Cavanaugh's Island

by Robert Vaughan

  The warriors surged away from the trees in an undisciplined stampede. They charged the ranch yard screeching war cries, firing the two rifles and three pistols they had.

  Two cowhands raced back for the barn and dodged inside. One tried for his horse, but he didn’t make it in time and went down with an arrow through his thigh. He rolled behind the corral fence and fired twice with his six-gun. One warrior took a round in the shoulder and spun off his mount. He lay on the ground gritting his teeth, then sprang up and ran to his war pony, which had been taught to stop whenever its master left him.

  The warrior leaped on its back and raced at the cowboy with his lance poised in his good hand. Twice the cowboy fired. Twice he hit the horse, but it didn’t go down. The warrior kept charging forward, then just before his war pony crashed into the poles of the sturdy corral, the warrior threw his lance. The moment it left his hand he nudged the war pony with his knees and it turned sharply to the left, away from the white-eye gun.

  It made no difference. The lance with the four-inch steel point slashed through the cowboy’s thin shirt into his belly, slanting upward and tearing up his vital organs. The man grunted, then blood spewed from his mouth and he died before he could get off another shot.

  Two warriors had broken windows in the ranch house. One warrior charged in the rear door, only to be blown back into the yard by the blast of a shotgun bearing double-ought buck rounds. He died instantly.

  Another warrior crept up beside the door, reached around, and fired his revolver three times into the house. He heard a low moan and darted through the door. A moment later he came out dragging a woman in her forties. She had two bullet wounds in her chest and was dying fast. He dropped her in the dust and raced back into the house, followed by two more warriors.

  One white eye from the barn ventured out a few steps when he heard the women scream. He fired at three warriors but missed, and they shot arrows at him and drove him back into the barn.

  Silver Bear dismounted and entered the main house. He had not been in many white men’s homes and they amazed him. It was strange to him how they could build such a lodge and leave it in one location. There were three large rooms with square images on the wall, and a strange device made of iron that was very hot. The house contained many things to sit on and tables with objects on them. Even beds off the floor. The windows were still wonders to him: sheets of ice he could see through, yet they would not melt from the sun’s fierce heat. He picked up a small hand mirror from the room with the beds and walked back outside.

  A warrior ran out behind Silver Bear dragging a screaming young woman of approximately sixteen winters in age. She had on no clothes above her waist and was covered with welts and scratches. The warrior did not have his breechcloth on but carried it in his teeth. He rushed into the yard, pushed the girl down and spread her legs, taking her quickly as the other warriors hooted at him.

  Long Bow and the rest of the war party were busy dividing up the horses. As the braves chose their prizes, they rode off. Silver Bear mounted his horse and rode past so close he could touch the wood of the barn and threw a torch into the haymow door ten feet off the ground. Flames leaped up in the dry weeds the rancher had put in the barn. Soon the buildings burned fiercely and smoke poured out of the lower doors.

  The large front door flew open suddenly and one white eye ran out with his hands over his head. The Indians had no idea what he was trying to tell them.

  Every warrior close by who had a bow shot an arrow at the man. Five struck him, three in the chest, and he cried out, then toppled over dead in the dust.

  The second man saw what happened. He ran out the back door, shot one warrior who had been checking on the horses, and caught his war pony. The white eye leaped onto the pony, caught the hackamore, and raced off before the warriors in front of the barn realized he was gone. They saw him tearing along toward the east, toward the white-eye towns and the Horse Soldiers.

  Silver Bear signaled to Long Bow to end the raid and ride off. He urged his horse to the east. Slowly the warriors picked up their booty and headed for the draw where they had left the rest of their goods.

  Both women were tied up and forced on the horses. They begged to put on some clothes. The warriors understood their gestures but refused. They set them astride the unsaddled war pony, the lead reign held by one brave.

  The two warriors who had been killed were tied over the backs of their war ponies and attached to a lead line behind another warrior’s horse.

  When the warriors had secured their goods, they began their trek back to the Arikaree River campgrounds. Six men drove the plundered horses in a herd toward the mountains. Most of the mounts had been broken and were tamed, but four broke away at once and raced into the prairie. The warriors did not chase them. They still had forty-two horses, a great prize for such a brief raid.

  They rode the rest of the day, pausing only once more to rest the tough little Indian ponies. The two captive white women were at last given some of the women’s clothing that had been stolen so they could cover themselves from the hot sun. One was already sunburned, the other close to it. Their owners bargained for the clothing and got them covered so they wouldn’t die on them.

  Long Bow was aware that a witness had escaped and that there would be someone on their trail soon. Once they got to the start of the hills and the timber, they broke up into five different groups of three men. Each of the groups took some of the captive horses. If anyone tried to follow them they would find an intermixed mass of trails that crossed, crisscrossed, and turned back on themselves.

  The warriors rode through the night until they could smell their camp on the wind. Long Bow sent one messenger into the village to alert them of their arrival, then the warriors camped a short distance from the village. They would reunite in victory the following morning.

  With the first hint of daylight came a flurry of action. The warriors put on new war paint, dressed up in the captured clothes, and brushed down their war ponies until they were sleek and clean. Then they ate a meal of pemmican and rode into the band’s camp after sunrise.

