Devil's Creek Massacre (3 page)

He struggled to hold his Colt ready for one last shot, but couldn't see any Apaches. Another gun fired, his ribs were smashed, and he struggled to breathe, hit in the vitals. In the distance, he heard volleys of gunfire, or maybe it was thunder, or perhaps even the voice of Lord God Almighty calling out to him.

“Oh, my Jesus . . . forgive us our sins . . . save us from the fires of hell . . . lead all souls into heaven . . . especially those most in need of your mercy . . . such as me.”

He wished he could die straight out, but his fighting Texas heart wouldn't let go. He lay still on the ground, struggled to open his eyes, and it appeared that Vanessa Fontaine was standing before him, wearing a white diaphanous gown, peering at him with great concern, as if she wanted to help him. “Vanessa,” was the last word he spoke, then black waterfalls spilled
over his eyes, and he plunged into the bowels of the raging noonday sun.

Mrs. Vanessa Dawes awoke with a start in her Austin hotel room, approximately seven hundred and fifty miles away. The former Charleston belle lay on her maroon velvet sofa, a book open on her breast; she'd dozed off reading Lord Byron. She closed the tome, laid it on the floor beside her, and wondered why she felt uneasy. It was as though something terrible had happened, but often she was disturbed by nightmares and vague premonitions of doom.

Her husband, the former Lieutenant Clayton Dawes, had been killed in action against the Apaches during the summer. His family had been old Yankee money, and his grandmother had bequeathed him a small fortune in securities and investments, which passed to his surviving widow, the former Miss Vanessa Fontaine of Charleston, South Carolina. Now wealthy again as in the halcyon days before the Civil War, she'd launched herself successfully in Austin society, which consisted mostly of ex-Confederate sympathizers such as herself.

In a week, she was scheduled to attend a private ball at the residence of a wealthy Austin banker. The crème de la crème of Austin ex-Confederate society would be there. Vanessa loved to enact the great lady, and certainly never mentioned that she'd been a poor itinerant saloon singer before she'd met Lieutenant Dawes.

Vanessa was bored with widow's weeds and toyed with the notion of marrying again. The most wealthy and presentable men in Austin would attend the ball, and she didn't hate the opposite sex by any means. To the contrary, they came in handy for performing escort
duties and providing certain pleasurable pastimes best not mentioned in polite society.

She drew her long legs around and planted them on the floor. Then she folded her hands together and looked out the window at another bright sunny day on San Marcos Street, not far from the former French legation to the Republic of Texas. She lived among others of her kind in a small out-of-the-way hotel, the Arlington, named after General Robert E. Lee's former estate in Virginia. Servants were available for every conceivable notion in the luxurious establishment, while the kitchen on the ground floor produced excellent meals for every occasion. Vanessa Fontaine could lie on her sofa for the rest of her life, be waited on by servants, and read beautiful poetry, but somehow she wasn't contented.

She knew what she wanted, but considered the idea preposterous. Despite her best efforts, she couldn't forget a certain ex-lover who had shared her bed several months ago. In the cold light of logic, she'd thought him too young and unpromising for a lost wandering ex-Charleston belle, and decided to marry instead the dashing Lieutenant Clayton Dawes. Now, despite the lieutenant's untimely demise, Duane Braddock continued to occupy a considerable portion of her waking hours.

The former Miss Vanessa Fontaine was by no means inexperienced with men. If the truth be told, she'd slept with too many gentlemen, rogues, and liars, but she'd been weak and helpless on numerous occasions. There'd been mornings, during her saloon singing days, when she'd awakened next to individuals whose names she didn't even remember and, in the cold dawn light, didn't want to remember.

Last thing she'd heard about Duane Braddock, he'd shot a professional gunfighter named Otis Puckett, plus several other people, in Shelby, Texas. Some said Duane was a kill-crazy outlaw, while others claimed he was a decent cowboy who'd stuck up for his rights. When last seen, according to eyewitnesses, the Pecos Kid had been alive and well and headed for the Rio Grande.

Vanessa's home consisted of three large rooms with a small kitchen. She filled a glass half with water, then opened the mahogany cabinet and pulled out a bottle marked
LAUDANUM
. She poured a shot into the water, then mixed it with a spoon. The contents rolled down her throat; she returned to the sofa and waited for the opium derivative to kick in.

