Chapter 23
Chapter 23: Closure on the Open Range
“Sim! I've been hit!” Alvin cried. Sim instantly looked back at him, but there was no gunshot wound, no new blood, and Alvin was frantically motioning for him to take care of Brooks, who was stirring again. He demonstrated, swinging the old misfiring Colt like a hammer, and then handed Sim the worthless thing, and motioned for him to knock out Billy Brooks for good, while he watched and waited for their attacker. Sim took the gun gladly, and thumped Billy good, one last time, like a fresh-caught trout.
"Third time's a charm..." Sim groused, getting bored with bludgeoning the Bully.
"Sim! Bring a rag and apply pressure!" Alvin begged. “Follow me” He whispered, as he lit the lantern, set it down, and they pranced into the blackness of the night.
Encouraged by Alvin's advertised injuries, both real and suggested, Col. Head began to brag as he approached in the dark. “Ya see, young man, we knew you were no lawman...” he chuckled. “Some people just don't have the backbone. 'S'no sin, but that's why you been runnin' all over Kansas! But you were easy to track. Chickens always leave a distinct odah- but ya undastan', yer cluckin's startin' ta make me an' the boys nervous.”
He raised his rifle and abruptly lunged around the back end of the wagon, and for a costly, split-second he instantly shot at the rear wagon wheel, conveniently illuminated by the unattended lantern, where he expected them to be. Instead he found himself blinded by the cunning, protective glow of the lantern, as Alvin stood in the dark, and Sim laid flat in the grass, both with pistols ready, about twenty feet away from the wagon. That lost second gave Col. Head's prey the advantage, for he had to locate them- and swinging his rifle, make a choice of whom to shoot first. Before he could make that choice, an explosion of gunfire erupted, and the three men shot until their guns were empty.
The old Confederate revolver misfired two more times, and finally Sim shot a deadly round on the last chamber, and by then the Colonel was free-falling. Col. Head valiantly shot wild between them, and then into the ground with his last round. Meanwhile Alvin had placed one bullet right below Colonel Head's throat; one in his heart-
One in his gut- and then Col. Head took one last round in the buttocks while he was going down. Bully Brooks remained unconscious through it all.
“That last one was from me...” Alvin blurted, as he glared at the dying man. “But the first one was from Stew!... and the second one... was from Pauline...” But Head was dead when he hit the ground, and never heard a word of Alvin's vain proclamation.
Sim walked timidly over to the old man, who had become a fountain of blood, and whose soul had gone to its reward, and shook his head. How could such unmerciful meanness come from somebody he had never seen before? “I guess my shot went high...” he said, somewhat amused, “cause I was aimin' at his head! An' it's unmarked..." Then young Sim could not resist a grim observation... "He's still smilin' though.”
“He died game for sure... so I guess he died happy...” Alvin wise-cracked.
Sim noticed that Head had a watch chain dangling from his vest. "Alvin! You want his watch... or anything else? He won't be needin''em."
"Naw... That would be robber... wait a minute. Look at it Sim... see if you can make out any initials on it." Sim tried, but it was too dark to tell anything. Alvin grabbed up the lantern, and Sim aimed the watch at the light, and they both read the cursive inscription together..."S. B."
"I'll be damned..." Alvin gasped. "He must have considered Stew quite the trophy. We'll take that... I would love to put that into Pauline's pink little palm some day."
They threw their gear in the wagon and stuffed a fresh, clean rag in Alvin's wound and headed east without much conversation. Bully Brooks, hog-tied with his own rope, would eventually come around- and he could clean up the mess, if the stage stop manager did not find them first.
“So Alvin... I guess you were right.” Sim conceded. “About everythin'. An' I wasn't sure if I could do it, when we had ta face that old man. But I did it, but I still just have one last question. You shot 'im four times! Who was that third bullet from?” Sim could not help but smile, because he already knew.
“Sorry Sim, you ought'ta know. it was from my best friend- walking with me on this dark ol' world. I'd have probably been dead if it wasn't for him.”
Alvin and Sim had a long, nerve-wracking ride back to civilization. But before they got very far, they ran into a living wall of billions of grasshoppers, on their way to eat every green thing in Kansas. Judgment had arrived, straight out of the Bible. The sky had become as dark as night, an ominous, roiling tempest, blasting their faces with living hail; assaulting the Morgans, the wagon canvas- with a million thumps, sometimes biting, always scratching and startling them. Several times they had to stop because the Morgan's blinders had become so full of crawling grasshoppers that they could not see, and they became quite agitated. The relentless insects crawled into every crevice in their clothes, in the wagon, and even into their dreams at night. Alvin never said to Sim what he was thinking. But he talked a lot to himself.
