Dying Thunder

by Terry C. Johnston

  Quanah prayed.

  21

  Late June–Early July, 1874

  In a grove of trees less than three miles from the meadow, Donegan, Dixon and Hanrahan made a startling discovery the third day after the attack. Leggings and moccasins and blankets had been cut to ribbons and left behind. Much of it bloodied.

  The ground around the area had been trampled by many feet, many hooves. Dark stains dotted the hammered grass and dust. The sight of so much of it soaking into the thirsty soil reminded Seamus of the fire and thunder of long-forgotten battlefields—of peach-faced boys calling for their mothers, of old men crying out like babies, and not enough unwounded to hold the hands of all the dying.

  “Why they cut up their clothes like that?” asked Jim Hanrahan. “Get to the bullet wounds?”

  Seamus shook his head. “I figure it’s like Jim Bridger told me: when a warrior dies, the rest divide up what he has worth keeping. And the rest they just cut up because he won’t be needing it where he’s going.”

  “We gave ’em billy-be-hell, looks to be,” Dixon said.

  To look at the place where the wounded had undoubtedly been brought was enough to give a man pause, and reason to wonder.

  “As many of ’em as they were,” Seamus said, “still they didn’t stand a chance against the big guns.”

  “If they’d found us asleep,” Hanrahan sighed with that sheepish, boyish grin of his, “we’d all be wolf bait by now. Had ’em a easy time of it running us over.”

  “But you saw to it that enough of us was awake,” Dixon replied, also grinning. “I s’pose me and the rest owe you our lives, Jim.”

  Hanrahan appeared genuinely embarrassed. “With Rath and Myers and the Mooar brothers skeedaddling north to Dodge when they found out—I had a choice to make. Everything I owned was there in that saloon. I wasn’t about to turn my back on it. If I saved the lives of most every man there—they helped save all that my life’s worth too. I figure we’re all even, in my account.”

  Dixon gazed off. “Our guns did make the day, boys.”

  “Like yours did yesterday,” Donegan reminded them. “If one shot put a end to that red siege at Adobe Walls, it was yours, Billy.”

  “Wasn’t nothing, Irishman,” Dixon replied, wagging it off. “Just a scratch shot.”

  Not long past sunup the day before, the third of the bloody siege, more than a dozen feathered horsemen had appeared in the east, on a high, red butte a little less than a mile away from the meadow.

  “You figure they’re up to something? After all this time?” Billy Ogg had asked as more of the white men gathered outside the saloon.

  “Naw, I doubt they’ll be riding down on us any more—after the drubbing we give ’em,” Donegan had replied.

  “Just the same—I’m getting mighty sore at seeing the red devils come and go as they wish,” Dixon had growled, “while we’re holed up here like field mice.” He then turned and snatched up the .50-caliber Sharps.

  “You look mad as a spit-on sowbug, Billy. What you fixing to do?” Ogg had asked as he and a good number of the hunters traipsed after Dixon to a bullet-splintered wagon.

  “Don’t any of you figure I can shoot one of them red bastards from here?” Dixon had asked the group.

  Most of them shrugged, unsure.

  “I’ll put ten dollars on Dixon,” Seamus told them. “Ten dollars says Billy can hit one of the horsemen.”

  Some had anteed up their bets, but most had stayed neutral as Dixon loaded the big .50 and made himself a rest right where he stood against the wagon sidewall. Dixon raised the rear sight after he had tossed a handful of dust in the air. When his calculations were complete, the hunter asked for quiet. After a few moments he pulled his cheek from the butt stock and rubbed his eyes.

  “Lot of trouble seeing that far,” he said.

  “That’s more’n half a mile, Billy,” Hanrahan said. “Far more.”

  Donegan nodded, himself aware of the trouble Dixon was having with the heat waves shimmering in all that distance between the Sharps’s sights and the targets on the far bluff.

  Dixon once more nestled his cheek against the stock, took a deep breath, then let most of it out while he slowly squeezed the trigger.

  With a roar, the gun had belched smoke and shoved Dixon’s shoulder from his rest. He backed from the wagon’s sidewall as the booming echo disappeared across the valley as if it were swallowed by the great distance. When the sound had all but gone … the white hunters watched one of the horsemen suddenly twist atop his pony and spin to the ground.