It was her medicine for whatever ailed her, and she was unhappy most of the time. Sometimes she wondered if she could ever exist in the new Yankee world. Vanessa Fontaine was an unrepentant Southerner, a member in full standing of the great Lost Cause, and she missed the old plantation back in South Carolina, with a colonnade of great oaks leading to white Corinthian columns of the main house, while slaves did all the dirty work.

Poppy juice invaded Vanessa's brain; she saw vast fields of fluffy white cottonballs, dashing cavaliers on prancing stallions returning from a hunt, and the orchestra playing chamber music in the gazebo. The lost paradise returned in all its splendor as she languished on the sofa, a faint smile on her curvaceous lips.

T
ANDOR THE APACHE SAW THE
white eyes lying cold and still in the bushes straight ahead. The white eyes appeared dead, the rifle and pistol lying nearby, blood everywhere. Tandor sang his victory song as he drew closer to the modern new weapons. No longer would he have to load a cartridge every time he wanted to shoot somebody.

Suddenly a fusillade of lead screamed through the air around him. He was so astonished, his song caught in his throat, but in the next second he dived toward the ground. In the distance, a large number of white eyes on horseback were attacking, sending forth terrific volleys of fire! Tandor had been so concentrated on the lone white eyes, he didn't consider that someone might stalking him. He crawled with his nose close to the ground and peered cautiously around a boulder. Fifteen white-eyes riders charged
across the desert in his direction, firing steadily, and he didn't like the odds. “Get out of here!” Tandor hollered to his comrades.

He leapt to his feet and sped through the underbrush, heading for the horses. His cohorts joined in the mad rush while the air sang with whirring bullets. Blue Feather shrieked in pain as a bullet pierced his spine; he dropped to the ground, but Tandor didn't have time to gather him up.

Tandor ran fleet-footed across the desert and leapt onto his horse. A bullet zipped past his left ear as his horse galloped away. Where did they come from? wondered Tandor bitterly as he rode toward the Apache camp in the hills. And why didn't we see them earlier? He recalled the white-eyes rifle that he couldn't steal; a dark cloud passed over his heart, and he cursed beneath his breath. Maybe, on another day, I'll be the victor and you'll be running from me, if you're lucky, Tandor thought with a grim smile, as his horse scampered across the cactus plain.

Tandor and his warriors had been attacked by a gang of American outlaws, and their leader was Richard Cochrane, formerly of the Confederate Cavalry Corps. He and his men rampaged onward, maintaining steady pistol fire at Apaches fleeing in all directions.

A half hour earlier, Cochrane had heard gunfire far away and decided to investigate. The Apaches scattered into the desert, but there was no point to dividing his small force and chasing them. Cochrane held up his right gloved hand while pulling back his horse's reins with his left. His men coalesced about him, a rugged
dusty lot, sunlight glinting off steely eyes. They'd expected a small band of embattled Mexican vaqueros, but could locate no hint of the gun battle that they'd just interrupted.

“Could be they was just Apaches a-fightin' amongst theirselves,” suggested Clement Beasley, second in command, formerly a sergeant in the Ninth Virginia Cavalry.

“Looks that way,” replied Cochrane. He took off his smudged silverbelly cowboy hat and wiped his forehead with the back of his arm. A jagged purple scar worked its way up his right cheek, and he wore a black patch over his right eye. “This is as good a place as any to break for dinner.”

He climbed down from his horse and let Beasley pass along his orders. Cochrane managed the outlaw band like a line cavalry detachment, with strict discipline and rough punishment for infractions of the rules. They were mostly ex-Confederate soldiers returning from the armed robbery of a west Texas bank, as attested to by packhorses carrying bags filled with loot.

Cochrane sat in the scant shade of a cottonwood tree as his men performed campsite duties. They traveled light as Apaches, with no tents, only grub and canvas bedrolls. Two men dug a firepit while two others prepared food. Another crew cared for horses, and three were lookouts, because no place is home for desperadoes with prices on their heads.

