Dying Thunder

by Terry C. Johnston

  Short ofttimes joked about having his scalp taken by Indians, telling friends and coworkers, “As many times as those proslavers out of Missouri wanted to deprive me of my hair—I don’t think there’s an Injun who can separate this scalp from me!”

  The leader of the second group to travel with Short was Captain Luther A. Thrasher. Also forty-one and a veteran of pro-Union, abolitionist forces in Kansas during the rebellion, Thrasher got along well with Short.

  Oliver liked the men he worked with this trip out, despite any rumbles of anxiety over the recent Indian scares. And besides, Short really did love the outdoors more than most men. It was there he truly felt in his element. It was with his normal enthusiasm that he gathered his crew at Dodge City that first week in August: his assistant, a Captain Abram Cutler; his two sons, Harry and Daniel; another assistant named James Shaw; along with several assistants who were students at Kansas University. Joining forces with Thrasher’s team, the twenty-two men marched southwest for Meade County on the border of the Territories, where they were contracted to survey some two thousand miles of section lines.

  In a broad, beautiful valley, Short and Thrasher established their base camp beside a spring where a single large cottonwood flourished, giving the local name to the place: Lone Tree Valley. Here the grass was good for the stock, with clean, sweet water. Besides, the surveyors discovered rocks aplenty to use as corner markers as they worked their way from section to section, platting the land for the claims of future settlers. Even Oliver’s pet dog liked the place, chasing after rabbits and field mice from sunup to sundown.

  Although he was aware of recent disturbances caused by the Indians, Captain Short found himself agreeing that there really was little cause for alarm. However, both he and Thrasher nonetheless agreed that should either party fall under attack, they were to set fire to the summer-dried grass as a means to signal the others. With plans for their departure made that Saturday upon arriving at Lone Tree Valley, both teams set about readying their tools and stowing gear in the wagons. Sunday saw the men attend a short worship service, after which Captain Short spent the shank of the afternoon reading in his bible after he had washed clothes.

  As they were cleaning up from breakfast on Monday morning, 24 August, a group of three buffalo hunters stopped in camp and shared a cup of coffee before moving on north, agreeing to carry Short’s letter to his wife, Francis, on to Dodge where it would be forwarded back to Leavenworth. Then the group hitched up their teams and separated for the day’s labors.

  “You’ll take care, won’t you, Pa?” asked Harry Short.

  Oliver gazed at his eldest son, who he was leaving in camp to oversee the repair of some equipment that morning. “Do your work and keep your hands busy, Harry. The day will pass quickly enough.” He urged the oxen away from the spring.

  “Keep your eyes along the horizon, Oliver!” hollered Luther Thrasher as the Short wagons pulled away to the south.

  “We’ll see nothing but blue sky today, Luther,” Short replied, his pet dog seated beside him as he waved. “Until suppertime.”

  Short’s group waved farewell to the others and was quickly swallowed by the tall, waving grass and rolling hills of the central plains, like an ocean swallows a dinghy.

  * * *

  Medicine Water knew he wasn’t the smartest Cheyenne war chief that ever sat a buffalo pony. But he had been smart enough to slip his war party north between three marching columns of soldiers.

  The armies of Miles and Buell and Price were all behind him now, converging on the Staked Plain to make war. Medicine Water’s brown horsemen had southern Kansas all to themselves.

  For most of his life the war chief had been less than successful as a raider. There were other war chiefs far better at planning than he. But Medicine Water had two things on his side. First of all, he was as primitive a predator as was a prairie wolf—and that made for a fierce reputation among his people. And secondly, Medicine Water was married to Buffalo Calf Woman—a full-fledged warrior in her own right, one who had drawn blood and counted many a coup in numerous raids as she rode along on her husband’s sorties. In her breast beat a heart as cold as that of Medicine Water, and for white folks she felt nothing but hatred and fury.

