the Thundering Herd (1984) (35 page)

Whenever Tom halted to rest he would listen to the shooting. His followers would creep up to him and make some comment. They were eager to join the fray.

"Tom, I reckon you're tuckered out," whispered Thorndyke, on the last of these occasions. "But do your damndest. For we're shore needed."

Thus admonished, Tom did not rest again, though he crawled less violently, trying to husband what strength he had left. The return had not been so exciting, and for that reason was harder work. It was different. Nothing but bullets could have stopped him.

They had crawled close to where Pilchuck and his men were shooting, and therefore within the zone of the Indians' fire, when a bullet kicked up the dust in front of Tom. He hesitated. Then a bullet clipped the crown of his hat. This spurred him to a spasmodic scrambling forward to cover behind a bowlder. From there Tom squirmed round to look back. Jake Devine was kneeling with leveled rifle, which on the instant belched fire and smoke. Jake dropped down and crawled forward. His face was black and his eyes blazed.

"Thet redskin is feed fer lizards," he said, grimly. "Go on, Tom."

Tom recalled the fact that Devine was a frontiersman, used to fighting Indians. So he crawled on, inspired by a sense of such companionship. Bullets now began to sing and hum overhead, and to spang from the rocks. Jake prodded Tom's feet.

"Tom, you're slower'n molasses," said Jake, "Reckon you don't mind this sort of thing. But, by golly! I'm scared. An' Al is hangin' on to my boots."

Sometimes Jake would give Tom a shove, rooting his face in the dust. "Crawl, you belly-whopper!" he whispered, gayly. And then he would call back to Thorndyke. "Come on, Al. Dy'e you want to git plugged all to yourself?"

At last Tom and his comrades reached the smoky place that marked Pilchuck's position.

"I ain't hankerin' fer this part of the job," said Devine.

"Suppose they take us fer redskins."

But Pilchuck was too wise a leader to allow blunders of that nature. He was on the lookout, and his grimy, sweaty, stern face relaxed at sight of Tom.

"Shore was good work, Tom," he said. "It's next door to hell here.

Hurry to Ory an' Roberts."

Tom hurried to where the young man lay, under a sunshade Roberts had rigged up with his shirt and a stick. Roberts gave Tom a husky greeting. Manifestly his voice was almost gone.

Ory's face was pale and clammy. When Tom lifted his head he opened his eyes and tried to speak. But he could not.

"Ory, here's water," said Tom, and held a canteen to the boy's pale lips.

Never until that moment had Tom appreciated the preciousness of water. He watched Ory drink, and had his reward in the wan smile of gratitude. "Much obliged, Tom," whispered Ory, and lay back with a strange look. Then he shut his eyes and appeared to relax.

Tom did not like the uneasy impression he received on the moment, but in the excitement he did not think any more about it.

Roberts handed the canteen to the other wounded fellow and watched him drink. Then he slaked his own thirst.

"Say!" he ejaculated, with a deep breath. "Thet shore was all I needed."

The white-headed old plainsman crawled over for his share.

"Son, them canteens will lick Nigger Horse," he said.

"What! Are we fighting that chief?" queried Tom, in amaze.

"Accordin' to Pilchuck we're doin' jest that," responded the plainsman, cheerfully. "Old Nigger an' a thousand of his redskins, more or less."

Then Tom crawled to the vantage point behind the rock he had used before, and gave himself up to this phase of the fight. It did not take longer than a moment to realize what Pilchuck had meant.

There was scarcely a second without its boom of Creedmoor or crack of Winchester. A little cloud of white smoke hung above every bowlder. Tom exercised the utmost vigilance in the matter of exposing himself to the Indians' fire. He was almost spent, and suffering excruciating pain from his wound. How infernally hot the sun burned down! His rifle and the stones were as fire to his hands. But as he began to peer out for an Indian to shoot at, and worked back into the fight, he forgot his pangs, and then what had seemed the intolerable conditions.

Tom grew intensely absorbed in his own little part in this battle.

