Kiowa Trail (1964) (14 page)

"All right." But he hesitated. "Maybe I should stay with him. We could use those guns and ammunition at Hackamore."

"We'll need the men even more. You've got two horses. Ride like the devil."

Meharry gripped his Winchester. "Conn ... a shot into one of those lanterns might give them plenty to do."

"No." I will admit I was reluctant to say it. "We're not fighting women and children. Besides, Kate would never stand for it."

Meharry knew how I felt about Kate, but he said, "Conn, do you think she's alive?"

For a moment I was shaken by a terrible fear, a fear that was washed out in a frightening wave of fury such as I had never felt before.

"If they've killed Kate," I said. "I'll personally hunt down every man of them and kill them where they stand."

Meharry gathered his reins. "I'll hurry, Conn," he said, and was off into the darkness, leaving me alone among the torn bodies of the unfortunate cattle, and near the fallen men who had given their lives. We would return to bury them. There was no time now if other men were not to die, for Hackamore was believing itself safe.

First, I dismounted and switched saddles. The weapons of the dead men had been taken, their pockets rifled. But all wore belts of ammunition that we might need, so I stripped off the belts and hung them around the saddle horn. I remounted and, leading my spare horse, I started off into the night.

Soon I must rest, but first I needed distance between myself and the town. I needed to feel that I was on my way.

By day I might have read the tracks and known what had happened on that hill, but now there was nothing to do but strike out toward the west, and hope the survivors of the attack had made it through.

Four miles west and south of the town I rode up to a slough, dismounted, and picketed the horses on the grass in the bottom of the hollow. Then I retreated into the edge of the tall reeds and, wrapped in my blanket to keep the mosquitoes off my face, I went to sleep.

With the first gray light I was once more in the saddle and headed west.

All around me was the vast sea of grass, the gray-green untouched miles where only buffalo and antelope grazed, unmarked except by a wandering Indian and the twin tracks of his travois. Steadily, I rode on, keeping off the sky lines, and watching my back trail with care.

Here and there I saw buffalo tracks, usually in twos and threes, heading south. At noon I switched horses, took a couple of swallows of water, and bit off a chunk of jerked beef to chew as I rode.

A faint wind blew from the south, the sky was very clear, and there was no sound except the drum of my own horses' hoofs on the ground. Once, circling around a butte, I left the horses in a hollow where they would be visible to me, and scaled the butte to look over the country.

It was a vast emptiness, that stretched in every direction - only the grass bending before the wind in long waves like the sea, only the faint sound of the wind brushing over the miles of whispering grass.

If all went well, I would reach Hackamore sometime tomorrow. McDonald and his crowd, coming from the town, would need much longer, with their wagons. But even as I thought of that, I realized they would not wait for the slow-moving wagons, which would carry only supplies to be used later, in the event the fight lasted longer than the initial attack. They would undoubtedly mount a large party of horsemen who would push right through to the attack.

Shortly before sundown I rode down into a small hollow, choked with willows and brush, where there was a trickle of water from a spring. After watering my horses, I staked them out, refilled my canteen, and switched saddles again. Tired as I was, there was no time for sleep.

With a boot in the stirrup, about to step into the saddle, I heard something stirring in the willows.

Instantly, I was on the ground, my Winchester at the ready. There was silence.

Glancing at my two horses, I saw their ears were pricked and their nostrils flaring. I spoke to them gently and moved ahead, walking with care to make no noise. Peering through the leaves, I saw a saddle horse cropping grass not fifty feet away.

I returned for my own horses and led them forward, alert for the rider. But when we came into sight, the horse looked up quickly, then came toward us at a rapid trot, whinnying.

The horse was a sorrel from our own remuda, wearing the brand of the Tumbling B. The saddle was Kate Lundy's saddle, and there was blood on the pommel.

My mouth felt suddenly dry. Gathering up the reins, I mounted my own horse and started forward, back-tracking the horse.

The tracks led back up to the prairie, and as it seemed that I might have to ride some distance, I rigged a lead rope for Kate's horse, and started on again.

There was little daylight remaining. The sun was going down and there would be a brief twilight. And when darkness came I could go no further, but must wait until it was light enough to see tracks again in the grass.

The horse had trotted here, walked there, stopped to crop grass, then had started on again. It was a once-wild mustang that we had captured and broke to ride ourselves, and he was no stranger to wild country.

The light faded. I stood up in my stirrups and my eyes searched the ground, but I saw nothing. No one standing, no one walking, no body lying on the grass.

In the distance, along the horizon, clouds were forming ... thunder clouds. The air was growing closer, heavier. I moved on, riding parallel to the faint trail. Glancing ahead, I saw the trail across the grass like a faint silver streamer lying along the ground and, touching a spur to my horse, I rode on at a gallop.

The clouds were piling up rapidly. One of them gleamed suddenly with far-off lightning.

If the rain came before I found her, the trail would be washed out In all this vast sweep of prairie there would be no hope of finding Kate Lundy.

Suddenly, from the southeast, another trail appeared ... three unshod ponies. That meant Indians.

Drawing rein, I looked around carefully. With three horses and my weapons, I offered a rare prize for any Indians, and in this country, at this time, they would probably be Kiowas, the most feared of all the tribes of the southern plains.

The Indians had paused too, studying the lone trail they had come upon. They had ridden along it, one Indian going one way, the others the other. Quickly they had made up their minds - this was a lone, riderless horse.

The rider was somewhere to the east and south, and that was the way they had gone.

Swearing wildly, I spurred my horse and rode desperately into the night, down into a hollow, up over a rise. Those Indians had found the trail within the last hour.

