto’s horn. He did not know what the call meant—and he figured few of the hundreds did either. But for some reason the whirling ring of horsemen racing flank to flank around and around the building broke off their circle and rode back across the meadow.

  He did not care. There was the hot, mean, sweaty work of war to be done. “Esa-Que, we dig the tai-bos out!”

  Wolf Tongue nodded, grinning. “Like the wolf will dig out his prey!”

  Using their knives and hands, all that they had, the two warriors were nonetheless unable to burrow through the thick layer of prairie sod so encrusted with the tangled roots of buffalo grass and bluestem. Furious enough that his eyes misted in fury, Quanah rose to his feet and shouted his curses on the white men cowering only inches below his moccasins.

  With a brassy, summer’s day blare, the Negro deserter’s bugle blew again on the hot wind as Quanah darted to the southern edge of the roof. With that shrieking horn’s notes rising beneath the pale, cornflower-blue sky, close to two hundred warriors reined once more for the Rath store. Upon its roof stood the Kwahadi chief, his arms outstretched, silhouetted against the sky, screaming his call for death.

  Quanah waved the horsemen on, shouting encouragement to the riders as they neared the store. A few sporadic shots erupted from the building. As if yanked by strings, all but one of the warriors dropped to the far side of the ponies and circled the earth lodge. The solitary warrior raised his arm in greeting to his chief on the roof.

  “Horse Chief!” Quanah bellowed in reply. “Come—together we will dig out the prairie rats and kill them one by one!”

  Many times since childhood had they ridden together. Now the Comanche warrior savagely brought his pony around near the door to the Rath & Company store as he dismounted on a dead run, a pistol in one hand, his huge war axe in the other. A puff of dust spurted behind him as Quanah watched the young warrior cross the last few yards to the wall of the white man’s earth lodge—

  —where Horse Chief suddenly skidded to a stop only a matter of feet from the wood door, gazing down at his chest. Across it opened a second blossom of red that drove Horse Chief to stumble back a step. He fought forward again, lowering his head like a bull in rut, but as Quanah watched, the warrior’s feet suddenly gave out beneath him as a third bullet hit Horse Chief, spinning him about violently. He pitched backward and moved no more.

  Wolf Tongue was the first off the roof, leaping atop his pony a moment before Quanah dropped to the back of the big gray. The war chief sawed the rein around in a tight circle, racing the horse back along the earth lodge, a matter of an arm’s length from the wall.

  Quanah heard the angry snarl of the guns as he raced along the east wall, heard the bitter whine of the white man’s bullets as he leaned off the horse. Yet this time he could not hide behind the horse as the others were. This time Quanah had to hang on with a hand tangled in the gray’s mane, a heel locked over the gray’s huge flank as he leaned toward the wall, toward the windows and doors, toward the spitting muzzles of the tai-bos’ guns, reaching down and with inhuman strength grabbing the back of Horse Chief’s belt. Unable to lift the dead warrior to his lap, Quanah reined the gray horse away from the earth building as the white man’s lead wasps followed him into the meadow.

  “He is dead,” said Wild Mustang, another Comanche warrior after Quanah had gently lowered the body of Horse Chief, then leaped to the grass himself.

  “He was the bravest of us, Cobay,” Quanah said, kneeling.

  The Kwahadi war chief gently laid his hand on the breast of his old friend, his palm coming away with Horse Chief’s warm, sticky blood. Quanah slapped the blood upon his own breast, over his heart, mixing it with the earth paint and grease, the sweat and the dust furring every inch of his bare skin.

  “Years ago, your blood became mine. And mine became yours, Horse Chief. Know now that your death will not be in vain. Isatai lied to us—”

  “Quanah!” Rag Full of Holes said, shocked.

  “He did lie!” Quanah snapped back, rising suddenly, glaring at Full of Holes’s face. He turned to glance at the ongoing battle as more and more warriors left the circle and dismounted, choosing to fight behind wagons or the tall, wide stacks the tai-bos had made of their dried buffalo hides, most as big as a small earth lodge.

  “We have two scalps,” Wild Mustang told him.

  “How?”

  “Timbo and the others found two white men hiding beneath the canvas covering their wagon.”

  He squinted into the new sunlight, shading his eyes with one hand to find Isatai still atop a nearby hill, his ocher-painted body glorious in the yellow light. “Only two? Any of ours?”

  “Stone Calf’s son, a Cheyenne, was killed. Now Horse Chief—a Kwahadi. Another Cheyenne, named Spots on the Feathers.”

  “Three?” Quanah shrieked in a rage. “And we were supposed to club the white man in his sleep?”

  “Quanah, we are gratified to have the two scalps now. There will be more soon. It is only the beginning of the fight.”

  He whirled on Wild Mustang. “This fight was supposed to be over by now!”