  As the rest of the warriors hurriedly wheeled their mounts and disappeared from the top of the bluff, the white men ripped their hats off and cheered, pounding Dixon heartily on the back, marveling at the distance of his shot. Donegan had stood back, collecting his bets—nonetheless in awe himself at not only the miraculous shot, but that these men who were all proven marksmen at great distances would be found congratulating one of their own on such a remarkable feat.

  “Lookee there!” Ogg had called out as they danced and jigged their joy.

  Atop the far bluff two of the horsemen reappeared, this time on foot. They quickly scooped up the fallen warrior and dragged him off, disappearing from sight once more.

  Ever since the day of the fight, the weather had grown more miserably hot. No longer merely sultry. The prairie was baking and drying, withering grass and drying ponds where the game struggled to breathe in the oppressive oven of the southern plains.

  That third day more hunters had come into the settlement, brought in by the news carried through the surrounding countryside. With more proven marksmen arriving daily, the hide men began fortifying the buildings in fear of a renewed attack. With their only water supply outside the protection of their earth walls, Swede Johnson dug a well inside the Rath store so they would not suffer for want of water with a renewed attack. More mud was chinked between the pickets, and the bastions were reinforced. Actual loopholes for firing rifles were now gouged through the walls of all three buildings. The most difficult addition was in fashioning a small lookout post atop both the Rath and Myers buildings. By climbing up a ladder to the small, sod-walled bastion through a hole cut in the roof, a constant and rotating watch could be maintained by the growing population at the settlement. They consoled themselves that they would be even more ready when the naked, screaming horsemen returned to the meadow.

  During that midday ride the fourth day, Donegan, Dixon and Hanrahan found the ruins of the warriors’ hospital. That trampled, bloodstained grass was a more sobering reminder of the power of the white man’s guns than all the windy tales of those who told and retold the stories of their individual exploits during those terrifying first hours of the attack on Adobe Walls.

  By afternoon of the fifth day, Donegan counted close to a hundred men come in and camped at the settlement. Between clerks and stock tenders, cooks and skinners and hunters, they now formed a small, resolute army of white men here far to the south of the dead line. Plunked down in the heart of Indian country, but with none of them having any particular stomach of late to go wandering about in search of the herds.

  The sun had begun to settle toward the west that first day of July when a sharp cry was raised from the lookout post atop the Myers store.

  “Injuns! Injuns coming!”

  From the sentry perch atop the Rath store, William Olds shouted frantically. “I see ’em! Injuns coming!”

  Clambering to his feet beside Dixon at the east wall of the Rath store, Donegan whirled, sweeping up the Henry repeater. After they hurriedly dragged their animals into the two corrals, the white men sprinted into each of the three buildings, everyone hollering orders to one another. A single gunshot split the noisy, sultry air of the Rath & Company store.

  Whirling, Seamus watched the body of William Olds fall from the ladder, the back of his head a bloody, pulpy stew.

  “What the hell happened?” demanded James Langton as Dixon knelt over the Rath employee at t
he foot of the ladder.

  “Somebody shoot him?” Donegan asked.

  “Billy!” shrieked Hannah Olds as she crumpled beside her husband, scooping his bloody head onto her flour-crusted apron. She was quickly covered with a seeping slick of crimson. “Oh, God—Billy!”

  “Are the red bastards back?” someone asked.

  “Who shot him?” asked another.

  “His gun went off somehow,” Dixon explained, wagging his head.

  “Must’ve snagged on something as he was coming down,” replied Sam Smith.

  Dixon rose from the old couple and pulled Donegan away. “The bullet went right up through his chin and out the back of the old man’s head.”

  Donegan nodded. “That’s number four.”

  “Number four?”

  “First Ike and Shorty Scheidler. Then Billy Tyler. Now those Injins they spotted just killed their fourth victim.”

  Outside, men on the ground were clamoring for news from the lookout atop the Myers store.

  “They’re up the valley a ways,” the guard shouted, pointing up Adobe Walls Creek. “Moving off slow. To the east.”

  “How many?”

