Bill Dugan_War Chiefs 04 (14 page)

J
ARED WILKINS LAY ON THE HILLTOP,
a long duster trailing on the ground behind him. Three hundred yards to his left, Joseph Hanley lay on the ground and, beyond him, another four hundred yards, Felton Peters did the same. Wilkins watched the valley below him, where a herd of buffalo was grazing peacefully. Turning to look behind him, he waved a hand to two more men, Anthony Chambers and Donald Duncan, who sat in the shade of one of four huge wagons parked in a row, their teams bobbing their heads lazily, and switching their tails to keep the flies at bay.

Wilkins shifted his position to get more comfortable on the hard ground. He had a canvas carryall on the ground beside him and tugged it closer, pulling down one side to expose several boxes of ammunition for his Sharps buffalo gun. The.55-caliber cannon with its octagonal barrel was the cleanest thing about the man, who stank
of sweat and buffalo grease. Flies swirled overhead but seemed frightened to come too close, whether kept off by the smell of the man or his movement would have been difficult to tell.

He raised his hand high in the air, then dropped it, and turned his attention to the box sight of the big Sharps. Wilkins was a good shot, one of the best. He swore he could hit the center spot on the ace of spades at five hundred yards, but that might have been pushing it, although he was confident enough over a bottle of whiskey, when he usually made his announcement, that no one had yet taken him up on his five-hundred-dollar wager.

Wilkins was a buffalo hunter, and he was pushing deep into Comanche territory, chasing the big beasts into a region where most of his fellow buffalo hunters were reluctant to travel. “Got to go where the buffs are,” he liked to say. “No point goin’ where everybody and his brother’s already been. Sides, with that big Sharps, ain’t no Comanche gonna get half close enough to lift my hair.” It was a barroom line, the one he’d used to convince Peters and Hanley to throw in with him, and he chuckled now, repeating it out loud for the benefit of the wind and the flies.

The first echo of one of the hunters’ big guns rolled toward him, and he glanced sideways before squinting through the sights once more and taking aim on a big bull which had lifted and turned its head. The animal seemed to be looking right at him, but Wilkins knew the buffalo
had poor vision and wouldn’t be able to see him if he were even closer than the five hundred yards that currently separated man and beast.

He squeezed the trigger, feeling the kick of the big gun all the way down his right side, jerked the empty out and shoved another round in. He was starting to feel it now, the thrill of dispensing death at long range, hurling thunderbolt after thunderbolt down into a big herd, watching the bulls fall to their knees, then rolling over on their sides. One by one, they fell. Peters and Hanley were good shots, too, but not as good as Wilkins, and the boom of the big guns started to sound like distant thunder as one or another seemed to be firing before the echo of the last shot had died away.

It had taken them three weeks to find the herd, and Wilkins had been getting antsy, suspecting that maybe there had been something wrong with his logic. Maybe nobody bothered to come this deep into Comanche territory because there were no buffalo to bother with.

For two hours, the three hunters banged away. The mound of shells by Wilkins grew deeper and broader, each one clinking onto the heap still hot, still giving off a little wisp of gunsmoke. The stench of gunpowder swirled around him, soaking into his duster and giving the flies further pause.

The animals below, terrified by the gunfire, didn’t know which way to turn. And because the sounds came from such a long way off, and were
joined by echoes, they were unable to settle on a direction for flight. As a result, they milled around helplessly. Wilkins was particular, and didn’t shoot just any buffalo. Each time, he picked a good specimen, going for the ones with the best skins, because that’s where the money was.

Back east, they were paying a fortune for good skins, and Wilkins meant to get his share. He wished there could be some way to mark each kill with his personal sign, so he could segregate the skins and make sure that his discriminating eye was fairly rewarded. Since that wasn’t possible, the profits were pooled, then shared out according to a formula Wilkins had outlined to the other two hunters. Duncan and Chambers were just skinners and wagoneers. Their cut would be smaller, but still a goodly sum.

