THE CARAVAN stretched nearly a mile along the river. The broad, rushing waters of the Arkansas tumbled over a rocky streambed that curved southwestward across the plains. A fiery sun tilted lower toward the distant horizon.
Lillian was seated between her father and Chester. She wore a linsey-woolsey dress with a fitted mantle coat that fell below her knees. The men were attired in whipcord trousers, plaid mackinaws, and wide-brimmed slouch hats. They looked like reluctant city folk cast in the role of pioneers.
Their buckboard, purchased in Abilene, was a stout four-wheeled vehicle designed for overland travel. The rig was drawn by a team of horses, one sorrel and one dun, plodding along as though hitched to a plow. The storage bed behind the seat was loaded with camp gear, food crates, and their steamer trunks. The goods were lashed securely and covered with a tarpaulin.
“Ah, for the outdoor life,” Fontaine said in a sardonic tone. “My backsides feel as though I have been flailed with cane rods.”
Chester, who was driving the buckboard, chuckled aloud. “Dad, you have to look on the bright side. We’re almost there.”
“How would you know that?”
“One of the teamsters told me this morning.”
“Well then, we have it from an unimpeachable source.”
“Honestly!” Lillian said with a perky smile. “Why do you complain so, Papa? I’ve never seen anything so wonderful in my life.” She suddenly stopped, pointing at the sky. “There, look!”
A hawk floated past on smothered wings. Beyond, distant on the rolling plains, a small herd of buffalo grazed placidly beneath wads of puffy clouds. The hawk caught an updraft, soaring higher into the sun. Lillian watched it fade away against a lucent sky.
“Oooo,” she said softly, her eyes round with wonder. “I think it’s all so … so magnificent.”
“Do you really?” Chester said all too casually. “I’ll wager you don’t think so when you have to do your business. You sure look mortified, then.”
“You’re such a ninny, Chester. I sometimes wonder you’re my brother.”
Her indignation hardly covered her embarrassment. There were fifty-three wagons in the caravan and more than a hundred men, including teamsters, laborers, and scouts. The upshot, when she needed to relieve herself, was scant privacy and a desperate search for bushes along the river. She absolutely dreaded the urge to pee.
Yet, apart from the matter of privacy, she was content with their journey. Fifteen days ago, south of Abilene, they had joined the freight caravan on the Santa Fe Trail. The muleskinners were a rough lot, unaccustomed to having a woman in their company, and at first standoffish. But Josh Ingram, the wagon master, welcomed them into the caravan. He worked for a trading firm headquartered in Independence, Missouri.
The Santa Fe Trail, pioneered in 1821, was a major trading route with the far southwest. The trail began in Independence, crossing the Missouri line, and meandered a hundred-fifty miles across Kansas to the great northern bend of the Arkansas. The trail then followed the serpentine course of the river for another hundred-twenty miles to Fort Dodge and the nearby civilian outpost, Dodge City. From there, the trail wound southwest for some five hundred miles before terminating in Santa Fe, the capital of New Mexico Territory. Hundreds of wagons made the yearly trek over a vast wilderness where no railroads yet existed.
Lillian was fascinated by the grand scheme of the venture. One aspect in particular, the Conestoga wagons, attracted her immediate attention. Over the campfire their first night with the caravan, Josh Ingram explained that the wagons dated back to the early eighteenth century. Developed in the Conestoga River Valley of Pennsylvania, the wagons bore the distinctive touch of Dutch craftsmen. The design, still much the same after a hundred and fifty years, had moved westward with the expansion of the frontier.
The wagon bed, as Ingram later showed her, was almost four feet wide, bowed downward like the hull of a ship. Overall, the wagon was sixteen feet in length, with immense wheels bound by tire irons for navigating rough terrain. The wagon box was fitted with oval wooden bows covered by sturdy canvas, which resulted in the nickname prairie schooner. Drawn by a six-hitch of mules, the wagons regularly carried up to 4,000 pounds in freight. The trade goods ran the gamut from needles and thread to axes and shovels and household furniture.
Late every afternoon, on Ingram’s signal, the wagons were drawn into a four-sided defensive square. So far west, there was the constant threat of Indian attack and the imperative to protect the crew as well as the livestock. There were army posts scattered about Kansas, and west of Fort Dodge, where warlike tribes roamed at will, cavalry patrols accompanied the caravan. But an experienced wagon master looked to the defense of his own outfit, and before sundown the livestock was grazed and watered. Then everyone, man and beast, settled down for the night within the improvised stockade.
The Fontaines made their own small campfire every evening. They could have eaten with the crew, for the caravan employed a full-time cook. But the food was only passable, and Lillian, anxious to experience life on the trial, had taught herself to cook over open coals. The company scouts, who killed a couple of buffalo every day to provision the men, always gave Lillian the choice cuts from the hump meat. Chester took care of the horses, and Fontaine, adverse to menial chores of any nature, humbled himself to collect firewood along the river. He then treated himself to a dram from his stock of Irish whiskey.