Cochrane smoked a cigarette and examined his map as dinner was prepared. Thirty-one years old, five-ten, he was sturdily constructed, with dirty tan jeans and two Colts in crisscrossed gunbelts, a bandolier across his chest, and a bowie knife sticking out his boot. He and his men didn't believe that the Great Cause was
lost, and fought on as highly mobile and efficient mounted guerrilla fighters. Cochrane had dubbed them the First Virginia Irregulars, and they were on their way to their hideout in the Sierra Madre Mountains.

No one sat near Cochrane, who maintained himself remote from the men. It was partially by design, because men won't take orders from a friend, and partially because he genuinely despised small talk. He removed his old brass army compass from his shirt pocket and took an azimuth on mountains on the horizon, then returned to the map. He loved tactics, ordnance, action, and danger. Certain events that had occurred at the Appomattox Courthouse in 1865 didn't change anything as far as he was concerned. The war that broke out at Fort Sumter was still on, and he'd never bow down to the Yankee invader.

Beasley approached his commanding officer and threw a salute. He was heavyset and wore a walrus mustache. “The camp is secure, sir. Walsh's horse has a loose shoe, but that's the total damage.”

“Carry on,” replied Cochrane. He didn't have to issue more orders; they all knew what to do and functioned like a smooth well-oiled war machine. Beasley sat opposite his commanding officer and rolled a cigarette. “I wonder what them Apaches was up to. They might come back with some of their friends.”

“I don't think so,” replied Cochrane.

Beasley and the others usually deferred to Cochrane, while the ex-company commander felt no need to explain himself. Who had the Apaches been fighting? he wondered.

Cochrane had more important concerns, such as his next raid behind enemy lines, and then came the cantinas of Monterrey, with beautiful Mexican girls,
gambling tables, horse races, and other pastimes to take his mind off the War of Northern Aggression that had destroyed and punished the South.

A strange sound came to his ears as he carefully folded his dog-eared map. “Someone's there,” he said, dropping to the ground and whipping out his old Remington New Model Army .44, the same one he'd carried during the war.

The men were all on their bellies instantly, searching for danger. “What's wrong?” asked Ginger Hertzog, who'd served under General Nathan Bedford Forrest during The Late Unpleasantness.

“Something's in those bushes over there,” replied Cochrane.

“It's probably a bird,” said Beasley. “Walsh—take a look at that bush. We'll cover you.”

Walsh was a survivor of Pickett's Charge, and he crawled forward, cradling a double-barrel shotgun in his arms. His head and shoulders disappeared in the foliage, and then he said, “My God—there's somebody here, and I think he's daid!”

The outlaws looked at each other in surprise, then advanced into the thicket. They found a young man lying on the ground, blood everywhere, flies buzzing noisily. “Guess he's what them Apaches was after,” said Beasley.

The outlaw band carried a doctor who had lost his license on their roster, and his name was Jeff Montgomery, formerly on the staff of General John Longstreet. Dr. Montgomery, forty years old, wore a black frock coat, stovepipe hat, and gray pants, with high-topped cowboy boots and shiny burnished spurs. Businesslike, he knelt beside the wounded young man and rolled him onto his back.

The victim had been shot in the chest, shoulder, and leg, his face pale, eyes closed, limbs loose. Dr. Montgomery opened his saddlebags, pulled out a small tin mirror, held it to the young man's nose, and a faint mist appeared.

“I believe he's alive, but not by much.” Dr. Montgomery pressed his ear against the young man's heart. “Very faint beat.” The physician was the oldest member of the outlaw gang, with a short salt-and-pep-per beard. He unbuttoned the bloody shirt and saw dried gore around the wound. “I'd say that he doesn't have long to go.”

“Is the bullet still in there?” asked Johnny Pinto, twenty-one years old, the most recent recruit to the gang and the only nonveteran. Cochrane had admitted him because of Johnny's raw outlaw guts. Johnny Pinto was wanted for murder, robbery, and assault with intent to kill in a variety of jurisdictions.

“Unfortunately,” replied the doctor, “all three bullets are inside him.” He turned toward their leader. “Should I operate, or do we let him die?”

“How long will it take to operate?”

“A few hours.”

The former company commander gazed at the young man sprawled on the ground. “He doesn't look like he's going to make it.”

“He probably won't.”

The weapons lying nearby indicated that the stranger had held out to the end, and that weighed the scale in his favor. “Sergeant Beasley—have the cooks boil some water, and please render any assistance that Dr. Montgomery might require.”

