Part 28 (1/2)

As stage-driver, Indian fighter, and peace officer Wild Bill Hickok did a man's work in cleaning up the border. He was about to go and join the Custer expedition as a scout when one who thought the murder would give him renown shot him from behind as he was sitting in at a poker game in Deadwood. He died drawing his two guns, and the whole West mourned his pa.s.sing. It had never known a braver spirit.

The silent ranks grow thicker: young men, sunburned and booted for the saddle; the restless souls who forsook tame Eastern farm-lands, lured by the West's promise of adventure, and received the supreme fulfilment of that promise; the finest of the South's manhood drawn toward the setting sun to seek new homes. They come from a hundred boot-hills, from hundreds of solitary graves; from the banks of the Yellowstone, the Platte, the Arkansas, and the two forks of the Canadian.

There are so many among them who died exalted that the tongue would weary reciting the tales. This tattered group were with the fifty who drove off fifteen hundred Cheyennes and Kiowas on Beecher Island. The Battle of the Arickaree was the name men gave the stand; and the sands of the north fork of the Republican were red with the blood of the Indians slain by Forsythe and his half hundred when night fell.

These three who follow in boots, jean breeches, and Oregon s.h.i.+rts are Billy Tyler and the Shadler brothers, members of that company of twenty-eight buffalo hunters who made the big fight at Adobe Walls.

The sun was just rising when Quanah Parker, Little Robe, and White s.h.i.+eld led more than eight hundred Comanches and Kiowas in the first charge upon the four buildings which stood at the edge of the Llano Estacado, one hundred and fifty miles from the nearest settlement. The Shadler boys were slain in their wagon at that onslaught. Tyler was shot down at midday as he ventured forth from Myers & Leonard's store.

Before the afternoon was over the Indians sickened of their losses and drew off beyond range of the big-caliber Sharp's rifles. They ma.s.sacred one hundred and ninety people during their three months'

raiding but the handful behind the barricaded doors and windows was too much for them.

Private George W. Smith of the Sixth Cavalry is pa.s.sing now. You would need to look a second time to notice that he was a soldier, for the rifle under his arm is a long-barreled Sharp's single shot and he has put aside much of the old blue uniform for the ordinary Western raiment. That was the way of scouting expeditions, and he, with his five companions, was on the road from McClellan's Creek to Fort Supply when they met two hundred Indians on that September morning of 1874.

Up near the northeast corner of the Texas Panhandle, where the land rises to a divide between Gageby's Creek and the Was.h.i.+ta River, the five survivors dug his grave with butcher-knives. They pulled down the banks of a buffalo wallow over his body in the darkness of the night; and they left him in this shallow sepulcher, unmarked by stone or headboard. There his bones lie to this day, and no man knows when he is pa.s.sing over them.

The six of them had left General Miles's command two days before. At dawn on September 13, they were riding northward up the long open slope: Billy Dixon and Amos Chapman, two buffalo hunters serving as scouts, and the four troopers, Sergeant Z. T. Woodhull, Privates Peter Rath, John Harrington, and George W. Smith. You could hardly tell the soldiers from the plainsmen, had you seen them; a sombreroed group, booted to the knees and in their s.h.i.+rt-sleeves; all bore the heavy, fifty-caliber Sharp's single-shot rifles across their saddle-horns.

The bare land rolled away and away, dark velvet-brown toward the flus.h.i.+ng east. The sky was vivid crimson when they turned their horses up a little knoll. They reached its summit just as the sun was rising.

Here they drew rein. Two hundred Comanches and Kiowas were riding toward them at the bottom of the hill; the landscape had tricked them into ambush.

There pa.s.sed an instant during which astonishment held both parties motionless: the white men on the crest, unshaven, sunburned, their soiled sombreros drooping over their narrowed eyes; and at the slope's foot the ranks of half-naked braves all decked out in the war-path's gaudy panoply. Their lean torsos gleamed under the rays of the rising sun like old copper; patches of ocher and vermilion stood out in vivid contrast against the dusky skins; feathered war-bonnets and dyed scalp-locks fluttered, gay bits of color in the morning breeze. The instant pa.s.sed; the white men flung themselves from their saddles; the red men deployed forming a wide circle about them. A ululating yell, so fierce in its exultation that the cavalry horses pulled back upon their bridles in a frenzy of fear, broke the silence. Then the booming of the long Sharp's fifties on the summit mingled with the rattle of Springfields and needle-guns on the hill's flank.

