Cavanaugh's Island

by Robert Vaughan

  The first volley from the carbines on the island slammed into the front riders like a steel scythe, cutting down warriors and horses in a massive wave. The horses behind the leaders stumbled and some fell. Others had to jump over fallen comrades, and when they did, the second volley smashed into them.

  On the third volley the Indians were only thirty yards away from the point of the island. More horses and warriors fell. The fifth and sixth rounds splattered into the struggling horses and Indians, and as it did, the ranks split once more and the warriors surged around the island.

  The weary troopers cheered. Rifle fire from the cliffs increased as the mass attacks began. Two more men were hit and then Captain Cavanaugh took his second wound, a chunk of forearm flesh taken by a stray bullet. Cursing loudly, he wrapped up his arm with his kerchief. He was about to pass out again, then came to by pure willpower and looked around. He checked his field. There was no sense in asking for a casualty report. Before this was over they would all be casualties in one way or another.

  14

  There were no more mass attacks the rest of the afternoon. The hostiles kept shooting arrows onto the island, and the riflemen on the cliffs maintained their fire, pinning the troopers in whatever cover they had found.

  Five more times a combined force of fifty or sixty Sioux, Arapaho, and Cheyenne charged directly at the island from one side or the other, then while still fifty yards away, fired and splayed off in both directions, breaking off the attack.

  At the first hint of darkness, O’Hara came up to Captain Cavanaugh’s pit with two men. One was Private Holder, the youngest man in the company. The other was a corporal who had six years service.

  “You know what we want you men to do?” Captain Cavanaugh asked the two troopers.

  “Yes, sir,” Holder said. “We sneak past these redskin heathens and hike due southeast until we get to Fort Wallace, or find some transportation to get us there faster. We send back a rescue column.”

  “Right. It might be better if you go separate routes. Then if the Indians catch one of you, the other might still get through. We’re counting on you men. Otherwise, all of us here are dead.”

  “Yes, sir,” Holder said. “We best get moving. Give us more time before daylight. We got to be hell and gone from this valley by then to get clear of them injuns.”

  Captain Cavanaugh nodded and waved them off. They had their pistols, knives, and double canteens, plus a five-pound slab of horse meat apiece which they could cook once they got far enough away to be safe. The last Cavanaugh saw of them, they had left the upstream tip of the island. That was the direction away from most of the savages.

  The men had planned on walking quietly up the shallow watercourse as far as they could so they wouldn’t leave any tracks. When they left the stream they would walk backward without their boots on so it would look like someone entering the stream.

  Captain Cavanaugh said a quick prayer for their safe journey, then asked Lieutenant O’Hara to check casualties. Cavanaugh couldn’t move. His thigh had stopped bleeding but throbbed with pain. The arrow in his thigh would have to come out long before any relief party might arrive.

  He didn’t like to think about how long they would have to hold out on the island. One day was already gone. If the scouts could get past the Indians, it would take them at least four days to walk the eighty-five miles to Wallace, then another two or three days for the first elements of a relief column to reach them. At least six more days!

  The troopers here couldn’t eat the salt pork they brought. It was useless unless they could cook it, and no fires were possible; they would become instant targets. In the darkness he heard men drinking and filling canteens at the water. Some of the troopers cut fresh meat off the dead horses and tried to eat it raw, but even the strongest stomach could barely hold it down.

  An unwounded trooper came at Captain Cavanaugh’s request, found the officer’s horse, and brought his saddlebags. He’d had to cut them in half to get them off the dead animal.

  The captain took out a kit of shaving gear and his canteen. He gave out most of the hardtack he found in his saddlebags, and the long, hard strips of jerky. He put the straight razor in his shirt pocket along with a small flask of whiskey.

  Lieutenant O’Hara came back with his report. “Sir, we have fourteen wounded; there are five dead. Lieutenant Winchester is about the same. He huddles behind his dead horse talking to himself. I thought of tying him up so he wouldn’t hurt himself, but I don’t believe that’s necessary.”

  “I see. Are you wounded, O’Hara?”