Thunder rumbled in the distance ... lightning flashed. A long wind rustled the grass.

Suddenly I topped out on a rise and looked upon a strange tableau.

Kate Lundy stood alone in the midst of a wide open space, facing three Indians. She was standing very straight and facing them, and they were staring at her. Now they turned suddenly to look at me. None of them wore paint. One of them had an antelope behind his saddle.

Slowing my pace, my rifle ready in my right hand, I rode down to them.

They looked at me, then at the saddled horse. Any Indian would know at once it was the horse they had been tracking. "How!" I said.

"How!" they replied. And then one of them pointed a rifle at Kate. "You squaw?"

"Yes," I said.

They looked at me with respect. "Brave warrior!" one of them grunted, his eyes seeming almost to twinkle a little. "Heap brave!"

Then, wheeling their horses, they rode off over the plains, whooping and yelling.

"What did you do to them, Kate?" I asked.

Her face was very pale, and there was blood on her left sleeve and on the side of her dress, for she had been wounded in the arm. "I told them I was not alone ... that I had run away from my husband and he was following me."

One of them, she added, had started toward her and she had produced a knife ... her only weapon ... and told him she would cut his heart out if he touched her.

Obviously they were a hunting party, looking for no trouble, and had been amused by her courage in facing them. Had she shown the slightest fear, the situation would have been otherwise.

Swinging down, I caught her as she staggered. Her legs stiffened under her. "Conn ... I'm afraid I'm going to faint."

"You?" I was appalled. "I don't believe you know how!"

And at my words she laughed weakly, but she did not faint.

The clouds were piling higher. "Kate, we've got to find shelter. That's going to be one hell of a storm."

When she was in the saddle I started to tie her in place, but she pushed my hands away. "I can still ride!" she protested.

The only shelter I knew of was in the hollow from which I had lately come. There was a sort of cave there under the thick branches of a gnarled old tree, half torn from the earth in some long-ago storm. Willows grew close around, and there was shelter there for both of us and for the horses.

Leading off at a gallop, I started back over the trail. The storm was drawing near, the wind blowing so that it was difficult to catch one's breath. It was almost dark now, but I held my direction across the wind, watching in every flare of lightning for a glimpse of the trees.

We saw the rain coining before it reached us. Black clouds covered the upper sky, but moving along the horizon was a lighter band of rain. When it reached us I knew we would be drenched. Suddenly, in a white flare of lightning I saw the wind-whipped tops of the trees.

"We're going to make it!" I yelled ... but we did not.

The rushing wall of water caught us with only twenty yards to go, and within a few feet we were drenched to the skin. In the hollow, there was some shelter from the mighty rush of wind, and swinging down, I led the horses into the black cavity under the tree. It was quieter there, and they seemed glad to be free of the wind and most of the rain.

With my bowie knife I hacked branches from the willows and worked them into the branches above us to make a thicker roof for our little shelter. The bodies of the horses, between us and the opening, helped some, and the thickness of the branches above, the inclined trunk of the tree, and the brush around us gave added protection.

There had been no time before to get my slicker, but now I got it from behind my saddle, with the two blankets I carried. Using the slicker for a screen against the wind, we each wrapped in a blanket and huddled together against the storm. And there, exhausted, we both fell asleep.

At daybreak, with the storm gone, I built a small fire and made coffee and a thick broth of jerked beef. While it was heating, I examined Kate's arm. It was in bad shape, though the wound itself was not a serious one. The bullet had gone through the fleshy part of the arm, causing her to lose blood. With proper care it would be all right.

Though I had learned about herbs from the Indians, I recognized none that I could see around me here. My medicine had been learned from the Apaches of the deserts and mountains, not from the Kiowas, Arapahoes or Cheyennes of the southern plains. The closest care her arm could get would be in Hackamore. So we wasted no time.

As we started to go, she looked over at me and said, "Conn, that's the second time you've told somebody that I was your woman."

"The third," I replied, and then led off to the west. And after a moment, she followed.

Kate's story was simple enough. On the morning of the attack the men had scattered along the wire before daylight, checking for breaks. They found several cuts, which they repaired, and had started back toward camp in the first gray of dawn.

"My horse was saddled," Kate said, "for I always had a saddle horse ready for every man in case of emergency, and one for myself. Harvey Nugent saved my life. All of a sudden we heard a thunder from the west, and we looked around. There was dust in the air over the small valley in that direction. Harvey just grabbed me by the waist and threw me into the saddle."

"Stampede!" he yelled. "Ride!"

He had given her horse a cut with his rope, and it was gone with a bound. Over her shoulder she saw a herd of maddened, fear-driven steers come boiling up over the rim from the valley.

"How about the rest of them? Did they make it?"

"I don't know. My horse simply ran away with me, and we were two miles off before I got him under control. By that time it was too late to do anything, and I had been shot."

"Who shot you?"

"There was a man with a rifle. He was standing on the hill beyond the valley from which the herd came. He was in plain sight when I looked back and saw the steers coming. Dust was rising, but it hadn't obscured the place where he stood, and I saw him as plainly as I see you now. He lifted his rifle, held his aim, then fired."

It must have been, I thought, a good three hundred yards. But a man who could see well enough to score a bit at that distance could see well enough to know it was a woman he was shooting at.

"At that distance you couldn't have recognized him."

"Oh, I'll know him!" Kate looked at me. "Conn, that man wanted to kill me. He wanted me to go down and be trampled under those hoofs, and no one would ever guess I had been shot."