5
Toby Gates sat in the Owlhoot Saloon in the small town of Wallace, population sixty-five but that was only at the Fourth of July county-wide dance. For most of the year, the count was more like twenty, give or take a few drifters and local Indians. The business consisted of the saloon and one small general store that also served as post office, undertaking parlor, and blacksmith shop.
There were three houses in the settlement, if you counted Willy Hedbetter, who lived about two blocks south of town on his small farm that ran down to the Smoky Hill River.
In the saloon, the beer was warm but the talk was free, so now Gates and Willy Hedbetter lifted their glasses in a toast and then set them down on the small table. Two men played a hand of penny ante poker at the only other table in the place. This was a crowd for the Owlhoot.
Willy was a large man, built like a bull moose without the headgear. Broad shoulders strained through a homespun shirt, and his hands dwarfed his mug of beer. He was just over six-feet-two-inches and weighed around 240 pounds. His face was ragged, unshaven for four days, and showing a bruise on one cheek where his woman, Amanda, had clipped him when he’d sassed her. Nobody sassed Amanda.
Willy was twenty-four years old. He was a farmer, and in the last two years had made a living for his wife and two kids and saved nearly twenty-five dollars ... in cash. Not many in the county could claim that.
Gates had been talking about the Cheyenne raid on the Burroughs ranch eight miles northeast of town.
“You got kin out that way, don’t you, Willy?” Toby asked.
“Damn right. My brother, Kenny, and his wife and kid. Trying to raise some cattle out that way. Hell, the big-timers got him beat all hollow. But he tries. ’Course I get a half a beef from him now and again.”
Toby Gates screwed up his face and shook his head. “Christ in a bucket, don’t know what I’d do if some of them damn heathens got to my family,” he said. “I’d go berserk, for sure. If’n some damn Cheyenne come storming in and killed my kin, I’d take off after the sons of bitches with my Sharps Big Fifty, that’s what I’d do.”
“That so.”
“Hell, yes. I’d get my Big Fifty. That sucker can shoot a mile almost on line. It’s one of them .50-caliber-by-100 grains of powder models. Heavy as hell but a real head buster. Blow a buffalo down at half a mile. Yeah, think what it’d do to a goddamn Cheyenne, sitting in front of his fucking teepee up there in the hills somewhere. Guess I’d just about go crazy if them Cheyenne got my family the way they did the Burroughs.” Gates paused. “What would you do, Willy, if’n something happened to your brother?” he asked as he lifted his beer.
“Ain’t gonna. Kenny says he’s got lookouts and places to hide and the whole bit.”
“Good, good, right idea, living out here so damn close to the danger zone. But say the damn Sioux or Cheyenne slipped up at night or such. What in hell you do then if old Ken shows up, his head split open by a Cheyenne tomahawk?”
Willy squinted his eyes and wrinkled his forehead. Then he rubbed his head and massaged his whole face and ears. At last he looked up. “Why, I guess I’d do just what you’d do, Toby. I’d come borrow your Big Fifty and go do me some Cheyenne hunting. You know, I used to trap up in them hills and places around the Republican and Arikaree. Know that country like the inside of my woman’s thighs.”
“Hey, Louie!” Gates yelled at the barkeep. “How about a couple more beers over here.”
Toby drank with Willy for another hour. Four more times he pounded in the idea that the white man had to stand up to these damn heathens. An eye for an eye, by damn. When Willy surged up to his feet and walked out the door with only a slight weave, Gates grinned. Yeah, he had planted the seed. Now all it had to do was grow.
That same night, Toby Gates packed half of his souvenir Indian short bows and arrows and part of a headdress into a big gunnysack and slung it over his horse. He had picked up the arrows and bows over the past two years in his meetings with the Sioux and Cheyenne to trade for buffalo robes.
He rode out about midnight and got within two miles of Willy Hedbetter’s brother’s place. It was four miles north of the burned-out Burroughs’ small spread. Gates eased down from his horse in a brush line formed along a creek heading east. He slept three hours and woke up just after daybreak. Checking his gear and his six-gun, he hurried toward the Hedbetter ranch so he would be in time for breakfast. Only he didn’t plan to stay for coffee.