With the smell of gunpowder and smoke clogging his nostrils, with the thunder of the Creedmoors behind him, with the circling rattle of the Winchesters out there in the hot haze of the sun, he gave them but vague attention. He applied himself to an intent watchfulness, and a swift aim and shot at every moving thing in the direction he covered. It grew to be a grim duel between him and Indians he knew saw him. Like him they had to expose themselves somewhat to get in a shot. But as it was imperative to be swift their aim was necessarily erring. Nevertheless, bullets spat the dust from Tom's rock, sometimes within a few inches of his head.

What a tingling sense of justice and deadly wrath these roused in Tom! It made the fight even. He welcomed these bullets, because they justified his own. He caught glimpses of shiny rifle barrels, of black sleek heads, of flashes of brown; and toward these, whenever possible, he directed his aim. Whether or not he ever hit his mark he could not tell. But he believed his bullets were making it hot for several Comanches.

Slowly the pitch of the fight augmented, until it was raging with a reckless fury on part of the Comanches, and a desperate resistance on that of the besieged. Sooner or later Tom was forced to realize in his own reactions the fact that the fighting and the peril had increased to an alarming extent. A stinging bullet crease in his shoulder was the first awakening shock he sustained. He had answered to the Indians' growing recklessness. He had been exposing himself more and redoubling his fire. He had missed Indians slipping stealthily from bowlder to bowlder--opportunities that only intense excitement and haste had made him fail to grasp.

Then, when he crouched back, forced to cover, aghast at this second wound, he became fully aware of the attack.

The Comanches had pressed closer and closer, now better concealed by the pall of smoke that overhung the scene.

"Hold your fire! Look out for a charge!" yelled Pilchuck in stentorian voice.

The booming of Creedmoors ceased, and that permitted a clearer distinguishing of the Indians' fire. Their Winchesters were rattling in a continuous volley, and a hail of lead whistled over and into the bowlder corral. Manifestly the Indians had massed on the west side, between Starwell's position and Pilchuck's. This occasioned the leader to draw up his men in line with Tom's fortification. Closer and hotter grew the Indians' fire. Through the blue haze of smoke and heat Tom saw dim swiftly moving shapes, like phantoms. They were Comanches, gliding from covert to covert, and leaping from bowlder to bowlder. Tom's heart seemed to choke him. If the Indians were in strong enough force they would effect a massacre of Pilchuck's men. Suddenly, as Tom dwelt fearfully on such contingency, the firing abruptly ceased. A silence fraught with suspense ensued, strange after the heavy shooting.

"It's a trick. Look sharp!" Pilchuck warned his men.

"Wal, seein' this fight's ag'in' the exterminatin' of the buffalo, I reckon old Nigger Horse will do or die," said Jake Devine.

"If you'd ask me I'd say these hoss-ridin' redskins was up to their last dodge on foot," averred the old white-headed plainsman.

"Look out it's not OUR last dodge," replied Pilchuck.

Scarcely had he spoken when the Indians opened up with a heavy volley at alarmingly close range. Pilchuck shouted an order that was not intelligible in the cracking of firearms. But only its content was needed. The big buffalo guns answered with a roar. In another moment the firing became so fast and furious that it blended as a continuous thundering in Tom's ears. He saw the rush of the Indians, incredibly swift and vague through the smoke, and he worked his rifle so hard that it grew hot. Above the roar of guns he heard the strange ear-splitting yell of the Comanches.

Almost at the same instant smoke veiled the scene, more to the advantage of the white men than the red. The Creedmoors thundered as continuously as before, and the volume of sound must have been damning to the desperate courage of the Comanches. Perhaps they had not counted on so strong a force and resistance. Their war-cry pealed to a shrill pitch and ceased; and following that the rattling volleys fell off. Then Pilchuck ordered his men to stop shooting.

Tom saw the old white-haired plainsman stand up and survey the smoke-hazed slope. Then he dropped down.

"Fellars, they're draggin' off their dead an' crippled," he said.

"They're licked, an' we ought to chase them clear to their hosses."

"Right," replied Pilchuck, grimly. "But wait till we're sure."

