A Prairie Song

(1871)

By Charles D. Phillips

It started out as a fine day. With only a two-day ride left to Buffalo Gap, Jake found a spot where a wet creek pooled and created a nice stand of mesquite perfect for an overnight camp. He spent the morning giving his buckskin gelding, Paco, a good rub and brushing, knocking a week of grit out of his coat. He cooked the last of his bacon, made a pan of biscuits, and boiled himself a pot of coffee. He had filled all his canteens, and the remainder of the biscuits and bacon would last until he reached the traders’ camp at The Gap.

Some folks didn’t like carrying a skillet or coffee pot on the trail. They thought that was only for men so busted up that they had to become a cook. Jake had spent much of his life riding a bunch of hard trails and saw little sense in depriving himself of those few things that might give a man a bit more comfort. Besides, he could make a better biscuit than most any of those stove up old boys who did cook. Not that he was going to tell anyone.

By now the rest of the crew would be at The Gap, trying to drink all the whiskey and take all the cardsharps’ money. They wouldn’t be doin’ much good at either, but they would be givin’ it their best. The buffalo hides they had piled high on their wagons farther up north would have brought a fine dollar from the traders who came to The Gap. His share would be there when he made it in. There might even be enough whiskey left to wash the caliche dust out of his mouth.

He had been forced to stay behind the crew because Paco had come up lame, the cannon bone in his left foreleg heating up right above the fetlock, just where Waco Jackson’s silly-assed mule had kicked Paco out of sheer meanness. Well, Jackson claimed that Paco biting his mule’s hindquarters might be seen by some as considerable provocation, but that stupid mule should have known better than to get between Paco and that patch of sweet grass.

Some men favored mules on the trail, but Jake always thought it was the choice of stubborn men like Waco who took some kind of contrary pride in riding an ugly plug of an animal. Jake himself took considerable pleasure in Paco’s good conformation and coloring. In fact, he knew the way Paco’s coal-black legs, tail, and mane stood out so sharply against the remainder of his light tan coat made Jake the envy of many a rider and also made a fine introduction to not a few ladies. No matter how drunk or broke Jake got, he refused to sell Paco or make a bet that included his saddle horse.

After a few days rest, Jake and Paco had started their long, lonely trek down off the Staked Plains into West Texas. Their pace has been slow and leisurely, exercising but never taxing Paco’s healing foreleg. After their luxurious morning spent under the light shade of the mesquites, they were braving the heat of the day to make a decent dent in the remainder of the distance to The Gap.

The day took its bad turn when Jake noticed a lone brave, probably Southern Comanche or maybe Kiowa, on a low ridge to his left. One Indian wasn’t a really bad problem. The real problems were that there was no such thing as only one Indian; Indians didn’t let you see them unless they wanted you to see them, and all plains Indians this far off the reservation hated all whites, especially buffalo hunters. Jake decided that it had to be a raiding party. The peaceful Comanche and the Kiowa were on their reservations to the west and north quietly dying in considerable numbers of cholera, typhoid, or starvation.

Jake figured he had three choices. He could keep going down the shallow valley he had entered on his way to higher ground. But, some hard-earned experience in the Civil War had taught him, just like it taught those Alabama boys who faced him and his unit at the southern end of Seminar Ridge, that holding low ground meant holding, maybe for all eternity, the killing ground. A healthy Paco would have outrun the Indian ponies, but Paco wasn’t healthy. Jake could head off toward the low ridge away from the Indian, showing his new companion that he wanted no trouble. At the same time, the lone brave might be trying to spook him into doin’ exactly that, trying to herd him into the rest of his raiding party waiting on the backside of the far ridge. Or, Jake could move up the ridge where the brave was keeping pace with his progress.

No matter what he did, he would do it while he vehemently cussed himself for acting like such a honyoker, a greenhorn. Now, he might lose his hair because he had chosen to take the easy, more westward track off the Staked Plains. Had he cut east sooner, he would have faced harder trails and more dry camps, but also had a much lower likelihood of running into renegades fresh off the rez and looking for trouble. On top of that, he was now taking a short-cut thru a shallow valley set off by two low ridges. He thought for a minute and came to the conclusion that on the dark side of it he was in near perfect ambush territory but that on the bright side he wasn’t riding into a box canyon. He did not find this bit of thinking too comforting.