Riding straight through the front the yard, Gates tied up his horse at a small hitching rail in front of the house. The screen door slammed and Kenny came out carrying a shotgun. He squinted, “Who in hell’s there?” Kenny called.
“Name’s Toby Gates. I do some trading with the Indians from time to time. I was talking with your brother Willy yesterday and I thought I’d say howdy on my way up to the tribes.”
Kenny lowered the shotgun. “Well, hell. Any friend of Willy’s can surely share my table. Come on in and have some breakfast.”
Gates walked up to the man and shook his hand, and when Kenny turned to go back in the the house, Toby drew his six-gun and shot him through the back of the head. Kenny flopped onto the dirt by the steps, dead. The killer jumped to the side of the house near the door.
“Was that a shot, Kenny? What’s going on out there?” The voice grew louder as the woman came to the door. She pushed open the screen door and looked out. Gates shot her in the heart as she turned toward him.
He didn’t figure she’d be so pretty. Damn, he could have used her once or twice first. That was his only thought. No pangs of conscience, no regrets. He jumped inside, found the baby, and shot it in the chest where it lay in a little rocking cradle.
Quickly he ran to his horse and brought back three arrows. He jammed one into each body where his .44 had made a hole. The arrows were hard going in, but finally he had all three driven in far enough to conceal the bullet wound and pin the killings on the Cheyenne.
Then he looked down at the woman. Indians raped the white women, everyone knew that. So he ripped and cut the woman’s clothes off, all of them. She had fallen on her back, so he spread her legs to make it look like the Indians had used her.
He scattered around two arrows, and two more broken ones, a discarded bow, which he broke, and then he snagged the piece of feathered headdress on the end of the hitching rail.
Gates worked faster now, riding to the small barn and setting it on fire, and then firing the shed. He’d leave the house. He opened the corral and drove the six horses out. After double-checking that everything looked like an Indian raid, he mounted and headed out.
He rode back toward town five miles, then swung to the east for five miles more so he could come into town from the other direction.
It was the next day before the “Cheyenne attack” on the Hedbetter ranch was discovered. Willy had been due to go out there to help his brother round up some wild horses they had spotted. He found the bodies about noon and raced back to Fort Wallace with the news. Major Owensby and Captain Cavanaugh led Baker Troop out to the Hedbetter place to investigate right away.
At the site they found the bodies where the civilian said they would be. The troops stayed back until Eagle Feather had made a careful inspection of the whole ranch yard and the house.
Major Owensby and Captain Cavanaugh rode up and down outside the house as they waited for the Crow scout to come out. He motioned to them from the door. “Inside, please.”
In the tiny cabin he showed them the baby in the crib with the arrow sticking out of it. Then he lifted the child’s already stiff form and turned it over. There was a blood-caked hole on the child’s back.
“Shot with pistol,” the Crow scout said. He put the baby down on the bed and removed some of the blankets and padding from the crib. Underneath the crib, embedded in the hardwood floor, he found a lead slug. He lifted it out and gave it to the major. “Forty-four, forty-five caliber.”
Outside, he pulled the arrows out of the man and woman,
shaking his head. “Small arrowhead. Bird point. Not for man. Man arrowhead much wide.” They turned the woman over and found where a bullet had gone all the way through her body as well.
“Shot, pistol,” Eagle Feather said.
He looked around the yard, then at the remains of the two buildings. Stuck in a chopping block at the side of the house were two axes and two small saws. “Cheyenne raid take axes, saws.”
He pointed to half a dozen horses that had grazed their way back toward the corral, looking for some oats or hay.
“Indians raid for horses. Why not take?”
Then the scout found the two unbroken arrows and showed them to the officers. “This arrow, Cheyenne,” he said. “This arrow, Sioux. Never Cheyenne and Sioux raid ranch together. Never.”
Major Owensby nodded. “So, Eagle Feather, you’re telling us that this murder was done by a white man who tried to make it look like it was a Cheyenne raid?”
