Shadow Riders, The Southern Plains Uprising, 1873 (6 page)

“Why didn't you get down to shake hands with the general?” Thomas asked the old rifleman.

He spit more brown juice into the spring wind. “Son of a bitch can die with a bullet between his goddamned eyes, for all I care.”

“That was General—by God—Sherman!”

“And during the goddamned war I done my best to make things hard on that poke-stealing bastard,” he snarled.

“Didn't know you was so hard again' the Union.”

The old man stared at Brazeale, incredulous. “I'm from Texas, boy. There ain't no doubt of that, is there?”

“No, sir.”

“So there damned well better be no doubt where my heart laid when it come to that goddamned war.”

“Sounds like the war ain't over for you.”

The old man finally glanced over and caught the grin on Brazeale's face, then smiled with one of his own. “Shit—if I was still of a mind to fight the war … there'd be one less Yankee general right now … and one more dead body to lay a'bleaching in the middle of this Jacksboro road!”

Thomas had to laugh at the old man, the way he said it, and the way he stroked the butt of that scuffed and worn but well-oiled Spencer repeater. Seven shots, and seven good Injuns, the old man had said days ago when they first loaded up at the rail siding in Weatherford, on the other side of the Brazos River, last stop on the line coming west from Dallas.

“All seven red niggers got a real good chance of spending eternity in Hell, I got anything to say about it!” the old Texan had spouted.

He was a sour one, Thomas thought, most of the time—but he could smile if he had to. And the old man would do to ride with all the way to Fort Griffin and back.

“You think General Sherman got more soldiers riding his rear guard?” Brazeale asked less than an hour later as the wagons lumbered closer and closer toward the Salt Creek Crossing.

He had to nudge an elbow into the old man's side to roust him from his sleep.

“What's that?”

“Look yonder,” Thomas said, pointing. “You figure that's some of Sherman's rear guard?”

The old man didn't reply at first, merely squinting and peering through the shimmering afternoon sunlight, studying the road far ahead.

“First off, son—there's too damned many of the sonsabitches to be soldiers.”

Brazeale swallowed hard. “Not … not soldiers?”

The old man was rising from the bench seat, turning to signal back to the other nine wagons and teamsters. “Find us a good, open spot to corral these wagons up, son. And you best make it fast. We don't have time to be lollygagging.”

Brazeale felt his heart rise in his throat as he read the look of something strange, foreign, in the old man's eyes. Then he glanced on down the road at that dust cloud and the wavy horsemen beneath the sun and shadow and haze of the Jacksboro-Belknap Road. Not that he hadn't seen Indians before, even Kiowa. Shit, he worked for Henry Warren of Weatherford—and if that didn't mean hauling supplies north to the Nations where the government had the Indians on reservations, why … but this group of horsemen was something else. More warriors coming on at that easy pace, just coming and coming on—more than young Thomas Brazeale had ever seen.

And these didn't look like no reservation bucks neither.

There was no time lost in rumbling those ten wagons into a crude circle, wagonmaster Nathan S. Long yelling orders and nobody really listening as they all scrambled to unhitch the mules from the trees, confining the forty-one animals inside the circle while the teamsters pulled rifles and ammunition from beneath the seats and made themselves small under the wagons just as a bugle blast split the air and more than a hundred Kiowas gave a war whoop, pounding heels into their war ponies.

In the shadows of that wagonbed, Thomas felt he was choking on his own belly-bile. Cursing himself, he knew it was better than wetting himself.

Those painted, screaming warriors were not content to merely circle the wagons this time out. Instead, they rushed headlong at the dozen white men as if they intended to overrun the ring of wagons in one swift and bloody charge.

Just like a nighthawk, Thomas thought as the screeching brown horde thundered in. Like a nighthawk sweeping down on a moth or wren or tiny sparrow.

As those dozen teamsters opened fire into the brown mass of that first wave, Nathan Long and four others were either killed or wounded.

Thomas watched the screeching, red wave pass, the sting of burnt black powder making his eyes water, pungent on his tongue. Behind him some of the teamsters were yelling again, nonsense. Then someone was pulling on Thomas's leg. He jerked around to find one of the older men motioning him out of the wagon shadows.