  “Things have gone well enough, Quanah. Do not be mad at Isatai because the white man was not asleep. We have the scalps, and some wagons to pilfer through already. Surely, I agree that we did not club the white man in his blankets—but the day is young.”

  For some reason, Quanah did not like the feel of this morning. His s
ense of things was not right. And now a good friend was dead while the rest were giving up the close fighting.

  “No!” he shouted, waving angrily at the hundreds as they dismounted and slapped the rumps of their ponies to send the animals off. “We cannot fight these white men like this! Their guns shoot harder, their bullets go farther! We cannot defeat the white man like this!”

  “Leave them fight,” Full of Holes said. “We will ferret the tai-bos out soon enough. They will run out of those far-shooting bullets—”

  Quanah whirled on him, nearly knocking Full of Holes off his feet as he swept past, leaping to the back of the gray horse again. He stopped momentarily beside Wild Mustang, tearing the long, fourteen-foot lance from his friend’s grasp. “If no other will fight like a Comanche—let it be told down to our grandchildren’s grandchildren that Quanah Pah-kuh was the last Kwahadi warrior!”

  He dug heels into the gray’s ribs as the animal burst into a run. Straight for the door he raced, that long buffalo lance held parallel to the dry breast of the ground, he swept over the stunted grass, drawing closer still to the Rath store where Horse Chief had fallen. Quanah grieved. In his own way, the Kwahadi chief grieved.

  Just as he neared the earth wall, the east door cracked open slightly, a muzzle appearing. Quanah was there with the lance, jabbing it into the black strip where the white rifleman must be standing. Shouts burst from the darkness as the weight of the door slammed on the lance. Fighting furiously, reining the gray back, Quanah struggled to free the lance. A bullet snarled past his braid. A second almost burned his nostrils.

  With a final, mighty pull, Quanah broke the buffalo lance in half and wheeled the gray about, reining the horse for the meadow once more, where the huge stacks of buffalo hides hid Comanche and Kiowa snipers. Of a sudden he was airborne, vaulting over the neck of the great horse as it went down, pitching its rider forward into the dry, drought-ravaged grass.

  For a moment he felt the blackness pulling him down like the shifting sands of the river sucked the unwary. Then Quanah shook his head to pull himself out of the quagmire. His mind exploded with shooting stars. And he realized his right arm and shoulder were not responding. His back felt as if it had been split in two. Slowly he raised his left arm and he rolled over off the numb right shoulder. It was then he saw the last thrashing of the big gray horse.

  A funnel of dirt exploded near his useless right hand. Another showered a moccasin with earth. The tai-bos knew he was down and in the grass. Lying here still many yards from that stack of hides.

  Quanah Parker crawled for his life. It seemed of a circle in some way: the white man had taken back his great, gray horse.

  But too, the white man had taken the life of a good friend.

  As the dirt erupted around him, angry bullets whistling past his ears, Quanah remembered their first horse raid into Texas together as mere boys, remembered how they both had come of age in the battle of Antelope Hills. How they had sworn to protect one another with their lives.

  First his mother and then his father. Followed by one friend after another.

  So now Quanah Parker cursed again, because the white man was taking everything from him. Everything.

  * * *

  Everything had moved so quickly for Billy in those next few minutes. Someone who sounded like Fred Leonard had hollered from the Myers store for Bat.

  Over the diminishing thunder of hooves as the warriors broke off their circling attack, Masterson had hollered back from the east doorway that he was in the saloon.

  Leonard had roared that Billy Tyler was hit and wanted Bat.

  “You don’t stand a chance of making it between hell and breakfast, Bat,” Billy tried to tell him.

  Masterson’s face had gone as dark as a square of trade plug. “Like you, he’s my friend, Billy. If it were you—I’d come.” He rose and stood hunched at the door. “Cover me—all of you!”

  Perhaps it had been the hand of God Himself that had shielded Masterson in that spirited race from the saloon to the Myers stockade. Billy was sure nothing else short of divine intervention could have kept Bat from running smack into a bullet in those few seconds it took the youngest of the hunters to sprint clear to the east wall of the stockade and dive inside the crack of a door opened for him.

  Later in the fighting and sniping, near ten o’clock, Dixon moved to the west wall and poked a new hole through the pickets so he could look in the direction of the Rath store. Some seventy-five yards off stood one of the tall hide ricks, every bit as big as O’Keefe’s blacksmith shop itself. Then something caught his eye. At the corner of the stack fluttered some black feathers. Billy crouched, held his breath and aimed. Fired.

  The feathers disappeared as the warrior backed anxiously to the far side of the hide rick. Putting himself in view of the riflemen inside the Rath store. Now they fired upon him, driving the warrior back into Dixon’s sights. Nearby stood the Indian’s gaily-painted pony, nervously cropping at the grass.

