WALKING BEAR SAT his painted pony and stared across the valley to where the stripe-legs clustered behind their defenses. There were fewer of them now; but fewer of his own warriors, too. Some had died in the first attacks, and others had drifted away. It was difficult to persuade a warrior accustomed to wandering and fighting only when the mood took him, that he should stay in one place to out-last the blue-coats, to play them at their own game. That was not the Comanche way. To fight hard, yes. To die with a war shout on the lips, taking the specters of the enemy to the Spirit World, yes. But to sit and wait … no.
The Comanche way was to strike and run. To hit hard and then fade into the wilderness. Not to play this waiting game.
It had been hard to argue the first great grouping into being, and that had taken all Walking Bear’s powers of persuasion. To convince the other war chiefs, and the shamans, and the camp leaders that if they failed now to destroy the white man’s hold on the valley, then more would come from the east and the north. Like the chittering insects that sometimes stormed in great clouds to eat the land, or the relentless wind that brought the snow from out of the northern country: unstoppable, ravaging.
Walking Bear had an awful vision. It had come to him in a dream, and then again when the shaman of his own band had prepared the medicine tent, and he had sat alone for five days and five nights with the fire lifting the spirit smoke about him as he sought that inner communion that linked a man to the Nothing World, opening his ears to the voices of the ones who had gone before, the ones who saw all. The dream had told him of the white man’s war that had just ended, fought away to where the sun rose. It had told him that now the white man had ceased to fight with himself he would look for other enemies: if not men, then the land itself. It had told him they would come here. That the buffalo would go, and that where once the Nokoni rode free there would be towns, buildings; all the appurtenances of the whites. And it had told him what he must do to stop that: to hold the land for the Nemenna, for the People.
He argued long and hard after he emerged from the medicine tent, and his reputation as a war chief had brought him allies. For the first time in as long as the oldest storyteller could remember the Nokoni and the Penatekas and the Kwahadi bands of the Nemenna had joined in one great force to destroy the invaders.
It had been Walking Bear’s dream that they would erase the bivouac in the Green Grass valley from the face of the earth. Kill all the stripe-legs, and then ride on to destroy the log village where the greater force of stripe-legs were. Burn that down, and leave the land open from the mountains to the land of the Mexicans.
It had been a good dream, but a dream too large for most of the bands. They had danced around the victory fires after they took the stripe-leg village, and many had gotten drunk on the liquor they took. And in the morning they had gone away, thinking they had done it all; not listening to the dream. So Walking Bear had been left with no more than fifty warriors, and after the white woman was stolen and the blue-coats failed to come after her, a few more men had drifted away. And then, when the four warriors he had sent to bring her back – along with the hair of the man who took her – had not returned, and the scout he sent after them reported that they were all dead, still more had left.
Now Walking Bear had only thirty men still loyal to the dream. And they were rapidly becoming disgruntled with the way he fought his war. And yet, he knew it was the only way. The long-guns they had taken from the blue-coats could not fire so fast as a bow, but they fired harder, and over a greater distance. The way the blue-coats used them, they picked off the front riders of a charge before the warriors were in close enough to loose their arrows, a long time before the lances could go in. But few of the Nokoni could use the guns properly: they did not know how to load the things, nor how to sight them. Walking Bear had organized the few braves who did know to teach the others, so that they could avoid more losses – nine men had gone down in the first three charges – and hold the white men pinned behind their walls. Before long, he knew, their food must run out, and even with the water from their well, they could not remain grouped in the heat of the cabin while the Nemenna picked off their horses. Before long, they would be forced to either die or run. And if they ran, they would be easy targets now.
But he still needed to convince his warriors of that: the dream was dying fast.
‘Sergeant!’ Frank Donnely shouted across the room at Shawn Docherty. ‘Call muster.’
‘Nine men fit, captain. Counting you an’ me. Averson’s too weak to use a gun, an’ Wallis got shot through his hand.’
‘He's got another,’ snapped Donnely. ‘He can use that.’
‘Nossir. Not without three new fingers an’ a thumb. Hatchet, sir.’
‘Damn!’ grunted the captain. ‘Horses?’
‘Seven left, sir. Rest been killed or run off. Johanson’s watchin’ them, along with Wallis.’
‘You said he lost his hands,’ Donnely barked.
‘Yessir! But not his eyes. Or his voice. Sir!’
Donnely started to say something about the tone of his sergeant’s replies, but a crackle of gunfire from the river cut off his words. One of the few remaining windows shattered inwards, sprinkling shards of glass over the floor as the almost-spent slug swirled the smoky air of the saloon and imbedded in the ceiling. Down the line a Sharps barked once, and a trooper with a bandage around his left arm shouted, ‘I got the bastard.’
No one answered: they were too busy ducking under the random fire hitting the cabin.
Donnely rubbed his left hand over crisp beard stubble and holstered the Army Colt. Motioning for Docherty to join him, he bellied over to the bar. Docherty crawled to join him, cradling a Henry single-shot between his arms.
