The Independence Trail

by Lyle Brandt

  That might not rival victories achieved by Mangas Coloradas or Cochise, but it would be a start. Cochise was now retired and living on a squalid reservation, while soldiers had tortured and murdered Mangas at Fort McLane, claiming he’d tried to “escape” custody, then boiled his head and sent the skull to a New York phrenologist.

  Paco might die tonight, but he would never yield or plead for mercy from his enemies. If by some chance he drove a stolen herd of cattle to the Mescalero reservation south of Ruidoso, he might manage to achieve a double victory. His people would have beef to eat for the first time in months, and when the cavalry arrived from Fort Bayard to take back the survivors, some of Paco’s tribe might find the nerve to stand and fight.

  That, he decided, might be victory enough, even if he was not alive to see what happened next.

  What true Apache would not choose a death in battle with the tsayaditl-ti over some foul disease from Europe while his loved ones starved before his very eyes?

  In fact, Paco thought, he would bless his fellow Mescaleros with another chance to live as men and die, if need be, with a vestige of their honor still intact.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The first gunshot roused Bliss Mossman as he was drifting off to sleep beside the campfire. Weary from another long day on the trail, he’d been about to seek his bedroll near the chuck wagon when suddenly the crack of rifle fire snapped him out of a fuzzy waking dream.

  What visions had his mind been conjuring before all holy hell broke loose?

  Later, in retrospect, he couldn’t say and didn’t give a damn.

  Mossman still wore his gun belt with a Schofield revolver holstered on his left hip for a cross-hand draw, and he was reaching for it as he dropped his empty coffee cup and stood, scanning the darkness for some sign of where the shot had come from. Others in the camp were casting off their blankets, donning boots and grabbing weapons, shouting back and forth for answers to the same insistent question.

  Mossman had his saddle thrown over one shoulder and was jogging toward the camp’s remuda and his flea-bitten gray gelding, when more shots rang out, causing the herd to shift uneasily, some of the longhorns voicing their displeasure in loud voices. This time, he saw muzzle flashes in the night, illuminating reports from rifles and revolvers as they crackled overhead.

  Some of the shots were being fired from outer darkness, toward the Bar X camp, while several of Mossman’s drovers were returning fire. He doubted whether they were hitting anything so far, but what else could they do until they had something approximating clear targets?

  Five minutes seemed to take forever, Mossman grappling with his saddle, clambering aboard his gray, and ducking as a rifle bullet whispered past his face, its hot tailwind ruffling his hair beneath the wide brim of his hat.

  Too close for comfort, that one, but the Bar X boss knew that he couldn’t duck and cover when his men were on the move, exposed to hostile fire from unknown enemies. The raid was bad enough all by itself, without the drovers losing faith in him.

  He called out to the drovers just arriving. “Rally round and listen up, boys! I don’t know who’s shooting at us, but we need to stop it, pronto. If the herd starts running, we could lose a week trying to get ’em back, if all of ’em are even still alive.”

  “How ’n hell are we supposed to do that while we’re taking fire?” Linton McCormick asked, forgetting to add “sir” or “boss.”

  “Take care of that the best you can,” Mossman replied. “Don’t bother trying to take any prisoners. If you can’t drop the shooters, run ’em off at least, but keep a sharp eye on the stock while you’re about it.”

  Murmurs told him that the men had understood his message—namely, shoot to kill, but make it quick and clean if possible. The longhorns had to be their top priority after survival.

  That said, Mossman galloped off to meet his enemies and do his best to stop them stone-cold dead.

  * * *

  * * *

  Hototo’s parents had been murdered by Comanches when he was a child of only seven summers, during one of countless skirmishes between their warring tribes. He had not asked them why they’d named him “Poet,” and that chance was lost forever to him now.

  Not that he cared today, at age nineteen, when he had never spoken any rhyming words and could not even tell a simple story very well, without losing its drift and circling back around to where he’d started from. Despite whatever hopes his parents might have had for him—perhaps a shaman with the gift of prophecy—those dreams had died with them, unrealized.

  He was a man of action now, and happy to be facing white men on a battlefield.

  But in that case, why did he also feel afraid?

  Somehow, he had imagined that the cowboys would be shocked and dazed by an attack at night, but that did not appear to be the case. Most of them had recovered quickly and were firing back, although it did not seem that they had spotted any solid targets yet.

  How long could that go on?

  How long before a bullet found him without even being aimed in his direction?

  Hototo had a Burnside carbine, .54 caliber, widely used by both sides in the white man’s Civil War. The single-shot breechloader measured thirty-nine inches from muzzle to butt plate and weighed seven pounds with a round in its chamber. Its iron sights allowed a skilled shooter to hit man-sized targets from two hundred yards away.

  So far, in this engagement, Hototo had not fired the carbine, but he had a target lined up now. The drover was dark-skinned, perhaps a Mexicano, although Hototo could not say with certainty. It made no difference to him, in any case.

  No one of any race who served the white man was a friend, and enemies deserved to die.

