General Anderson waited until the party of advancing Indians halted. Then he smiled and said: “Now we’re getting somewhere.” He turned in the saddle. “Major, you take command of the column while I’m up ahead. If I’m foolish enough to get myself killed, your orders are to go ahead and destroy the village. Is that understood?”
The major nodded.
“Yes, general.”
“Good. Tom, I want you and Sergeant Dolan. Where’s Sergeant Dolan?” The sergeant’s name was cried down the line and that worthy appeared, trotting his horse along the column. He saluted when he came to a halt. “Be ready with your weapons, lads, you’re going to need ’em. We’re going to give these treacherous devils a lesson they’ll likely never forget. Forward, now.”
The general led the way on his magnificent white horse, the scout and the sergeant following closely behind. Two hundred yards out from the troops, the general halted and raised his hand in salute to the Indians who were perhaps another two hundred yards further on. There was a slight hesitation on the Indians’ part before Many Horses, matching the size of the general’s party, came forward with two other chiefs.
He came slowly and with dignity, walking his pony as though nothing in the world would hurry him.
The Indians out on either hand started to edge in, a fact that Anderson did not miss. As soon as Many Horses came to a halt, Anderson said: “Tom, tell him if those damned Indians come any nearer my men will fire on them.”
Mangold interpreted. The chief cried out in a loud voice and made signs to the warriors. They halted, eyeing the general hungrily, but scarcely within gunshot.
Anderson was giving the renowned chief a close inspection, thinking to himself: So this is the great Many Horses the eastern newspapers write so much about. Why, he’s nothing but a dirty old savage. Is this the man everybody’s afraid of?
He looked beyond the chief to the sub-chiefs behind him, sitting like bundles of muck in their buffalo robes on their scrawny ponies. By God, it was almost an insult to ask a soldier to fight them. But when his eyes went further back to the knot of horsemen beyond the one immediately in front of him, he received something of a shock. There were the remaining chiefs and the warriors from the village and the warriors were ready to charge. They held their lances and their rifles at the ready. Any wrong move on the part of the general was going to bring them down on him fast. Something inside the man momentarily quailed. But he was determined. He had ridden out here with only two men with his mind made up. He was going to take the fight out of the Cheyenne here and now.
“Tom,” he said, “give the chief greetings and tell him that I have come here to punish the transgressors.”
Mangold translated freely, going on and on for several minutes. Anderson waited with rising impatience. The chief replied in sonorous tones. Mangold put his words into American.
“He’s askin’ what transgressors you’re talkin’ about, general,” the old scout said.
“Tell him I mean the renegades who have been burning whitemen’s homes and stealing their women and children.”
Mangold put this into Cheyenne. The chief answered, his eyes suddenly angry now. And the Indian’s anger angered the general. Jumped-up barbarian sonovabitch!
Mangold said: “He says he don’t know what the hell you’re talkin’ about, general. He says that no young men have gone from this village. He’s at peace. He says a soldier chief gave his word that no harm would come to his village if he flew an American flag over it. The flag’s flyin’ right now.”
“He’s a liar.”
“Mebbeso, but I ain’t tellin’ him that.”
“Tell him if he withdraws his warriors and allows me and my troops to enter the village without trouble we will talk and maybe come to some agreement.”
The old scout gave him a queer look. He looked a bit surprised.
“You mean that, gineral?”
“It’s what I’m saying.”
Mangold put it to the chief. The reply came back.
“We are talking here. Here is a good place to talk. Let it be decided here. Peace or war. The Cheyenne want peace.”
When this reached Anderson through Mangold, the general looked furious.
“Ask him why the hell his warriors attacked me then?”
“He says they are not his warriors. They are men who want war. He and the people in the village do not want war. They’re peaceable. If the soldier chief has to fight the Indians he sees, let him stay away from the village. The people there do not want war, they want only friendship with the whites.”
“My God,” the general cried, “does he take me for some kind of a fool? He wants it both ways. He strikes me with his left hand and offers me his right.” He almost choked in his anger. “Tell him to get those men on my flanks out of it or take the consequences.”
Mangold put this back to the chief who, when he had heard, sat motionless for some time, staring at the general deep in thought. One of the old men leaned forward and spoke in a low voice to Many Horses.
The general asked Mangold –
“What’s he say?”
“I didn’t catch it all, gineral. But it sounded like ‘Strong Bear’s right’.”
“Who’s Strong Bear?”
“My guess it’s the feller leadin’ the bucks that jumped us.”
“So that’s the way the wind blows, is it? Stand by, boys, for action. Follow my lead.”
Dolan grinned. Mangold looked startled.
“What do you aim to do, gineral?” the scout asked.
“I’m grabbing that chief and taking him back to the column.”
“Hell, you can’t get away with that.”
“Watch me. I’m putting the old rogue under arrest.” He turned his head to Dolan. “I’ll cover him, you grab the pony’s line, sergeant, and away we go.”
Many Horses started to talk.
He hadn’t spoken a dozen words when the general drew his right-hand gun and levelled it at the chief cocked.
