“So you think this Quick Ride system will work, Cavanaugh?” the major said after hearing out his junior officer.
“Yes, sir. We need a little coordination now for saddling horses and placement of the thirty mounts, but that’s just routine housekeeping.”
“Good, but it’ll have to wait a while. I received some new orders while you were gone today. Dispatch rider came in on the stage. Division says we’re to ‘redouble’ our efforts to stop any threat we hear about any Indian tribes forming military alliances.
“That damn lone wolf sniper seems to have stirred up the tribes at just the wrong time. From what the trapper said, the Arikaree valley is the trouble spot where they might gather. I’m authorizing a troopsized patrol to head up there in two days. No rush, so go fully equipped with a full troop. Plan on about six days. Make a sweep of the valley and push all the Indians out of there.”
“I’ll be glad to lead a sweep like that, Major.”
“Wasn’t thinking of you leading it, just picking the troop.”
“We don’t have an officer with enough experience to lead it, sir. I’d like to go, and take Able Troop.”
“Been working them pretty hard lately, haven’t you, Captain?”
“The other troops have been drawing field time, too. They do the regular patrols. The men will rest tomorrow and we’ll leave at six-oh-five the next day.”
“You want to take a supply wagon and a doctor?”
“No, sir, just our medic, Sergeant Foland. He’s better than a surgeon for this kind of a ride.”
“Suit yourself, Cavanaugh. I need a full report to send to Division headquarters in two weeks. That give you enough time?”
“We’ll sweep that valley clean and be back in five days.”
“Not a chance. Draw rations for six.”
Later that night, Captain Cavanaugh told both the officers of Able Troop about the assignment. Winchester simply nodded and walked away. Lieutenant O’Hara frowned and looked up at the captain. “You think he should go? Sounds like we’ve got nine chances out of ten of hitting some skirmishes with the hostiles up there.”
“You think a battle with the hostiles might set him off again?”
“I don’t know, Captain, I just don’t know.” Captain Cavanaugh went back to the Regimental headquarters and opened the personnel history files of the officers. He found Lieutenant Winchester’s folder and read through it, noting his various duty posts. He slowly realized that this was the first post where Winchester had been exposed to any Indian fighting — any combat of any type. Before, he had been at Division Headquarters, then in the quartermaster slot at an Illinois post, and in administration in a fort in South Carolina. He was a garrison soldier, not a seasoned frontier officer.
In the upcoming campaign, Cavanaugh would have to keep his eye on him.
13
The patrol to sweep the Arikaree River valley pushed off at 6:05 A.M. from Fort Wallace, Kansas, that Tuesday morning. The full complement of Able Troop went along, including Sergeant Foland as their enlisted medical sergeant, three Indian scouts, and both regular officers. Captain Cavanaugh was in command.
The troops were fully equipped, with twelve pounds of salt pork and hardtack and eighteen pounds of oats for the horses.
They rode steadily, crossing the north fork of the Smoky Hill River the first day, and then Beaver Creek in the afternoon. They pushed beyond that ten miles, then called a halt for the night’s camp late in the afternoon.
The troops went through the rituals of the trail, picketing the horses, brushing them down, feeding and watering them. Then they built fires and worked on their own single cooked meal of the day.
Eagle Feather came in with three jackrabbits, and Captain Cavanaugh called in the troop’s sergeants and gave them the rabbits to divide and cook as they pleased.
Lieutenant O’Hara made one last inspection of the four guards and gave a thumbs-up sign to Captain Cavanaugh, who saw the signal and nodded.
The second day went without incident. Late in the day, they passed through a narrow ravine into the broad valley of the Arikaree. It was just dusk and they had pushed to get into the valley before full darkness. They set up a quick camp in some trees at the edge of the river and put out guards.
“Too dark to check for smoke from any hostiles,” Lieutenant O’Hara said. “We could send our scouts out to take a long-range look.”
Captain Cavanaugh shook his head. “We’ll be able to tell a lot more about whatever they find out if we wait until morning. Let’s give the men a good night’s sleep.”