  Ten years before, Buffalo Calf Woman had lost her first husband to Colonel John M. Chivington at the Sand Creek Massacre, along with their three children. Let no warrior make a mistake: she was clearly second-in-command of this war party, some twenty-five strong. They each had their reasons for following Medicine Water and Buffalo Calf Woman north following the poor showing at Adobe Walls, but one thing each warrior held in common: where this predatory husband and his wife went, there was sure to be blood and plunder and ponies. Never any lack of excitement.

  Their fourth day across the medicine line, that northern boundary marking the extent of the Cheyenne Reservation, young Yellow Horse rode back to report that he had discovered some wagon tracks plowing the tall grass. Medicine Water and the rest dismounted to inspect the ground.

  “They are traveling south,” Buffalo Calf Woman said, looking to the southeast.

  “Perhaps they are supply wagons, going to Camp Supply,” Yellow Horse suggested.

  “Yes,” Medicine Water replied, his wolfish grin slashing his fleshy, bronze face. His eyes had gone the color of dark underbellies of thunderclouds rolling across the prairie. “Those wagons will carry much plunder.”

  With Yellow Horse leading the rest by a hundred yards, the war party set off once more at a lively pace, riding south by southeast along the fresh wagon tracks made through the tall bluestem grass just that morning, now in the summer days of the Moon When Geese Shed Their Feathers.

  Besides the blankets and flour and coffee and sugar, there might also be a few guns they could steal from the white men who were driving the wagons. A wagon meant that they would steal some of the white man’s horses as well. It would be good. Horses to replace those ponies white horse thieves had been stealing right off the Cheyenne Reservation.

  And there would surely be a scalp or two to make the others happy. Medicine Water had enough scalps. He hoped the wagons carried some of the burning water that made his eyes sting and his head feel light, like down from a goose. Able to float away after he had swallowed enough. It was at times like that when Medicine Water most enjoyed rutting with Buffalo Calf Woman. When she had enough of the burning water, she would strip off her clothing and chase him unashamedly through camp, then drop to her hands and knees, wagging her ample rump provocatively until Medicine Water plunged himself into her, just to listen to her grunt, enjoying herself with such abandon.

  With the burning water in their bellies, they were like two insatiable animals enjoying one another’s flesh.

  Yes, Medicine Water hoped he would find some whiskey in the white man’s wagons.

  * * *

  “Pa, look over there,” said fourteen-year-old Daniel Short, pointing at the summer-smudged skyline, hazed with shimmering mirages.

  Oliver gazed over his shoulder at the northern horizon. It was just after midday, the sun hung high in a pale blue sky. The glare often hurt his eyes anymore. They swam with the distance and the grass waving beneath a persistent hot breeze.

  “Can you see them, Oliver?” asked Abram Cutler.

  “I think so,” and he really did believe he saw the horsemen fanning out on the horizon to the northeast now.

  “What are they?”

  “Oh, God—they’re Indians!” Cutler suddenly shouted.

  Short was in motion that next heartbeat. “Everyone in the wagon. Quickly!”

  Oliver had the plodding oxen turning as soon as he had slapped their backsides with leather. He thought he heard one of the young men whimpering in the back, and prayed it was not Daniel. No, not his own son crying in fear and panic and—

  He bit off the thought the way he would bite off a dark corner of a plug. Just keep these oxen moving. Maybe they could get close enough to their camp that the others would hear th
e gunshots. Yes, there would be gunfire, Oliver thought. Those Indian ponies are far faster than these hulking oxen pulling this wagon with all of us and our gear in it.

  He turned slightly, flinging his voice over his shoulder. “Abram! See what you can do to lighten the load!”

  “You want me to throw our instruments out?”

  “We can’t go fast enough with all of us and the weight too. Throw the blessed instruments out!”

  The other five men promptly obeyed, heaving boxes and tripods and leather cases over the sidewalls as the wagon lurched and rumbled over the uneven prairie. He figured they had been running over a mile already. Perhaps close to two miles …

  “Is that all?” Short demanded.

  “Everything but our guns.” Cutler’s face was white, pasty.

