Lost Cause (18 page)

Chapter 29

Jack opened his eyes and saw an Indian
looking at him. The man was old and wrinkled and smelled like wet
feathers. His long braided hair was gray and he was tall and lean
and well-muscled for a man of his age. Jack moved to rise from the
ground and someone grabbed him from behind and pulled his right arm
up so that it twisted in the socket and Jack cried out in pain and
tried to pull free but the grip on his arm was powerful and
unyielding. The old Indian grunted something in a dialect and the
man gripping Jack’s arm let go and Jack scrambled to his feet. His
head hurt and there was blood on the collar of his shirt and he
knew he was in serious trouble.

The Indians took him down the slope of the
hill toward a group of men gathered in the road. Some of the
Indians were holding the horses while others went through the
pockets of the dead soldiers. There were many dead and a few
wounded, but none of the Indians paid any attention to them. As
they drew closer to the group Jack saw a few soldiers kneeling in
the road. Their hands were tied behind their backs and four Indians
armed with lances stood guard over them. One of the men was
Corporal Campbell. His face was bloody and the broken shaft of an
arrow protruded from his left thigh. Jack looked around for Captain
Ross and found him lying in the middle of the road with three
arrows in his body. It was clear by his enervated stare that he was
dead.

Someone shoved Jack in with the group and
forced him down on his knees. Another man tied his hands behind him
with rawhide string. The Indians all seemed efficient and cold and
in total command of their actions. It was clear to Jack that they
had done this sort of thing many times before. They all wore battle
paint and bird feathers in their hair and leather breeches and
beaded moccasins made of deer hide. They looked to about fifteen in
number not counting the old man who appeared to be the leader.

The old Indian said something to a couple of
the others and they took hold of a kneeling soldier and dragged him
to the side of the road. One of the Indians took out a stone knife
and cut the soldier’s throat in one swift motion. The soldier fell
on his side his throat spurting blood. His legs twitched in the wet
grass for a while and then he lay perfectly still as he bled out
and died. The old man spoke again and the process was repeated. The
next victim was a young man barely old enough to shave. He began to
cry softly as they dragged him away. Corporal Campbell was next in
line. Jack could see his lips moving soundlessly and he appeared to
be on the verge of passing out. The Indians came for him, but a
trio of horses came galloping down the road and stopped in front of
the old man. An Indian dismounted and began talking to the old man
in their language. He spoke with haste and pointed to one of the
other horses. It was then that Jack saw the eldest of the three
Kickapoo girls he’d rescued from the old white man the day before
sitting on one of the Indian ponies.

There was a quick conference and then some of
the Indians began loading Jack and the other bound soldiers on
horses. There were four of them left alive; Jack, Corporal Campbell
and two privates from the regiment that Jack didn’t know very
well.

The group headed off across the plain angling
toward the trees in the distance. An Indian rode beside each
soldier ensuring they didn’t try to escape from the saddle. At one
point Jack saw his escort glaring at him his dark eyes as
unreadable as a block of stone. Jack had no idea how the Indian’s
minds worked; if they had minds and if they worked at all. Except
for the chief they appeared to be fairly young men, but there was
no doubt that they were capable of extreme violence as indicated by
the little throat cutting party back at the road.

As they approached the outer perimeter of the
Indian camp it began to rain. Jack and his companions were hauled
off the horses and placed in front of a deer hide tent. They sat in
the rain and waited to see what the Indians were going to do to
them. Corporal Campbell was mumbling something unintelligible and
flexing his wounded leg in an effort to take the pressure off the
arrowhead embedded deep in his thigh muscle.

So far the Indians had killed fifteen men,
and seemed prepared to kill Jack and the other three survivors. But
the three teenage girls from the wagon appeared in the midst of the
gathered crowd and began talking to the old chief. There seemed to
be some disagreement for a while and finally the chief raised a
hand and said something to an Indian standing beside him. The man
walked to the tent drawing a knife as he drew near to the four
soldiers. Jack was saying his silent prayers when the Indian cut
the rawhide strings binding his wrists. Then the Indian cut
Campbell’s bounds as well and stood back a few paces his arms
folded across his chest.