The captain was hatless, his hair lank with sweat and his eyes red, with deep, blue-black hollows underneath. His cheeks were sunk in more than usual, so that when he spoke his lips spread back. He looked tired: ten years older; but not defeated. Docherty looked better, mainly because his face was already set in the fixed lines of age and didn’t – or couldn’t – change much under stress. His thick silver hair was darkened by powder smoke, and there was a thin cut showing red on his left cheek, a dark powder burn on the right, but his blue eyes were smiling, only the red of whisky showing through.
‘Sir?’
‘How much ammunition, Sergeant?’
‘Full loads for all the handguns,’ said Docherty. ‘Then six more apiece. Around twenty a man for the rifles and carbines. Enough for three more attacks, if we watch our fire.’
‘Food?’
‘Gone. Sir. Unless you count the horses.’
‘We’ll need them if we have to run.’
‘Too late for that, Captain. The Comanches fouled the supplies: the horses couldn’t make over five miles before they died on us. We’re stuck here. Sir!’
Donnely stared at the older man for a long time before he replied. Then:
‘All right, Sergeant. So we stay here. No doubt Fort Davis will be sending a relief column if your friend got through.’
‘Sir? I don’t understand.’
‘Someone gave that Southern trash a horse,’ snapped Donnely. ‘I can’t prove anything, but I intend to put in a report.’
‘I hope you can, sir,’ said Docherty. ‘I surely hope you can.’
‘It won’t do you much good,’ said Donnely. ‘I promise you that.’
‘Nossir!’ The sergeant blew loose powder from the breech of the carbine. ‘But it will mean we’re still alive.’
A fresh volley of shots burst against the wall and the captain and the sergeant slithered back to their positions at the windows.
The two braves Walking Bear had sent in found an easy way over the ruined walls. Found it easier still to find cover amongst the burned-down tents and smoldering remnants of the outer buildings. All the blue-coats were at the western side of the building, answering the shots that rang constantly from the river. There was one man at the door of the cabin, but he had a stained bandage wrapped over most of his head and the rifle he carried was slumped between his spread knees. And his eyes were barely open.
The two Nokoni wore only loincloths. Their bodies were daubed with black and red and white, so – even though it was war-paint – it resembled the colors of the ground: where burned-down tents had added staining to the streaks of blood and fire.
The horses were in a makeshift corral to the left of the building. There was a fallen-down adobe still high enough to protect the animals on the southern side, and sufficient remnants of timber and clay blocked them to the west. Northwards, the bulk of the sole remaining building hid them from attack.
To the east, from the direction the Comanches had never chosen to mount a raid, the corral was protected only by wooden struts, most of them burned through.
There were two men with the horses.
One was a wiry, dark man who crouched against the eastern entrance with his bandaged hands clutched tight against his chest, and moaned softly. The other was tall – a foot, or more, above atypical Nemenna – with hair like snow and a rifle held in his hands. He moved through the horses and around the perimeter of the stockade as he mumbled a song.
The two warriors bellied closer. They knew that there was little chance of them getting away alive, but if they could kill two of the stripe-legs and run off the fat horses, they would enter the Spirit World with coups to their credit.
They moved in, easing their knives clear of the sheaths.
Amos Wallis stared at his hands and thought about Washington. When he had signed up for the Union cause he had thought about glory. About victorious battles that would bring him back to his home with bands in front and flags waving. He would – in his imagination – have been a lieutenant at least, maybe even a captain. But he had been inducted and sent south. To godforsaken Texas, for God’s sake! And left to rot in the heat and dust; cursed with a bastard like Donnely in command. Wasting his life on drill routines that left him for hours on end staring at empty grass that never showed anything more than coyotes and prairie dogs. Until Donnely screwed everything up even worse and the goddam Indians lost him both his hands.
Jesus! The first one had been hard enough to take. At least after the first shock of the slug going through his palm subsided. And by then, good old sergeant Docherty was pouring whisky down his throat and more over the hand before he bandaged it. But now? Christ! Half his other hand gone? The end of the thumb and the two fingers beyond? What would the Army pay him for that? For he sure as shit couldn’t work anymore with either hand. He was a cripple: and how much did an Army pension pay a crippled trooper?
He stopped worrying as the knife slid across his throat. It was a good knife, a very good knife, sold by a trader out of Mexico who bought only the best Toledo steel. It cut sweet and clean through Amos Wallis’s windpipe like a butcher’s knife slicing raw meat.
The hand that shuttered Amos Wallis’s mouth closed didn’t let up its grip until the spurt of blood from the windpipe had faltered to a thin pulsing from the dying heart. It stayed there, dragging back his head until his last goutings were spent. And then left him propped against the poles of the corral.
The Nokoni slipped amongst the horses, conscious of the second warrior moving in on the other blue-coat.
He would be more difficult. Being uninjured and very tall. And, also, he held a rifle in his hands and had a gun on his waist.
Nils Johanson finished his circuit of the corral. He was good with horses, which, he guessed, was the reason Sergeant Docherty had assigned him this post. He would have liked to be inside the cabin: that seemed safer than walking circles around nervous ponies that were, anyway, too weak to ride far. But a duty was a duty, and he would see it out; until he was relieved.
