Cavanaugh's Island

by Robert Vaughan

  “Yes, sir. And thank you.”

  “You earned it, Sergeant. Carry on.”

  Captain Cavanaugh detailed four men to stay with the new sergeant, leaving the man’s horse and two of the Indian ponies that had been captured.

  Then he rode up to Lieutenant O’Hara and said, “Lieutenant, you see any reason why we shouldn’t move out to last night’s camping location?”

  Lieutenant O’Hara hesitated. He started to say something, then obviously changed his mind. “No, sir, no reason whatsoever, Captain.”

  They sat at the front of the column of fours. Captain Cavanaugh looked at the officer, frowned for a minute, then decided to take it up later. He lifted his hand, turned, and called out, “Forward hoooo!”

  The other officers and non-coms repeated the command, and the long line of troopers headed for the woods three miles away. They met Eagle Feather and the other scout about a mile from the stream. He waved them forward. The area had been cleared of any hostiles.

  At the campsite the troopers stopped in place and Captain Cavanaugh went to the center of the line and shouted out his praises for the men.

  “You acted like real cavalry troopers today, men. I’m proud of you. We lost five men, probably six, but we took down fourteen hostiles and sent the rest bleeding back to their lair. We also saw the benefits of having a trained trooper along who can attend to the wounded. Today Jake Foland was promoted to sergeant, and should be so addressed from now on.” The men Foland had bandaged gave a cheer. Their sergeants scowled at them.

  Captain Cavanaugh nodded. “We’ll all give the man a cheer when he gets back with his final patient. Is there anyone here who has ever built a travois?” He waited, and two of the troopers held up their hands. “You two men, front and center.” They rode forward and stopped in front of the captain.

  “Commanders, dismiss your troops to prepare camp.”

  Shouted commands came from the officers, and then sergeants and the troops broke up and set up a picket line for the horses. They began caring for the animals first. A cavalryman without his horse wasn’t a soldier. The horses came first on every march.

  Captain Cavanaugh looked at the two soldiers. “We have a wounded man out there who needs a travois to get home. I want you men to build one now and tow it out to the battle site as soon as possible.”

  “Yes, sir, Captain,” the older of the two men said. “We’ll need some rope and a hatchet if anybody’s got one.”

  “Sergeant Long,” Captain Cavanaugh said. “Help these men get the materials they need.”

  “Yes, sir.” The three men rode away.

  Five minutes later, the four officers met near the water where Captain Cavanaugh had called them together.

  “I’ve decided that we’ll overnight here, then move back to the fort tomorrow. I’ve learned most of what I wanted to. The Indians are moving. Now the Sioux are raiding far from their camps. Something has stirred them up. It very well may be this lone wolf sniper who is terrorizing the camps up around the Arikaree River. We’ll return to the fort, and in the meantime, I want both of these troops to take target practice. Every man thirty rounds every day for the next four days. Your troopers have to learn to hit what they shoot at.”

  A little later, the two volunteers towed a travois across the prairie toward a small bonfire they could see in the approaching darkness. The travois was made with two long poles that extended just beyond the horse’s head. They were harnessed securely around the animal’s neck and held in place with multiple strands of rope. Behind the horse, a platform had been built between the poles. Rope had been used to tie a crosspiece between the poles to hold them apart. More rope was used to form a webbing between the poles. On this were four army blankets. The wounded man would lie there and sway on the cushioning rope springs.

  At sundown, the travois came into camp and the wounded man called to his buddies.

  “By damn, I ain’t dead yet, you polecats. Warn’t for Doc Foland here I damn well would have been.”

  The wounded trooper was taken off the travois and put on a bed of soft leaves and small branches. “Doc” Sergeant Foland sat beside him until he drifted off to sleep after eating his evening rations.

  A trooper slowly led an army mount into the area. On the mount’s back lay the sixth dead soldier from the battle.

  The troops ate a solemn meal that evening, and when the bugler played taps, the men took off their hats.

