Them ridin’ Apaches stopped their horses and rode back until they was up on the hill, and the runnin’ Indians dropped to the ground and lay there. We popped off a few more shots, but didn’t hit nothin’, and then I remembered I was in charge. I said, “Hold your fire. Don’t waste your bullets.”
The Former House Nigger crawled over by me, said, “We showed them.”
“They ain’t showed yet,” I said. “Them’s Apache warriors. They ain’t known as slackers.”
“Maybe Colonel Hatch heard all the shootin’,” he said.
“They’ve had time to get a good distance away. They figured on us cut-tin’ the wood and leavin’ it and goin’ back to the fort. So maybe they ain’t missin’ us yet and didn’t hear a thing.”
“Dang it,” The Former House Nigger said.
* * * *
I thought we might just mount up and try to ride off. We had more horses than they did, but three of them ridin’ after us could still turn out bad. We had a pretty good place as we was, amongst the trees with water to drink. I decided best thing we could do was hold our position. Then that white man who had been clubbed in the head started moaning. That wasn’t enough, a couple of the braves come up out of the grass and ran at his spot. We fired at them, but them Spencer single shots didn’t reload as fast as them Indians could run. They come down in the tall grass where the white man had gone down, and we seen one of his legs jump up like a snake, and go back down, and the next moment came the screaming.
It went on and on. Rice crawled over to me and said, “I can’t stand it. I’m gonna go out there and get him.”
“No, you’re not,” I said. “I’ll do it.”
“Why you?” Rice said.
“‘Cause I’m in charge.”
“I’m goin’ with you,” The Former House Nigger said.
“Naw, you ain’t,” I said. “I get rubbed out, you’re the one in charge. That’s what Colonel Hatch said. I get out there a ways, you open up on them other Apache, keep ‘em busier than a bear with a hive of bees.”
“Hell, we can’t even see them, and the riders done gone on the other side of the hill.”
“Shoot where you think they ought to be, just don’t send a blue whistler up my ass.”
I laid my rifle on the ground, made sure my pistol was loaded, put it back in the holster, pulled my knife, stuck it in my teeth, and crawled to my left along the side of that creek till I come to tall grass, then I worked my way in. I tried to go slow as to make the grass seem to be moved by the wind, which had picked up considerable and was helpin’ my sneaky approach.
As I got closer to where the white man had gone down and the Apaches had gone after him, his yells grew somethin’ terrible. I was maybe two or three feet from him. I parted the grass to take a look, seen he was lying on his side, and his throat was cut, and he was dead as he was gonna get.
Just a little beyond him, the two Apache was lying in the grass, and one of them was yellin’ like he was the white man bein’ tortured, and I thought, Well, if that don’t beat all. I was right impressed.
Then the Apache saw me. They jumped up and come for me. I rose up quick, pulling the knife from my teeth. One of them hit me like a cannon ball, and away we went rollin’.
A shot popped off and the other Apache did a kind of dance, about four steps, and went down holdin’ his throat. Blood was flying out of him like it was a fresh-tapped spring. Me and the other buck rolled in the grass and he tried to shoot me with a pistol he was totin’, but only managed to singe my hair and give me a headache and make my left ear ring.
We rolled around like a couple of doodle bugs, and then I came up on top and stabbed at him. He caught my hand. I was holding his gun hand to the ground with my left, and he had hold of my knife hand.
“Jackass,” I said, like this might so wound him to the quick, he’d let go. He didn’t. We rolled over in the grass some more, and he got the pistol loose and put it to my head, but the cap and ball misfired, and all I got was burned some. I really called him names then. I jerked my legs up and wrapped them around his neck, yanked him down on his back, got on top of him and stabbed him in the groin and the belly, and still he wasn’t finished.
I put the knife in his throat, and he gave me a look of disappointment, like he’s just realized he’d left somethin’ cookin’ on the fire and ought to go get it; then he fell back.
I crawled over, rolled the white man on his back. They had cut his balls off and cut his stomach open and sliced his throat. He wasn’t gonna come around.