  “Then get ready to use them,” Short told them. “These oxen have about had it.”

  A moment later a dozen warriors had swept along each side of the wagon. Most were hollering, crying out their pagan chants and those war songs Oliver had heard so much about. It made his throat seize to hear them now for himself, slapping again and again the thick latigo reins down on the rumps of the oxen. Then the grinning warriors began firing their weapons, bullets slapping the side of the wagon. One of the four oxen grunted, throwing its head about before it went down in a tumble of traces.

  “Jump!” he hollered at the rest the instant before the wagon began to keel over on the double-tree.

  The warriors swept in then, firing at the three remaining, snorting oxen. It was as if they were putting off bringing the pitiful little skirmish to an end too quickly.

  One by one the surveyors went down. Oliver watched his Daniel fall. Then Shaw’s son Allen. And finally two of the young students from the university, Harry Jones and John Keuchler, crumpled, lifeless. As he turned to find himself a better position behind one of the downed oxen, a bullet struck Short.

  He grunted, surprised. He had always thought you weren’t supposed to hear the bullet that got you. That’s what they had said during the war: that you never heard one. But by damned, he had heard that one.

  “James,” he whispered, his mouth filling with blood, hot and sticky like warm syrup.

  “Oh, Jesus,” James Shaw said as he turned and found Oliver sinking.

  Oliver wanted to cry out in pain. Maybe even rage. He had never done anything to these people … then he remembered his bible, thought of nothing else and began crawling for it … somewhere here in all of this jumble of gear.

  He quickly gave up. Oliver simply didn’t have the strength. Looking up into the sun and sky where Shaw crouched over him, Short said, “Make a run for it. Run.” He could barely hand his pistol over to the older man. He was panting for breath now, so hard to breathe. It felt as if his lungs were full of hot coals.

  The fifty-one-year-old Shaw stared down into the captain’s face, taking the pistol. “I suppose I could run. Chances are as good as staying here.”

  Shaw dragged Short’s hand away from Oliver’s chest and shook it, with a look in his eyes that Oliver did not like. It was a look that said they were parting for the last time. And Oliver sure as hell did not like that.

  He wanted to growl something angry, but said only, “Now—go!”

  Short watched Shaw scramble to his feet and vault a dead ox, firing two shots as he leaped through the tall grass.

  With renewed whoops and screeching calls, the warriors swarmed toward Shaw. Then the scene was all gone from Oliver’s vision. But he could still hear the pounding of hoofbeats somewhere behind him now. James was running, hard. And he could almost hear Shaw’s rapid breathing, his thundering boots.

  He must be trying to make it to the top of that hill behind us.

  There was a flurry of shots. A pause. Then another flurry of shots that gave Oliver some hope.

  Then all was quiet. And the sun beat down on him while his breathing grew harder and harder. After a long time, the glaring, blinding sun was blotted out.

  Oliver blinked, barely able now even to move his eyes. Seeing and not believing as he gazed upward into the face of an incredibly ugly Indian woman. In her hand she held a limp scalp, dripping with blood. In the other, a huge butcher knife, slick with crimson. He could see the dirt under her fingernails, the blood crusted in dark half-moons back of the nails.

  Short watched her face, hypnotized as she gripped his hair, yanked his head back, and brutally dragged the butcher knife across his throat.

  Gurgling with that last, wheezing breath, Oliver called his wife’s name.

  “F-Francis…”

  * * *

  Medicine Water saw that his warriors were satisfied, not only with the white men they had killed and had just finished mutilating, but also with the shiny objects of great curiosity they had found among the enemy’s belongings.

  Yellow Horse called frantically, his voice filled with fear.

  Stepping over the body of the man whose throat Buffalo Calf Woman had slit, the war chief found the others staring like frightened children at a round object lying on the ground at the center of their ring of dusty moccasins.

  When he picked it up, the others drew back suddenly. “You see this before?” he demanded of Yellow Horse.

  The young warrior nodded, wide-eyed. “I dropped it … it frightened me.”