Dodge had been called a lot of bad names. And these were the years before the Texas cowboys began to use it as a cattle collection point. Almost everything people said about it was true. “The Babylon of the Plains” certainly was experiencing a judgment- or more likely a warning. The hostile threats, the pestilence, the self-destruction of its inhabitants, and it seemed like God was trying to tell the people there something. And it was not hard to imagine what. And Father Swineberg had played his part: the prophet bringing a call to repentance- to a stiff-necked people who would not listen, then leaving his unpopular message behind. But Alvin had no doubt they were listening now.
Alvin and Sim landed in Emporia in late August and nestled into a quaint boarding house- and even one without prostitutes. And they immediately adapted to peaceful living. By now Sim was a top hand at photography, and they made good money and enjoyed spending it. When Hummingbird came to find them, Sim was so happy he almost cried. When she told of Billy Bowlegs'es death while defending the monks and a dying Comanche medicine man, they both teared up, perhaps finally succumbing to an overdue emotional catharsis. Billy was such a passionate new believer, it made no sense for him to die now. All Alvin could say was to recite a quotation from the Bible his mother always said at such times: “God moves in mysterious ways, His wonders to perform.”
It was a miracle, how Billy had turned his life around so abruptly, after a terrible life of crime, and then went on a mission which he well may have been the only person who could have, or who would have saved the others- with courage even the Cheyennes respected.
Sim and Hummingbird spent the day together before she caught her train to St. Louis, and then life separated them again, for the last time. It was pure love, no courting or lofty promises, no physical expressions, just longing looks and loving smiles. They were young, too young, but they would always think of the other whenever they saw a tintype of an Indian, or a bag of Bull Durham tobacco. And that was often.
Alvin wrote Pauline and gave her his new address, but he never got an answer. He did not blame her, he was not a very good prospect for marriage, and now they both knew it, and he still had some things he wanted to do, and places he wanted to see before he settled down. His infatuation with Pauline may have been nothing more than a selfish fantasy. Hers with him had been a heartbreaking frustration. He would write her again, but he began to tell himself to let her go, and allow her to find someone else; somebody that she deserved. As he watched Sim sit down and write Hummingbird before she was even back in Texas, he saw himself, and realized that love, or at least being “in love,” is sometimes just a wonderful delusion designed to help people endure life. He knew now that it took years for most people to understand and give- and receive lasting love.
Maybe it did not matter whether it was real, or whether it ever materialized, it was still what drove a man to get out of bed in the morning and make something of himself- to strive harder than he ever would for just himself. But real love, the kind that some couples had, was rare, and only God could arrange for two fortunate souls to cross paths and know it when they saw it. And to act on it. That kind of luck took Divine intervention. It was not luck but Providence. And if anything, it seemed that he and Pauline had experienced that very thing- but in a negative way, which pulled them apart.
Pauline returned to taking care of her mother, and the silent, simmering rivalry with her sister. She busied herself with needlepoint and crochet projects, and preparing dishes and desserts for church suppers. There were men who wanted to court her, even though she was reaching the age where men were a bit less interested, but the problem was, she had always had interesting men- and preferred their memory to the bookkeepers and clerks in Chicago. Alvin was her excuse for being unattached, and yet an obsession with the impossible.
Alvin had been right about there being all kinds of love between men and women. Their's was truly a lasting one, which had been conditioned so long that it no longer was affected by proximity or distance, or communication or the lack of it. Their relationship, in her mind, had risen above time and touch, and tangibles. Sure it could be physical, and was definitely emotional, but what made it special was a spiritual love, the kind older couples talk about. The kind evidenced when they have lost a longtime mate, but still feel them in the present. It was not her choice, and it was not much to snuggle with on a cold night, but Pauline had accepted it as her fate.
Whatever her future, Pauline knew one thing for sure; she would never again go chasing after a man, even Alvin, even if he asked her to. She had her pride after all, and her mother had even apologized for encouraging her to throw caution to the wind. Her trip to Dodge was a desperate escapade, and nearly had disastrous results. That was what can happen when women get too desperate. Making a fool of oneself was bad enough, but she was glad to have gotten home in one piece. She now found comfort with knowing all of that, and finding comfort from God. If she was meant to marry, God would have to bring that person to her. If it was Alvin, he would have to come to her. Or she would wait until “Kingdom come.”
