Cheyenne Saturday - Empty-Grave Extended Edition (11 page)

His attention was jerked back to his left where seven riders went down together as if their horses had been tied to a rope and the rope had run out. A sand pit, not very wide and not very long, had trapped the hoofs of their ponies. Ellis saw them and their horses crushed to a pulp by the maddened beasts.

Suddenly his hands burned and he realized that he had fired his carbine until it was nearly red-hot. The flesh of the palm on his left hand was blistered and torn, but he gripped against the pain and continued to fire back into the wall of the heard.

Then, from the center of the tent city, Ellis saw two dozen soldiers appear, riding hard and fast on fresh horses straight into the advancing herd. He shouted for them to get back, to turn around and run with the herd, by they did not appear to hear and charged straight into the rumbling black sea of buffalo.

Suddenly there was a tremendous explosion, then another and another. Then more—again and again explosions shattered the air and smoke and dust and splinters flew high. More explosions followed. Ellis saw the soldiers throwing sticks of dynamite into the on-rushing herd of buffalo.

He did not realize that this pony had stopped, or that the other riders had pulled up at the very edge of the tent city and were watching along with him.

The line of beasts wavered, and then there was a sudden swing away on two sides, and as the buffalo swung, the soldiers moved along the outer edges of the herd tossing more sticks to keep them running.

Ellis watched in fascination, not conscious of his nearly raw hand, not conscious of anything really as he saw the soldiers blast the tide into two streams, turning the buffalo around, driving one stream north and the other south.

 For forty-five minutes the solders blasted the beasts into submission. For nearly an hour they surged up to the very edge of the tent community, facing continuous fire from more than five hundred guns, in addition to the explosive charges.

When the last beast had swung to the right and the dust of the plains had blown away, as far as the eye could see the grass was bent and steaming. As if a fantastic wind had hailed stones to the ground, the plains lay trampled and churned into a dry field of death. Great black mounds of buffalo were piled at the very steps of the tent community. Parts of buffalo lay everywhere: the animals had been literally torn to pieces by the charges of dynamite. And farther back, every Johnny-Jack and soldier knew, were the bodies of friends and working mates, stamped irrevocably into the dry Nebraska plains, so thoroughly torn to pieces by thousands of hoofs that when riders went out in search of possible survivors they would not even find so much as a boot.

* * *

Hardly a moment after the stampeding buffalo had been turned away, and the other riders were slipping exhausted from their horses, there came another attack on the tent city from the east.

Goose Face and his hundred followers swarmed up over the hillock eastward of the tents and, screaming war cries, charged straight for the heart of the railhead camp.

The emergency train filled with women and children was blocked a half-mile away by twenty of the braves who had led spare horses onto the tracks and hobbled them there, a bloody sacrifice to prevent any of the whites from escaping. 

A third of Goose Face's warriors broke away from the main party and began firing arrows point-blank into the loaded train. The wails and screams of women and children broke out over the late afternoon plains.

Hasty fire was returned by the few men and women aboard who had guns, while others labored to remove the dead and injured carcasses of the screaming horses from the tracks. The engineer had not hesitated to plow his powerful balloon-stack hundred-tonner into the animals, praying that the engine would not be thrown from the tracks.

The wheels had held, a miracle on this day when Providence had seemed to abandon the railroad men and their families.

Soldiers dropped like dead flies before the rain of arrows thrown by the circling Cheyenne, but the horses were removed from the track and the engine throttle shoved wide open, the high wheels slipping and sliding in the blood before catching hold and picking up speed. When the train had succeeded in pulling away from the attackers, the Indians fell away and turned their attention to the camp city itself—where Goose Face and his braves were already wreaking havoc.

The attack was timed so perfectly, the thrust and vengeance of the Indians so violent, that the defenders of the camp reeled back, suffering heavy losses.

Goose Face knew that the white men expected the Indians to attack, circle, and withdraw. He saw them trying to form a hard core of fire power in a large, devastated area strewn with fallen tents. He screamed to his men to follow, and those nearest him swerved their ponies around and galloped after their young leader.