  Medicine Water looked it over suspiciously, top and bottom, then held the round object, about the size of his palm, against his ear. He had long ago learned that some white men carried magical objects that made soft noises. But this made no noise. He shook it, then brought it to his ear once more. Still no noise.

  “Perhaps it is not magical,” he admitted with a shrug, trying to hand it back to Yellow Horse.

  But the young warrior shrank from the object. The others jerked back from it as well.

  “It is evil, Medicine Water!” Yellow Horse explained, fear in his voice.

  “Evil?”

  “Turn … turn it, and watch,” Yellow Horse pantomimed with his hands, not wishing to get any closer to the object.

  Medicine Water turned it in his outstretched palm. Then jerked his hand away. The object spun to the dust.

  It was truly evil.

  The long black arrow inside the object always pointed in the direction the white men came from: the north. This was truly evil medicine. Although the long black arrow danced and bobbed a bit, it had still pointed toward the white man’s settlements in the land called Kansas.

  This could only mean that it was some powerful divining object the white man used to bring other white men, perhaps even yellowleg soldiers, after the Indian.

  He kicked it with his toe. It lay there, the black arrow trembling. Then coming to a rest.

  Abruptly, Medicine Water grabbed the evil thing and smashed it violently into the dead white man’s forehead with all his strength.

  Evil for evil, Medicine Water thought, gratified as he gazed down at the dead man, the front of his sweat-stained shirt now drying with dull-brown blood from the gaping neck wound. The white man’s features sagged after Buffalo Calf Woman had scalped him. Yet he had smashed the object into the man’s head with such force that it clung there, embedded into the skull and blood and lacerated flesh.

  Evil for evil.

  No white man would ever again use that evil object to divine anything. And these white men would never again bring their evil to the doorstep of Indian ground.

  “We ride,” he growled at them.

  He wanted to be away from there before the evil spirits began to rise from these lifeless bodies. This was truly a bad place. And it made the powerful, thick-witted Medicine Water more than a little frightened.

  He punished his pony making his escape from that place of the white man’s demons.

  * * *

  “Captain Thrasher! Captain Thrasher!”

  Luther Thrasher stood from the noon fire where he had set a pot of water to boil coffee and watched one of his workers riding in.

  “What is it, Crist?
You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

  S. B. Crist licked his dry lips as he dismounted. “I got a feeling something’s wrong. I seen the Short wagon.”

  As Thrasher glanced over his shoulder, he saw Harry Short stepping up.

  “Pa’s wagon?”

  Crist nodded.

  “You see anyone around it?” Thrasher asked, a sinking feeling going cold in his gut like a stone.

  “No. No stock.”

  “Did you go to the wagon? Was their gear in it?” Harry Short demanded, his voice rising with fear.

  “I didn’t go there. Just watched it long enough to know it was deserted.”

  “Where?”

  He pointed. “About three miles that way. Over by Crooked Creek.”

  “Let’s go.” Then, in afterthought, Thrasher turned to Short. “Why don’t you do as your father asked you, Harry: stay here and tend to camp while we go. There’s likely nothing wrong—they just wandered off from the wagon working.”

  “But where are the oxen?” Harry asked, shrieking. “I’m going with you!”

  Thrasher caught him roughly. “You’ll stay here. Until your father returns, I’m in charge—and that’s an order, Harry. Stay … here.”

  After he had designated two of his men to stay behind with the teenaged Harry Short, Thrasher took Crist and two others with him, each man heavily armed as a precaution, and headed for Crooked Creek, herding a pair of plodding oxen with them to hitch to the disembodied wagon.

  They came across the first of the toolboxes pitched from the wagon. Then more and more of the surveyors’ tools were found scattered in a rough line that led them to the scene. For better than three miles, over the rolling hills and across Crooked Creek itself, the six men had been chased as they pitched everything from the wagon, fighting off their attackers. There were emptied cartridges and shell cases all along the last two miles of the chase. Eventually, the captain figured, the seven men had been overwhelmed.