The camp settled down with no fires allowed. The troops ate soaked hardtack, along with any personal foodstuffs they brought along. The night passed quietly.
At daybreak, a guard’s warning cry echoed through the small camp. Indians had invaded the area.
Every trooper came up with his weapon. At the small rope corral where the troop’s fifty horses were gathered, the guards saw warriors stealing some of the mounts. They fired, driving off the savages, but not before several horses were stolen.
At once the men saddled the remaining mounts and prepared to move. Captain Cavanaugh saw his tactical situation immediately. He was in a 300 yard wide valley with high grass. A riverbed more than 150 yards wide ran through the center, but it was sandy and nearly dry. Through the middle of it ran a shallow stream that parted to expose an island about 20 yards wide and 60 yards long. It was covered with scrubby alder, some willow and wild plum, and a single tall cottonwood. He looked at the cliffs around them and saw Indians everywhere, hundreds of them. They hadn’t closed off the entry to the ravine yet, but they would have plenty of time to do so. It was a trap.
Just then twenty mounted Indian warriors charged from downstream at the disorganized group of soldiers. The way was open to retreat to the ravine.
The troopers who rushed to that side drove off the attackers, killing one and wounding a pony. But they needed some cover, Captain Cavanaugh reasoned, some terrain to fight from. The island. It would work as well as anything in sight that wasn’t already occupied by the enemy.
“Regroup on the island out in that shallow riverbed!” Captain Cavanaugh ordered. The sergeants picked up the command and began splashing through the hock-deep water to the small island.
The forty-eight men reached it, ten of them without horses. The thirty-eight horses were brought into a circle on the outer rim of the island and tied to bushes. They formed a living breastwork.
“They knew we were here,” Lieutenant O’Hara said. “Must have seen us yesterday and got their war paint on last night. How many of them, do you suppose?”
“Three hundred, four hundred, and we probably haven’t seen them all,” Captain Cavanaugh replied. “Tell the men to dig in, if they can. Use their mess cups, bayonets, anything. Get some protection.”
The orders rang out and the men needed little urging.
A half-dozen redmen charged from one side, but six men with rifles managed to drive them off, wounding one.
“I’d say we upset their plans,” Captain Cavanaugh said. “From what I saw, they intended to drive away our horses, then charge us in force and run us down one by one.”
“What’s the battle plan, Captain?” Lieutenant Winchester asked.
“We repulse them however we can. O’Hara, put five men with Spencers up there on the point of the island. That’s how they’ll try a mass attack, if they make one.”
O’Hara ducked into the troops and picked out his best shots, sending them to the point, where they crawled through the lush, tall grass until they were almost at the water line. They formed a “V” facing front so all could fire at once.
Rifle fire came now from the cliffs along both sides of the little valley. Horse after horse whinnied loudly as they were hit by gunfire and fell dead. One private took a rifle round through the head.
Captain Cavanaugh dug out a place behind his dead horse for cover. The other men dug the best they could in the hard, rocky ground, b
ut no one made much progress. The dead and dying horses made the best protection.
Arrows began to fly through the air. They had broad iron heads for killing man or buffalo. One horse took four arrows, two puncturing its lungs. It wheezed and bleated in agony. The corporal who had been riding the mount for three years crawled over to the animal and mercifully killed it with a shot to the head.
“Trouble upstream,” Sergeant Long called from the left side of the little island.
Captain Cavanaugh looked that way. More than a hundred mounted Indians had formed together upstream, many carrying lances with colorful streamers on them. Some wore paint on their faces, chests, and arms. Others had pieces of white man’s clothing on. Those with rifles came in front, and those with bows and arrows behind them.
Suddenly there was a deafening whoop, and they headed downstream, galloping on the sand, then at the last minute breaking into the water and coming directly for the point of the small island.
“They want to overrun us and cut us to pieces!” Captain Cavanaugh bellowed. “Cut down the leaders in the front.”
