Dying Thunder

by Terry C. Johnston

  Hippy had his elk-antler quirt swinging at the end of his arm as he closed on Isatai, his eyes filled with hate, his face as black as a coming thunderstorm. “What’s the matter with your medicine now, shaman? It cannot save you from white man’s bullets—nor will it save you from the beating I’m going to deliver!”

  Quanah and two of the older Cheyenne chiefs stepped in front of Hippy and Elk Shoulder as more of the young warriors surged forward to give Isatai the beating they all felt the shaman deserved.

  “Look before you!” Quanah ordered them. “See how he is already shamed. His medicine is like water now. His shame is enough. Let it be enough that Isatai will have to live out all his days with this disgrace.”

  “The little ones will know of his shame!” Hippy vowed.

  “Yes, long will the little ones know of the mistakes made this day,” Quanah agreed.

  More than two dozen warriors lay dead—half of them right under the muzzles of the white man’s guns where the Kwahadi could not rescue the bodies. Twice that many were wounded, already dragged from the meadow to the safety of the timber where the women could nurse the wounds, or there await the certain death that would greet some before night fell this long, bloody day.

  “Quanah!”

  He turned, finding the face of his young friend, Timbo. Halting close, Timbo dismounted. The four warriors with him reined up but did not dismount.

  “We have another dead friend, Quanah,” Timbo said.

  “You rescued his body from the white man’s—”

  “No,” Timbo interrupted, his eyes frightened like a small animal’s. Those eyes glanced quickly to the others, then came back to rest on the war chief. “Quanah, he was not killed attacking the earth lodges. The six of us, we were there,” he said, pointing a little to the north. “Behind those hills. Sitting in a circle, talking of our plans—how to rescue the bodies of our friends. When we had decided on a plan, we leaped atop our ponies … and that is when the bullet struck. We did not hear it, Quanah! These bullets from the white man’s guns come and we do not hear them! This bullet killed—”

  Quanah embraced the trembling young warrior suddenly, silencing him. “There is evil in the tai-bos’ guns. That they can shoot bullets we do not hear coming. That these guns kill us behind trees and hills … no man is safe from such evil.”

  Timbo struggled a moment with himself, then appeared to regain his composure. “We will take my friend to the women.”

  “This is all you can do now,” Quanah replied quietly. “Perhaps it is all any of us can do now—to mourn our dead.”

  Those rifles of the white man had proved potent. Far more powerful than the strength of Isatai’s medicine, stronger even than the will of the young Kwahadi war chief to drive the tai-bos from this land. Yes, he was angry—but not only angry at the white man. There was little to celebrate. Two scalps and a little food found among the wagons they had looted. A few horses had been captured, but far too many had been killed during the first few fiery minutes of battle at dawn. And now the brown grass in that meadow was littered not only with the carcasses of animals, but far too many puddles of crimson stained the trampled bluestem and bunchweed of this evil place.

  Not that long ago the hundreds of horsemen had been filled with heart to overrun this place of the hide men. But now, having found the white men awake and not to be clubbed in their sleep, finding the guns far-shooting, finding the white men unwilling to come out of their earth-walled burrows … all the fight had seeped out of the warriors like milk from a cracked bowl Quanah had discovered inside a settler’s soddy two summers before. Never had any fight gone this badly, for this long.

  As if the white man’s hand had cruelly ripped it from his breast, Quanah sensed the heart had clearly gone out of his people.

  19

  June 27, 1874

  “It’s over,” Donegan said quietly.

  He rose to his feet, his hung-over head throbbing as he peered through a loophole in the pickets where that morning they had knocked loose the dried mud. Clearly, it appeared the warriors had disappeared like rain splatter fallen into deep and thirsty dust.

  “I think the Irishman may be right,” Dutch Born agreed. “Listen.”

  “I don’t hear a thing,” replied Charley Armitage.

  “That’s just what I mean,” Born said.

  “Ain’t been much shooting to speak of for some time,” added the old man, Keeler.

  “Don’t see much moving around out there,” Fred Leonard said from his post at the wall.