When the barrel of the Sharps began to grow too hot, Wilkins put the gun aside and rolled onto his back, watching the clouds drift by for a while.

But Wilkins and his friends weren’t alone. The first sound of the big guns had drawn a pair of Comanche, who had heard them often enough to know exactly what they were. But they had been surprised to hear them here, so close to their camp, and they wanted to be certain what was happening.

They had hidden their horses in a willow break and walked nearly a mile before catching sight of the wagons. It took them a half hour to
find out exactly how many men were in the hunting party, because they knew only too well the accuracy of the big guns, and couldn’t afford to get too close.

But soon enough, they had all the information they needed, and they knew the hunters would be there for a long time. It took a lot longer to skin three hundred buffalo than it did to shoot them. And since it was too late to save the herd, there was no hurry.

Sneaking back the way they’d come, they leapt onto their ponies and headed back to their small village, their anger at the slaughter boiling into a fury at the violation of their territory. By the time they’d reached the camp, they were in a towering rage, and word spread quickly about the hunters.

Fast Panther was the first one into Quanah’s lodge.

“Buffalo hunters,” he said.

Quanah looked up, startled. “Where? How far?” But he didn’t wait for an asnwer. Running out of the lodge, leaving Fast Panther to follow him, he raced to where the two scouts were retelling their story for the fourth time.

“How many guns do they have?” Quanah asked.

Swimmer, one of the two who had seen the hunters, shrugged. “I don’t know. Three hunters, and two other men. That means at least five.”

“Often the buffalo men have more than one gun,” Quanah said. “They shoot so many buffalo
the guns get hot and they switch to another while the first one cools.”

“We should go while they are still there,” Swimmer said.

Quanah nodded. “We will go, but we won’t attack them. Not now. The buffalo guns are too strong for us. If they know we are there, we will never get close enough. The hunters are not like the soldiers, who have bad guns and don’t even know how to use them.”

“We can’t let them go,” Fast Panther said. “If we do, then others will come. We have to show them that Comanche land is for Comanche only.”

Quanah nodded. “We will show them. But we will show them in our own good time.”

“When?”

“Tonight.”

“Suppose they finish their skinning?”

“If they do, they will still stay where they are for the night. They don’t travel after dark. And even if they leave, we can follow them, now that we know they are here. Go to your lodges and get ready. If you have a gun, bring it.”

Quanah went back to his own tipi and went inside. He had a gun of his own now, a Springfield carbine, but he had very few bullets. There were so many different kinds of guns the white man used, and the bullets for some did not fit others. He knew of some Comanche who fired bullets too small for the guns they had, and the bullets would not go where they were supposed to. But Quanah had
the feeling that bullets were not going to be necessary this night.

The war party was ready to go in less than twenty minutes. Fourteen were already on their ponies by the time Quanah came back out of his lodge. He had learned from what happened at Pease River, and never took more men than necessary on any raid, always leaving enough behind to protect the camp.

They reached the valley where the wagons had been with less than an hour of daylight left. Quanah led the way on foot up the hill, following the wagon tracks to the top of the ridge. He lay down and crawled to the crest, where he found a pile of shells from one of the buffalo guns and several broken pasteboard boxes. There were even a few good shells in the grass. As he stuck them into his shirt, he thought how wasteful the white man could be, that bullets, which were like jewels to the Comanche, could be left unspent in the grass as if they were worthless.

Looking down into the valley ahead, he saw the wagons, just as he had expected. They were spread out across the valley floor, and as he watched, he saw one of the skinners straighten up and carry two fresh skins to the wagon, throw them onto a heap of other skins, and trudge back to his next carcass.

All across the valley floor, the great mounds of red flesh that had been buffalo just a few hours before, lay scattered, barely recognizable for
what they were. They might as well have been mounds of red clay, for all they resembled buffalo. Quanah felt the rage boiling up inside him now, and he knew that he had to control himself. He would like nothing more than to leap to his feet and lead a charge down into the valley. But that would be suicide. Stealth was the only hope he and his warriors had, the only ally. To punish these men for their invasion of Comanche land, he would have to get close enough, and rage would not help.