  “No, sir, at least, not yet. I’ve put four men on guard, one on each side and end of the island. Don’t think we’ll need them, but in this situation ...” “Good idea.” Cavanaugh gritted his teeth in pain. “Lieutenant, I am turning command over to you for the duration of this battle. Inform the men.” O’Hara saluted and turned to go. “And I’ll stand guard on one shift. Tell me when. I’m not doing anything except sitting here, anyway.”

  There hadn’t been a shot fired for two hours. The calm was unreal after being under attack all day. He knew the Indians were afraid to fight after dark. They believed that if they died in the dark, their spirits would become lost and never find their way into their version of heaven.

  Cavanaugh used some water in his mess cup and his shaving brush and shaved as best he could without a mirror. He washed his face, head, neck, then had a man fill his canteen again. He tried to think of some way to store water for use the next day when it got so hot, but there were no available containers. After his turn at watch, he managed to get some sleep.

  Lieutenant O’Hara had rifled every saddlebag on the island and brought out all of the ammunition they had, distributing it among the men. They had enough for another two or three days of good fighting, then they’d have to be careful how often they shot.

  As the sun lighted the eastern sky, he saw the hostiles gathering upstream and on the right-hand riverbank, where most had been assembled before. Now there seemed to be a new enthusiasm for the fight. He wished he knew what it was all about.

  Silver Bear had ridden into the clearing near the twin cottonwoods where the three tribes had been gathering for the day’s fight. A murmur went through the three or four hundred Indian braves. All had heard that Silver Bear had been in their camp for two days, but that he would not lead their fight. He had violated one of his sacred taboos the night before the first fight with the white eyes. There had not been time for his purification. It took three days of rituals and intense concentration to cleanse him so the magic of his war bonnet would keep him safe and bring his people to victory over the pony soldiers. He had told his people that if he fought without his strong magic, he would surely die and the people would suffer defeat.

  He sat in a small tepee near the river all day and heard reports of how the warriors had been thrown back time and time again by the small number of white eyes. He bowed his head in pain and anger but knew he could do nothing.

  Then Running Free had pushed into the small tepee and shook his head. Running Free was a Cheyenne and proud of his tribe. He was angry at Silver Bear.

  “You are showing the Sioux and Arapaho that you and the rest of the Cheyenne are cowards. How can you sit on your lance when your people, your family, are being shot down by the white eyes?

  “I have taken one of the white-eye bullets, but I still ride on the attack. Are you a coward, Silver Bear?”

  Silver Bear waved him away, but a few minutes later he rose from where he sat, said an incantation to the gods, then put on his war bonnet, took his heavy Sharps rifle, and called for his war pony.

  A wave of joy swept before him as he rode from the war camp toward the river. Two hundred warriors fell in behind him. By the time he got to the river, word had spread that Silver Bear had come and would lead the charge. Silver Bear would save the day and they would overwhelm the white-eye Horse Soldiers. Every warrior must be ready to take many scalps and count dozens of coups.

>   The Cheyenne warrior chief sat on his large white stallion and stared at the small island where the white eyes huddled. “They are like mice in their puny dens just under the sod. We will rout them and kill every one of them on the island.”

  He looked around and saw Sioux and Arapaho and his own Cheyenne brothers. He lifted his lance. “It is time we finish this. Follow me, and we will run the white eye through a dozen times and take his scalp and his long guns. Today we will fight with bravery and win a great victory! It will be the first to come from our gathering together!”

  His very appearance and his willingness to fight galvanized the Indians into action. Silver Bear took the point in the arrowhead Indian attack formation. Cheyenne, Arapaho, and Sioux mixed in the boiling sea of warriors behind the great leader. They spread out, and soon there were over 600 warriors moving forward. When they were three hundred yards from the point of the island, Silver Bear lifted his heavy white-eye rifle and bellowed out a Cheyenne war cry.

  The six hundred behind him screamed their own battle cries, and the massive wave of warriors swept forward. Nothing could stop it.

