Winchester 1886 (10 page)

C
HAPTER
F
IFTEEN

Sean O'Donnell ducked in the saddle, feeling and tasting the blood that had splattered all over his face. He tried to spit it out, but his mouth immediately went drier than a lime burner's hat. More out of instinct than anything else, he ducked in the saddle, reached for the Springfield .45-70 in the saddle boot, and heard the roar and echo of the rifle shot that had torn Lieutenant Troy Henderson practically in two.

Behind him came the screams, curses, and shouts of men. Horses reared. O'Donnell had trouble keeping his own mount under control, staying in the saddle.

Another shot roared. A horse screamed. Fell.

The rifle was in O'Donnell's hands, and he was thumbing back the hammer, trying to look, trying to find the smoke that would give away the Apache's location.

“Sergeant!” one of the men cried. Almost whimpering.

“Behind that butte!” O'Donnell roared.

A hundred yards away. Two of the soldiers were afoot, their horses loping toward the east, unlikely to stop until they ran themselves to death or reached the stables at Fort Riley. Another horse lay dead, its rider trying to kick himself free.

“Lie still!” O'Donnell told him. Through the dust, he saw another trooper catapult from his saddle, landing in the dirt, kicking up white sand and dust, with a sickening thud. Moments later, the report of the rifle reached O'Donnell's ears.

“Behind the butte!” O'Donnell yelled again. He had the Springfield against his shoulder, sweeping the barrel left to right, trying to train on something, an impossible task seeing how his skittish gelding kept stepping one way, then the other, nervous from the smell of blood and death.

Somewhere, the Winchester '86 stolen by the Apache boy once known as John York, spat again.

O'Donnell's horse was falling, but not from the bullet. That round had slammed into the head of the trooper—Martini was fresh off the boat and train from Sicily, could hardly speak a word of English—who had been pinned underneath the horse. He had managed to get free from the dead horse, stand, and get the back of his head blown off. Because he didn't listen to O'Donnell's orders to lie still.

No, because he didn't understand. Because Sean O'Donnell didn't speak Italian.

He triggered a shot just as the gelding stepped into a prairie dog hole. Then he was going over the horse's neck, hitting the ground, hearing the big dun climb to its feet, scurry off after the other riderless mounts.

He dug himself into the sand, would have dug his way clear to China if he could. A bullet slammed into the ground inches from his face, peppering his forehead and cheeks with grit.

The Springfield, hot to the touch, smoke snaking from the barrel, came up to him, and he worked the breech, had to pry the brass casing out of the chamber and slam in another cartridge.

“Sergeant!” It was Andy Preston.

O'Donnell rolled onto his back, watching the trooper who had served in his platoon for ten years spurring a black gelding straight for him. With a curse, Sergeant Major Sean O'Donnell raised his hand, trying to wave the trooper off, trying to get him to follow the rest of the boys back behind that butte.

The .50-caliber cannon ripped another round, but Preston kept riding, jerking hard on the reins, sliding the black to a stop. Preston lowered his hand, but O'Donnell was standing, turning, firing, and barking an order. “Get back behind that rock,” he snapped. “I'm borrowing your horse.”

“What the—”

He didn't have time to argue and grabbed Preston's proffered hand, jerking the unsuspecting soldier out of the saddle. An instant later, Sean O'Donnell held the reins to the black, and his left foot found the stirrup. As he swung into the saddle, he barked an order at Andy Preston. “Run like the devil. While that Apache buck reloads!”

He raked the black's sides with his spurs, and took off, leaning low in the saddle, almost over the gelding's neck. Moving north and east, he angled toward a series of buttes and arches.

O'Donnell made one mistake. He looked at the body of Second Lieutenant Troy Henderson, mouth open, never to finish the sentence, the curse, whatever it had been the green pup was trying to say, and eyes staring sightlessly at the sky darkening with the setting sun.