  11

  Toby Gates kicked up his feet on the table in his house and lifted his glass of whiskey. “Just like money in the bank, Foster. You hear how somebody been blasting the Indians? Trapper guy came through here yesterday spouting about it.”

  “Somebody really shooting them up in their own villages?” Byron Foster asked. The sutler stared at his partner and sipped his whiskey.

  “Remember we talked about wishing the injuns would get riled so the army would move in and clean them out of our little valley up there? Looks like that just might be happening.”

  Toby grinned. “Hear tell Willy Hedbetter used to be a trapper up that way ’fore he started sod bustin’. Cheyenne done in some of his kin week or two ago. Maybe he ran off up there and is whaling away.” “Never can tell about Willy,” Byron said.

  Toby emptied his glass and smacked his lips. “Soon enough now we gonna fetch us all sorts of expensive whiskey and good-looking women and anything else we want, thanks to the U.S. Army.” “Maybe. But I don’t put much stock in army planning.”

  Toby ignored him. “I think it’s time we head back up there and see if the damned Cheyenne done moved out of our little valley where our gold mine is.”

  “You mean right soon?” Byron asked.

  “Yeah, right soon, like tomorrow morning. You tell your old woman to mind the store, and we’ll high tail it out of here long about daylight. Bring grub for three or four days and another one of them big canvas sacks.”

  “You ever get that other ore assayed?”

  “Hell, no. Where am I supposed to find an assayer around here? Got to go damn near to Denver to find one. We’ll assay it just before we sell it and get rich. Now you get on home and load up one of them good horses of yours and meet me here at sunrise.”

  “Really think we should go with the injuns getting so riled up thataway?”

  “Hell, yes, or I wouldn’t have said to do it. Now git! I’ll see your ugly face in the morning.” Toby grinned as he added, “Hell, Byron, we’re gonna be rich!”

  The partners rode all the first day toward the northwest, and then all the next day, and came into the hills behind their claim about dusk. They had spotted no Indians, and evidently none saw them. They worked their way silently through the timber and down the far slope until they found the rock monolith. No one was camped there. Nothing had been disturbed.

  They hid their horses, bedded down in the deepest brush they could find, and by sunup were at the upthrust beside the tall rock slab.

  “Damn, she looks better than I remember!” Toby crowed. “Don’t see how we can do less than be millionaires!” He looked down the stream. “First off I want to go down to the Arikaree valley and see if I can spot any Cheyenne or any smoke, case they got a camp downstream.”

  Gates came back an hour later, grinning. “Watched both ways and didn’t see any redmen. No smoke came up from the trees along the river, upstream or downstream. Looks like they headed into the plains to find a herd of buffs. Sure hope so.”

  He looked at the vein of gold where Byron had pushed back the brush. This time they had a cold chisel, a five-pound hammer, and a long steel rod with a raised cross cut into the end. It was called a star drill.

  “Way you work this is to put it against the rock and hit it hard with the hammer. Then one man turns the shaft here so the star is halfway around and we hit it again. That way this steel will bite into the hardest rock a little bit at a time, and after enough hits and turns and hits, you start drilling a hole in the rock.

  “Seems like a lot of wor
k,” Byron said.

  “Hell, yes, it’s a lot of work. You don’t earn a thousand dollars a month mining gold by loafing around.”

  “A thousand dollars a month?” Byron asked in awe.

  “Hell, yes. Easy. Once we get these Indians out of here and can settle down with a crew of men and build ourselves a stamping mill and then a processing plant to separate out the gold.”

  Foster looked up and scowled. “All that? I figured we could just chisel some out and go sell it.”

  Gates shook his head. “Not quite that simple. But we can cut out some of that pure looking gold vein right now. Give me that hammer.”

  Toby whaled away with the hammer and chisel and cut out some of the gold vein, then ran into rock.

  “Look at that! Damn near pure gold! I never seen anything like it before. Just one ounce of this gold is worth twenty dollars and sixty-seven cents. One pound is worth over three-hundred-and-thirty dollars! Think what it would be if we had half a wagon- full!”

  “Lord a’mighty, I can’t even cipher up that high,” Byron said.