He shook his head, pulled Paco up, took up one of his canteens, had a good swallow, washed out his mouth, and spit to one side. His shadow on the ridge also slowed. In this land you never knew when you were making a decision that could cost your life, maybe with hours or days of torture thrown in to sweeten the pot. So, you always needed to act like every decision was life or death. Jake hadn’t done that, and now it looked to him like it was time to put a price tag on that momentary failure in judgment.

Like many other successful hunters, Jake carried two Sharps buffalo guns. He liked the double trigger on these Sharps better than the single-triggered version he had brought west from The War. The two triggers reduced the inaccuracy caused by the longer pull on a single triggered gun. His twin rifles rested in scabbards on either the side of his saddle.

When Jake was hunting, he would fire one Sharps then he would hand the smoking rifle to one of the skinners he paid to act as his loader. The skinner would hand him a loaded rifle. He would sight-in, set the first trigger, and just touch the second, hair-trigger, to fire. His loader would pull down the latch lever on his second rifle, eject the used casing, load a new .52 caliber cartridge, and he would hand Jake a fresh rifle before the buff he had just shot hit the ground. Using two rifles kept each gun from overheating when you found a good stand of buff, and it let you pretty much double your hides, plenty more than enough to pay for the skinner’s help.

Jake leaned back in his saddle, pulled one Sharps from its scabbard, set its butt on his right thigh and cocked it. He didn’t set the first trigger. He could do it quickly enough if it was required, and all he needed was for Paco to stumble going up the ridge and for that cannon to go off by accident. He didn’t have much hope that this would end without a fight, but he was sure that he had heard of stranger things happening with Indians. He couldn’t remember any one of them at this particular moment, but he was sure they were out there somewhere. He turned Paco toward the ridge where his shadow rode and began a slow ascent on a path that would intercept the brave’s progress, if they both maintained speed.

At this move, the brave kicked his pony and rode directly at Jake, screaming, and waving his spear. This meant the brave was either on some strange solo, religious quest that made him crazy with hunger and lack of sleep, or, more likely, it meant that his job was to drive Jake back down into the valley toward the ridge hiding the rest of the raiders. Jake could have let him pass and largely ignored him, but this was obviously going to be a battle, and a dead brave was one that couldn’t take his scalp.

He slid off Paco on the side away from his attacker, ordered Paco still, and placed the Sharps across the saddle seat. He pulled the first trigger, just touched the second trigger, and watched the oncoming brave fly backwards off his pony like someone had just roped him from behind. The Indian pony dashed madly past him, and Jake heard the war cries from the opposite ridge. The braves he now knew were Southern Comanche flew into view riding at breakneck speed down into the shallow valley and toward him. There were at least twenty of them.

Jake holstered the empty rifle, moved to the other side of Paco and drew his unfired rifle. Another brave died flying backward off his pony as he absorbed the shock of a bullet that would stop a charging buffalo in its tracks. That second shot surprised the war party. They had expected to fly up on him after his first shot as he fumbled to reload his one single shot rifle like some farmer with ten thumbs and a bad case of the tremors.

Jake reloaded the Sharps with quick, efficient movements learned at deadly places like South Mountain, Chancellorsville, and Gettysburg. His third shot struck home as well, and his attackers faltered. They turned and galloped back toward the opposite ridge, racing erratically from side to side, some hugging their ponies’ necks trying to escape his aim. Most of the braves seemed to be returning fire with lever action repeating rifles, but it’s hard to hit a barn when you are shooting over your shoulder from the back of a racing pony. Jake managed one more shot that took down yet another attacker as the brave’s horse topped the opposite ridge.

Great, thought Jake that only leaves me maybe 16 or 18 more young bucks who want my hair and who aren’t going to come screaming straight at me next time they decide they want to fight. Jake looked for cover, but the ridge was barren. He pulled Paco the last few yards to just over the top of the ridge line. He couldn’t help but wonder how he could’ve survived all those Confederate minie balls flying through the air when thousands of men clashed, just to be trapped by a small band of red Indians on a piece of forlorn prairie at the southern tip of The Great American Desert.