Now, while the bullets threw the dust from the dry sod into their faces, five of the six dropped on their bellies in a ring. And by the sergeant's orders Private George Smith took charge of the panic-stricken horses. Perhaps that task fell to him because he was the poorest shot, perhaps it was because he had the least experience; but it was a man's job. He stood upright clinging to the tie-ropes, trying to soothe the plunging animals; and he became the target for a hundred of those rifles which were clattering along the hillside below him. For every warrior in the band knew that the first bullet that found its mark in his body would send the horses stampeding down the slope; and to put his foes afoot was the initial purpose of the plains Indian when he went into battle.

So Private Smith clinched his teeth and did his best, while the deep-toned buffalo-guns roared and the rifles of the savages answered in a never-ending volley all around him. The leaden slugs droned past his ears as thick as swarming bees; the plunging hoofs showed through the brown dust-clouds, and his arms ached from the strain of the tie-ropes.

Billy Dixon had thrown away his wide-rimmed sombrero and his long hair rippled in the wind. He had been through the battle at Adobe Walls and men knew him for one of the best shots in the country south of the Arkansas River. He was taking it slowly, lining his sights with the coolness of an old hand on a target-range. Now he raised his head.

”Here they come,” he shouted.

The circle was drawing inward where the land sloped up at the easiest angle. A hundred half-naked riders swung toward the summit, and the thud-thud of the ponies' little hoofs was audible through the rattle of the rifles. The buffalo-guns boomed in slow succession like the strokes of a tolling bell. Empty saddles began to show in the forefront. The charge swerved off, and as it pa.s.sed at point-blank range a curtain of powder smoke unrolled along the whole flank.

Private George Smith pitched forward on his face. His rifle flew far from him. He lay there motionless. A trooper binding his wounded thigh glanced around when the a.s.sault had become a swift retreat.

”Look!” he cried. ”They've got Smith.”

”Set us afoot,” another growled and pointed after the stampeded horses.

Smith lay quite still as he had fallen. They thought him dead. Within the hour, a dozen whooping Comanches ran their ponies up the hill toward his limp form. To gain that scalp-lock under fire would be an exploit worth telling to their grandchildren in after years. And there was the long-barreled rifle as a bit of plunder. But the five white men, who had changed their position under a second charge, emptied four saddles before the warriors were within a hundred yards of the spot, and the eight survivors whipped their ponies down the slope again.

The sun was climbing high when Amos Chapman rolled over on his side and called to Billy Dixon that his leg was broken. Dixon lifted his head and surveyed the situation. The Indians were gathering for another rush. Thus far they had taken things as though they were so sure of the ultimate result that they did not see fit to run great chances. But this could not last. The next charge might be the final one. Down on a little mesquite flat about two hundred yards distant, he saw a buffalo wallow. He pointed to it.

”We got to make it,” he told the others, and they followed him as he ran for the shelter. But Amos Chapman crawled only a dozen paces or so before he had to give it up. The four fell to work with their butcher-knives heaping up the sand at the summit of the low bank which surrounded the shallow circular depression. They dropped their knives and picked up their rifles, for the savages were sweeping down upon them.

So they dug and fought and fought and dug for another hour and then Billy Dixon was unable to stand the sight of his partner lying helpless on the summit of the knoll.

”I'm going to get Amos,” he announced, and set forth amid a rain of bullets. Those who saw him after the fight was over--and General Miles was among them--said that his s.h.i.+rt was ripped in twenty places by flying lead. He halted on the hilltop and took up Chapman pick-a-back, then bore him slowly down the slope to the little shelter.

Noon came on. The sun shone hot. Dixon had got a bullet in the calf of his leg when he was bearing his companion on his back. Private Rath was the only man who was not wounded. They all thirsted as only men can thirst who have been keyed up to the high pitch of endeavor for hours. The savages charged thrice more; and when they came, numbers of them always deployed toward the top of the knoll where Private Smith lay dying: dead his companions thought, but they were grim in their determination that the red men should never get the scalp which they coveted so sorely. The big Sharps boomed; the saddles emptied to their booming. Private Smith wakened from one swoon only to fall into another. Sometimes he wakened to the thudding of hoofs and saw the savages sweeping toward him on their ponies.

Near midafternoon the warriors formed for a charge and it was evident from the manner of their ma.s.sing that they were going to ride down on the buffalo wallow in one solid body. But while their ranks were gathering there came up one of those sudden thunderstorms for which the Staked Plains were famous. The rain fell in sheets; the lightning blazed with scarcely an intermission between flashes. And the charge was given up for the time being. The braves drew off beyond rifle-shot and huddled up within their blankets.