  Toby worked on the face of the upthrust, pounding it with the heavy hammer. “Want to try to get more of that surface rock off,” he said. “See if the vein goes both up and down right here.”

  A good-sized chunk of the rock broke off and they saw where the streak of yellow continued down to the ground level. Toby sat back, panting from swinging the hammer.

  “Money in a bucket! You ever in your life see anything that pretty? “Makes a good-looking woman seem like a hog. Damn, but that is nice!” Toby shook his head, admiring the gold.

  “Let’s fill up that bag we brought. No sense going home empty-handed.” He brushed back his shoulder-length hair, and his watery green eyes glowed.

  “Damn, I’m a millionaire, and I can’t get to it because of the Indians!”

  He chipped off some more of the rock and gold ore. “Christ, if old Willy Hedbetter don’t do the job, I’ll try something else.”

  Foster looked up, curious. “You know something about Willy heading back into the hills?”

  “Told you I’d take care of it. Now dig some more of that paydirt out of there. I’m going to check the valley. Don’t want them hair-lifting Cheyenne sneaking up on us.”

  “Thought Willy came up here ’cause his kin got slaughtered by some Cheyenne,” the sutler said, staring hard at Gates. “Oh, good Lord and Savior... it couldn’t be. It was you, not the Cheyenne, who killed Willy’s kin out on his farm place. You did it purposeful so Willy would go crazy for the Cheyenne!”

  “Stop talking and get back to digging. I’ll go look for the scalping Indians.”

  Gates trotted down the edge of the creek along a deer trail heading for the Arikaree River. He peered out cautiously through some brush when he got there. For a while he saw nothing, then far downstream he caught a wisp of smoke, then another. There had to be some Indians there, probably camping about two miles down. They couldn’t hear the hammer on steel leastwise, Toby decided. He checked the other way upstream and discovered no Indians in that direction either. He trotted back to the upthrust.

  Foster had the canvas sack almost full of chunks of gold he had chiseled out and pieces of rock with the gold in them. He looked up at once and lifted the five-pound hammer.

  Toby, you kill Willy’s kin out at their farm? I got to know one way or the other right now.”

  Toby shrugged. “Look, Foster, you’re just a partner, not the boss. I don’t like taking orders, and I don’t owe no explanation. But I know Indians and what gets them in a fighting mood. Nothing riles them up like getting shot at in their own tepee. They think their camps are safe. So we had to get somebody to hit the Cheyenne and Sioux right in their camps.”

  Foster declined to look at Gates now and busied himself with the ore.

  “You listening to what I’m telling you, Byron?” “Still waiting for a yes or no answer.”

  “So it had to be Willy. His kin was the trigger to setting him off on a rampage.”

  Foster seemed to sag. His shoulders dropped and he reached for his six-gun. “Gates, you murdered that man and woman and child in cold blood and made it look like Indians. Right?”

  “Hell, you wasn’t doing anything. Yeah, right.” His own hand hung over his revolver on his belt. “You gonna do something stupid now that we’re almost rich?”

  Tears squeezed out of Byron’s eyes. “Knew them folks. Liked that little woman.” His hand shook over his weapon, then gradually eased away from it. “You’re a murdering bastard, Toby. I never shoulda got into this mess with you.”

  “Hard luck, storekeeper, you’re in it. Now you want to get rich or not? I didn’t ask you to do in none of them, did I? Just shut up your yap and fill that sack. I saw some injun smoke down a couple of miles. Could be some of the bastards around here yet.”

  Byron tossed the chisel to Toby. “I’ll go keep watch. You finish filling the damn sack.” Byron stalked away downstream, but shot one last angry stare at Toby first. “I got to do some thinking on this.”

  “Go ahead,” Toby called. “Just remember, you was in on it. Sheriff can hang you for them three just as quick as me. I’ll claim you was with me even, and you poked it in the woman before you done her. You start thinking rich, not go soft like some old worn out whore.”