  “Only Injuns I seen for better’n a hour,” said Mike McCabe, “is them dead’uns spraddled on the grass.”

  “You fought with the Yankees, didn’t you, Irishman?” asked Keeler, his top lip serrated with deep wrinkles as he tongued his brown cud of tobacco.

  Seamus grinned. “It shows, does it?”

  “I can tell you been under fire a whole danged lot, Irishman. And top of that, I never knowed a Irishman what fought for the Confederacy. S’pose I can add as good as the next fella.”

  “Second Cavalry.”

  “Sheridan’s Army of the Potomac,” Keeler replied, then let go with a low whistle. “Damn if a strange dog don’t get his ass sniffed. You was with Little Phil in the Shenandoah too, weren’t you?”

  Donegan nodded. “Never figured out why the last fighting in a war like that is always the bloodiest.”

  “Same in a scrap with Injuns,” added Armitage as he strode to the west door. He cracked it cautiously, setting one eye into the opening.

  “See anything?” Born asked.

  “Just this dead Injun Tyler was dragging back.”

  “Cheyenne,” Donegan told them.

  “So you know he’s Cheyenne, do you?” McCabe growled. “How’s it you so sure?”

  “Fought enough of ’em. From the Bozeman Road down to the Arickaree and on to Summit Springs. I know Cheyenne, McCabe.”

  “Whoooeee, fellas!” cried Keeler. “This Irishman’s the genuwine article—one hell of a man come fit with hair on his brisket clean down to his hobbles!”

  “Shit,” growled the always irritated McCabe, “that don’t mean he knows Cheyenne from—”

  “There’s Bermuda!” Frenchy hollered, keeping watch through the pickets on the south wall.

  Some of the others rushed to look too. Another three of them ventured cautiously into the corral, their rifles at ready.

  Donegan and Armitage raised the bolt on the huge double doors facing the bare western hills, then slowly drew both doors back into the store, allowing a great, warm wash of the settling light into the building. He breathed deep of the quiet.

  “Smells pretty good, don’t it?” Armitage asked.

  “It will for a while yet,” Seamus replied. “We don’t do something about these Injin bodies … them horse carcasses—before you know it, this place will be stinking like that island where Roman Nose had us pinned down for nine days.”

  The meadow was littered with the carcasses of fifty-six enemy ponies and ten of the hide men’s horses, besides a dozen mules and more than twenty-eight oxen belonging to the Scheidlers—each animal already starting to bloat beneath the summer sun. If a man listened intently enough, he could hear the buzzing and the scritch-scritching of the little things at work already: those flying, crawling, wriggling creatures drawn to the stench of the blood and the gore and the decaying flesh.

  Eventually the rest of the defenders at Hanrahan’s saloon emerged into the sunlight, following Bermuda Carlisle—the first to bravely make the venture. Some of them turned to holler for Dixon and the rest in Charley Rath’s store, urging them out.

  “Someone ought’n count the dead Injuns, I s’pose,” Keeler suggested as he strode off, appointing himself.

  “Only those what’s wanting some of the plunder,” Armitage replied gruffly. “I figure first off we ought to look to Ike and Shorty.” Charlie had known Ike and Shorty for some time and took no small offense that the rest did not concern themselves over
their proper and immediate burying.

  Donegan, along with James Campbell and Ed Trevor, followed Armitage to the overturned wagons behind which they found the stripped, mutilated bodies of the Scheidler brothers. For the better part of the morning and into the early afternoon, the warriors had flaunted the scalps of the two white men, hoping to enrage the hunters, provoking them into something foolish.

  “Lookit that—the red bastards even scalped Shorty’s dog,” Armitage whimpered as he knelt beside the animal.

  “Put up one helluva fight when the Injins found the boys hid under the wagon covers,” Donegan said, remembering how the Scheidlers had concealed themselves in those early minutes of the fight as the warriors swarmed into the wagon yard outside Myers’s stockade.

