Without John Wayne

This is a piece of a larger story I wrote about a year ago...

 

WITHOUT JOHN WAYNE

By

M.E. Mortensen

 

One man woke 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 stroked their flanks, telling them they were beautiful 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 on the dark prairie and facing east he prayed softly, the words handed down from generations long lost in the shadows of history.          

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 primed the few ancient fusils they possessed, and assembled themselves, each alone with his thoughts.  They prepared their horses and they inspected them and when they were ready they mounted and joined together, the animals fresh, prancing, mouthing their bits and jaw ropes.  The horizon glowed gray as they set off at a trot, a forest of legs quick-stepping nearly in unison.

 

In another camp were six men, unemployed teamsters and two deserters from Fort Kearny who had joined the small company three days previous, ragged and hungry.  All were making for the mountains, for the gold and silver that could be plucked from the shadowed canyon walls of the front range, just west of the confluence of the South Platte and Cherry Creek.  

The day before they had forded 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 fresh hump roast and ribs, and of wealth and whores. They had crossed into a new land.  

The great constellations wheeled in the night sky and when the jug was emptied they posted the two Kearny deserters on watch. The fugitives 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, its muzzle aimed at his testicles. They were young, ages 19 and 23, illiterate, with only a few months on the frontier.  Both were second sons of poor farmers. They enlisted on the promise of adventure but found military board unappetizing, the work tedious and the discipline unendurable.  They were poor gamblers; they had saved little of their wages for a stake. Worse yet, garrison life had installed in each 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 survive the early hours of that final morning.

 

In the dark four bowmen belly-crawled to within fifteen paces of the hapless pickets, arrows nocked.  Just before dawn they raised their bows. The soft twang of death, followed by choking, gurgling sounds.  A twitch.  A long sigh.

First light brought twelve riders at a dead run from the east, out of the new sun, flattened against their mounts, a chaos of arrows and buffalo robes to spook the camp’s horses.

The cavvy’s picket rope popped as it broke and panicked horses snorted and broke across the prairie in wide circles, looking back as they ran.

The attackers rode over the sleeping camp.  The first killer came in striking with his favored stone-headed club, down and down, to break rising, unprotected skulls; turning, leaning, aiming the pony with his knees.  Arrows zipped among the blankets - two, four shafts sprouting in the rising men, bodies flopping under the strikes of iron, stone and hoof.  Several raiders carried pistols, but they did not use them.  Destroying the wasichus was effortless - fluid, like sparks rising from a fire, extinguished as quickly as the eye looks.  

Only a couple of the whitemen died outright, however, so several tribesmen dismounted with hatchets and knives.  The wounded moaned, hands and feet moving, reaching for absent weapons.  Rifles lay underneath blankets, pistols beneath saddles, some even swaddled in oilcloth, rust-free. None of the victims had slept in readiness.   

Not a gun was fired save one, a young brave’s musket.  His ball pierced the hips of an old, bearded skinner as he crawled from his blankets, unarmed.  He was the last alive. 

Though his legs were useless the wounded man resisted death, pulling himself forward by fistfuls of buffalo grass, grunting, heading nowhere.  Six mounted tribesmen gathered around him, watching impassively. One adolescent, his thin brown leg looped around the tall fork of his war saddle, munching a found biscuit.

Into their midst strode the warrior who led the attack, bloody club in hand.  The nearest ponies shied as he stepped on the skinner’s back, swung the mallet overhead and caved the old man’s skull.

They spent some time rifling the bodies, emptying pockets, taking supplies. Tobacco and coffee were highly prized, and gold coins too, if only as gifts so their women could decorate their ears. They stripped the dead and slashed them to suppress the appetite for war in the spirit world. They took hair to decorate shields and lances, and to carry on sticks around the great celebration fires they would build when they returned to their lodges. They cursed the dead for their boldness in coming here and for the coughing death they brought with them. And when these things had been done to their satisfaction and the horses were rounded up, the warriors mounted and rode south, wrapped in the dead men’s blankets, carrying the dead men’s guns and powder, eating stolen bacon with bloody fingers.  Around the campsite the slain lay naked; hands, feet and heads severed, bellies opened, skulls flensed.

And a flock of crows began to gather.