Goose Face plowed straight into the thick of the fire, scattering the railroad men and soldiers with the fury of his unexpected attack. Again and again, he whirled and pounded into the middle of the group until the power of its concentrated fire disintegrated to lone bullets from men forted up behind canvas spills and baggage.

The raid could be counted as a success, but Goose Face had sworn himself to kill the white men until death alone prevented him from drawing a bow.

The defenders of the camp, the horsemen who had pounded out to meet and race before the buffalo herd, were now back in the saddle. The enraged Irishmen, the ex-Confederates, the Jehus, the soldiers, the scattering of gun-slingers and drunks, the engineers and graders, the entire corps that had come out here to build a railroad that would link a continent, roared back against the sudden rain of death Goose Face had poured down on them.

The general's caboose had been brought up and guns were distributed to any who could point and fire. Tarts from the grog tents, missionaries on their way west, the injured and bedridden in medical tents, were given guns and cartridge belts. Two hundred, three hundred, four hundred guns began to answer Goose Face, death for death.

The Cheyenne party continued to thrash and fight, not bothering to reload, but firing until their guns were empty, then—hanging low to the ground—they snatched up fresh guns from the dead or wounded. The finest horsemen in the world, the Cheyenne, showed the hated whites that day what a hundred furious savages could do to the order and plans of civilized men. Again and again the ponies of the Indians were shot out from beneath them, and again and again the savages would remount either one of the railhead's own horses, or an animal of a dead comrade.

Like a swarm of maddened hornets, the Cheyenne attackers broke up the tent city. The stench of powder, scorched flesh and burning canvas filled the air.

The defense was dug in now. The whites were not going to die easily, at least not without taking their toll of the attackers. But Goose Face, seeing that his men were being cut to ribbons, rode directly to a cookfire and lit a buffalo-grease-soaked torch. He screamed his orders to the remaining braves, who followed him, dipped their torches into the fire and sailed them at the tops of the largest tents.

In a matter of minutes, twenty tents were blazing furiously, and thick black columns of smoke were billowing to the twilight sky. With another scream, Goose Face signaled his men to retreat. Followed by less than ten of his original party, the white-masked warrior whipped his pony to the south and west, after the buffalo. Behind him, he left over a hundred dead, two hundred wounded, a raging fire and destruction on a scale equal to the bloodiest of the fights between the white and red men on the western plains.

* * *

The furious heat, the searing flames that consumed the canvas tents in minutes, were not the concern of Nathan Ellis. The Texan had wrapped his raw palm in a bandanna and fought back against the attackers with pure violence. Not since the war had this tall man felt such rage fill his throat. Twice he had sighted on Goose Face himself, and twice he had pulled a hammer down on a dead cartridge.

The moment Ellis saw Goose Face stoop to light his torch and order the others to follow, the Texan had known the Indian was about to withdraw. He ran to a frightened horse hobbled to a tent stake and, yelling to Kelly, who had fought beside him during the whole attack, was astride the animal when the Cheyenne leader broke away from the fight.

Kelly saw it too and, shouting for Johnny-Jacks to follow him, began jerking at snorting horses and leaping for the bridles of those that had bolted from the roaring fires.

The Indians were about three thousand yards away when a party of five white men broke from the scatter of tents. Ellis's face was grim, streaked with sweat and blood. As he pounded after the small band of surviving Cheyenne, Ellis knew he would not stop until he had killed Goose Face. His mind was filled with scenes of horror he would not forget until the day he died. Without realizing it, he had pulled ahead of the others and was now five hundred yards closer to the Indians, but the ponies of the braves were stronger and gradually they pulled away from the pursuing enemy.

They rode at dead heat for an hour. They rode until their horses were white with lather and trembling from the beat of their hearts. The white men were forced to slow down and watch the dust of the braves gradually disappear into the ridge country of the South Platte.

Kelly pulled up to a stop. “We'll never get him now,” he said. He nodded to the western sky. The red had disappeared from the heavens and the plains twilight, short-lived and false, was on them. “It'll be dark before you know it. We'd better get back to the railhead and see what we can do.”