“Yes. White eye kill all, burn buildings.” Eagle Feather went to his horse and mounted and rode around the ranch buildings. Captain Cavanaugh called to one of the Lieutenants about digging three graves. They had brought shovels for that purpose. He put six men on the task near the side of the house.
By the time the graves where half dug, Eagle Feather came back. He shook his head. “Find no tracks of Indian pony raiders. No Indian raiders. Track of one shod horse heading toward town. Maybe day, day and half old. No Indians here.” When they had buried the three bodies and erected simple wooden crosses for the graves, they headed back for the fort.
“That’s one we won’t have to worry about,” Major Owensby said. “Cavanaugh, I want you to ride over to Sharon Springs and report this to the sheriff. You’re an on-the-spot witness. Tell him what the scout said, too. Then it’s out of our hands.”
“Tomorrow?” Captain Cavanaugh asked.
“Hell, yes. Tomorrow.”
As soon as Willy Hedbetter got back to town, he headed for the small boarding house where he knew Toby Gates lived. His pounding on the door brought a quick response.
“Willy,” Toby Gates said. “Good to see you. Got time for a beer down at the saloon?”
“No time now. My brother Ken is dead. Damn Cheyenne! Cheyenne arrows all over the place. I know their markings. I want your Big Fifty.”
“My Big Fifty? Let the Army handle it, Willy.” “No. Got to be family. Eye for an eye. Bring me your Big Fifty. You really got one?”
“Sure, but that’s dangerous. You’re not going to . . . Oh, no! You remember what we was talking about the other day about going after the Cheyenne ourselves. Drunk talk, Willy.”
“Get the Big Fifty for me, and a hundred rounds.” “You’re serious, aren’t you, Willy?”
“Damn serious. Get the Big Fifty. I’ll stop by at my farm for a sack of grub, and I’m heading for the hills. Hell, I know where half those bands have their summer camps and their hunting camps. I can kill as many as I want and they’ll never see me. I reckon I owe them at least six — no, nine, just to make sure they remember. Yeah, nine.”
Ten minutes later, Gates watched from behind the curtain as Willy Hedbetter stepped into his saddle and cradled the Sharps Big Fifty across his arms as he rode for his little farmhouse south of town.
“Goddamn, it worked!” Gates exclaimed in delight. Now all he had to do was sit back and wait. The Cheyenne hated nothing more than an enemy they couldn’t see. Within a week they would be raiding every white eye they could find to try to rid themselves of this “bad magic,” this long-gunner who they never could catch.
Willy Hedbetter was fifteen miles north by the time the Army had finished its evaluation of the killings. He did not punish his horse, but he worked the big black as hard as he knew she could stand. It would take him a day and a half to get into the country where the Cheyenne liked to camp. Then he would be more careful. Tomorrow at dusk he would make his first kill, and he wouldn’t be too particular about who it was — as long as it was a Cheyenne!
The next afternoon, he worked his way up a creek he called Wandering Stream that emptied into the Arikaree. He had trapped the area years ago. He knew where the heavy brush was and how he could get close to the small Cheyenne band that often stopped there late in the year before the big buffalo hunt.
He rode his horse into the brush, picketed her, and lifted off the Big Fifty and the cloth sack holding the sixty rounds he had brought. He patted his mount but left the saddle on for a possible quick exit.
Then Willy Hedbetter walked swiftly and surely toward where he figured the Cheyenne band would be camped. His heart was hard, as the Cheyenne said. All he could see were his kin, stiff and pale in death with open, staring eyes.
When he parted the last brush on the slope above Wandering Stream, he found a familiar sight. Fifteen tepees lined the little stream. At the far end of the string of brownish-gray buffalo hide covers on the tepees, he could see where the band’s ponies were kept.
Fortunes must be down for this band, he thought. He guessed they had no more than forty horses. That would be less than three mounts per warrior. He had seen some Cheyenne bands where the leader had well over a hundred horses all his own.
He studied the closest tepee. An old woman sat outside working on a hide. Two children ran to the stream, splashed and screeched at each other.