  Only when two dozen of the horsemen dismounted to pilfer through the wagons did the unsuspecting warriors pull back one of the canvas covers—and were greeted by a blast from Shorty’s gun. Ike had bolted from his wagon, sprinting for the stockade, but had not made it far before he was shot, then dragged back to be butchered beside his brother. As the warriors began their mutilation of the warm bodies, the huge, black-furred Newfoundland had done its best to guard the earthly remains of its masters, grittily attacking the butchers. With a pitiful whimper, the Comanche had clubbed the four-legged defender, then scalped it as well as the men. The hound had proved itself a worthy enemy, brave in battle.

  Donegan found himself understanding. Then wondered if he had been out here on this mapless frontier a bit too long—if he were now beginning to savvy these first inklings of the Indian mind.

  “I’ll go fetch us up some shovels,” Armitage said before he turned back to the stockade, ashen-faced.

  Donegan nodded without a word, then strode off for the open meadow where stood the huge ricks of dried flint hides. The huge gray horse had drawn his attention during the middle of the morning’s fight, the way its rider had whirled and dared and taunted the white riflemen. Making of his broad back as much a target as any brave man would in the face of so many muzzles and marksmen. And an animal as big as the gray horse had made itself a dandy target.

  As he stood over the carcass, staring down at the green-backed flies buzzing in and out of the ears, eyes and along the open mouth, not to mention how the insects collected among the drying blood, Donegan counted seven bullet wounds in the animal’s sides and flanks. Which brought him to remembering The General’s last, valiant race that hot summer dawn on the high plains of Colorado Territory before the renegade Bob North brought the great animal down and sent the Irishman sprawling onto a sandy scut of island in the middle of a nameless river where he and Forsyth’s scouts fought for their lives across the next nine days.

  “You coming to help me?” Armitage shouted from the wagons.

  Donegan turned, dragging a hand beneath his dribbling nose, and blinked his stinging eyes. It was all right—this mourning still. A good animal should be remembered and grieved like he would any friend.

  Not quite halfway along the north wall of the Myers stockade, Armitage stopped and planted his shovel in the ground. There, working together at the same time, both he and Donegan began digging. From time to time others showed up to relieve them. Small celebrations erupted as the defenders from the saloon and Rath’s store eventually wandered over—replete with back-slapping and congratulations. Then the occasion grew sober once more as the somber task of digging a grave for the three men continued into the first deepening hints of early dusk.

  As the huge black crow settled silently atop the stockade pickets nearby, cocking its head as if to listen in respectfully, Fred Leonard spoke some words over the graves where they had laid the three bodies side by side in their blankets, shoulder to shoulder. Then James Langton recited some scripture from memory and Sam Smith brought out his mouth harp, knocked it against his palm to clear it of dust from the pocket in his filthy britches, and blew a mournful dirge over that pit yawning now to claim three of their own.

  For a few moments the two dozen stood in silence at the edge of the grave, each in his own thoughts. Then the crow grew noisy once more, calling out raucously as it took to flight in a great flapping of its black wings. The men stirred.

  “Black bastard,” muttered Carlisle as he shoved his felt hat back on his head.

  “How many the sonsabitches you count, Bermuda?” Donegan asked the veteran hunter who had been the first to venture from the saloon and claim some of the plunder from the warrior dead.

  “We got thirteen of ’em good Injuns now,” Carlisle answered. “No telling how many got dragged off or crawled off and died out there in the brush. But, great God in Beulah, we did get thirteen—against these three friends of ours.”

  “I say the score ain’t even then,” McCabe growled his protest. “Them thirteen for these three good men. In a way, I hope those sonsabitches do come back tomorrow.”

  “So let’s use what light we got left to make this place tight afore morning,” Hanrahan suggested as three men began humping sod back into the grave.

  “You raised that black flag over your place, I see,” Leonard said to Hanrahan.

  “Maybe anyone coming in will see it—figure that we’ve had trouble.”

  “If they didn’t hear the noise of all these guns,” added Seth Hathaway.

  “Not a man inside of twenty miles couldn’t hear what went on here today,” snorted Hiram Watson.

  “Let’s do as Jimmy says,” Dixon told them. “Get water pulled and repairs made before morning.”

  “And any man needing to reload cartridges better be at it before it gets too dark,” Hanrahan warned, glancing at the sun easing down on the western hills. “I don’t cotton to the idea of having lamps lit and making targets for ourselves. We ain’t got much daylight left.”