Jim must have walked fifty miles to the northwest after escaping the brig at Ft. Sill. Then he began to hear shouting and gunshots in the Washita Valley. It was not hunters, but hot gunfire between fierce enemies, and from the sound of it, many men would be bleeding. It would add days to his trek to go around, so he snaked his way closer, and over hours came upon the scene of a violent massacre. It appeared to be one group of White men, shot up and bleeding all through the river bottom, most of them already dead, who were obviously the losers, and another group of White men who had done the killing, who were more or less the winners. And from what he could tell, the latter group was trying to hang several of the former, when a gun battle broke out which temporarily freed up the men being hung, but only shortly before they were each shot in the head at close range. In haste, the ropes were left around their necks. A sizable horse herd also appeared to have changed hands in the fray, so he surmised that the dead men were rustlers who finally got their comeuppance, and the ones who had prevailed were probably one of the vigilante groups which Marshal Meagher had mentioned.
Frustrated with the bogged wheels of justice, outraged men had finally jumped the fence of civilization, and taken things into their own hands. This of course, was exactly what he had done, only with his Cheyenne friends. As time passed, most people would eventually understand why he had done what he did. Now men were doing what he did all over the Nations. It wasn't right, when a person considered the U. S. Constitution, but it would be years in the West before that paradigm could be enforced.
The rustlers had put up quite a fight, and seemed to have died to the last man. Until Jim came upon the last man. A wounded rustler was leaning against a dead tree, singing Sunday School songs, or at least what he could reconstruct of them, when Jim heard him echoing through the river bottom. He walked in his direction, to see if the man could tell him what had happened. The singing became faint, but he could follow it until he came to a place where beavers had blocked the creek and created a small lake. There across this beaver pond, was a young fellow bleeding and singing his heart, and in fact his very life out.
Jim whistled, not wanting to be shot if he came any closer. The singer looked up and waved, acknowledging Jim, but probably could not tell whether he was friend or foe. And it did not matter anyway. “Just passin' by friend.” Jim yelled. “Heard all the shootin', Are you alright?” He continued to approach the man who was obviously crippled, if not mortally wounded, as he continued to sing in floating, eerie spurts.
It took awhile for Jim to find solid ground to walk on, as the beaver pond stretched for quite a ways. Finally Jim gave up and just stepped into the water and sloshed through the last fifty yards. When he got to the fellow, he was still alive but barely conscious. He was a nice looking young man, about nineteen or twenty. His clothes were store bought, and his guns were the best you could buy. He had no hat, and his boots were covered in mud. His horse, which was tethered nearby, had trouble in the mud around the beaver dam, and desperate to cross it, probably fleeing from the posse, the young outlaw had dismounted and tried cross it on foot, Swamp Fox style. But apparently his wounds began to sting and the pain overtook him and he had crawled back out of the water on his hands and knees, and the last thing he did was tie his faithful horse before he collapsed and leaned and slid down against this beaver-chewed tree. And there he laid, with perhaps just minutes to live.
Jim had no water, so he checked on the horse but the last man had not been carrying any either. It occurred to him that men such as this one were who had caused him and his Indian friends so much grief. Yet now he was just a pitiful, dying boy. Some mother's pride and joy. It was too bad she had not taught him better. He fished out a tin cup from his saddle bag and dipped up some pond water.
“Can you hear me boy?” he asked softly, trying to offer him a drink. "What's your name? Maybe I can at least send word to your folks.”
The young man did not answer, but he still breathed. Then he opened his eyes and studied Jim, who looked to him like a Indian. He tried to speak, but his face showed terror, and he surely would have loved to have killed an Indian; one last courageous act with his last breath, but he was too weakened to even speak. Still he had enough strength to find his knife, and stick Jim in the back, but he did not have the strength to force the knife through Jim's buckskin shirt. It hurt, but it only drew a little blood, and the knife fell to the ground. But while Jim felt at his back, feeling for the knife, the last man grabbed his knife again and aimed it at Jim's throat, but Jim caught his wrist in time and held it, and slowly... forced... it back. His palm slashed, he still overpowered him and pressed the man's wrist against his chest, his own blood now mingling with the dying man's whom he would have saved. Finally, the lost, crazed, dying rustler used up all of the strength he had, his lifeblood steadily draining out of him, just trying to kill Jim. And just because he was there. Then he expired, with horror frozen on his face.