  He framed the horseman in his carbine’s open sights and cocked the Burnside, snugged its butt against his shoulder, his index finger curled inside the weapon’s dual trigger guards that also served the carbine as a lever for unloading empty cartridge casings.

  Hototo took a breath and held it, waiting for his pony to stand still beneath him, then squeezed off a shot from sixty yards away. At the last moment, no more than a fraction of a second, something made the drover’s horse rear up, his bullet ripping through the animal’s muscular neck and bringing it squealing down. His human target rolled away, seeking cover from the herd while blood pumped from his horse’s mortal wound, leaving the animal to die.

  Hototo cursed fate and sloppy marksmanship, reloading while his pony shied a bit and then fell back in line.

  If Hototo’s target showed himself again, he still might have a chance to make it right.

  * * *

  * * *

  Art Catlin guided his strawberry roan away from camp and into darkness, moving toward the fight before it came to him. Eyes grown accustomed to the darkness scanned the herd in front of him, tracking the horsemen whom he recognized, looking for strangers in their midst.

  He still had no idea who had attacked the camp or why, but such details could be resolved some other time, when Mr. Mossman’s crew had beaten back the raiders. And a new moon on this Saturday cast no light on the battleground to help him spot his unknown enemies.

  Whoever they might be, there had to be more than a dozen of them, judging by the sounds and muzzle flashes of their firearms. He had rarely faced a situation like it heretofore, and never when he had no clear idea of who was bent on killing him.

  It stood to reason that whoever mounted the attack had plans for Mr. Mossman’s herd. The Bar X drovers were an obstacle in that regard, and killing some—or all—of them would make it easier for renegades to make off with the steers. Should gunfire set off a stampede, it might play just as well into the raiders’ hands.

  Of one thing Catlin had no doubt: the Bar X drovers couldn’t mind the herd while fighting for their lives.

  And stopping gunmen in their tracks was one thing he knew how to do.
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  The way to go about that, in his case, was spotting one opponent at a time, then acting swiftly to eliminate the threat. How much he could accomplish in pitch-darkness with lead flying all around him was a question unresolved so far.

  To start, he chose a random target, fixed upon a rifle firing toward the camp and chuck wagon from eighty yards or so away. Urging his roan in that direction, Catlin drew his Henry rifle from its saddle boot and held it ready, braced across his lap, the hammer down for safety’s sake until he had a clearer mark in sight.

  There was a chance, he knew, that someone else would pick him off before he moved in close enough to aim and fire, but Catlin had to take that chance. He had to play the hand that he’d been dealt, even if that meant drawing to an inside straight.

  * * *

  * * *

  Paco aimed his Remington Rolling Block rifle toward the white men’s campfire, paused to let a drover pass before the flames in silhouette, then fired the weapon’s single .50-70 Government round and instantly began reloading with another cartridge.

  From a distance, in the dark, he could not say whether his shot had struck a living target, but at least it made some of the other cowboys duck and scramble as they struggled into trousers, boots, and gun belts.

  For the moment, that was good enough.

  The Remington had come to Paco from a homestead raided nine months earlier, near Portales in New Mexico. It measured fifty inches overall, tipping the scales at nine and one half pounds. A breechloader used widely by white buffalo hunters, the piece could kill a man or other big game at two hundred yards, presuming that a shooter’s eyes could frame a target at that range using the rifle’s open sights.

  As he reloaded, Paco scanned the night with narrowed eyes, seeking his raiders scattered through the darkness, trading shots with their white enemies, seeking to kill as many as they could or, at the very least, provoke a stampede that would spread the longhorns out for several square miles.

  Whether or not they left some of the drovers living, Paco’s braves had vowed to claim as many cattle as they could before they fled the scene.

  For his next shot, Paco decided on an easy stationary target, sights fixed on the wagon standing off a few yards from the campfire. That, at least, should be impossible to miss, and while he did not know if anyone remained beneath its darkened canvas covering, he hoped to damage some of the trail drive’s supplies, perhaps leave its survivors hungry if they managed to survive the raid.

  The rifle bucked against Paco’s shoulder, and this time he could mark the slug’s progress from rippling canvas as it struck. Someone crouching behind the wagon fired back in his general direction—with a pistol, by its sound—but it was wasted, coming nowhere close to Paco or his unshod pony.

  As he slipped another round into the rifle’s smoking breech, he called out to his warriors with another screech owl’s simulated cry, urging them to hurry up their efforts and prepare to disengage before the white men rallied to go on a counterattack.

  Some of his braves heard and responded with wild hoots and chirping of their own, while others failed to answer. Were they wounded? Dead? Simply preoccupied with fighting for their lives?

  Paco could not have said, but logic told him they were running out of time.

  The raid was not proceeding as he’d hoped it might, which would reflect upon his judgment as a leader with the other braves—assuming, that is, that they managed to survive, escape, and sit in judgment on him at some future date.

  If they were all gunned down tonight, it would not matter. Only Paco and his disappointed ancestors would care, and likely none of them for any longer than it took a fleeting thought to vanish from all memory.