“Let's get!”

“Where?”

“We're going to the trees, by God!”

Brazeale glanced over the scene. Five men down: two staring at the sky, motionless. Another two facedown in the grass and dust, barely breathing. The old rifleman was the fifth, sitting slumped against a wagon wheel, his legs akimbo, his head slung low between his shoulders. On his chest glistened a bright red rosette. As Brazeale crouched beside him and pulled the old man's head back, the wrinkled eyelids fluttered.

“I'm done, boy. Just don't let them bastards get me alive. You … you gotta kill me 'fore you go.”

“C'mon, Thomas!” rose the shout from others.

He gazed back at the old man.

“Gimme my gun, boy—you don't got the stomach to kill me yourself, much as I'd beg you.”

Brazeale found it in the nearby grass, slapped it in the old Texan's hand. For the first time those wrinkled eyes softened.

“I don't want you to watch—now get and save your hide!”

Brazeale was pulled onto his feet by two others anxious to escape. He found himself running, eyes stinging as he glanced one last time at the old man, watching the Texan jam the muzzle of his rifle under his chin, stretching down for the trigger guard. He squeezed off the tears and turned around as the three of them vaulted over the wagon tongue.

The rifle exploded like spring thunder behind him. Brazeale did not look back.

One teamster spilled a few yards ahead of him, whimpering in pain from the first arrow that fluttered between his shoulder blades.

They would never make the trees ahead.

He leaped over the wounded man, squirming still, his hands red as he struggled to grasp the arrows bristling high in his back. Crying out, like the gutted pigs back home—crimson streaming down his wrists.

When Thomas reached the trees, he was gasping, sliding in among the late shadows with the rest. How many he did not know at that moment. Only that there were five back there at the wagon ring where the warriors closed in now. And two out there in the dry grass, having tried to make it to this stand of trees. His mind scratched at the calculations the way he would scratch at the damned chiggers troubling his sweating body this time of the year. That made five of them left out of the twelve …

The guns opened up in a sporadic rattle of fire within the ring, warriors screaming in victory, ponies whinnying. The mules braying as the first fell.

The red bastards were shooting the mules.

Then Thomas saw one of the two bodies moving out on the Salt Plain, there in the tall grass. Slowly crawling, crawling toward the trees.

A blast from a bugle drew Brazeale's attention from the wounded teamster in the grass. By lord, he prayed—it might be soldiers!

But as the huge, stocky, bare-chested Indian rode into sight and reined up, Thomas saw the bugle hung from the war-chief's neck. Whoever he was, he was shouting orders, stopping the slaughter of the noisy, scree-hawing mules.

Overhead the storm clouds had rolled in so quickly that Thomas had not even noticed. Black, roiling, fluffy and full of terror. The kind of clouds a twister would drop out of—

His attention was brutally yanked back to the grassy plain where three warriors had discovered the wounded teamster among the tall grass. With a shriek from the white man, the three dragged their captive back toward the wagons, shouting joy at finding one of their enemy alive.

Thomas swallowed hard, choking on the sour ball in his throat. He understood enough to know why the warriors were celebrating now. It wasn't for the wagons and their booty. It wasn't for stealing the mules. No … instead, they had them a white man now. Alive.

Young Brazeale squeezed his stinging eyes shut and turned around to find the other four teamsters gone. He could not hear them answer when he whispered for them. Thomas could not see them anywhere in the shadowy timber nearby. Gone.

But that's where he wanted to be.

Long gone from this bloody meadow …

*   *   *

“Looked like Spencers, sir,” gulped the young Texan.

General William Tecumseh Sherman fumed to his core as he tore his eyes from the young teamster's face.

Just minutes ago the civilian had stumbled into Fort Richardson on foot, grimy and soaked to the hide with the driving rain, his eyes wide with fear, wide with what he had witnessed. Telling any and all listeners about the raid on Henry Warren's wagon train some twenty miles back on the Jacksboro-Belknap Road.