  Every man on the island saw the attack begin. They didn’t need to be told to load a full tube of rounds into the Spencers and lay out rows of ammunition for the Sharps carbines.

  “We fire at seventy-five yards,” Lieutenant O’Hara ordered. His voice was becoming hoarse. He looked at Captain Cavanaugh as he readied his own rifles.

  “How many of the wounded can fire their weapons?” Captain Cavanaugh asked calmly as he saw the 600 painted, screaming warriors bearing down on them.

  “All but two, sir,” Lieutenant O’Hara said. “They’re holding up remarkably well.”

  “So are you, O’Hara. How is that arrow wound in your arm from the other patrol?”

  “I don’t think about it, sir. I pretend it isn’t there.” “Damned well wish I could do the same. Christ, I wish I could walk!”

  “Later, sir. We’ll get you patched up.”

  “Take a surgeon to — ”

  “Hostiles at one-hundred yards.” Lieutenant O’Hara bent down behind a dead horse and lifted his Spencer carbine. “No sense in firing in volleys,” he bellowed. “Each man fire at will after they’re within seventy-five yards. Don’t waste a round. Eight rounds, eight dead savages. Let’s get ready.” The hostiles began firing from the front row when they were a hundred yards away. A trooper on the left side of the island wailed in pain as he was hit in the side. He slumped over his carbine, then rose, wiped away the blood, and prepared to fire.

  “Now!” Lieutenant O’Hara bellowed.

  The Sharps barked, fresh rounds slammed into the breach and fired again. The Spencers roared one after another. A dozen horses went down. Four warriors fell off their mounts into the jumble of trampling hooves behind them.

  The firing came in surges, as the men needed so many seconds to reload. The second spate of firing dropped another six or eight horses and riders, but Silver Bear on his huge white stallion swept forward untouched through the bullets thick as raindrops in a thunderstorm.

  After the third heavy firing, the Indians on the outer wings began to close in. Now they came under heavier fire and half a dozen stumbled and sent riders into the sand or water.

  The spray from the horses in the shallow stream was like a silver curtain for the Indians. It hid some of them but did not deflect bullets.

  The fifth round of shots from the Spencers blasted a hole in the men around Silver Bear, but still he charged forward. He came ahead of the others and angled for the very point of the spit of land. Four of the five troopers out there with Spencers lifted their aim as the big horse thundered almost to dry land. They all fired together and horse and rider faltered.

  Silver Bear held his seat for a second, then slammed off the left side of his large mount and splashed into the water, twenty feet from the shore. His big stallion took another step, then crumpled into the water just beyond Silver Bear.

  The warriors riding behind him couldn’t believe it. Many stopped firing when they saw their leader fall. Some on the ends of the line turned and rode away. The rest, pushed by the riders behind, broke around the island in two big rivers of warriors, too shocked to go on firing. They stared at their fallen leader, Silver Bear, the great man who could not be hurt by white-eye bullets.

  Now he lay dead in the water near his magnificent dead war pony. On the island, the troopers watched the warriors stream by. “That took all the fight out of them!” one jubilant sergeant cried as he fired the last round in his Spencer and reached for a full tube.

  Captain Cavanaugh lay sprawled in his hole behind the horse. Blood snaked down the side of his head.

  “We did it again, Captain,” Lieutenant O’Hara said. When he got no response, he crawled over to the captain, saw his wound, and swore. At once he rose up in the line of fire and scooted across the dead horse to drop in beside the captain. He checked the head wound.

  The frown on his face eased.

  “Captain,” O’Hara called. He shook his shoulders slightly. “Captain Cavanaugh!” he said louder. Eyelids fluttered, then came open.

  “Christ, who kicked me in the head?”

  “An Indian’s bullet, sir. Creased your skull and knocked you out. As long as you can talk, it can’t be too bad.”

  “Nobody ever stopped me from talking.”

  O’Hara wiped the blood off, then washed the wound with some water from his canteen and called for Sergeant Foland.