  As war chief—while he still retained that title—Paco had a choice to make without further delay. His raiders could fight on, perhaps inflict a few more casualties before they were finally annihilated, or he could command them to break off and flee into the night, perhaps to live and fight another time.

  The choice was gut-wrenching, a frank admission of defeat, but Paco only took another second to decide. Cupping both hands around his mouth, he shrilled the fierce scream of a red-tailed hawk, hoping his warriors heard it over crackling gunfire and the anxious lowing of two thousand steers.

  If they did not—if none of them responded to his cry and disengaged from combat—he would have no choice but to remain and die beside them in the dark.

  * * *

  * * *

  Foreman Sterling Tippit fired his Sharps carbine into the night and knew almost before the hammer fell that it would be another wasted shot. He didn’t have a target, only winking muzzle flashes from the hostile guns around him, and with each new blast he worried that the herd would bolt into a mad stampede to nowhere, trampling all before it.

  Still, he couldn’t just stand by without responding to the gunfire Mr. Mossman’s crew was taking in their camp. After he had the Sharps reloaded, Tippit spurred his blood bay mare into the darkness, seeking closer contact with the enemies he hadn’t seen yet, to at least find out who was intent on panicking the herd and killing off its drovers.

  Were they white men, hostile Indians, or raiders up from Mexico? He didn’t know and didn’t care while lead was flying all around him. All that mattered was their criminal intent and crushing them before they could do any further damage.

  Tippit knew one Bar X drover had been hit so far and guessed they would be lucky if he proved to be the only one. A slug had grazed Francisco Gallardo’s left thigh, an inch or so above the knee, but one of his amigos, Jaime Reyes, had been quick to tie it off with a bandanna before too much blood was spilled. The last Tippit had seen of him, Gallardo had been lying prone beneath the chuck wagon, returning fire toward their attackers with his Colt New Model revolving rifle—and most likely having no more luck than any of the other Bar X hands.

  That had to change, and Tippit reckoned it was up to him, since he’d lost track of Mr. Mossman in the fracas. Keeping that in mind, he started shouting to the other mounted drovers, calling any who could hear him to form up around his bay and join him in a charge against their faceless enemies.

  It could be foolish, and it might well get him killed, but at that moment Tippit saw no other way to turn the tide.

  * * *

  * * *

  Denzhone had never understood what made his parents choose his name, translated as “Beautiful” in the white man’s tongue. Throughout his childhood it had been a burden, constantly inviting other boys to tease him, asking whether Denzhone’s father wished that he had been a girl instead.

  After tonight, at least, he thought that mockery would cease.

  A rifle bullet from the darkness had ripped into Denzhone’s face, slicing across his left cheek from an inch or so beneath his eye down to the jawline, spilling blood over his buckskin shirt and nearly toppling him from his pony on impact.

  Somehow, he’d stay atop the animal and hung on to his Snider-Enfield rifle, though he’d been unable to reload the .577-caliber weapon after his last shot before he was wounded. Dazed and groggy, with his head throbbing as if someone had used it for a tom-tom signal drum. His ears rang, and Denzhone’s left eye was nearly swollen shut. In short, he was a bloody mess and feared he might lose consciousness at any moment.

  Even so, he heard Paco’s call for retreat. No red-tailed hawk would be soaring abroad by night, so what else could it mean?

  And in that instant, Denzhone was ashamed to feel a swift rush of relief.

  He was no coward. Denzhone had proved that repeatedly since joining Paco’s war party last year, but now, disfigured and still losing copious amounts of blood, he was relieved to be recalled from combat that was ill-conceived at best, futile at worst.

  If he could only manage to escape now, Denzhone thought he might survive to sit in judgment of the chief who had squandered their party’s strength to
no result.

  He hoped to live that long, at least, and possibly to fight again some other day.

  * * *

  * * *

  Art Catlin pumped the lever action on his Henry rifle, quickly aimed, and fired a .44 round from behind one of their mounted enemies, watching the shadow figure tumble from his mount onto the ground.

  He felt no more compunction about back-shooting this raider in the darkness than he would have gunning down a fugitive from justice in pursuit of a reward. The faceless stranger clearly meant to murder Catlin and his fellow drovers, likely to obtain the Bar X herd, so he was asking for whatever mayhem came his way.

  After he’d jacked another round into the Henry’s chamber, Catlin rode up on the man he’d shot, confirming from his silent, prostrate form that he was either dead or on his way. It took another moment, short of moonlight, to discover that the raider wore buckskin and had hair longer than some women’s splayed across his shoulders and around his face where it was pressed into the turf.

  There was no need to roll him over and confirm the raider was an Indian—which told Catlin the others were as well.

  He could have shouted out that information to the other Bar X hands within earshot but saw no point to it. Race and specific tribe were things to talk about after the fight had been concluded to his satisfaction, but just now it made no difference.

  Armed men had set upon the camp and herd. They must be stopped at any cost, regardless of their skin color, the language that they spoke, or any other aspect that distinguished them from Mr. Mossman’s crew.