Another Attack

Note: this segment was published earlier. Here it appears in sequence with the story, "Pony."

 

     The man awakened before his companions.  In the predawn darkness he moved quietly past the horse guard to inspect the hobbled, dozing animals, whispering to them as he gently cupped their muzzles and stroked their flanks, telling them they were very brave and greatly cherished.  Their coats were wet with dew, and as he touched them they yawned and licked their mouths, swished their tails and shook their heads, turning to watch as he walked away.

He went to the edge of a spring and knelt.  He cupped his hands in the water and drank from them and wet his face and shoulders.  Then he walked out onto the dark prairie; facing east he raised his arms and chanted softly, a death song handed down from generations long past.          

Gradually his companions woke but they did not approach him nor did they speak.  They watered their mounts and they ate what small rations they had.  They strung bows and primed the few ancient fusils they possessed, and assembled themselves in feathers and paint, each alone with his thoughts.  They sprinkled dust on the backs of their ponies to ensure swiftness and they daubed them with pigment for protection and when they were ready they mounted and joined together, the ponies prancing, wild-eyed and mouthing their jaw ropes, tails tied up for war.  The horizon glowed gray as they set off at a trot, a forest of legs quick-stepping nearly in unison.

 

--

In the veho-e camp were six men, unemployed teamsters and two who had joined three days previous, army deserters from Kearny, ragged and hungry but armed.  All were making for the mountains; they had heard of gold and silver plucked from the shadowed canyons of the front range, west of the South Platte and Cherry Creek. 

The day before they had crossed the Stinking Water and Frenchman’s Creek.  Fresh buffalo sign was everywhere, and as they passed a jug around their night fire they spoke of wealth and whores they would never know and also of fresh hump roast and ribs.  As stars wheeled in the night sky and the jug emptied they posted the deserters on watch, and the two fugitive soldiers seated themselves cross-legged at opposite ends of the picket line, each cradling a pitted and fouled army carbine in his arms, his thin belly pressed against a pistol stuck in his belt, aimed at his testicles.

The deserters were young, ages 19 and 23, illiterate, with only a few months on the frontier.  Both were second sons of working-class fathers.  Without hope of inheritance they had enlisted on the promise of adventure but found military board unappetizing, the work drudgery and the discipline unendurable.  They were poor gamblers; they had no money.   Worse yet, garrison life had installed in both a taste for whiskey, which flawed their decisions and left them vulnerable to physical impairments, such as the drowsiness that always accompanied their drinking – and so predicted their failure to sound the alarm in the early hours of the last morning of their lives.

They were the first to fall.  In the dark four bowmen belly-crawled to within fifteen paces of the sleeping guards.  They waited; arrows nocked.  Just before dawn they fixed black eyes upon the humped watchmen and slowly raised their bows.  And then the soft twang of death, followed by a choking, gurgling sound.  A twitch.  A long sigh.

With the dawn’s first ray of light came twelve riders at a dead run from the east, out of the new sun, flattened against their ponies’ backs, shooting arrows and waving buffalo robes to spook the picketed horses.

The camp's picket rope made a popping sound as it parted and the panicked horses snorted at the scent of the riders and broke away, galloping across the prairie to run in wide circles, looking back as they ran.

The attackers rode over the sleeping camp, trampling the slow-rising pilgrims.  First to ride among the victims was Lorenz Bauer’s killer, swinging his favored stone-headed club, viciously, down and down upon rising, unprotected skulls, turning now, leaning, aiming the pony with his knees.  Arrows slipped among the blankets - two, then four shafts sprouting in each of the waking men, their bodies flopping under the strikes of iron, stone and hoof.  At his waist the first Indian carried Bauer’s pistol, but he did not use it.  Destroying the veho-e was effortless - fluid, like sparks rising from a fire, finished as quickly as the eye looks.  

Only a couple of the whites died outright, however, and several braves quickly dismounted with hatchets and knives to finish the work.  The wounded lay moaning, their hands and feet moving, reaching for absent weapons.  None had slept in readiness; rifles lay underneath blankets, pistols beneath saddles, swaddled in oilcloth, rust-free.   

Not a gun was fired save one, a young brave’s musket.  The ball pierced the hips of a freighter, and the old, bearded skinner crawled from his blankets, unarmed and bleeding.  He was the last alive. 

Though his legs were useless he resisted death, pulling himself forward by fistfuls of buffalo grass, grunting, heading nowhere.  When the rest of his companions had been dispatched six mounted Indians gathered around him.  They watched him impassively, leaning forward on their ponies, one young brave with a brown leg looped around the tall fork of his war saddle. He sat relaxed, munching a found biscuit, his bow slung across the withers.

Suddenly into their midst strode Bauer’s killer, bloody club in hand.  The warriors’ ponies shied as he stepped on the teamster’s back, swung the mallet overhead and caved the old man’s skull.  Then, without a word, he walked away, leaving the veho-e body twitching in the grass. 

And when the horses were rounded up the war party rode south, wrapped in the dead men’s blankets, carrying the dead men’s guns and powder, eating stolen bacon with bloody fingers.  At the campsite the slain lay naked; hands, feet and heads severed, bellies opened, skulls flensed.

Around them a murder of crows began to gather.