The old chief made a sweeping motion with his
hand and pointed across the field toward the road. It took Jack a
moment to realize that the he was telling him and Campbell to leave
the camp. Apparently the girls had petitioned for their release out
of gratitude for rescuing them from the old slaver. Jack looked
over at the other two soldiers kneeling beside him and the Indian
guarding them shook his head.

Jack hesitated for a moment then grabbed
Campbell by the arm and began walking out of the camp. He looked
back a couple of times expecting to feel a stone arrowhead pierce
his spine. But the Indians weren’t even looking at them. They were
concentrating on the two remaining soldiers and Jack knew it was
only a matter of time before they would also be dead.

Instead of heading back to the road, Jack
angled for the swollen creek thinking he would have a better chance
of getting away if the Indians changed their minds and came after
them. Campbell was having considerable trouble keeping up and Jack
had to stop a few times to help him along. Finally Carl sat down in
the tall wet grass and said, “Go on, go on without me. I can’t keep
up with this leg.”

“I can’t just leave you, Carl.”

“Sure you can. Those Indians just let us go,
they don’t want us no more. You go on ahead and catch up with
Colonel Ford and tell him to send the Calvary.”

“Damn, Carl.”

“Just go. And hurry up about it.”

Jack didn’t want to leave Campbell behind,
but he knew he could make much better time without him. Campbell
was right, the Indians had let them go when they could very well
have killed them. He didn’t know much about Indians, but he’d
always heard they were a people of their word. They may be savages,
and in Jack’s mind cold-bloodied murderers, but they seemed to be
very principled people. Campbell was probably out of danger, at
least as far as the Indians were concerned.

With a promise to get back as soon as he
could Jack sprinted to the creek intent on following the creek bed
northward where he figured to find Colonel Ford’s convoy. It didn’t
turn out as planned however, because as he turned to head north his
boot slipped on the slick mud and he was in the raging water before
he could recover his balance. The water was very cold and the
current swirled around him and pulled him under the surface of the
water. He could feel his back scraping over rocks and broken tree
limbs and more rocks until he thought he would surely drown if he
couldn’t somehow get his head above water for a breath of air. His
head did pop up briefly and he took a giant breath and then he was
submerged again as his shirt caught on a tree stump. He struggled
to free himself, his lungs burning from the lack of oxygen. He
pulled as hard as he could and the shirt ripped away and he was
rolling and tumbling again as the raging creek pushed him along as
if he was a feather. Water poured into his mouth and he flailed his
arms in an attempt to grab anything solid. Finally a large tree
branch came sailing by and he grabbed the bottom of it and pulled
himself up out of the water.

The tree limb swung like a pendulum in the
eddying current and Jack held on with all his strength. The water
was so cold his body was starting to become numb and he feared he
would lose his grip and be pulled under the rushing water again.
And then just when he thought he couldn’t hold on any loner, he saw
a deadfall still connected to a stump lying half way across the
creek. He grabbed it with both hands as he rushed by and climbed
upon the wet slippery bark. He was wet and cold and out of breath,
but he was free of the pull of the water and free to continue his
journey to find the convoy.

At least he thought he was, and then his
hands slipped, and in an instant he was once again being pulled
along in the raging torrent of brown icy water.

Chapter 30

Jack didn’t have any way of knowing how long
he was in the creek. The flow moved so swiftly that it was
impossible to gauge distance, or even time for that matter. Tree
limbs and large chunks of wood and uprooted mesquite bushes rushed
past Jack’s head tumbling and spinning like objects in the grip of
a whirlwind. He lay on his back with his chin tilted upward and
scanned the water ahead in search of some solid object to grab on
to. He was afraid he would begin to cramp up and lose even more
strength in his arms and legs.

The current took him around a long curve and
he could see a little peninsula of land looming straight ahead
where the creek narrowed around a deadfall. The section of
cottonwood tree stuck up like a tombstone in center of the swirling
water. Jack watched the land draw nearer and for the first time
since going into the water he felt an inkling of hope.

