A few of the men without wounds had splashed across the river and waited on the other side. Their enthusiasm gave them a surge of energy that soon waned. Some of them dropped to their knees to wait.
The first mounted trooper to break through the screen of brush from upstream and splash across the stream looked familiar.
“It’s Private Holder!” Captain Cavanaugh shouted. “He made it, the boy got through.”
Holder stopped on the sandy shore on the island in front of a crowd of cheering men and tore open his saddlebags, pulling out strips of jerky and hardtack and some smashed loaves of bread. The hard bread had touches of blue mold on it, but nobody minded. They ate, chewed on the jerky, and pounded Holder on the back until he nearly fell.
He walked over to where Captain Cavanaugh lay. “Sir, Private Holder reporting. My assignment is completed. A relief party is arriving. Three ambulances and a supply wagon are a day behind us, but we have two pack mules with enough food for half an army.”
Captain Cavanaugh reached out for the trooper and hugged him. Both men were crying. Holder brought out a chocolate bar that had melted at least once and hardened again.
“This is to keep up your strength, sir. Major Owensby himself is leading the column, and Dr. Lassiter is in the ambulance.”
“Thank you, Corporal Holder,” Captain Cavanaugh said. “You just earned yourself a promotion.” Then Holder was swept away by the men, who pounded him on the back and asked all sorts of questions.
He returned a minute later. “Sir, I’m sorry, but I don’t think Wilson got through. He didn’t get to the fort and we couldn’t find him on the way back. I almost didn’t make it myself. I passed out near a little ranch ten miles from the fort. Luckily, them folks heard my shots and took me in. They helped me get to the fort.”
“Good work, Corporal Holder,” Lieutenant O’Hara said. “As you were.”
By the time Major Owensby arrived that evening, the thirty-two survivors were all sitting down eating rations and special food the troopers had brought them. The major stared at Captain Cavanaugh and shook his head. “Looks like you stopped half the lead and arrows the hostiles threw.”
“Some of it, sir.”
The major looked around. He saw thirty-five dead horses on the island, and another thirty or forty near the point of the island and along both sides.
“Seems like you men were busy. You rest easy, Cavanaugh. Dr. Lassiter is coming across the stream now with his black bag and ambulance rig. He’ll have you feeling better in no time.” He grimaced. “Damn, those horses stink.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Oh, we ran across one poor wretch on the way here. Looked like he was a prospector, but one of the men said he was the Indian trader from town. Gent said his name was Toby Gates. We run off some Cheyenne, but not before they had tortured the poor devil almost to death.
“Close-mouthed guy, thin as a rifle barrel. The man knew he was dying. Said he wanted to confess. Said he killed the rancher and his wife and girl at the Hedbetter place. We were out there a couple of weeks ago and we agreed it didn’t look like Indians. Said he wanted to stir up the Indians by getting Hedbetter’s brother to go out and rile them by gunning their camps with a Big Fifty buffalo gun.”
“So he caused this whole uprising?” Captain Cavanaugh asked.
“Looks like. He paid the price. He’d lost too much blood — you know how the Cheyenne like to bleed a man. He died and we dug him under. Curious, though, he never said why he did it. But on his horse we found a sack of ore, looks like damn near pure gold to me.”
“Keep it quiet,” Captain Cavanaugh said. “Just what we don’t need up here is a gold rush. We’d have a thousand men stream in here, and the Indians would kill half of them, and then we’d be in a real Indian war.”
“My sentiments exactly. I saw it and I had two men bury it before anyone else had a look. Here comes Dr. Lassiter.”
Dr. Lassiter worked quickly on Captain Cavanaugh. He brought his fever down, then cleaned his thigh wound with sulphur and stitched and dressed it properly. He shook his head in amazement when Sergeant Foland described how the captain had cut out the arrowhead himself.
The following day the men were ready to leave. The sixteen dead, including Lieutenant Winchester, were buried a good distance off the bank of the Arikaree. There were shovels on the wagons to help dig them out of mires. The bodies were dug in deep and covered with rocks but no markers so the Indians couldn’t desecrate them.
No one said a word about how Lieutenant Winchester died, and Major Owensby didn’t ask. It would be a small secret the men would never divulge. No reason to shame his family.
A remuda of thirty extra saddled horses had been trailed from the supply wagon. All the Able Troop men fit to ride would be permitted to; the rest would roll along toward the fort in the ambulances and the supply wagon.