  Byron charged ahead down the trail. He was so angry he could hardly see. He brushed tears from his eyes and tried to get control of himself. He had been so close to shooting Toby on the spot that it scared him. That would throw everything away.

  But murder, three murders! It shook him. He sat down halfway to the valley and held his head in his hands. After a short while, he stood and walked on down to the edge of the Arikaree valley. He saw the smoke downstream. As he watched, three warriors on their war ponies came out of some brush and worked slowly across an open spot as they headed downstream along the river toward him.

  “Damn Indians,” Byron whispered to himself. He jogged back up the small valley and told Gates what he’d seen.

  “Hell, we better load up and get out of here.”

  “Neither horse can carry a man and that sack of gold up over the ridges the way we went out last time,” Byron said. “We got to go through the valley or leave the gold here.”

  “We take it. We can wait until dark and slip out.”

  “Maybe work through the brush along the side of the valley,” Byron suggested. He wanted to get away from the Indians at almost any cost.

  “Let’s try it. If it don’t work, we wait for dark.”

  They packed up, loaded the sack of gold on the bigger horse, Foster’s Big Mike, and led the animals down the trail and then into the brush upstream on the Arikaree, where they had to go to get to the easy valley and pass that led east.

  A half hour later they were in a tangle of brush and vines and berry bushes that simply would not permit them to break through.

  “Let’s leave the horses here and check on the damn Indians,” Toby said. They crawled to the edge of the brush on the edge of the big valley and stared in disbelief.

  A cottonwood tree grew at the side of the Arikaree where the stream bent close to this side of the valley. Around the tree were about twenty Cheyenne warriors, engaged in some kind of ceremony.

  “A damn rite of manhood. A torture ceremony, where they judge how strong and pain-proof and brave their young men are,” Toby said. “They let me sit in on one once where they hung these boys from pegs through the skin on their shoulders. Damn near killed the kids, but they passed without one yelp of pain.”

  “How long does it last?” Byron asked nervously. “When can we get out of here?”

  “That’s the trouble. Lasts most of the day. We’re stuck here for a while.” He paused, squinting hard at the warriors. “Well, damn, they got a prisoner, a white man. You got them field glasses?”

  Byron got them from his saddlebags and looked at the prisoner of the Cheyenne.

  “Holy shit! Take a look,” Byron said, thrust
ing the binoculars at Toby.

  Toby adjusted the binoculars and looked. “It’s Willy Hedbetter! They caught him.”

  “Looks like it. They gonna torture him to death, right?”

  Gates didn’t have to answer, because it started right then. The warriors stripped Willy naked and pushed him spread-eagle on his back. They tied him down and cut off his eyelids so he had to stare at the sun with no relief. After his body turned deep pink from the sun, they cut him free and put him in the center of a circle of warriors,

  Each time he tried to break out they sliced him with their knives. Soon he had slashes over half his body. The cuts were only deep enough so he would bleed, but not bleed to death.

  One of the warriors threw a rawhide rope over a branch on the cottonwood tree and lowered it almost to the ground. Beneath this rope the warrior built a small fire.

  “Savages!” Toby hissed. “I heard of this, but never seen it. Ain’t pretty neither.”

  “What they gonna do to him?” Byron asked.

  “Watch. You’ll find out.”

  Hedbetter’s hands were tied firmly to his sides with wet rawhide. Then more wet rawhide was tied around his scrotum and his forehead. At last he was hoisted by the rope that had been tied around his ankles and positioned head-down three feet over the small fire.

  Willy’s black hair hung straight down from his head. He swung and twisted, trying to get away from the heat of the fire.

  “He gonna bleed to death?” Byron asked softly.

  “Be a blessing if he could,” Toby replied mysteriously.

  A minute later Byron understood. One of the warriors loosened the twisted rope and let the trapper slip a foot down toward the fire. Willy screamed as his hair gushed with flames and burned off, leaving a black stubble and a blackened scalp, then fainted.

  One of the warriors swung him away from the fire, and another Cheyenne threw water in Willy’s face to bring him back to pain-filled consciousness.

  “God! They gonna leave him there?”