  Dixon came up and stopped beside the Irishman, saying quietly, “I’m worried about Fannie.”

  Donegan peered around. “She ain’t with you all day?”

  “She run off when the shooting started. We was there together, me scratching her ears—”

  “Come to think of it, I ain’t seen any of the other dogs been hanging around here either,” Donegan replied, trying to offer hope. “I suppose they ran off for cover.” He clamped a hand on the young hunter’s shoulder. “She’ll come back, Fannie will.”

  “Found this on a Injun bridle,” Dixon said, pulling a scalp from his belt.

  “You plundered the bodies too, did you?” Donegan asked as he took the long scalp and held it up to the fading light. Brown, and of a fine texture. “This is a white woman’s hair.”

  Dixon nodded. “The rest got kerchiefs and silver armbands and belt pouches and shields and quirts. All sorts of souvenirs.”

  “Something for your grandchildren, Billy,” Seamus said, handing the scalp back to Dixon.

  “Nothing for yours, Irishman?”

  He sighed. Then shook his head, thin-lipped. “No. Not this time.”

  “Dixon made a long shot this afternoon,” said Tom O’Keefe as he came up to the pair. “Least eight hundred yards. You ever go out to see about the Injun crawling through that grass, Billy?”

  Dixon nodded. “He must’ve crawled for at least a quarter mile with a busted knee where I shot him. I could follow the blood through the grass from where he was hit until I found his body where I finally killed him.”

  “Eight hundred yards? That’s some shooting,” Donegan said.

  “Not for Dixon,” O’Keefe bragged. “He’s one of the best I’ve seen or even heard tell of in buffalo country.”

  “That warrior was packed for bear, Seamus,” Dixon replied. “I found a pistol in his belt, a bow and quiver of arrows on his shoulder, and in arm’s reach I found his shot pouch with fifteen army cartridges in it, along with a powder horn. And I claimed his .50-caliber needle gun, a Springfield—army, it was.”

  In addition to the thirteen enemy dead, George Eddy tallied the dead horses, mules and oxen stiffening in the fading light. Near the Rath store lay the carc
ass of the young colt the men had presented to Hannah Olds weeks before, wrapped in the blanket the old woman had sewn to protect her pet from the rapacious mosquitoes. Another victim of the morning’s brutal attack.

  “How ’bout a whiskey, Irishman?” Dixon asked.

  “Not in the mood for drinking like I done last night,” Seamus replied, a hint of a grin crossing his smoke-blackened face. “But a whiskey or two would go a long way to smoothing out the wrinkles right now.”

  “One or two will do nicely, then we’ll get settled for the night,” Dixon replied as they started for Hanrahan’s saloon. The rest were breaking up and heading for one or another of the three buildings. He shuddered noticeably. “I feel like they’re watching us.”

  Donegan stopped and turned, his eyes slowly scanning the western hills. “No doubt of that, Billy. When you don’t see the red divils—that’s when you know they’re watching.”

  “One horse, just one horse. And I’d ride north for help,” Dixon declared as they reached the saloon.

  “We’ll work on that tomorrow,” Donegan replied, knowing the unrelenting tension would be eating at most of the rest come nightfall. Here, in the middle of a great wilderness. Without any way to get word out. But for him, it wasn’t the first time. How was he to assure that it would be the last?

  “Right now, Billy—let’s wash down the dust with this saddle varnish Hanrahan calls whiskey.”

  * * *

  It had been a day when their medicine went sour in their mouths.

  Lone Wolf had seen enough victories in his life, but lately he had witnessed far too many defeats. Still, there was one day darker than this had been—the morning the Yellow Hair Custer had put the rope around the necks of Satanta and Lone Wolf, threatening to hang the Kiowa chiefs if they did not bring their people in to the reservation at old Fort Cobb.

  The old fort was no longer there, in ruins now. Replaced by the soldier camp called Sill. And the Yellow Hair was somewhere on the northern plains now, Lone Wolf was told—harassing and killing the Sioux and Northern Cheyenne.