* * * *
I made it back to the creek bank and was shot at only a few times by the Apache. My return trip was a mite brisker than the earlier one. I only got a little bit of burn from a bullet that grazed the butt of my trousers.
When I was back at the creek bank, I said, “Who made that shot on the Apache?”
“That would be me,” The Former House Nigger said.
“Listen here, I don’t want you callin’ yourself The Former House Nigger no more. I don’t want no one else callin’ you that. You’re a buffalo soldier, and a good’n. Rest of you men hear that?”
The men was strung out along the creek, but they heard me, and grunted at me.
“This here is Cullen. He ain’t nothing but Cullen or Private Cullen, or whatever his last name is. That’s what we call him. You hear that, Cullen? You’re a soldier, and a top soldier at that.”
“That’s good,” Cullen said, not so moved about the event as I was. “But, thing worryin’ me is the sun is goin’ down.”
“There’s another thing,” Bill said, crawlin’ over close to us. “There’s smoke over that hill. My guess is it ain’t no cookout.”
I figured the source of that smoke would be where our white fella had come from, and it would be what was left of whoever he was with or the remains of a wagon or some such. The horse-ridin’ Apache had gone back there either to finish them off and torture them with fire or to burn a wagon down. The Apache was regular little fire starters, and since they hadn’t been able to get to all of us, they was takin their misery out on what was within reach.
As that sun went down, I began to fret. I moved along the short line of our men and decided not to space them too much, but not bunch them up either. I put us about six feet apart and put a few at the rear as lookouts. Considerin’ there weren’t many of us, it was a short line, and them two in the back was an even shorter line. Hell, they wasn’t no line at all. They was a couple of dots.
The night crawled on. A big frog began to bleat near me. Crickets was sawin’ away. Upstairs, the black-as-sin heavens was lit up with stars and the half moon was way too bright.
Couple hours crawled on, and I went over to Cullen and told him to watch tight, ‘cause I was goin’ down the line and check the rear, make sure no one was sleepin’ or pullin’ their johnsons. I left my rifle and unsnapped my revolver holster flap, and went to check.
Bill was fine, but when I come to Rice, he was facedown in the dirt. I grabbed him by the back of his collar and hoisted him up, and his head fell near off. His throat had been cut. I wheeled , snappin’ my revolver into my hand. Wasn’t nothin’ there.
A horrible feelin’ come over me. I went down the row. All them boys was dead. The Apache had been pickin’ em off one at a time, and doin’ it so careful like, the horses hadn’t even noticed.
I went to the rear and found that the two back there was fine. I said, “You fellas best come with me.”
We moved swiftly back to Cullen and Rice, and we hadn’t no more than gone a few paces, when a burst of fire cut the night. I saw an Apache shape grasp at his chest and fall back. Runnin’ over, we found Cullen holding his revolver, and Bill was up waving his rifle around. “Where are they? Where the hell are they?”
“They’re all around. They’ve done killed the rest of the men.” I said.
“Ghosts,” Bill said. “They’re ghosts.”
“What they are is sneaky,” I said. “It’s what them fellas d
o for a livin’.”
By now, I had what you might call some real goddamn misgivin’s, figured I had reckoned right on things. I thought we’d have been safer here, but them Apache had plumb snuck up on us, wiped out three men without so much as leavin’ a fart in the air. I said, “I think we better get on our horses and make a run for it.”
But when we went over to get the horses, Satan, soon as I untied him, bolted and took off through the wood and disappeared. “Now, that’s the shits,” I said.
“We’ll ride double,” Cullen said.
The boys was gettin’ their horses loose, and there was a whoop, and an Apache leap-frogged over the back of one of them horses and came down on his feet with one of our own hatchets in his hand. He stuck the blade of it deep in the head of a trooper, a fella whose name I don’t remember, being now in my advanced years, and not really havin’ known the fella that good in the first place. There was a scramble, like startled quail. There wasn’t no military drill about it. It was every sonofabitch for himself. Me and Cullen and Bill tore up the hill, ‘cause that was the way we was facin’. We was out of the wooded area now, and the half moon was bright, and when I looked back, I could see an Apache coming up after us with a knife in his teeth. He was climbin’ that hill so fast, he was damn near runnin’ on all fours.