Tom could not see anything of the retreat, if such it was. The smoke mantle was lifting above the bowlders. With the sudden release of strain the men reacted according to their individual natures. Those new to such fighting were silent, as was Tom, and lay flat. Jake Devine was loquacious in his complaints that he had not downed any Comanches. The old plainsman urged Pilchuck to chase the Indians. Then when the receding fire of the enemy ceased altogether Tom heard yells close at hand.

"That's Harkaway," said the scout, eagerly, and he called out a reply.

Soon Harkaway and his men came stooping and crawling to join Pilchuck. They were panting from exertion.

"Boss--they're--workin' down," he said, breathlessly.

"Mebbe it's a trick," replied the wary scout. "I'll sneak out an' take a look."

Tom drew back from his position and eased his cramped limbs. His shirt was wet with blood. Examination showed his second bullet wound to be a slight one, but exceedingly annoying. He got Devine to tie it up, running a scarf under his arm and over his shoulder.

"Wal, a couple more scratches will make an old residenter out of you, Tom," he said, dryly.

Tom was about to make some fitting reply when Pilchuck returned in haste.

"Men, it's goin' to be our day," he said, his gray eyes alight with piercing intensity. "If we rout old Nigger Horse it'll be the first victory for the whites in this buffalo war. Us hunters will have done what the soldiers couldn't do. . . . Harkaway, you stay here with two of your men to guard these cripples. All the rest of you grab extra cartridges an' follow me."

Tom was not the last to get his hands into that cartridge bag, nor to fall in line after the scout. Once out of the zone of smoke, he was thrilled to see Indians disappearing over the edge of the slope. There was a good deal of shooting below, and the unmistakable booming reports told of Creedmoors in action. From the sound Tom judged Starwell had changed his position. But this could not be ascertained for sure until the brow of the slope was reached. Pilchuck advanced cautiously, gradually growing bolder as ambush appeared less probable, and the time came when he broke into a run.

"String out, an' come fast," he called back.

Tom fell in behind Jake Devine, and keeping some paces back he attended to the difficulty of running over the rough ground. Thus it was he did not look up until he reached the edge of the slope.

Here he found Pilchuck and some of the men in a group, gazing, talking, and gesticulating all at once. Tom's breast was heaving from the hard run. He was hot and wet. But it was certain that a reviving thrill ran over him. The Comanches were in retreat.

There was no doubt of that. It was still an orderly retreat, with a line of warriors guarding the rear. Tom saw Indians dragging and carrying their wounded and dead; others were gathering in the horses; and the mass was centered in the middle of the encampment, where there were signs of great haste.

One by one Pilchuck's arriving men added to the group on the slope.

"Starwell has the idea," declared Pilchuck. "See. He's moved this way an' down. He can still cover that gate an' also reach the camp."

"Jude, we shore hev our chance now," spoke up the old white-haired plainsman.

"I reckon," replied the scout. "Now listen, men. When I give the word we'll charge down this hill. Each an' every one of you yell like the devil, run a dozen jumps, drop down on your knee an' shoot. Then load, get up, an' do the same over again. Head for that pile of rocks this side of Starwell's position."

Silence followed the scout's trenchant speech. Then ensued a tightening of belts, a clinking of cartridges, a rasping of the mechanism of the Creedmoors. Tom was all ready, quivering for the word, yet glad of a few moments' rest. Pilchuck and the old plainsman stood close together, keen eyes on the Indian encampment.

The sun was low over the escarpment to the west and it was losing its heat. The canyon seemed full of golden lights and blue haze, through which flashed and gleamed moving objects, horses, Indians, collapsing tepees, a colorful and exciting scene. The rear guard of Indians backed slowly to the center of the encampment. Their horses were being brought in readiness. Tom could not help but see the execution of a shrewd Indian brain. Still, there were signs of a possible panic. Already the Comanches had suffered in this fight, as was manifested by the number of those incapacitated, and which had to be packed off. Already the far slope of the canyon was covered by ponies dragging travois.

The sudden breaking up of the rear guard, as these Indians leaped for their horses, was a signal for Pilchuck.