  “Twenty-five. Maybeso, thirty.”

  “You see any more?”

  “No—not what I can see from here.”

  For a few anxious minutes every man of them waited, fearing this news signaled a renewed attack. But as the afternoon wore long and the shadows lengthened ever onward to the east where the thirty horsemen had disappeared, it became clear no attack would be forthcoming.

  “She sat at his side through it all,” Billy said quietly, of a sudden and out of the blue that evening as the light eased out of the sky after they had buried William Olds in a solitary grave southeast of the Rath store.

  “Hannah?” asked Donegan.

  He nodded. “Reloading guns for the old man, wiping sweat out of his eyes. Like … like she really loved that old wolf.”

  Donegan cleared his throat. It was hard, what with the sudden, hot lump clogging it. “I … I suppose she did love him, Billy.”

  “I was there in Rath’s with ’em for part of the fight, Seamus,” Billy tried to explain. “The rest, they asked me to stay—’cause of her. Being a woman and all.”

  “I remember you telling about it.”

  “But there wasn’t a one of us there what wouldn’t’ve fought tooth and toenail for her, if’n it’d come down to them red savages getting in the door and it being hand-to-hand. It was like … well, some of the boys say she’s been like a mother to a lot of us. A fine woman—what didn’t deserve this happening to her.”

  “No woman would, Billy. To have her man come through a bloody fight the likes of what we got through—then to shoot himself by accident three days later. Makes a man wonder on the time he’s got left him on earth, it does,” Donegan replied thoughtfully, his voice gone wistful as the first stars came out, one by one.

  In those few hours following the senseless death of William Olds, if not the past few days since the dawn attack, Seamus found himself brooding more and more on that fragrant woman he had left behind at Sharp Grover’s place outside of Jacksboro, Texas. She had done all that was in her power to make him know just how truly pleased and content she was to be around him.

  Was she truly happiness? Or was his thinking now ruled only by the excruciating loneliness he felt holding his life prisoner. At times of late he had forced himself to stare down into his soul and come away with the feeling like it was looking down into a black, seemingly bottomless cavern. Empty. And utterly cold.

  Ultimately and desperately in need of a woman’s love to fill that gaping chasm. This wandering and liquoring and whoring was all right for a younger man. And he had been a younger man of a bygone day. But these feelings of unsettled yearning were still new and he wanted to be certain. Sure and certain before he rode back to Jacksboro. Back to Samantha Pike.

  “You riding with us to Dodge, Seamus?” asked Dixon.

  He nodded. “Fixing to light out soon, ain’t you?”

  “Whole caboodle of us packing up and heading north. The partnership with me and Hanrahan still good—you want to throw in with us, Irishman? Maybeso, I’ll go back to hunting buff one day soon.”

  “Don’t figure I’ll throw in with you now, Billy.”

  “Hunting still good someplace else,” Dixon explained. “We’ll let this country cool off for a while. Find where the herds gone and shoot our way through ’em.”

  “No, Billy. I will ride north with the lot of you, then cut back south through the Territories, down through Camp Supply and Sill.”

  “What’s there in Injun Territory has you going after it?”

  “Nothing in Injin country,” he said. “Going down to Texas.”

  Dixon turned to look more fully at the Irishman now. Slowly, a smile took root across the young hunter’s face. “Jesus, Mary and Joseph! If I don’t figure but what you got woman troubles on your mind, Donegan. That’s it—ain’t it?”

  He shook his head, shrugging self-consciously.

  “Yes, it is! Ain’t much else make a man ride hundreds of miles out of his way, and through Injun Territory to boot.”

  “I just figure to settle down with Sharp like he’s wanted me to—like I should’ve to begin with last summer.”

  “Stillwell told me Sharp’s sister-in-law took a real shine to you, Seamus.”

  “He did, did he?”

  Dixon nodded. “Before Jack took off north to go sign up to scout for Colonel Miles.” The young hide man fell quiet for a time, digging a stick into the dry, flaky soil.

  That gap in conversation as the light eased out of the sky put Donegan’s thoughts back to wandering. And when his thoughts wandered, chances were awfully good that they would lead him south of the Red River.