By sundown, Lillian had the cooking under way. She worked over a shallow pit, ringed with rocks and aglow with coals scooped from the fire. Her battery of cast-iron cookware turned out stews and steaks and sourdough biscuits and an occasional cobbler made from dried fruit. Fontaine, who had appointed himself armorer, displayed a surprising aptitude for the care and cleaning of weapons. In Abilene, the hardware store owner had convinced him that no sane man went unarmed on the plains, and he’d bought two Henry .44 lever-action repeaters. His evening ritual included wiping trail dust from the rifles.
“Fate has many twists,” he said, posing with a rifle as he looked around at the camp enclosed by wagons. “I am reminded of a passage from King Lear.”
Lillian glanced up from a skillet of sizzling steaks. She knew he was performing and she was his audience. “Which passage is that, Papa?”
“ ‘When we are born we cry that we are come to this great stage of fools.’ ”
“You believe our journey is foolhardy?”
“We shall discover that by the by,” Fontaine said, playing the oracle. “Some harbinger tells me that our lives will never again be the same.”
“Evenin’, folks.”
Josh Ingram stepped into the circle of firelight. He was a large man with weathered features and a soup-strainer mustache. He nodded soberly to Fontaine.
“Figgered I’d best let you know. Our scouts cut Injun sign just before we camped. Wouldn’t hurt to be on guard tonight.”
Fontaine frowned. “Are we in danger of attack?”
“Never know,” Ingram said. “Cheyenne and Kiowa get pretty thick out this way. They’re partial to the trade goods we haul.”
“Would they attack a caravan with so many men?”
“They have before and they doubtless will again. Don’t mean to alarm you overly much. Just wanted you to know.”
“We very much appreciate your concern.”
Ingram touched his hat, a shy smile directed at Lillian. “Ma’am.”
When he walked off, Fontaine stood for a moment with the rifle cradled over his arm. At length, he turned to Lillian and Chester. “I daresay we are in for a long night.”
Chester took the other Henry repeater from the buckboard. He levered a shell into the chamber and lowered the hammer. “Wish we had practiced more with these rifles. I’d hate to miss when it counts.”
“As the commander at Bunker Hill told his men, wait until you see the whites of their eyes. What worked on British Red Coats applies equally well to redskins.”
Lillian thought it a witty pun. She knew her father’s levity was meant to allay their fears. She was suddenly quite proud of him.
Alistair Fontaine was truly a man of many parts.
A noonday sun was lodged like a brass ball in the sky. The caravan followed a rutted track almost due west along the river. Scouts rode posted to the cardinal points of the compass.
The Fontaines’ buckboard was near the front of the column. Josh Ingram, mounted on a blaze-faced roan, had stopped by not quite an hour ago with a piece of welcome news. He’d told them the caravan, by his reckoning, was less than twenty miles from Fort Dodge. He expected to sight the garrison by the next afternoon.
Lillian breathed a sigh of relief. The likelihood of confronting Indians seemed remote so close to a military post. Even more, from a personal standpoint, she would no longer have to suffer the indignity of squatting behind bushes to relieve herself. Her spirits brightened as she began thinking about the civilized comforts—
A scout galloped hell for leather over a low knoll to the north. He was waving his hat in the air and his bellow carried on the wind. “Injuns! Injuns!”
Ingram roared a command at the lead wagon. The teamster sawed hard on the reins and swung his mules off the trail. The wagons behind followed along, the drivers popping their whips, and the column maneuvered between the river and the rutted trace. The lead wagon spliced into the rear wagon minutes later, forming a defensive ring. Chester halted the Fontaines’ buckboard in the center of the encircled caravan.
A war party boiled over the knoll even as the men jumped from their wagons. The massed Indians appeared to number a hundred or more, and they charged down the slope, whipping their ponies, at a dead run. The warriors rapidly deployed into a V-shaped formation and fanned out into two wings. They thundered toward the caravan whooping shrill battle cries.
The men behind the barricaded wagons opened fire. Before them, the buckskin-clad horde swirled back and forth, the wings simultaneously moving left and right, individual horsemen passing one another in opposite directions. The warriors were armed for the most part with bows and arrows, perhaps one in five carrying an ancient musket or a modern repeater. A cloud of arrows whizzed into the embattled defenders.
Ingram rushed about the wagons shouting orders. Fontaine instructed Lillian to remain crouched on the far side of the buckboard, where she would be protected from stray arrows. He left her armed with a Colt .32 pocket pistol he’d bought in Abilene, quickly showing her how to cock the hammer. She watched as he and Chester joined the men behind the barricade, shouldering their rifles. Here and there mules fell, kicking in the traces, pincushioned with feathered shafts. The din of gunfire quickly became general.