And then he felt something hit his back. He opened his mouth to shout a warning, but somehow he couldn’t get the words out, so he started to turn around. And something else hit his side.
At first he didn’t feel any pain, just a curious sensation of falling; almost dreamlike: leisurely, with warmth all around him.
And then a hoof snapped against his face and he realized what was happening. Tried to fire his rifle. Even squeezed the trigger to drop the hammer against the charge.
But the Comanche had placed a thumb against the pan, between the hammer and the cap.
Johanson fought to lift the Indian’s thumb away, but the Nokoni won, dragging the rifle clear as he reached towards the Swede’s stomach.
For a while Johanson couldn’t understand what the Indian was doing, but then the blade dragged clear and came down against his belly. He tried to scream; to shout a warning, but a second blade sliced over his mouth. It cut through his lips, slicing off the tip of his tongue as it severed the sides of his jaw. And then it went away for an instant: he saw it shine as it lifted above his face. And then came down again, the tip plunging through his opened mouth, pinning his tongue against the back of his throat, cutting the windpipe before it landed in the dirt behind his head.
He tasted steel on his bleeding tongue, and tried to scream. But the knife had severed his spine, and all that came out was a spurt of blood that gouted high as his dying body writhed around and spat silent cries against the air.
The two Comanches drew their knives from the body and lifted the corral poles clear of the gate. Then they began to lead the horses through the opening.
They got three out before anyone noticed them, and then the trooper on the door of the saloon woke up enough to mumble, ‘Raid! Horses going.’
Docherty and a trooper called Lyle came over to the door. They both held carbines. Docherty shoved the wounded guard aside, ignoring his injuries, and shouted, ‘They’re raiding the horses.’
‘See to it, Sergeant,’ called Donnely.
‘Stay there. Don’t move.’
Docherty stepped over the wounded trooper on to the porch. He saw a rider fall back over the side of a bare-back mount and shot the horse through the head.
It went down in a swirling spray of dust and blood, tossing a painted warrior clear as it fell. Docherty dropped his carbine and reached down to haul the Colt’s Army model clear of his reversed holster. He shot the Comanche through the front of his face as the man came up on his feet a yard behind the horse. The bullet threw the Indian back, exploding his face into fragments of scarlet that disintegrated all the features inside a bloody hole that erupted from the rear of his skull as he somersaulted over to spread his brains on the ground.
Lyle fired, and Docherty saw a second horse go down with blood spraying from the neck. It began to rise to its feet, but the ponies behind it cannoned into it, and smashed it down so that, for a moment, his target was exposed.
‘There was a Comanche, Sarge. I swear it.’
‘Wait!’ Docherty went down on one knee.
He cocked the big Colt and balanced his left elbow on his left knee, his left hand clutched tight about his right wrist. Lyle thumbed a fresh load into his carbine and eased sideways down the porch.
The last of the horses ran by, lifting enough dust to cloud most men’s vision.
Docherty fired once. Thumbed the hammer, and fired again.
There was a scream as the .44 caliber slug took the Comanche in the chest. It burst through his painted body to rupture a lung and throw him back with blood coming in thick spurts from his mouth and nostrils. He rolled back, doubling over in agony as Lyle saw him cornered against the far wall and triggered the carbine. It was a Spencer, holding a .36 caliber shell that didn’t fire far, nor hold too much hitting power.
At that range it was enough. It ruptured the Comanche’s skull into sticky fragments of bone and blood and brain matter that dripped sluggishly from the adobe. The Nokoni dropped his knife and slumped over the stained ground.
‘Johanson! Wallis!’ Docherty watched the horses run wild on to the grass. ‘You alive?’
There was no answer.
‘All right,’ grunted the sergeant. ‘Let’s get back inside an’ try to stay alive.’
‘You think we can?’ asked Lyle. ‘Now?’
‘I ain’t sure, son,’ said Docherty. ‘But I sure know we can try.’
‘What happened?’ asked Captain Frank Donnely. ‘We heard firing.’
‘Yes,’ said the Sergeant, ‘you did, sir. You heard our horses getting run off.’
‘All of them?’ Donnely sounded surprised. ‘That means you let them go, Sergeant.’
‘The hell he did,’ snarled Lyle.
Docherty kicked him hard enough that he jumped sideways, yelping as he clutched at his ankle.
‘Trooper Lyle did real good out there, sir. Shot as many hostiles as he had bullets. But there was too many, sir. Couldn’t do a thing about it, in the end. They just took out our horses.’ Docherty spoke fast and loud, covering Lyle’s groaning. ‘Run off all but two, sir. At least we can eat fresh meat now.’
Donnely stared a long time at the sergeant, but Docherty held his face bland, fixed in as rigid a position as he could maintain on one knee, with both eyes scanning the windows.
‘All right, Sergeant,’ Donnely allowed at last, ‘stand easy. We’ll talk about this later.’
‘Yessir,’ said Docherty. ‘I hope so, sir.’