Jim wrapped his hand with the man's bandanna, snatched up his new Winchester rifle and mounted his handsome horse Indian style, and was out of the bottoms in thirty minutes. He was feeling lucky, until he ran smack dab into another party of rustlers, coming to the aid of their associates. “It's FRENCH!” one of them screamed, and they spurred their mounts with sudden zeal. He would not have known who they were, but he heard someone say his name, and realized that at least some of this group had been the same ones who were released from Ft. Sill right after he escaped. He ran for his life, and as it turned out, he could not have commandeered a better horse to do it.
It was uncanny, all the running he had just done, and he still ended up being served to them on a silver platter. And, wouldn't you know it, riding their companion's horse! If they caught up to him it would be instant death. Jim wheeled around, and headed back into the Washita bottoms. He had seen several places where he could confound them, and one of them was that damned beaver dam.
Jim took the ancient Indian trail which generally followed the Washita but was a great deal straighter, and would require most of the rustlers to follow him in single file, knowing this might slow some of them down... But any of them who knew the country could get away from the bottom and head him off up ahead. The idea was to separate them into confused groups, until the group he eventually ran into, if he was unable to evade them, was much smaller. He crossed the tributary leading to the Washita back and forth, to challenge their tracking ability, but did not count on it being that successful. He had learned over the years that a fugitive must use every trick he knew. Fortunately, the horse he was on proved to be an excellent mount, well trained and faster than most horses found in the Nations. It carried him as if Jim was a new and valued friend, or perhaps he loved to race, and gladly stayed way ahead of the pursuers, and more importantly, out of gun range.
Jim pulled up in an elm grove on a rise in the landscape and tried to get his bearings. He had lost the rustlers, at least temporarily. Then he saw a party of Cheyennes crossing the river about a quarter mile away, and spurred his horse in that direction. This was a stroke of luck, and it would even up the odds considerably. To his great surprise, in just minutes he was enjoying a reunion with George Bent and a dozen Cheyenne warriors."What are you boys doin', coon huntin' out here in the bottoms?" Jim teased.
"We heard they were herding the rustlers to the Washita and hanging them all over. We wanted to see it." George said with no satisfaction. "Thought maybe we would get in on it!"
"You still can." Jim answered, and told him his predicament, and they were all too happy to assist him. They had just been to the battle site where they were pleased to see that the vigilantes had wiped out many of their enemies in one afternoon. Now they would kill the rest of them, and the vigilantes would get the credit- and the blame!
They would send Jim back in their direction, to make sure that the outlaws saw him, and use him for bait to lead them into an old-fashioned Cheyenne ambush. Jim took off, his horse now rested, ready to continue the most dangerous game of hide-and-seek in his life. George Bent held up his hand, to get the brave's attention, then said emphatically, “NO Arrows- NO SCALPS!” in Cheyenne. “AND... SHOOT the horses! All of them.” These instructions made little sense to the warriors, but those carrying bows obediently spread out on either side of a natural pass to hide and watch, while those with rifles stood up front, and lined the pass just out of sight where Jim would lead their prey... Men with rifles followed the creek back a both ways and hid so they could come up from behind and prevent any escape.
The rustlers entered the bottleneck without slowing down, and suddenly blood and hair began to explode from the gunfire, in every direction, as men and horses collapsed and writhed, and for the most part, laid in shock. One or two rustlers were able to barely sit up and examine the situation before one of the Cheyennes knocked their brains out with clubs. And then it was all over, like a barber removing a painful splinter. It was bloody, but it already felt better.
Bent reminded his fighters that no scalps would be taken, no guns... no saddles. Nothing useful to them. The warriors argued but knew they had agreed to his terms before it ever started. They had the satisfaction of avenging wrongs that the raid on Adobe Walls could never have provided. That would have to be enough. But more frustrating, they were told to never brag about the ambush, to anyone. This was even harder to accept. How could warriors, who sat around and compared acts of courage, resist telling of their participation in this great Cheyenne retribution?
“You will resist." Bent assured those who were complaining. "You will never speak of this! Unless you want to be thrown into the White Man's prison. And die singing to the four walls of a prison cell instead of the Four Winds. You will NEVER SPEAK OF THIS." He looked around into each set of eyes, making contact and sealing the secret. When he was sure he had their cooperation, Bent led his accomplices back to the reservation, to begin corraling the Cheyenne there before they were annihilated.
No comments:
Post a Comment