I dropped to one knee and aimed and made a good shot that sent him tumbling back down the rise. Horrible thing was, we could hear the other men in the woods down there gettin’ hacked and shot to pieces, screamin’ and a pleadin’, but we knew wasn’t no use in tryin’ to go back down there. We was outsmarted and outmanned and outfought.
Thing worked in our favor, was the poor old mule was still there wearing that makeshift harness and carry-along we had put him in, with the wood stacked on it. He had wandered a bit, but hadn’t left the area.
Bill cut the log rig loose, and cut the packing off the mule’s back; then he swung up on the beast and pulled Cullen up behind him, which showed a certain lack of respect for my leadership, which, frankly, was somethin’ I could agree with.
I took hold of the mule’s tail, and off we went, them ridin’, and me runnin’ behind holdin’ to my rifle with one hand, holdin’ on to the mule’s tail with the other, hopin’ he didn’t fart or shit or pause to kick. This was an old Indian trick, one we had learned in the cavalry. You can also run alongside, you got somethin’ to hang on to. Now, if the horse, or mule, decided to run full out, well, you was gonna end up with a mouth full of sod, but a rider and a horse and a fella hangin’, sort of lettin’ himself be pulled along at a solid speed, doin’ big strides, can make surprisin’ time and manage not to wear too bad if his legs are strong.
When I finally chanced a look over my shoulder, I seen the Apache were comin’, and not in any Sunday picnic stroll sort of way either. They was all on horseback. They had our horses to go with theirs. Except Satan. That bastard hadn’t let me ride, but he hadn’t let no one else ride either, so I gained a kind of respect for him.
A shot cut through the night air, and didn’t nothin’ happen right off, but then Bill eased off the mule like a candle meltin’. The shot had gone over Cullen’s shoulder and hit Bill in the back of the head. We didn’t stop to check his wounds. Cullen slid forward, takin’ the reins, slowed the mule a bit and stuck out his hand. I took it, and he helped me swing up behind him. There’s folks don’t know a mule can run right swift, it takes a mind to, but it can. They got a gait that shakes your guts, but they’re pretty good runners. And they got wind and they’re about three times smarter than a horse.
What they don’t got is spare legs for when they step in a chuck hole, and that’s what happened. It was quite a fall, and I had an idea then how that Apache had felt when his horse had gone out from under him. The fall chunked me and Cullen way off and out into the dirt, and it damn sure didn’t do the mule any good.
* * * *
On the ground, the poor old mule kept tryin’ to get up, but couldn’t. He had fallen so that his back was to the Apache, and we was tossed out in the dirt, squirmin’. We crawled around so we was between his legs, and I shot him in the head with my pistol and we made a fort of him. On came them Apache. I took my rifle and laid it over the mule’s side and took me a careful bead, and down went one of them. I fired again, and another hit the dirt. Cullen scuttled out from behind the mule and got hold of his rifle where it had fallen, and crawled back. He fired off a couple of shots, but wasn’t as lucky as me. The Apache backed off, and at a distance they squatted down beside their horses and took pot shots at us.
The mule was still warm and he stunk. Bullets were splatterin’ into his body. None of them was comin’ through, but they was lettin’ out a lot of gas. Way I had it figured, them Indians would eventually surround us and we’d end up with our hair hangin’ on their wickiups by mornin’. Thinkin’ on this, I made an offer to shoot Cullen if it looked like we was gonna be overrun.
“Well, I’d rather shoot you then shoot myself,” he said.
“I guess that’s a deal, then,” I said.
It was a bright night and they could see us good, but we could see them good too. The land was flat there, and there wasn’t a whole lot of creepin’ up they could do without us noticin, but they could still outflank us because they outnumbered us. There was more Apache now than we had seen in the daytime. They had reinforcements. It was like a gatherin’ of ants.