Mangold cried out an order in Cheyenne. Sudden alarm showed on the faces of the three Indians. Many Horses’ right hand snapped down to the Navy Colt in his belt; Mangold snapped another order. The chief lifted his hands. A running murmur went up from the watching warriors.
“Quick, now, lads,” the general cried excitedly.
One of the sub-chiefs shouted and urged his pony forward. Dolan darted his horse forward, he leaned from the saddle and snatched the chief’s line from his hand. The general fired past Many Horses and the sub-chief was knocked clean out of the saddle. The horses jumped at the sound of the shot. The shot man’s pony scampered away to one side.
A great roar went up from the watching Cheyenne, men started to urge their horses forward from the flanks. All three whitemen were aware that they were in terrible danger and only the utmost speed could save them. The warriors who had come up from the village with Many Horses were kicking their mounts into a run. Several rifles snapped off.
Dolan heaved his horse around, jammed home the spurs and went racing toward the column, the chief’s horse running wild-eyed behind him. The general and the scout followed suit, spinning their horses and going after him as fast as they could.
But Many Horses wasn’t to be taken so easily. In spite of the gun in the general’s hand, the chief now ripped the Colt’s gun from his belt and fired back at the general under his left arm-pit. Anderson felt the wind of the bullet and fired back, but the chief was no longer on the back of his paint-stallion. With desperate courage he had flung himself from the back of his racing pony.
For a second, it looked as though he had landed on his feet, but after three quick paces, he stumbled and went down. In a second, the general was on him, bending from the saddle with his revolver at the full extent of his arm, firing point-blank into the chief’s body. Many Horses was thrown sideways by the force of the shot. He rolled over twice and lay still, but the general never saw that, for he was intent now only on reaching the column, needing its sanctuary desperately from the Indians who, at the sight of their chief being shot, gave a howl of horror and rage. They drove their winter-weakened horses forward after the fugitives as fast as they could go, but they were no match for the corn-fed army horses who were soon among the troops.
If the three whitemen thought themselves to be safe back among their comrades, they were mistaken. The shooting of the chief had so maddened the Cheyenne that they now rode clean up to the smoke-wreathed muzzles of the soldiers’ guns. The clatter and din of the untidy charge and its repulsion was deafening with the guns going off, the screaming of enraged and wounded men, the pitiful whinnying of injured, horses. The devastation wrought by the firing of the troops was terrible. The ground around the column was littered with the dead and the dying, horses kicked and screamed their lives away. But it was not only the Indians who suffered. The whole column reeled under the impact of the charging savages, several of whom through the very recklessness of their charge had been carried still mounted into the very midst of the column itself. Then it became a matter of hand-to-hand fighting for fear of shooting a comrade, every man there a savage, hacking and kicking, doing anything to destroy the foes they feared and hated.
Then, as quickly as it had started, it was over. Soldiers staggered, their faces black with burned powder, exhausted by their violent efforts, their guns empty, rifle butts gory from being used as clubs. The Indians broke off with their customary suddenness, swooping down from the saddle as they went to pick up their dead and wounded. But these proved to be so many that even after the last horseman had withdrawn out of gunshot, there were still dead bodies and writhing wounded scattered around the battered column.
The general walked among his men, throwing a word of encouragement here and there. The man looked exhilarated by the action, his eyes bright with excitement. His face was smudged with burned powder and he coughed on the fumes of the guns, but he was plainly a happy man.
“Well done, lads. I’m proud of you. The greenest recruit is now a seasoned soldier. You’ve received your baptism of fire, boys, and you’ve done well.” He got back to the major at the head of the column. Carpell looked a little battered. His face had been grazed by a bullet and was smeared with blood, but he was calm enough.
“Well, major, what would you do now?” the general demanded.
Carpell knew better than to think that any suggestion of his would be carried out.
“Tend wounded and retire to the wagons as best we can with a strong vanguard out.”
Anderson laughed.
“That’s why one of us is a general and the other a major, I venture to suggest. No, we advance straight for the village in one compact body. The fruit awaits to be plucked. That last charge took the stuffing out of them. The little that was left after their chief had been killed.”
A resigned look came over the major’s face. He looked like a man sentenced to death, but who was brave enough to face it. He was also a troubled man, for the killing of the chief had alarmed him. He hadn’t been able to see the details of the little skirmish, but it looked uncommonly like to him that Many Horses had been killed in cold blood. But this was not the time to raise such a question, though he didn’t have a doubt that it would be asked later. If any of them lived to come out of this to answer questions.
The column was a half-hour collecting itself and during that time not a shot was fired. The dead were hastily dug into shallow graves and the horses walked back and forward over them to hide them so that the savages could not disinter the corpses to mutilate them. The wounded were patched up as well as could be and tied on their horses. Six men dead and eight wounded. Anderson and most of them reckoned they had come off lightly after a charge of that kind. Wounded horses were killed. Only four men were forced to ride double, which was a blessing.
The column went slowly forward. The general reckoned there wasn’t much time if he was going to take the village before sunset and that he was determined to do.