  Easily remembering the bold tilt to her chin when she grew set in her mind on something. Or the full cut of those ripe, moist lips when she pouted to convince him otherwise. She was very much a real live and warmed-up woman with a wanton mold to her body. Again he recalled how her pale hair captured light just the way a mirror captured the flicker of a candle’s flame. Wasn’t easy to squeeze her out of his mind anymore, burned as she was into his deepest memory. At times it seemed almost as if she were to remain forever on his skin, where she had touched his flesh, just the way he reflected time and again on her flesh, on the tangle of freckles that spilled into that great cleft between her breasts.

  Perhaps it was time to settle into a routine with Sharp Grover, both of them to walk off early of a morning into the frost-tattled forest surrounding the old man’s place and supply meat for Samantha’s rich squirrel stew so crowded with tiny morsels of tender, red meat and those big, softened chunks of white potatoes—

  “You figure it’s coming to a all-out war, Seamus?”

  Dixon’s voice interrupted the warmth in his breast and the flavor on his tongue.

  “These warrior bands keep at it this way,” Donegan replied, “yes—it will, for certain.”

  Dixon stretched his back, gazing into the distance. “Then, I figure my hunting days are numbered.”

  “Too dangerous to be a buffalo man now, Billy?”

  “Naw. Just that I’m set on following after Sharp Grover’s footsteps some, I s’pose. Wander on up to Larned myself and sign up with Stillwell and the rest. Ride for Colonel Nelson A. Miles since this war’s a’coming.”

  Seamus looked at the handsome face framed by the long, dark hair. “So you set your sights on becoming an army scout now, Billy Dixon?”

  “I s’pose I have at that, Seamus,” he answered. “Same as you’ve set your sights on that woman who I’m told is waiting for you back down there in Texas.”

  22

  Moon of Black Cherries, 1874

  In the two weeks that had passed following the disastrous attack on the buffalo hunters at Adobe Walls, Lone Wolf and his warriors had slipped back onto their reservation near Fort Sill, where Kicking Bird’s Kiowa were just g
etting their annual sun dance underway.

  On the other hand, the Cheyenne war bands had refused to return to Darlington. Instead, Stone Calf, Medicine Water and the other war chiefs had marched north to attack a wagon train bound for Fort Supply and killed four teamsters before the warriors rode northwest into Colorado Territory, where they raided outlying settlements, killing an estimated sixty men, women and children as a general alarm spread through a growing section of the central and southern plains.

  During the daily council gatherings of the Kiowa head men, the coming war was debated, hotly at times. The visiting Comanche delegates, anxious to have the matter settled then be off on their raids, claimed the Kiowas “talked too much.” In return, the Kiowas huffed that the Comanche were as impetuous as children. As the hours and days of deliberation droned on, one chief after another sided with Kicking Bird’s peace faction. First to declare his adherence to the white man’s road was Dangerous Eagle, brother of Big Tree, the same war chief who with Satanta had spent time in the white man’s prison down in Tehas. Next to choose the road of peace was Stumbling Bear, a great warrior of many winters. Then came Chief Sun Boy, named for the long-ago founder of the Kiowa tribe.

  Yet most electrifying was the decision of Napawat, the tribe’s most powerful shaman. Without his spiritual sanction, most warriors would never dare ride off to make war.

  Things did not bode well, but through an intensive emotional appeal, Lone Wolf was able to finally convince the great war chief and shaman, Mamanti, to again lead a revenge raid into Tehas. Ever since that day Lone Wolf had been forced to ride off without the bones of his son and nephew, leaving the remains in the land south of the Red River, the Kiowa war chief had carried a smoldering desire for revenge. Now, before the great council of chiefs and warriors, Lone Wolf clearly challenged the manhood of the others, saying that the soldiers would not have killed Tauankia and Guitain if the other warriors had shown more bravery in battle.

  Mamanti was a huge man supported by massive bones that seemed far too thick to ever be broken. Known as the Swan, he was not only the logical choice to lead a revenge raid, but the popular choice as well: he had led the successful raid on the Warren wagon train three winters before. More so, the shaman was one of the few in many generations of Kiowa tradition to possess owl medicine that could foretell the future.