A warrior came out of the tepee and went to another. He called, and a second warrior came out and the two men stood talking. Good enough for the first time, he decided. He had already inserted the big round, and now he lined up the sights, judged the distance and the downhill shoot, and adjusted. He zeroed in on the man nearest the tepee.
Hedbetter’s eyes watered and he stopped to wipe them. He had only five minutes. Dusk was falling quickly now. Again he sighted in, aimed at the first warrior’s chest, and squeezed the trigger. The cracking blast of the high-powered cartridge surprised him. The stock jolted against his cheek. For a moment he couldn’t see through the haze of blue smoke from the muzzle.
Quickly he levered out that round and pushed in a new one. When he looked back at the tepee, the man he’d aimed at was flat on his back and not moving. The second man stared at his dead friend, then began to run toward his own tepee.
Willy tracked the Cheyenne Warrior, led him by a hair, and fired. The second warrior stumbled, threw his hands into the air, and slammed backward between the two tepees.
Since the breeze blew toward Willy, the blue gunpowder smoke pushed back into the brush. The Cheyenne would have no idea where the rounds had originated. He lay there watching. The old woman in front of the tepee lay on the ground not moving. The two boys in the stream had ceased their play and sat in the cold water, shivering.
Then a wail came as a woman darted into the scene and fell on the body of the first dead warrior. That brought out another woman, and slowly the band filled the area. Two warriors ran out holding rifles.
Willy eased back from the thick brush opening and ejected the shell casing. He picked it up, as well as the first one, and smoothed out the place where he had lain and his entry to it so there would be no signs for the Indians to read.
He went back to his horse by a different route. As soon as it was dark, he moved cautiously forward, working higher on the Arikaree to a valley where he had found good trapping and where the Cheyenne had driven him out.
Willy Hedbetter looked up at the stars as he rode through the woods and down to the edge of the valley of the Arikaree River. “Those two are for you, Ken, my lost brother. And there’ll be more, I swear it.”
6
Silver Bear, leader of his own band of Cheyenne, had his fall camp at one of his favorite spots high on the north fork of the Republican River in Colorado Territory. They had been coining here every year for the past decade to rest and prepare for their major buffalo hunt.
The fall hunt would provide the buffalo jerky to fill their parfleches so the women could pound the jerky into pemmican. The buffalo provided almost all of the necessities of life for
his band, from buffalo robes to sinew for bowstrings. They used every scrap of the animal, even the bones for utensils and tools.
It was a satisfying time for Silver Bear. He had brought his band through another summer of minimal confrontation with the white-eye Horse Soldiers. He had kept the truce with the Sioux bands intact, and there had been four successful raids on white eyes who were trying to push into the Cheyenne hunting grounds.
Soon it would be time to send out scouts to find the thinning buffalo herds and to plan the hunt.
Silver Bear was especially tall for an Indian, standing six-feet four-inches. While the Indians did not use the word “chief,” he was a respected leader not only of his own band, but of all of those Cheyenne in the Arikaree-Republican River area. Sometimes he dreamed of a large coming together, when all the tribes, of the area would unite and their warriors would move out and fight the white eye wherever they found him, sweeping the Cheyenne and Sioux hunting grounds free of the hated white eyes for good.
One small band- could not stand up to the Horse Soldiers when they swept down from the hills. But a combined force of the Sioux, Cheyenne, and Arapaho would be a big enough force to do the job. They could field 800 mounted warriors. With a force like that they could sweep the white eyes from the entire region.
The Cheyenne leader shifted his weight now where he was seated on a buffalo robe in front of his tepee on the north fork of the Republican. His shield, lance, and bow and arrows stood just at the entrance to his dwelling, where they would be easy to grab if the camp was attacked.
He watched his number-two and number-three wives working on hides. A chance buffalo kill last week had provided fresh meat for the band, and six new hides to scrape, dry, and cure in the sun. Silver Bear heard something and looked toward the end of camp. A rider worked his way through the tepees and the people. He shouted at some, waved, and then rode for the largest of the tepees, the one with the head of a silver-tip grizzly bear painted on it. The rider, a Cheyenne from another band, stopped at last where Silver Bear sat, and dismounted.
Cavanaugh's Island Page 5