The peninsula was very close now and he could
see the tops of mesquite bushes and cat tails rising up from the
water’s edge all along the south end of the small strip of land. He
began kicking his legs and sweeping his arms in wide arcs in an
attempt to propel his body toward the shore. He thrashed and
sputtered and fought the pull of the water and thrashed until he
had his body basically in line with the peninsula. As the current
pushed him close to the bank he reached out and grabbed a handful
of mesquite bush and wrapped his fist around the long slick
branches. He hung on with all his strength and began to pull
himself up on the grassy slope of solid land. He lay on his back
gasping for breath his feet and legs still submerged in the water.
The thought that he would not drown crossed his mind and he sobbed
out loud. He felt hollow and numb and sick to his stomach. His
chest burned intensely from the effort of breathing and inhaling
the cold water. Still, he thought, I’m alive. I’m alive and I have
to go get help for Carl.

When the sick feeling began to fade, he
crawled all the way out of the water, stood to his feet, and
quickly examined himself. He’d lost his pistol and hat somewhere
along the way and half his shirt tail was missing. There was an egg
sized knot on the back of his head where an arrow had hit him a
glancing blow and an innumerable amount of cuts and bruises covered
most of the meaty parts of his body. But he was alive, by damn, he
was alive!

After a while, when his breath had returned
to normal, he started walking along the bank staying well clear of
the rushing water. Ahead there was a animal trail leading up from
the water to the open plain east of the creek. Jack stopped in the
middle of the path, sat down on a flat rock, took off his boots,
and emptied them of water. Then he removed his blouse and torn
shirt and tugged off his trousers and wrung all of them out,
squeezing out as much water as possible. He would have liked to let
the clothing drip dry for a while but he knew he had to find
Colonel Ford as soon as possible. He had no idea how much distance
he had covered while in the water. Finding the convoy could turn
out to be much more difficult than he originally thought. But he
knew he had to try.

Before putting on his clothes he rubbed a
little mud on the worst of his cuts and scratches hoping to stop
the bleeding. Then he got dressed and started up the path hopeful
that he could make good time now that he was free from the perils
of the flooded creek. The fields were bare and still wet and
withered from all the recent rain and he could see a long way
across the open terrain. There was a line of low hills rising up
out of the plain about a mile ahead and Jack thought he saw
movement within the shadows cast by the tree covered hills. He
stopped walking and stood still for a long time watching the hills
until he decided he hadn’t seen anything after all. Just nerves, he
told himself.

He began walking again and crossed the plain
at a brisk pace. It was level country with good sod but the
unrelenting rain had turned it spongy and flattened the grass to
where it looked like an enormous straw mat for as far as the eye
could see. He followed the animal trail until it turned sharply to
the west then he blazed his own trail heading for the center of the
hills in the distance.

When he arrived at the tallest hill he
climbed up an embankment and made his way through a stand of
cottonwood trees to the summit. He looked across the other side of
the hill and saw soldiers riding single file heading in a northerly
direction. At that distance, it was hard to tell if the troops were
Union or Confederate, but Jack was willing to gamble that they were
Colonel Ford’s advanced guard patrolling the road ahead of the
convoy. He sat on the ground and watched the soldiers moving away
from him trying to muster up the strength to follow them. The bump
on his head had now swollen to the size of a duck egg. It had
stopped bleeding but it felt malleable and segmented. He picked
away the dried blood that had coagulated over the cut and ran his
fingertip along the exposed section of his skull that the arrow has
gouged out. There was nothing he could do to treat the wound so he
wiped away the seeping blood with the sleeve of his shirt and tried
not to think about how badly it hurt. But that was impossible to do
because he ached from head to toe. His stomach felt as though it
was on fire, and his old shoulder wound was becoming stiff and sore
having underwent much punishment at the hands of the Indians and
the ravages of the swollen creek. He felt lonesome inside and alone
outside with nothing but wet clothing and an aching head to remind
him that it didn’t matter how he felt. His only concern now was to
get moving and catch up with that convoy as soon as possible. He
could never overtake the scouting party as they were a horse back,
and he on foot, so he would have to head due south and hopefully
intercept the convoy somewhere down the main road.