  Every old man, woman, and child was out to greet them. The women wore the best dresses they had, with fancy beads sewn on or rows of elk’s teeth that clattered with every move.

  The women who had lost husbands wailed and screamed and slashed their breasts and their arms, crying and wailing as they displayed the proper form of mourning. Young girls ran along with the warriors, throwing flowers at them, and women and men alike raised a joyous shout as the men paraded in. Long Bow was at the head of the procession, with Silver Bear in an honorary second position.

  They walked their war ponies slowly through the whole camp, showing off the two women captives and parading the forty-two captured horses. Then the procession turned and went back through the camp, this time each warrior turning off at his own tepee, unloading his booty and sending his horse back to the pasture.

  As soon as the warriors had rested, the drums began to beat in the council circle. There, a fire was started and the oldest buffalo robe that could be found was laid down in front of where the council of twelve sat. Then all the people in the camp came to hear the tales of battle. When the population had assembled, the drums stopped and a warrior on his horse and wearing his war regalia thundered through a narrow path left in the mass of seated Cheyenne to the front of the gathering where the council sat.

  The warrior lifted his lance and sank the steel blade deep into the ground through the old buffalo robe before the council.

  Then he stood on the back of his war pony, and with gestures and terrible faces, told a glowing story of his bravery and how he stole ten horses himself, and how he counted coup on one of the ranch hands before he died, and then how he burned down the barn and watched it roar and drive out the white eyes hiding inside.

  When he was finished the people cheered and he rode out, and another warrior raced into the circle and planted his lance deep into the buffalo robe and told his own tal
e of bravery and honor and victory.

  This continued until each of the warriors on the raid had told of his brilliance and bravery under fire by the enemy white eye. One warrior told of the game of kick ball with the head of the small white girl, and the women cheered the loudest of all.

  After the warriors’ telling of the victory, the council moved together to sort out which coups should go to which of the warriors when a coup was contested. They would make the decisions and the warriors would abide by them.

  Silver Bear retired from the celebration early and went to his tepee to rest. He was not as young as he had been, and he had started to feel his age. Tomorrow morning he would be back on his pony again, riding with one of Long Bow’s most trusted men. Together they would visit four of the other Cheyenne bands in this area, then they would part and each visit another group of camps of both Sioux and Arapaho, until every band in the whole area knew about the Coming Together, now only eight days away.

  8

  Just after 2 P.M.that same day as the Cheyenne raids, First Lieutenant Scott Winchester led Able Troop up to the small farm and ranch that had been destroyed. The lone survivor had run the Indian pony hard and made it to Fort Wallace, fifteen miles away, in a little over two hours. The Indian pony foundered and died two hundred yards from the fort.

  Newt Stockner rushed into the fort and was taken at once to the commander’s office, where he excitedly reported the raid to Major Owensby and Captain Cavanaugh. He was given a horse and a quick meal and was ready a half hour later to lead a patrol back to the ranches.

  Lieutenant Winchester ordered the bodies buried at both places, then with his scouts pointing the way, led out on a chase after the hostiles. He kept his troop of forty-five men moving at a good clip. By eight o’clock that night he figured they had covered about twenty-five miles heading northwest toward the mountains.

  “Damn Cheyenne,” Winchester growled as they stopped to rest their mounts. “Damn hostiles don’t mind riding a hundred miles to make a raid. Be a miracle if we find this bunch.”

  Lieutenant O’Hara made no comment. He had been functioning in the troop at a regulation level, but that didn’t mean he had to be friendly with the man who had given him so much trouble in his command.

  “Will we be moving any further now that it’s almost dark, sir?” Lieutenant O’Hara finally asked.

  “No. Give the order to make camp along this stream. Put out the usual guards. We’ll pursue the bastards another twenty-five miles tomorrow, but I bet we never see a redskin.”

  “Yes, sir.” Lieutenant O’Hara gave the word and the men set up camp at once.

  Usually the troops had daylight to establish camp, but now they had to do the best they could in the dark. First came the horses; they set up picket lines for them and fed and watered them. Some of the men rubbed down their mounts and curried them.

  Details were sent to gather wood. There was plenty of fuel near the creek where high water had left dead dry wood, good for making a fire.

  After the camp was secured and wood brought in, the men started small cooking fires. On the march, each man was responsible for his own food and cooking — there was no company cook.

  Each man had been issued five pounds of salt pork and hardtack for the patrol. It was enough food to sustain a soldier in the field for two days. Many of the men said it was enough to kill a trooper after three.

  They boiled the salt pork to make it safe to eat, then drained off the fat which they often threw in with the hardtack and boiled them together to make it more palatable. There was no time to cook beans, which could take from six hours to a full night.

  Usually each man had an issue of green coffee beans, which he roasted over his fire in his cup or sutler-bought skillet. The beans were put in a small sack and with a pair of rocks pounded into a powder, then boiled for coffee.