The campsite bustled as Dr. Montgomery prepared for surgery. He'd served in the field during all five
years of the war, but then, after Appomattox, during a particularly difficult period of his life, he'd performed an abortion on a certain young woman brought him by an old family friend. The woman had died from unforeseen complications, and then scalawags and carpetbaggers decided to arrest the good doctor. He wasn't interested in Yankee prisons, so he'd cut out for Texas, met Cochrane in a saloon, and offered his services. Now the former field surgeon was an irregular, too, but one highly experienced at removing projectiles from human flesh.

Cochrane sat nearby, alternately munching a biscuit and sipping from his canteen as he watched Dr. Montgomery slice into the unconscious young man's stomach. The former captain of cavalry understood wounds all too well. He'd been smacked across the face with a cavalry saber in the hard fighting around Yellow Tavern, 13 March 1864. Many of Cochrane's closest friends had been killed in the bloody struggle, while polite and elegant Captain Cochrane had gone berserk on the battlefield, hacking down federal soldiers with his saber, getting shot and cut himself in the wild melee, then he'd fallen out of his saddle from loss of blood and been trampled by horses. Seven years later some corner of his frame hurt every time he moved.

Meanwhile, Dr. Montgomery probed forceps into a hole welling with blood. His patient was white as a lily, heartbeat barely existent. The doctor had to work quickly, but during the war he'd been awake three or four days in a row, sawing off limbs and digging out lead while the occasional stray bullet flew by.

Dr. Montgomery's bright red nose twitched as he caught a piece of lead solidly in his forceps. Slowly, he
withdrew the jagged irregular lump from the patient's open stomach cavity. Funny how a little thing like this can kill a man, he mused.

He took one last look inside the bloody cavern, then removed the clamps, took needle and catgut, and sewed the wound with quick deft strokes while an assistant sopped the blood. At the perimeter of the surgical area, guards searched the desert for Apaches while other irregulars cared for the horses, and the cooking crew roasted meat on an iron spit.

The field surgeon cut into his patient's leg; the patient's eyes were opened to slits, but only white showed. His earlobes were turning blue, not a good sign. Dr. Montgomery withdrew the second bullet carefully.

Cochrane knelt beside the patient and said, “What d'ya think?”

“He's lost a lot of blood, and now it's in the hands of God. We'll have to rig out the travois.”

“Beasley—get the travois!” ordered the former company commander.

Beasley turned to Johnny Pinto. “You heard him.”

Johnny Pinto appeared surprised. “We're not a-takin' ‘im with us, are we?”

“The captain said get out the travois.”

Johnny Pinto wore tight black pants, a flowing red shirt, and a yellow bandanna. His flat-brimmed black Mexican
estancia
hat sat at an angle over his brown eyes. “But he's as good as dead, and anybody can see it. We're wastin' our time with ‘im.”

“Do as I say.”

“But it's stupid.”

At the sound of the last word, Beasley's eyes widened. He hooked his thumbs in his gunbelt, strolled
toward Johnny Pinto, and peered into his eyes. “You were told the rules when you jined up with us. If you can't take an order, you can quit right now.”

“What do we need a dead man for?”

Beasley was about to reply when Captain Cochrane stepped onto the scene. “I'll take care of this, Sergeant.” Then Cochrane turned toward Johnny Pinto. “Do as you're told, or ride on out of here. It's as simple as that.”

Johnny Pinto spread his legs and leaned his head to the side. “What if I don't do neither?”

“I'll have to execute you.”

Johnny Pinto blinked, not certain he'd heard those deadly words. Then he stood straighter, loosened his shoulders, and said, “What makes you think you can do it?”

“I'll count to three. If you're not on your horse by then, I'm opening fire. One.”

Johnny Pinto raised his hand. “Now wait a minute.”

“Two.”

The young outlaw didn't like bosses and could out-draw anybody in the band, or so he thought. He'd won six-gun duels in the past, and men had told him afterward that they'd never seen anything like his speed. Johnny Pinto tensed for the showdown, his eyes focusing on Cochrane. He saw the ugly battle scar, knew that Cochrane was a Confederate war hero, and remorseless determination glowed from Cochrane's eyes.