 

 

Deftly, Yuyutsu fingered the long brass cartridges into the loading gate of the smoking, hot-to-the-touch rifle. Most of the bluecoats, those not lying on the ground dead or dying, had made it behind the slanted butte. A few others were running or riding, kicking up dust.

He muttered a favorite curse among the indaaligande, and brought the big Winchester up, cocked it, jumping to the other side of the hole in the chalk monument. The barrel of the .50-caliber rifle followed the black-faced rider on the black horse.

He was the man. The honorable one. The pale eyes who had managed to follow the trail. Leading horse and rider with the barrel, Yuyutsu waited, squeezed the trigger, and felt the curved stock kick savagely against his shoulder, which throbbed from all the shooting and killing he had already done.

His eyes and nostrils rebelled from the smoke and the punishment the Winchester dished out. Blinking, he looked through the opening and saw that he had missed.

Maybe he should have shot one of the men running. Killed another bluecoat coward. But there would have been little honor in that.

He jacked another shell into the Winchester. Jerked the trigger, flinching even before he fired. He knew the gun would cause more pain on his throbbing shoulder.

Another miss. Horse and rider had reached the safety of the odd shaped chalk monument behind him. Yuyutsu swore a white man's curse again, turned, and tried to find an easier target.

A bullet spanged off the rock over his head. Not close. Probably even a scratch shot, but one of the bluecoats had seen his smoke. Knew where he was. He pulled himself inside, feeling his heart pound against his chest, blinking away the sweat.

He made himself stand, waited, and then jumped across the opening. Another rifle roared from the soldiers far away, but he did not even hear the bullet strike. Those soldiers were not great marksmen, and at four or five hundred yards away, posed no threat.

The one he must kill was over behind the rocks.

When he reached the edge of the tall monument, he looked across the open flatness toward the other chalky series of rocks.

To the southeast, he saw the one that resembled the ruins of an adobe hut, like the corner of a building a pale eyes might have built in Arizona. Beyond that, rose a finger, dark underneath, white at the top. There was an opening, and then a large rock, longer, but not as high as either the adobe ruins or the finger. That one reminded him of one of the old prairie schooners that once traveled across the country, bringing more and more pale eyes into the lands once owned and ruled by Indians.

And behind that rock?

He didn't know. Maybe more buttes and smaller arches. Maybe nothing. Maybe the pyramids ended there, or another rock did not rise from the plains for a hundred or more yards. But Yuyutsu knew one thing. Somewhere behind those chalk formations waited the pale eyes soldier. He would have to kill him. Maybe steal his horse. Then he could either try to kill the other bluecoats or ride away to fight some other day.

To get there, he would have to cross fifty yards of flats. Not an easy shot for those troopers way off hiding, cowering, behind that slanting tower. But an easy kill for the bluecoat waiting for him.

Turning, Yuyutsu found the sun almost slipping behind the series of monuments off to the west. He would have to kill that bluecoat in a hurry, for he was still an Apache—no matter what the School Mothers and School Fathers had tried to beat into him at Carlisle in Pennsylvania—and Apaches did not like to fight at night.

He raised the barrel of the Winchester, thumb on the hammer, and cursed himself again. How many cartridges had he left in the sand by the window in the rock? How many shots had he fired since he had reloaded?
What a fool.

Again, he wet his lips. The pale eyes behind those rocks was smart and patient. He knew that the first to move would often become the first to die. He was almost like an Apache. Yuyutsu knew he could no longer wait. Wait and the sun would set. He was not going to run away from a fight, anymore.

Besides, his feet hurt. He needed a horse. Food. And more rounds for the big rifle in his arms.

He leaped over the lower rocks, and ran, not even looking off toward the soldiers. A rifle roared, far off, but no bullet neared him. Another shot came, or maybe it was the first gun's echo. Either way, he kept running, kept studying the darkening rocks.

A third shot came, but missed, before Yuyutsu was safe behind the rock, slipping into the corner, looking through the opening, and carefully listening.