A week later, back in Fort Wallace, Captain Cavanaugh was healing well in the sick ward behind Dr. Lassiter’s medical office. There were still eight men there from the engagement which had come to be known as the Battle of Cavanaugh’s Island.
Major Owensby telegraphed his report on the fight to the Territorial Headquarters in Chicago. He let Lieutenant O’Hara write the majority of it. Within days, the story was on the front page of every newspaper in the country, and Captain Cavanaugh was being hailed as a hero. The details of his cutting an Indian arrowhead out of his thigh grew each time it was reported.
“Some of your supporters around the country,” the major said, smiling as he threw down a stack of newspapers next to Cavanaugh’s bed. “Hell, don’t worry about it. I don’t mind that you’re more famous than your commanding officer. Besides, I’m mentioned in half of the stories, anyway.”
“Seems only fitting, since you sent me on the mission.”
The major pulled a sheet of paper out of his jacket and gave it to the captain. “Here. Thought you should know this has gone in. It’s a recommendation for a medal for you. Lieutenant O’Hara wrote it up before I even saw it. Recommends you for the Congressional Medal of Honor for bravery and leadership far above and beyond the call of duty in the face of overwhelming enemy odds in the heat of battle. I wrote an endorsement of the letter and sent it to Chicago four or five days ago. Also put in a strong written request that you be promoted to major on merit, before your time in rank is satisfied.
The Army doesn’t do it very often these days. Sort of like a field promotion under fire. But I got me a feeling Sheridan will ram it through congress. Now, you got anything to say in your defense?”
Both men chuckled, then Captain Cavanaugh caught the major’s hand and shook it firmly. “Major, I don’t know what to say. I’m not much on making speeches.”
“You spoke right handily to those 900 savages when they made a mass attack on your forty men.” Marcus Cavanaugh laughed softly. “Major, I’d bet by reveille that number will be up to at least fifteen hundred. Might even go to two thousand.” He sobered. “We both know I was just in the right place at the right time. If you’d been there, you would have done the same thing. I’ll never know why it was me. But I damn well won’t turn down the medal or the promotion, if I get them.”
“You’ll get them, or I’ll blow Phil Sheridan out of his britches.”
They shook hands again and the major left the papers with the Army’s latest hero.
“Oh,” Major Owensby added, turning in the doorway, “I thought you might like to know that according to headquarters, this was the first time that an Army troop has ever faced an overwhelming force with repeating rifles. The idea that a small band can stop even 600 savages with repeating rifles and little protection is going to be a big talking point for the Army brass for years. It’s also going to be a big factor in how the hostiles look at the Army and our fighting ability. Cavanaugh, I’d say you just earned yourself a full page in the military history books.” Major Owensby waved and slipped out the door.
A Look at Commanche War (Arrow and Saber 3)
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br /> Sweetwater Creek, Texas: 1876
Only wisps of smoke and buzzards engorged on human flesh remain after Comanche warriors attack a stage relay station in the Texas Panhandle. Leading a company of untested recruits to an outpost on Sweetwater Creek, Major Marcus Cavanaugh finds the gruesome evidence and realizes he has a full-scale Indian uprising on his hands.
With stagecoaches, homesteaders, and cattle drovers crossing the Panhandle for Arizona Territory and the Kansas railheads, hundreds of lives are still at stake. But before Cavanaugh can whip his troops into shape, a wagon train rolls straight into a Comanche ambush. Ready or not, Cavanaugh is forced to head his men into the brutal hell of an all-out... COMANCHE WAR.
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Robert Vaughan
About the Author
Robert Vaughan sold his first book when he was 19. That was 57 years and nearly 500 books ago. He wrote the novelization for the miniseries Andersonville. Vaughan wrote, produced, and appeared in the History Channel documentary Vietnam Homecoming. His books have hit the NYT bestseller list seven times. He has won the Spur Award, the PORGIE Award (Best Paperback Original), the Western Fictioneers Lifetime Achievement Award, received the Readwest President’s Award for Excellence in Western Fiction, is a member of the American Writers Hall of Fame and is a Pulitzer Prize nominee. Vaughn is also a retired army officer, helicopter pilot with three tours in Vietnam. And received the Distinguished Flying Cross, the Purple Heart, The Bronze Star with three oak leaf clusters, the Air Medal for valor with 35 oak leaf clusters, the Army Commendation Medal, the Meritorious Service Medal, and the Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry.
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