The Apache had run their horses all out, and now they was no water for them, so they cut the horse’s throats and lit a fire. After a while we could smell horse meat sizzlin’. The horses had been killed so that they made a ring of flesh they could hide behind, and the soft insides was a nice late supper.
“They ain’t got no respect for guv’ment property,” Cullen said.
I got out my knife and cut the mule’s throat, and he was still fresh enough blood flowed, and we put our mouths on the cut and sucked out all we could. It tasted better than I would have figured, and it made us feel a mite better too, but with there just bein’ the two of us, we didn’t bother to start a fire and cook our fort.
We could hear them over there laughin’ and a cuttin’ up, and I figure they had them some mescal, ‘cause after a bit, they was actually singin’ a white man song, “Row, row, row you boat,” and we had to listen to that for a couple of hours.
“Goddamn missionaries,” I said.
After a bit, one of them climbed over a dead horse and took his breech-cloth down and turned his ass to us and it winked dead-white in the moonlight, white as any Irishman’s ass. I got my rifle on him, but for some reason I couldn’t let the hammer down. It just didn’t seem right to shoot some drunk showin’ me his ass. He turned around and peed, kind of pushin’ his loins out, like he was doin’ a squaw, and laughed, and that was enough. I shot that sonofabitch. I was aimin’ for his pecker, but I think I got him in the belly. He fell over and a couple of Apache come out to get him. Cullen shot one of them, and the one was left jumped over the dead horses and disappeared behind them.
“Bad enough they’re gonna kill us,” Cullen said, “but they got to act nasty too.”
We laid there for a while. Cullen said, “Maybe we ought to pray for deliverance.”
“Pray in one hand, shit in the other, and see which one fills up first.”
“I guess I won’t pray,” he said. “Or shit. Least not at the moment. You remember, that’s how we met. I was—”
“I remember,” I said.
* * * *
Well, we was waitin’ for them to surround us, but like Colonel Hatch said, you can never figure an Apache. We laid there all night, and nothin’ happen. I’m ashamed to say, I nodded off, and when I awoke it was good and daylight and hadn’t nobody cut our throats or taken our hair.
Cullen was sittin’ with his legs crossed, lookin’ in the direction of the Apache. I said, “Damn, Cullen. I’m sorry. I fell out.”
“I let you. They’re done gone.”
I sat up and looked. There was the horses,
buzzards lightin’ on them, and there were a few of them big ole birds on the ground eyeballin’ our mule, and us. I shooed them, said, “I’ll be damn. They just packed up like a circus and left.”
“Yep. Ain’t no rhyme to it. They had us where they wanted us. Guess they figured they’d lost enough men over a couple of buffalo soldiers, or maybe they saw a bird like Colonel Hatch was talkin’ about, and he told them to take themselves home.”
“What I figure is they just too drunk to carry on, and woke up with hangovers and went somewhere cool and shaded to sleep it off.”
“Reckon so,” Cullen said. Then: “Hey, you mean what you said about me bein’ a top soldier and all?”
“You know it.”
“You ain’t a colonel or nothin’, but I appreciate it. Course, I don’t feel all that top right now.”
“We done all we could do. It was Hatch screwed the duck. He ought not have separated us from the troop like that.”
“Don’t reckon he’ll see it that way,” Cullen said.
“I figure not,” I said.
* * * *
We cut off chunks of meat from the mule and made a little fire and filled our bellies, then we started walkin’. It was blazin’ hot, and still we walked. When nightfall come, I got nervous, thinkin’ them Apache might be comin’ back, and that in the long run they had just been fiinnin’ us. But they didn’t show, and we took turns sleepin’ on the hard plains.
Next mornin it was hot, and we started walkin’. My back hurt and my ass was draggin and my feet felt like someone had cut them off. I wished we had brought some of that mule meat with us. I was so hungry, I could see corn-bread walkin’ on the ground. Just when I was startin’ to imagine pools of water and troops of soldiers dancin’ with each other, I seen somethin’ that was a little more substantial.
Satan.
I said to Cullen, “Do you see a big black horse?”