He waited until his breathing came back under control. Had to wipe his clammy hands on the chalky rocks. He slid along the side of the rock until he neared the opening. Waited. Listened. Looked.

At last, he jumped through the narrow entrance, landed in sand, spit out dirt, came to his knees. Something sounded behind him, and he spun, falling back, bringing the rifle barrel up.

The shape came to him. He touched the trigger, then quickly released all pressure on it.

The horse stood still, sweaty and breathing hard. It pawed the earth with its forefeet. Otherwise, it did not move, and barely even considered Yuyutsu.

Shadows began lengthening, casting darkness all around him. He came to his knees, and considered the finger of rock just behind the dark horse. He even looked up, to the top of the finger, as if any pale eyes could have scaled that. Again, he wet his lips, and looked down the back of the wagon-shaped rock, but all he could make out were darkened shadows.

Suddenly, he felt cool. Night would be there directly. He moved toward the wagon-shaped rock, but quickly stopped and looked back at the horse. Instantly, he was heading straight for the worn-out animal. He slowed, speaking in quiet hushes as he approached the bluecoat's horse. He found its neck, rubbed one hand on the damp hide, and turned around, looking back toward the wagon-shaped rock.

His hand gripped the canvas strap of the canteen and jerked it up, pulled out the cork with his teeth, and brought the container to his lips.

The water was tepid, brackish, tasted of iron, and there wasn't much left, but he emptied it, dropped the canteen, and looked again at the rock butte.

He heard the footsteps.

Letting out a war cry, Yuyutsu scrambled toward the opening, sliding to a stop, bringing the Winchester to his shoulder. He saw a dark shape, but knew that shape had to be the soldier. The gun roared. He grunted. Jacked another round into the Winchester.

Somehow, the bluecoat had managed to dive behind the rock where Yuyutsu had perfected his ambush. Yet there was no cover there. The Winchester roared again.

The bluecoat kept running. Yuyutsu saw chalk and dirt and shrapnel of rocks fly from where the .50-caliber slug had slammed into the rock above the pale eyes' head. Again, the Winchester sang out, just as the bluecoat had reached the opening. He was diving, the pale eyes with the dark beard, and stretching out through the opening.

Yuyutsu's ears rang from the roar of the rifle, but he felt—he was almost certain—that he heard the man cry out before he disappeared through the door in the rock. He thought, though surely it was his imagination, he saw blood splatter against the crumbling white rock, now gold from the setting sun.

Yuyutsu fed another bullet into the rifle, and began hurrying to the rocks, to finish off that pale eyes tracker.

He had managed to make it only halfway, when a lead slug whistled past his ear. Another clipped the sand in front of him.

Whirling, he dropped to a knee and cursed his own stupidity, his deafness. So focused on catching and killing the one bluecoat, he had forgotten about the others. He had dismissed them, figuring they would be hiding behind that rock way off in the distance.

But they were all worthy opponents, solid warriors.

They had come, not on horses, but walking—marching bravely—crossing the flats, leaving themselves open to be gunned down by an Apache with a repeating rifle. And they had surprised him. He fired. Saw all of the soldiers either flatten into prone positions or drop to a knee. Guns roared, and Yuyutsu had no other choice but to stay where he was. To make his stand in the opening and be cut down like a dog and die.

Or run.

He made it back to the rocks, but not before a .45-70 slug slammed through his right leg, breaking the bone in his thigh, and making him scream like a newborn baby, wailing in pain, in misery.

C
HAPTER
S
IXTEEN

O'Donnell sat up, grunting, grimacing, gripping his right side. His left hand came away sticky with blood, and he whispered a curse. Unsnapping the flap on his holster, he pulled out the Remington revolver.

The silhouettes appeared, and he brought up the big .44, trying to keep his right hand steady. The left hand had returned to his side, making a feeble effort to stanch the flow of blood.

“Sarge . . .” one of the shades whispered.