  Billy tried again. His bullet knocked dust off the corner of the hide rick. Back and forth the warrior danced behind the stack of dried hides for the next ten minutes. Tiring of the do-si-do with the Indian, Dixon laid his front blade on the warrior’s pony, deciding to aim for the colorful calico ribbons braided in the pony’s mane. The animal dropped immediately, a bullet through its head.

  Without the cover of his pony, the warrior made a much better target. Dixon drove home another cartridge into the .50-caliber Sharps he had switched with Oscar Sheppard, took deliberate aim at what little he could see—nothing more than some feathers fluttering at the corner of the hide rick—and fired.

  The warrior bolted from hiding, sprinting toward the cottonwoods for about fifteen yards, then suddenly spilled in the brittle grass. He was down only a moment before he bolted onto his feet again with the yip of a coyote pup and sprinted off a little farther when he dropped again. Up again, yipping at the top of his lungs, zigging and zagging until he reached the cover of the trees while Dixon watched, more amused than amazed.

  A noisy crow fluttered in through the solitary window of Hanrahan’s saloon and perched on a shelf where broken crockery littered the floor below. “Kraw! Kerr-raawww!” it called.

  “Get outta here!” Dixon shouted at the bird roosting just over his shoulder.

  “He got you scared?” Bermuda Carlisle asked.

  “You know well as I crows don’t mean anything good,” Dixon replied. He looked at the old buffalo man smiling at him. There was still a lot of fire in Bermuda’s eye, steel in the old man’s lean belly. Carlisle knew as well as any, for he had long proved himself out here in this country, a plainsman with saddle calluses clear up to his elbows.

  “Don’t claim to be superstitious about death, are you?”

  Outside in the meadow the naked horsemen sounded like a roving pack of mountain cats, all filled with a painful dose of porcupine quills in their jaws.

  “Look out yonder—and you tell me, Bermuda,” Billy snarled, turning back to his loophole, a cold drop of sweat shinnying down his backbone.

  Crows meant no good. They carried news of death. Dixon wondered who it was, and why the crow had come to tell him—perched right over his shoulder, cawing away. Was it Masterson? Had Bat made it to Myers’s place all right? Or could it be Tyler? It had to be Tyler the crow was cawing about. Or maybe—would it be the Irishman?

  “G’won now!” He swung the muzzle of the big .50 at the crow angrily. Scared more of the supernatural than he was of anything he could see. No matter what color the man’s skin, Billy Dixon weren’t afraid of nothing he could see.

  “Too bad, boys,” Carlisle commiserated with a grin on his face as he swiped beads of sweat off his brow. “A damned shame that Injuns don’t have pelts half as good as buffler—so the sonsabitches’d be worth something in the shooting.”

  Some of the others laughed as Hanrahan inched his way out of a squat and crabbed over to Dixon.

  “We’re in a bad way,” Hanrahan said as he
settled beside the young hunter.

  With the sun noon high, sulled in the sky and refusing to move like a lazy mule, they had been under siege for better than six hours now. Dry as chalk itself, the air tasted like it had been fried in sulfurous tar.

  “We got a better chance than Dudley and Wallace had,” Billy whispered. “I saw ’em, Jim—least what was left of ’em.” And that sight had been enough to shove what he had left of his breakfast that day clear up around his tonsils. He swallowed hard against the bad taste in his mouth. “I’ll bet the bastards what killed ’em are right out there, been shooting at us all morning.”

  “Weren’t a pretty sight to see, I heard.”

  “The red bastards propped their heads up,” Billy snarled.

  Hanrahan squinted, as if imagining it. “What the hell for?”

  “For ’em to watch their own torture. Cut ’em from upstream gullet to downcreek gut-end.”

  “They sliced ’em open … and c-cut their pizzer and balls off?”

  Dixon nodded. “Then burned ’em. Set a fire down there.”

  With a pale-eyed, loafer wolf of a look in his well-seamed eyes, Hanrahan glanced at his groin and shuddered involuntarily. “Where was their goddamned bites?”

  Billy shrugged a shoulder, glancing back out the loophole.

  A “bite” was what the veterans of buffalo country carried in a pocket, always handy in the event of attack. No man wanted to be captured alive by the red raiders of the Staked Plain. Their bites were made from wolf poison—strychnine mostly—rolled into a paper cartridge. Ready for a man to shove between his teeth and bite if he found himself hopelessly surrounded and about to be taken.

  “Jesus, Mary and Joseph—I don’t know where they was. Maybe they didn’t even carry one.”

  “You got yours?”

  Dixon patted a pocket. “My mama didn’t waste her cooking on no feebleminded children.” He sighed, wiping his sweating palms off on the fronts of his britches. “We’ll know next time to listen to that shit about the Injuns coming—won’t we, Jimmy?”