He scanned the valley from end to end, counting five men, then scanned it again to make sure that he hadn’t missed one bent over his work and hidden by a buffalo carcass or a wagon. But he had missed none.

Already, the men had a fire built at one end of the valley, and one of the wagons sat beside it, the team already unhitched. He knew that is where the men would camp for the night, away from the stink of the rotting carcasses, and he backed away from the ridge line until he could stand without risking being seen by the hunters.

He led the men at a trot, wanting to be in position before sundown. As he ran, he heard the whistle of one of the wagoneers, followed by the sharp crack of a bullwhip. When he reached the far end of the valley, not a quarter mile from the ridge overlooking the hunters’ campsite, he could hear the creak of wagon wheels, and he nodded with satisfaction.

“They are coming,” he said, when he had
gathered the warriors around him. “They are making camp on the other side of this ridge. There are five of them.”

“Only five?” Swimmer said. “We should attack them now, while there is still light.”

Quanah shook his head. “No. They are not all in the camp yet. And once it is dark, the only light will be their campfire. There is no moon tonight, and their long guns will be of no use in the dark. Even the best shooter can’t hit what he can’t see.”

He smiled but it was a cold smile, speaking more of the revenge to come than of any pleasure felt at the moment.

The Comanche waited for sunset, watching the sun as if the weight of thirty determined eyes would drag it down sooner. Quanah waited impatiently until the sky darkened, then went black, and he could see the stars.

It was time.

Leading his warriors carefully up the hills, he stopped at the top and crawled forward to take a look. The men were sprawled around the fire, eating from tin plates like the ones the soldiers used. He could see all five of them, and they were careless enough that they had parked their wagons all in a row instead of arranging them for protection. This would be easier than he had feared.

Quickly, he backed away and explained what he wanted done, then crept back to the hilltop and waited for the warriors to get into position.

Instead of launching an assault from this high up, he was going to move in close, and he would communicate with the others by birdcalls and animal sounds, as few as possible and using only those appropriate to the time of day, because the hunters often had a keen ear for any sound that did not belong.

He could see that some of the men were drinking. They passed a bottle back and forth, and the more they drank, the louder their voices became. He was glad to see that it was not only Indians who made fools of themselves with whiskey.

When the others signaled they were in position, he started down the hill. They had encircled the camp, but since they numbered only fifteen, there was considerable distance between each pair of warriors. Only when the noose closed around the camp would they be close enough to see one another.

It took nearly an hour. But finally, Quanah was so close that he could smell the burnt meat from the meal, and the stink of the white man clothes. As prearranged, he made the first move, notching an arrow and pulling the bow to full draw. Sticking his tongue between his teeth as he often did when shooting, he held his aim for a split second, then let the arrow go. He followed its flight, saw it strike his target just a little higher than he had intended, but not enough to matter, and saw the man clutch frantically at his back where the arrow had lodged, getting to his feet and spinning around several times.

Suddenly a hail of arrows poured into the camp, and he knew that all of the hunters had been hit at least once. There was a single gunshot from a pistol as one of the wounded men drew it from his hip and fired blindly into the darkness.

Quanah’s second arrow was on its way, and he saw that several of the others had chosen the same target, because the man was hit by half a dozen shafts almost instantly, as if he were sprouting quills.

And just that quickly, it was over. Quanah moved close, another arrow drawn, keeping a wary eye on the five bodies, just in case one of them was not already dead.

But there was no movement, and the only sound was a ghastly rattle as one of the hunters tried to breathe once more, then trembled and lay still.

As if in a frenzy, the other warriors charged in and riddled the bodies with arrows, then ransacked the supply wagon for anything of value. Quanah reached into the fire for a brand and tossed it onto one of the wagonloads of skins, and soon all three were in flames and, when the fourth had been pilfered, it joined the others in flames.