Sergeant Major Sean O'Donnell mouthed a prayer of thanks as he lowered the revolver. “You get him, Andy?”

“Wounded him.” Trooper Andy Preston sank beside O'Donnell. “I see he got you, too.”

O'Donnell moved his hand and let Preston press a handkerchief over the wound. While he worked, O'Donnell leaned his head back against the chalk rock, his lungs still heaving, and pain burning his side.

“I'd say it's just a scratch, Sarge, but . . .”

O'Donnell knew what Preston meant. A .50-100-450 slug did not leave just scratches. It dug ditches. His side would sport one mean-looking scar, something he could brag about.

At least, the wound appeared far from fatal.

Another soldier knelt, ripping the sleeves off his calico shirt. He and Preston tore the garment and wrapped it tight around O'Donnell's waist.

While they were finishing, Trooper Roger Jones hurried over, sliding to a stop. “The Apache's back in them rocks. I know we got him. In the leg. He was hollerin' like a stuck pig for a minute, but he ain't sayin' nothin' no more.”

“Bled out?” the soldier who had sacrificed his shirt asked hopefully.

“I doubt that,” Preston muttered.

O'Donnell jerked his thumb back through the hole in the rock. “He doesn't have much lead to throw. There's a handful of shells on the other side. He left them in the dirt.”

“How many will an '86 hold in the tube?” Preston asked the sarge.

“A .45-70 holds eight if it's a rifle or musket. I'd have to guess that a .50 would hold about the same. Maybe one fewer if it's a carbine.”

“It's a rifle,” Preston said. “So eight shots. Nine if he jacked one into the chamber.”

“Likely less than that in that buck's repeater,” Jones said. “He cut loose with a few shots.”

“Still enough to kill a couple more of us, though,” said the soldier without sleeves.

O'Donnell made himself stand. The sun had dropped well below the chalk pyramids off to the west, and it was growing darker with every passing second. He leaned back against the rock, wet his lips, and looked down at the .44 in his right hand.

“Let's finish this,” Preston whispered.

“You bet,” echoed Jones. “Win us some medals.”

“Posthumously.” Sergeant Major Sean O'Donnell tilted his head toward the sun. “Medals are one thing, if you're alive to get them. You boys itching to get killed?” He waited. “Chasing an Apache in the dark ain't my idea of having fun.” Drawing a deep breath, he said, “Put some guards on both sides of those rocks. Tell them not to shoot Trooper Preston's horse by accident. Tell them don't fall asleep. We'll get Mr. John York come morning.”

 

 

“Was that thunder?” Peggy Crabbe asked.

Her husband Matt was already tugging on the lines to the Michigan A Grade Combination Market and Pleasure Wagon. He called out, “Whoa” to the mules and looked across western Kansas toward the chalk monuments in the distance just beginning to show in the morning light.

“There it is again,” Peggy said, shielding her eyes and fair skin, staring to the southeast. “But there's not a cloud in the sky.”

He considered lying. Telling his new bride that certainly, it was thunder. She'd heard of heat lightning, no doubt. So what she'd heard was heat thunder. Common in western Kansas. A body gets used to things like heat . . . and the wind, which was just beginning to pick up.

He couldn't do it. “No, Miss Peggy, it ain't thunder.”

The sound rumbled across the plains, despite the fact that the wind was blowing away from Monument Rocks.

She knew. “Gunfire?” The word came out like a gasp.

His head bobbed as he scanned the plains. He turned in the comfortable seat with the lazy back, reaching into the back, and pulling up his beaten-like-the-Dickens Spencer carbine.

“Hunters?” she asked.

He shook the lines, yelling at the mules to hurry, and slid the rifle onto the seat between his wife and himself. It struck him as one of his fool notions. But so had marrying the pretty little brunette who thought Terre Haute, Indiana, had been a wild, lawless town.

“Come on, you fool mules!” He found the whip and lashed out with it, just managing to catch a glimpse of his wife's horrified face.