Ten minutes into the battle the warriors suddenly retreated out of rifle range. Several teamsters lay sprawled on the ground, dead or wounded, and beyond the wagons Lillian saw the bodies of dark-skinned braves. She thought the attack was over and prayed it was so, for neither her father nor Chester had suffered any wounds. Then, with hardly a respite, the Indians tore down off the knoll, again splitting into two formations. Lillian ducked behind the buckboard, peering over the seat, racked with shame and yet mesmerized at the same time. She was struck by something splendid and noble in the savage courage of the Indians.
A man stumbled away from one of the wagons, an arrow protruding from his chest. In the next instant, a lone brave separated from the horde and galloped directly toward the wagons. He vaulted his pony over a team of mules, steel-tipped lance in hand, and landed in the encirclement. All along the line men were firing at him, and Lillian, breath-taken, thought it was the most magnificent act of daring she’d ever seen. Suddenly he spotted her, and without a moment’s hesitation he charged the buckboard, lance raised overhead. She froze, ready to crawl beneath the buckboard, and then, witless with fear, cocked the hammer on the small Colt. She closed her eyes and fired as he hurled the lance.
The warrior was flung forward off the back of his pony. He crashed onto the seat of the buckboard, a feather in his hair and a hole in his forehead, staring with dead eyes at Lillian. She backed away, oddly fixated on the war paint covering his face, her hands shaking uncontrollably. She couldn’t credit that she had shot him—between the eyes—actually killed a man. The lance quivered in the ground at her side, and she knew she’d been extraordinarily lucky. A mote of guilt drifted through her mind even as she lowered the pistol. Yet she had never felt so exhilarated, so giddy. She was alive.
The Indians seemed emboldened by the one warrior’s suicidal charge. Their ponies edged closer to the wagons, and the sky rained wave upon wave of arrows. Here and there a brave would break ranks and charge the defenders, whooping defiance, only to be shot down. But it appeared the Indians were working themselves into a fever pitch, probing for a weak spot in the defenses. There was little doubt that they would attempt to overrun the wagons and slaughter everyone in savage struggle. Then, so abruptly that it confounded defenders and attackers alike, the din of gunfire swelled to a drumming rattle. A bugle sounded over the roar of battle.
The Indians were enveloped from the rear by massed cavalry. Fully two troops of horseback soldiers delivered a withering volley as they closed on the warriors at a gallop. The lines collided in a fearsome clash, and the screams of dying men rose eerily above the clatter of gunfire. Lillian saw a cavalry officer with long golden ringlets, attired in a buckskin jacket, wielding a saber slick with blood. The warriors were caught between the soldiers and a wall of gunfire from the wagons, and scores of red men toppled dead from their ponies. Others broke through the line of blue coats and fled across the plains in disorganized retreat. A small group, surrounded at the center of the fight, was quickly taken prisoner.
One of the captured warriors was tall and powerfully built. His features were broad and coarse, as though adzed from dark wood, and his eyes glittered with menace. Lillian watched, almost transfixed, as the cavalry officer with the golden hair reined through the milling horses and stopped near the tall warrior. He saluted with his bloody saber.
“Hao, Santana,” he said crisply. “We have you now.”
The warrior stared at him with a stoic expression. After a moment, the officer wiped the blood from his saber with a kerchief and sheathed the blade in his saddle scabbard. He spun his horse, a magnificent bay stallion, and rode toward Josh Ingram and the men at the wagons. He reined to a halt, touched the brim of his hat with a casual salute. His grin was that of Caesar triumphant.
“Gentlemen,” he said smartly. “The Seventh Cavalry at your service.”
“The Seventh!” someone yelled. “You’re Custer!”
“I am indeed.”
Ingram stepped over a dead mule. “General, I’m the wagon master, Josh Ingram. We’re damned glad to see you and your boys. How’d you happen on this here fracas?”
Custer idly waved at the tall warrior. “Mr. Ingram, you are looking at Santana, chief of the Kiowa. We’ve been trailing him and his war party for near on a week.” He paused with an indulgent smile. “You are fortunate we were not far behind. We rode to the sound of gunfire.”
“Mighty glad you did, General. We might’ve lost our scalps.”
“Yes, where Santana’s concerned, you’re entirely correct. He keeps his scalping knife sharply honed.”
Lillian had joined her father and Chester. She listened to the conversation while studying the dashing cavalry officer. Finally, unable to contain herself, she whispered to Fontaine, “Who is he, Papa?”
“The greatest Indian fighter of them all, my dear. George Armstrong Custer.”
“Thank God he came along when he did.”
Fontaine smiled. “Thank God and the Seventh Cavalry.”