The sharpshooters with the Spencer carbines at the point of the island began firing when the hostiles were at a hundred yards. For these marksmen, it was easier than shooting fish in a barrel. Three of the leaders in the “V” went down in a crash of water and spray. The other men commenced firing at will on Cavanaugh’s order as the enemy force came closer.
More than a dozen horses and men went down in the center of the charging mass. The warriors were twenty yards from the point of the island before they hesitated, then broke the attack and charged down both sides of the island.
Men along the sides of the small spit of land poured more gunfire into the attackers, and they rushed past and regrouped downstream, well out of range.
“Broke them, by God!” Captain Cavanaugh roared. “Good work, men! They’ll come that way again. They’ve got plenty of manpower.”
He looked around the island as men dug frantically with hands and tin plates, even spoons. He asked Lieutenant O’Hara to check for casualties.
“Keep it informal, look around. I don’t want the men to know how many we’ve lost.”
Lieutenant O’Hara rolled across a dead horse and crawled along the flat ground to check on the men.
Lieutenant Winchester lay behind his dead mount. He fired randomly now and then with his Spencer, but Cavanaugh didn’t have time to worry about him.
“Doing fine, men!” Captain Cavanaugh called so everyone on the island could hear him over the sporadic rifle fire. The snipers on the cliffs wounded two more men.
“Here they come again!” a trooper yelled. Twenty-five mounted warriors charged the island, then circled it. Before they’d completed one turn of the island, four of the warriors were dead in the hot sand of the riverbed. They withdrew.
The sniping from the cliff was deadly. One corporal took a round through the chest and died in his friend’s arms. By now, every horse on the island was dead or dying. The sun blistered down on them. Water was close by, but an attempt to fill up a canteen brought a flurry of hostile arrows and rifle shots.
A trooper screamed on one side of the island, and Medical Sergeant Foland squirmed through the men to get to his side. He saw that an arrow was in the man’s leg beyond the end of the arrowhead. He broke off the shaft with pliers and, before the trooper could protest, hit the broken end of the arrow and drove it on through his thigh until it came out the other side. The trooper fainted. Foland threw the bloody arrow away and tied up the wound, then hurried over to the next wounded man.
Captain Cavanaugh directed four men to leave one side of the island and run to the other to balance the defense, though there was a good chance they’d be hit by sniper gunfire on their way. Miraculously all four made it untouched.
The enemy gunmen were no more than 300 yards away, and their superior vantage point made it impossible for the troopers to devise any solid protection. If the hostiles had been better shots, Cavanaugh knew that his company could have been wiped out in an hour.
“Enemy charge,” one of the point men bellowed. Captain Cavanaugh looked upstream. At least three hundred warriors were forming into a single group, their ponies prancing, rifles and bow and arrows at the ready.
“Hold your fire until they get within seventy-five yards,” Captain Cavanaugh roared. “Make every shot kill an Indian!”
A small cheer went up, and just then a sudden rain of arrows dropped silently out of the sky. Two troopers called out in pain. Sergeant Foland ran toward the men. He stumbled, and Captain Cavanaugh saw a bright red bloodstain blossom on his pants leg.
“Damn it, Foland’s down,” he muttered to no one. He rolled across the top of his horse and ran upright for ten yards, then he dove into a small depression behind a horse and looked at the medic a few feet away.
“Hell, Captain, it’s just a scratch,” Foland called. “I got to get over to Phillips. Looks like that arrow caught him bad.” The medic crawled away across the sandy island, past some wild plum brush. He stopped and picked up a ripe plum and chewed on it. “Not bad, Captain,” he Said, then vanished behind the brush.
Captain Cavanaugh shook his head, then worked his way up toward the front of the little island. He could see the five men lying flat in the tall grass. If the hostiles broke through there and got on that spit of land, they would overrun the whole island and the battle would be over.
“Ready weapons!” he shouted, bringing up his own Spencer. He had laid out two extra tubes of seven rounds each, and he bellied down in the sand where he could fire over the heads of the five men at the point.