Crabbe had twenty-three years on the twenty-two-year-old girl he had saved from a spinster's existence teaching school in La Crosse. He didn't know what that pretty young gal saw in him. Fresh out of Indiana, she could read, write, speak French, and make mighty fine biscuits.

And him? He had met a Frenchman once, had even hired out to serve as one of the monsieur's guides on a hunt the aristocrat had arranged with a couple generals, a consulate—whatever that was—from Washington City, and the commanding officer at Fort Wallace. That's as close to he'd come to speaking French.
Monsieur
.
Ouí.
And a couple cuss-words that Frenchy, one evening after too much Champagne, had discretely told him . . . words he'd never mention to Peggy.

He could read sign, but not his letters, signed his name with two Xs and wasn't much for cooking anything that he hadn't killed. He'd never been to Indiana—hailed from Kentucky—although he had told Peggy that he had, back when he had been courting her.

He had worked on the Kansas Pacific, hunted buffalo, served as a beer-jerker in one or two hell-on-wheels, served as a deputy during the cattle seasons in Newton and Ellsworth, and scouted for the U.S. Army out of Fort Wallace. It was where he was taking Peggy, more or less.

The Army had closed up shop at Wallace about ten or twelve years ago, and since then he had spent his time working lousy jobs like gathering buffalo bones for fertilizer, even sweeping out the mercantile at Crider's place in La Crosse—which is how he met Peggy.

Actually, he was taking her to a hundred and sixty acres he had filed to homestead just spitting distance from Pond Creek. But first . . .

“Sounds like a gunfight!” he shouted. A regular shooting scrape. He hadn't been in anything like that since '89.

Swaying beside him, Peggy gripped the seat with both hands, her mouth open but her eyes screwed shut, trying to keep from tumbling out of the wagon.

He let the mules pull the wagon—which had set him back thirty-five dollars at La Crosse (and that did not include the mules or the harness or the ring Peggy made him buy for her)—off the track. The chalk monuments slowly grew off the prairie floor.

“Monument Rocks!” he called out, like he was offering a tour of western Kansas.

His wife didn't open her eyes to enjoy the view. 'Course, she couldn't see much anyhow. On account of all the dust the two mules kept kicking up.

Twenty minutes later, he could see the figures of men scurrying around the outcroppings. Smoke puffed from behind one of the rocks, and a moment later came the muffled report of a single-shot Springfield. Other men spread out. They seemed to have some ol' boy pinned up behind a series of chalk ridges.

A lawman he had worked with in Newton—before the peace officer had the misfortune of getting his head stoved in by an anvil—had once warned him to never go rushing into a fight. Not until he knew which side was the one he wanted to join up.

Crabbe pulled back on the lines, bringing the mules to a rough stop. Her set the brake, pulled the rifle off the seat, and leaped from the rig. “Stay here!” he shouted to his new bride.

She kept her eyes closed and her fingers tight against the seat.

Maybe,
he thought as he hurried across the prairie, running in a crouch,
I should have at least kissed her cheek.

Seven hundred yards from the pyramids, he stopped and knelt behind a clump of grass and scrub. He could make out the guidon flapping in that infernal wind and knew some cavalry boys had someone pinned down. He had never trained his sights on anyone wearing the blue.

Deserter,
he figured.

All right. At least one thing had been settled. He knew which side he would pick in this scrape. He didn't care for deserters.

He started to snake through the grass, gripping the Spencer in his sweaty hands.

 

 

The leg no longer hurt. It did not bleed, either, but only because he had packed the ugly wound with the chalky sand. It had swollen up and was beginning to turn black.

Soon, Yuyutsu knew, he would die. From blood poisoning, thirst, or a bluecoat's bullet. He prayed for the latter, a fitting way for an Apache warrior to die.