“I ain't turnin' back, Mr. Kelly,” a soft voice said behind him. Kelly turned to see a grime-covered Slocum.

“I'm goin' to get that Injun,” Ellis said flatly. “Tonight, or tomorrow, or next week or next month—if it takes me the rest of my goddam life—I ain't stoppin' till I get me that Injun.” 

Slocum nudged his horse and walked it beside Ellis. “Well, you got yourself a pardner.” 

“You goin' back, Kelly?” Ellis asked.

“I don't want to,” Kelly said, looking ahead into the distance. “But there's repair work to be done. Monday morning at sunup, the Johnny-Jacks will be puttin' down rail or I'll know the reason why.” 

Ellis exploded. “You no-good goddam Irish bastard!” he roared. “Men, women and children have been killed today. Good men, fine women and their children—and that heathen Injun is the reason—and all you can think of is buildin' a railroad!” 

Kelly met Ellis's gaze. “Mr. Ellis,” he said heavily, “there ain't nothin' this side of hell goin' to stop this railroad from gettin' built. A hundred—two hundred—a thousand! What does it mean when—” 

Ellis jerked his pony around. “Let's go,” he said to Slocum.

Kelly and the others watched the two riders head out into the black of the onrushing night.

“They don't need us,” Kelly said. “We'd just be in the way.” He pulled his pony around. “Let's get back, you muckrakers!” he bellowed. “We've got work to do before we can start buildin' our railroad Monday mornin'.” 

Chapter 8

HOW YOU GONNA TRAIL them Indians in the dark, Mr. Ellis?”

Ellis did not reply. He extended his hand sideways and found Slocum's arm. He pressed it tightly.

It was close to nine P.M. Ellis thought his body would break from fatigue. His back ached, his head ached and his eyes burned from his stretch in the sun earlier that day. His left hand was useless to him and he held it inside his shirt. For a long time now he had been biting down on a lead bullet, fighting back the agony in his body. He could not remember ever being so tired or so full of pain in so many places at one time in his whole life.

For more than two hours they had been heading due south, hitting the ridge country, listening to the plains wolves howl. There wasn't any moon and Ellis breathed a prayer of thanks for that. The ponies were tired, but Ellis was glad to be riding in a saddle again after spending so much time bareback on a broomtail. The grass was not as high out here as back near the railroad and he was grateful for that, too. Goose Face could not lie in wait too easily and ambush them along the trail.

For some time now, Slocum had been insistent in his question. Ellis, in spite of his pain, had to grin at the young Southerner who could not understand how Ellis was trailing the Cheyenne party in the dark. He had not had a chance to tell Slocum that there was no trail to follow in the black night, but that he was riding south to a place at which he felt sure Goose Face would stop. Even after a war party, Ellis knew that the Cheyenne would be reluctant to travel all night. It had been just as tough a day for Goose face as it had been for Ellis in certain respects, and the tall Texan knew the broomtails the Cheyenne were riding would be just as tired as his own. Somewhere up ahead, Ellis remembered, there was a small creek that fed into the Platte. He was not as  familiar with the country as he would have liked to be at the moment, but in his early-morning scout he had spotted the signs of gulleys and dry washes and small gulches running off in a varied pattern, but in the same general direction.

Ellis was staking time and his life on the chance that Goose Face and his men would be camped near that creek, somewhere ahead of them, out in the darkness.

A little further on they hit an eight-foot dry wash and dropped into it. Their horses hoofs were soundless in the powdery sand bed and the further they moved south, angling a little to the west now, the wider the bed became. Ellis began to sniff the air and watch the head of his animal closely. He knew the horses would catch the scent of water before he would and from then on, they would have to move with extreme caution.

They had been riding for another twenty minutes when Ellis felt his pony twist its head slightly and stir beneath him. He pulled back and touched Slocum on the arm. “We leave the horses here,” he said. “There's a creek up ahead.” 

“You know this country?” 

“The horses smelled water. I'm bettin' Goose Face is camped somewhere along that creek.” 

Slocum grunted, and both men eased out of the saddle. “Check your guns,” Ellis said.