  The sergeant dragged himself into the hole and O’Hara heaved out of it. Two rifle bullets jolted into the horse, as if some redskin had been waiting for him to move.

  “Not much damage here, sir,” Foland said. “I’ll put a bandage around your head to keep that spot covered. About the only way I can do it.”

  Eagle Feather worked up toward the captain. “Hardest charge I ever saw,” the head scout said. “Six hundred of them! They all done hard fighting. Great leader dead.”

  Captain Cavanaugh grinned through his pain. “I think he’s right, O’Hara. Never seen anything like that charge. They’ll bother us, keep us pinned down, starve us out maybe, but they won’t try to run us off here with any real power to it. Putting down the big chief leading that last charge seemed to do it.”

  As they spoke, fifty Sioux left the main group upstream and charged down toward the island. They were still 200 yards away when a soldier stood up, waved his Spencer carbine and shouted.

  “Charge, men! Follow me. We’ll get the bastards!” It was Lieutenant Winchester. He took a dozen steps and was beyond the last trooper, striding into the water. “Come on, men, we’ll wipe out this little bunch and go back to the fort for a hot supper!” He lurched then as a rifle bullet hit him from the cliff.

  “Winchester! Get back here!” Captain Cavanaugh’s voice blasted out at the officer.

  The crazed lieutenant lifted his carbine and fired into empty space. Another rifle round hit him, driving him back a step. Then four more rounds caught the easy target. He half turned, dropped to one knee, then a round hit him in the side of the head and smashed him sideways into the water. He lay there without moving, his face under water.

  “My God!” Lieutenant O’Hara exclaimed.

  “Stand in your positions!” Captain Cavanaugh shouted. “No man is to retrieve the lieutenant’s body until dark. He died in the line of duty. Now let’s keep alert and stay down if you want to stay alive!” O’Hara looked over the dead horse at his captain. “Sir, I . . . ”

  “We’ll sort it out later. Right now, we stay alive.” “Yes, sir.” He paused. “Captain, you hear any shooting last night? The two scouts. You think they made it through the Indians?”

  “Might have. I didn’t hear anything. If they did, we’re still looking at five days before reinforcements arrive.”

  There were two more charges that day, but not more than a hundred warriors on either. The first was shattered so badly the Indians never got nearer than fifty yards to the island. In t
he last one, the warriors gave up before they even reached the water.

  What hurt the most was the rifle fire from the cliffs. Now the men on the island could return some fire at the cliffs and it reduced the enemy shots for a while.

  The hot sun was out again with not a cloud to mar the beautiful blue sky . . . only now it was a curse. Some of the wounded called for water. Most could move about a bit and toss canteens from one to another.

  Captain Cavanaugh shook his head. For just a moment he saw two of everything. He had lost too much blood and had had nothing to eat for a day and a half beside hardtack. It tasted like sawdust. Salt pork would taste good. They had to figure out how to get some fires going so that the Sioux couldn’t see.

  He moved and yelped in pain. His damn leg. That arrow had to come out. Maybe now Sergeant Foland would do it. The redness around the arrow shaft had burned black. His left thigh was swelling. He could get blood poisoning and die by daybreak.

  15

  Sergeant Foland crawled around the horse, dragging the leg that had been shot. Captain Cavanaugh saw the pain on the sergeant’s face.

  “Foland, have you taken time to wrap up that leg of yours?”

  He looked up, surprised at the question. “Yes, sir, last night. Hurts a mite, but I’ll be fine.”

  “Maybe so, maybe not. You ever cut an arrowhead out of a leg?”

  Foland hooded his eyes, his face tight. “No, sir. Can it be driven on through?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Foland looked at the tear in the captain’s pants leg where the jagged end of the arrow shaft protruded.

  “Flesh is going bad around the wound. You’re right, sir, it can’t wait five or six more days. But I don’t have a proper cutting scalpel for this.”

  “I do. Sharp as any sawbones’ knife.” Captain Cavanaugh handed him the straight razor.

  Foland shook his head. “Don’t rightly think so, sir. Never cut that much before. Rather not start on you.”