Shadows lengthened in the room with that first fuzzy texture come to early evening here on the southern plains, the air stirring enough to cool things quickly what with the passing of the noisy, crashing, prairie thunderstorm. Sherman had to admit, he liked the weather farther north. Farther still than St. Louis, where he had moved his command headquarters after he found his craw filled with that strutting peacock of a Secretary of War Belknap and the rest of those starched collars who sucked up to one another like a bunch of gelded, bawling calves.

“How many, son?”

The teamster shook his head, swiping his rain-dampened hair from his eyes as the post surgeon gruffly attended to bandaging the gash the youngster had along his side. “Don't know, General. A lot.”

“Colonel Mackenzie,” Sherman said grittily, turning to the commander of the Fourth Cavalry headquartered here at Richardson, “those red sonsabitches got those Spencers up on the reservation—or Bill Sherman doesn't have balls. By Jupiter, we've got to cut off this trade in weapons and powder—but first, we've got to get you following these murderers.”

“Yes, sir,” answered the tall, handsome, mustachioed Mackenzie. “From what the civilian here tells us, there were between a hundred and a hundred fifty warriors. I've already sent my adjutant to have four companies stand ready to horse, General.”

“Good. Pack thirty days rations,” growled Sherman, stuffing the damp stub of his cigar back in his yellowed teeth. He gazed at the young teamster a moment, then his eyes found Mackenzie staring at him. “You know, Colonel—I passed that train with my escort minutes before they were jumped.”

Mackenzie nodded. “It must surely have a sobering effect on you, General. To think that those raiders could be carrying your scalp on their belts now.”

Sherman snorted, running a hand over his thinning hair, half-bald already, what there was turning to gray bristles on top. “Shit, Mackenzie. I thought these Kiowa and Comanche down here were warriors. This scalp of mine isn't fit for a real fighting Injun's lodgepole!”

“We don't find a trail to follow, you want us to stay out for the thirty days, General?”

“I want you to do your goddamndest to find the red bastards! If you can do it, and strike them hard inside those thirty days—then do it. Cut those warriors off at the knees!”

“I'll send word back when I've found them.”

“Where will you head from here, Colonel?”

Mackenzie did not hesitate. “There's only one direction that bunch will go, I'm afraid. They'll ride north.”

Sherman fumed, his ruddy cheeks puffing. “Back to the God-blamed reservation?”

“Yes, General. Back to Fort Sill.”

Chapter 3

May 27, 1871

“This New York paper claims I should be President, Mr. Tatum,” announced the graying General Sherman as he laid the
Herald
on the civilian's small desk in the middle of his cramped office.

Lawrie Tatum, agent for the Kiowa-Comanche reservation located just outside Fort Sill, nodded. He was Society of Friends—a Quaker. “Yes, General. If the Almighty has that in His plans—you will be President of the United States.”

The civilian watched the easygoing Sherman wrinkle his eyes at that and step over toward the window, gazing out on the wide, tree-ringed meadow. Agency storehouses stood in a short row to his right, a small chapel to the left of this tiny clapboard office house built for the government's agent.

“Grant may like you Quakers,” Sherman said with his back to Tatum, “but—for the record—I don't.”

“It's plain to see, General.”

“These bands don't respond to anything but force. And when they don't respond to that, then they must be eliminated.”

Tatum coughed nervously, swallowing down his temper. He could feel his ire rising, and reminded himself to stay calm. This was one of the most powerful men in Washington City, well known for his strong, unvarnished views on dealing with the western tribes.

“Then we know where we both stand, General.”

Sherman turned. “Yes we do.”

“You don't like the President's policy of dealing even-handedly with the tribes, do you, General?”

“Haven't I made that abundantly clear?”

Tatum nodded. “You have. But I don't think you've given Grant's and Secretary Delano's policy time to work.”

Sherman snorted, yanking the cigar from his teeth and patting his pockets for a sulfur match. Disgustedly, he waved an arm out the window. “You tell me … just try to tell me, Mr. Tatum, that you have control of your goddamned wards.”

“I … I can't—”

“Damned right, you can't!” Sherman shouted. “Both the Kiowa and Comanche are free to jump this reservation whenever it pleases them to. I heard reports from at least a hundred civilians down in Texas regarding depredations committed by your wards on this peace-loving reservation.”