The Indians, some Cheyenne, some Sioux, charged the point again. This time they splashed through the water directly at the tip of the island. The splashing of the hooves in the shallow water sent up a spray that formed a kind of screen.
“Fire at will!” Cavanaugh shouted and began shooting himself when the enemy got within range. The troopers’ rounds began to take effect. Captain Cavanaugh fired at the lead man, missed, fired again, and saw him tumble off his mount. He lowered his sights and fired at the horses.
He took two of the mounts down, making others behind stumble over them or swing around. He reloaded a tube of rounds and cracked out seven more shots, blasting two more Sioux from their mounts and cutting down two more Indian ponies, sending their riders into the water, in the way of the riders behind them.
As the hostiles pounded closer through the shallow water, the fire from the Spencers and carbines on the island came as a lead wall. Dozens of the Indians fell, and half as many horses went down. Twenty yards from the point of the island, the attackers broke like before and raced along each side. The men along these areas laid down more firepower into the hostiles.
Captain Cavanaugh was just about ready to move back toward his command post in the middle of the island when a searing, white hot pain daggered through his left thigh. He groaned and twisted to one side. A Sioux arrow had penetrated his leg. He gritted his teeth at the terrible pain. Reaching down, he held the arrow in both hands, then with a surge of energy he broke the arrow shaft in half. He roared in pain.
A moment later, Sergeant Foland rolled over next to him.
“Join the walking wounded, Captain. Good work on that arrow. Most men can’t do that themselves. I’ll carry your Spencer if you want to get back to your hole.”
They made it several minutes later. Twice Captain Cavanaugh had to pause and let his head clear from the pain. He slumped in his shallow hole behind the dead horse and stared at Foland.
“I’m fine, Sergeant. Tend to the wounded,” he said calmly.
“I am, sir.” Foland wrapped a bandage around the captain’s leg to stop any bleeding around the shaft, then rolled away and headed for another man who had been hit by a sniper from the cliffs.
Lieutenant O’Hara looked over the dead horse at his commander.
“Sorry you got hit, sir. I’ll do the roadwork for you.”
“Just k
eep shooting the bastards,” Cavanaugh said. “What time is it?”
Lieutenant O’Hara looked at his pocket watch. “Not quite ten A.M., sir.”
“Christ, feels like six in the evening. They don’t like our firepower, do they? We got to get every man in the company a repeating rifle. Blew hell out of those charges. Don’t think the hostiles have ever gone up against half a company with Spencers before.”
Another rain of broad-tipped arrows fell from the sky. This time they all missed human flesh.
“You thinking about tonight, sir?” O’Hara asked.
“Yep. Who are your two best men?”
“Captain, what about our scouts? We could send them.”
“Like to, but one is dead and another one wounded in the leg. Eagle Feather has a hurt hand. I’m not sure that he wants to walk eighty-five miles back to the fort.”
“I’ll think on it, Captain. First they’ll have to get through the Indians out there. They’ll be waiting for us to send somebody out.”
“Where’s Winchester gone?”
O’Hara looked over his shoulder. “He’s not functioning, Captain. Just huddles there. He’s not wounded. I tried to talk to him. He just says, ‘So many die, so many die.’”
“My fault, Lieutenant O’Hara. I should have figured it out and left him at the fort.”
“Enemy charge!” a voice called from the point. They looked upriver. This time there were fewer Indians, no more than two hundred, Cavanaugh guessed.
“Load a new tube in your Spencers and leave a round in the chamber,” Cavanaugh bellowed. “Let’s knock the bastards down again.”
He waited as the men reloaded. “No one fires until they get to within fifty yards of the point,” the captain called.
As they waited for the charging Indians to get within range, Captain Cavanaugh looked upstream along the shore and saw a sudden surge of movement — mounted warriors he didn’t think had even been in the battle yet. It was as if a new spirit moved the warriors. Then he looked back at the hostiles charging. When they were at fifty yards he brayed out the command, “Fire!”
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