  One trooper, known to bring along special food when he could afford to buy it from the sutler, had a feast this night. He pulverized hardtack along with bacon and raisins and boiled the mix in his tin cup with condensed milk and a little water. For dessert, he fried moistened hardtack in some salt pork grease, then sprinkled it with brown sugar.

  Once their meals were over, the men spent the rest of the night relaxing or playing friendly poker with matchsticks or pebbles, since most of them had little gambling money left over from their $13-a-month wages.

  Some of the men wrote letters or kept a diary, and there was always the usual enlisted man’s gossip, bitching about the officers and non-coms, and daydreaming about what they were going to do once their hitch was up and they could get out of the damn Army. Private Beauchamp, a trooper from New Orleans, had brought along his mouth organ and played for the men as they hummed along.

  The company carried no shelter halves for the small “pup” tents. Each man had his blanket and slept next to his saddle.

  As usual, first call from the trumpeter at 4:45 A.M. came much too soon the next day. The troopers climbed from their blankets on the hard, cold ground. Within ten minutes, they came to order and saddled their mounts.

  Five minutes later they heard mess call on the trumpet and the men had half an hour to fix their breakfast. Usually this was a cold meal of hardtack and water, or a quick fried salt pork.

  By 5:30, they struck camp, stowed all of their personal gear and weapons on their mounts, and prepared to ride. The troops fell into a column of fours in marching orders and waited for the signal to ride forward. Promptly at 6 A.M. Lieutenant Winchester gave the signal to move out along the line of travel that the scouts had found for them.

  The ten to fifteen hostiles and the stolen livestock had cut a plain trail across the prairie. There had been no attempt to confuse a tracker so far. The Cheyenne were running as fast as they could back toward their mountain camp and safety, or at least to reach reinforcement from the others in their band.

  The march continued through the morning. By the time they had traveled twenty more miles, Lieutenant Winchester called a halt at a small stream to rest the horses. He told the lead scout to call back his two men out in front.

  “This as far as we’re going?” Lieutenant O’Hara asked the troop commander.

  “It is, O’Hara. We’ve pursued the hostiles for at least forty-five miles. I can see the next six or seven miles up the slant toward the mountains. The savages are not in sight. That makes more than a fifty mile pursuit. Seems like a waste of resources to continue it any further.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Tell the troops we’ll take our noon break here and when we march again, we’ll be heading for home.”

  Back at Fort Wallace, in the commanding officer’s office, Captain Cavanaugh and Major Owensby were standing in front of a wall map of the area. The map covered western Kansas and eastern Colorado. It had fairly accurate but unsurveyed boundaries, rivers, streams, trails, towns, settlements, and every ranch and homestead they had managed to track down.

  There were red thumbtacks on the black-and-white map marking places where there had been Indian raids involving deaths during the past year. Each red splotch was labeled with the name of the spot, the number killed, the number of horses stolen, and the tribe thought to be responsible.

  Cavanaugh had pasted smaller white squares of paper by the red tacks. “These white marks represent attacks within the past six months. Look at the pattern. They’re moving closer and closer to our position. That’s partly because they’ve cut down half a dozen outlying ranches, but does this positioning mean anything else?”

  Major Owensby pulled at his beard. “Hell, it means we’ve got a damn rough situation. Looks like the attacks have been increasing. Since I’ve been here we’ve had what — five or six?”

  “Averages out to one killing raid every two weeks.” Cavanaugh set his hands akimbo on his hips and marched around the room. “Don’t know if it would work, but what we’re doing is reacting to what the savages do. They have the offensive. What we need to do is anticipate their next attack.”


  “I don’t follow you, Cavanaugh.”

  “I’m not sure that I make sense, either. Just wondering ...” He stared out the window at a troop working on the drill field. “What would happen if we placed, say, two squads of men or a platoon out in a couple of ranches and waited to see if any savages attacked? We could camp out in some brush or cover along a river or stream to stay out of sight.” “Yeah, it might work. If you were lucky. But hell, they might hit any one of ten or fifteen ranches out that way.”

  “True. It would be a gamble. But we could pick the most likely. The Cheyenne especially like to go for small ranches where they get a remuda of thirty to fifty horses. That’s candy on a string to them horse lovers.”

  “True. Work up your idea and let’s talk about it again. We could call them training patrols. Couldn’t hurt one single goddamned thing.”

  “Yes, sir. I’ll check with local general supply for a few suggestions.”

  Later that day, a trapper rode wearily into the fort and asked to talk to the commander. The Officer of the Day knocked on Captain Cavanaugh’s door and showed the grizzled man inside. He said his name was Loot Chalmers and he did some trapping up in the hills to the west.

  “Not a lot left in there, but I can do all right during the fall and early winter, then I streak on out of there. Lately things been getting ugly.” He spit a stream of tobacco juice into a mostly unused spittoon beside Cavanaugh’s desk, hitting it in the center. “I work with the injuns. When I get a good catch in my traps, I skin the critters out and take the meat to the squaws. They’ll eat anything. But then, couple weeks ago I got the idea they’d just as soon eat me as the beaver. One of the chiefs warned me to stay away. He told me somebody up in that area around the Republican and the Arikaree been gunning down Indians with a buffalo gun.”