It had not been much of a raid, after all. The bluecoats had outsmarted him more than once. For that, he blamed the School Fathers and the School Mothers at Carlisle, where they had taught him to follow the white man's road. Where they had made him forget what it was like to be a Chiricahua Apache warrior in battle.

Still, he had made some of them pay. Their women would cut off their hair in mourning for those who were no more. Their names would never be spoken again.

Well, if they had been Apaches—old Apaches, before the reservation days, before Geronimo had surrendered to the general called Miles—they would have done those things. The pale eyes would brag about how bravely their soldiers had died. They would erect marble monuments to their dead. They would tell lies in newspapers and books.

The only monument for Eager to Fight, the last great Chiricahua warrior, was the chunk of stone and sand he leaned against. He stared at the Winchester in his arms. Wondered if he had enough strength to lift the weapon or even to pull the trigger.

A rifle roared and the big slug bore into the butte far off to the right and ten or twenty feet over his head. Not even close. He wondered if the bluecoats planned on chopping down the chalk rock with bullets. Was that how they would flush him out of his hiding place?

“Stop wasting lead!” shouted the leader of the bluecoats—the man who had barked orders since Yuyutsu had killed their chief.

He wondered why they did not rush him. Just end the fight with one charge. He couldn't kill them all. Yuyutsu stared at the Winchester. He probably couldn't even kill one of them.

Last night, when the leg pained him so much, he had thought about turning the big rifle on himself. But that was not a fitting way for a Chiricahua brave to die.

The sun baked him. Had the bluecoats been smart, they could have come at him from that direction. He probably wouldn't have seen them until it was too late.

But the bluecoats were stupid.

They could have charged him during the night, or immediately after they had busted his leg with a rifle shot, when the pain became too intense, when he could not have protected himself from a tiny ant. Or when he had drifted off to sleep, not to awaken until shortly before dawn.

The bluecoats would not wait much longer. The sun kept turning hotter, even though it was late in the year. The men and the horses Yuyutsu had killed would begin to bloat, to stink. The soldiers would want to end the standoff. Soon.

He
wanted it to be over.

He dragged himself to the edge of the rock, leaving behind the soldier's black horse and a trail of blood the ants would follow. There was nowhere else for him to go.

“John York!” the leader of the soldiers called out.

Yuyutsu had tired of the man's voice.

“This is your last warning. Give it up, boy. There's no need for anyone else to die. Listen to me, John York. It's over. Let's end this peacefully.”

John York.
As if he would ever answer to that name.
I am Yuyutsu.

A bullet kicked sand into his face, and he turned, surprised to find the strength back in his body, his wits keen. He blinked rapidly, cleared his vision, and brought up the big rifle. A soldier—a fool bluecoat—was running straight for him, firing a six-shooter. Smoke and flame belched from the revolver's long barrel, yet Yuyutsu felt no bullets tear into his body.

A running man could not shoot straight.

“Winfield!” a voice called out. “You fool!”

The big rifle boomed, jarring Yuyutsu's entire body and knocking him down. He landed with a grunt, felt the wound in his thigh open up again, and pushed himself up with the Winchester.

Just ten yards ahead of him, the foolish bluecoat named Winfield lay writhing on the ground, the sand darkening with his blood. He was crying, begging, coughing.

Yuyutsu sat up again, bringing up the rifle and levering a fresh cartridge. He aimed at the soldier, but did not pull the trigger.

Something in the corner of his eye caught his attention, and he turned and froze.

Another man stood only twenty yards from him, right knee on the ground, elbow braced on his left thigh, holding another type of rifle. “Drop the rifle, boy.”

He was no bluecoat. He wore tan trousers and a muslin shirt. His cheek bulged with tobacco, and his hat wasn't even what they called hats out in this country. It was nothing more than a woolen cap of tweed, the kind Yuyutsu had seen in Pennsylvania. Not Kansas.

“Drop the gun.” The indaaligande spoke with authority, but the big rifle trained on Yuyutsu's chest gave a man much power. “Drop it. Else I drop you.”