It didn’t seem fair. Unfortunately, fair didn’t come into it. Too often on these plains, you fought, killed, or died where you stood or crouched because of your own or someone else’s good or bad luck, or because of something as simple as breakfast. Had he pushed on to a dry camp last night, instead of stopping and indulging his desire for good water, fresh coffee and warm biscuits, he might have missed these bucks altogether. Then again, he might not have, and he would be here in the same spot having missed the pleasure of those biscuits and that bacon.

Jake realized there was no running to be done. Given Paco’s condition, he was pretty much afoot. If the Comanche continued their attack after the hidin’ he had given them, then they wouldn’t be turning tail any time soon and riding off into the sunset back towards the rez with its moldy hoecakes. They would be aimin’ to stay until they settled their score with him.

As he considered his situation, braves began slipping over the far ridge, moving from one bit of cover to another. They had dismounted because a horse was too big a target for a marksman like himself. The braves not moving would fire at his position to protect the other braves while they moved. A few braves with single-shot buffalo guns, probably obtained from men like Jake, remained on the ridge, firing both relatively quickly and relatively badly.

Jake understood this for the bad news it was. He had seen these tactics far too often when he was wearing the green uniform on one of Berdan’s sharpshooters in The War. It meant that this band of renegades was lead by a veterano, an older brave who had learned far too many things from the mounted infantry fighting on the frontier. And, he had trained these braves well. Their fire was relatively ineffective at this point, but it would improve as the skirmishers closed and the braves on the ridge finally figured out the range.

He couldn’t outrun them. He was much more of a accurate rifleman than any of the braves, but they could generate a volume of fire he couldn’t match. Soon, their fire would force him to take cover, allowing different portions of the band to move up under strong covering fire. Oh no doubt, he could make them pay, but in the end, he would lose this battle. Within the few hours remaining before dusk, they would have his guns, his horse, and his hair. They would either shoot Paco early to keep Jake from running, or, after they finished with Jake, they would run Paco until his bad foreleg gave out. Then, the best saddle horse Jake ever had would become dinner for the men who had killed him.

He could take down a few more braves, but not enough. He sat behind cover and killed man after man in battle after battle in The War. In January of ’65, he contracted cow pox. When he was discharged, he took his sharpshooter’s rifle, his U.S. Army issued cowhide covered-knapsack with its messkit, and a stolen sutler’s horse. He headed west, and he never looked back.

As he crouched just at the edge of the backside of that ridge, he surprised himself. He realized that he had no stomach for another fight like those battles back East. He had no desire to sit behind cover while his rifle cut through a band of men like a scythe goes through a cornfield. If it would save him, then he would do it without batting an eye. But, he could only fire eight, maybe ten, good shots a minute, but a minute might as well have been an eternity when 15 or so braves were moving in across a couple hundred yards. Jake had killed men to stay alive, and he killed buff to put food on the table and some money in his pockets. He had long ago decided he wouldn’t kill other men just because he could. That decision gave him little choice.

Rising, he grabbed Paco’s reins and pulled him to the top of the ridge, doing his own version of the Rebel Yell that he had heard far too many times. He pulled his Bowie knife from the scabbard hanging from a rawhide strap around his neck and swiped the finely-honed blade across Paco’s throat as he used the reins and weight of his body to pull Paco down onto his side. He laid both loaded rifles across Paco’s twitching withers, rubbed Paco’s nose for a moment, murmured softly to him, then dipped his fingers in the warm blood flowing from Paco’s neck. He drew those wet fingers down his face.

Next, he used his knife to hack off both his long braids. He threw them down the low ridge toward the Comanche. Jake then stood and pulled off his buckskin shirt with its fine Lakota beadwork and ripped it to pieces with his knife. He did the same with the saddlebag that had once been his knapsack. As he did all this, the firing from the braves fell away to nothing, despite the target he made of himself standing behind Paco’s now still body. He had decided that they could take his life, but there would be little bounty in it for them. He would leave no fine long-haired scalp to hang from a spear, no beaded buckskin shirt, and no cowhide covered saddlebags to make the squaws think a brave was rich.

He bent down and dipped his fingers in a pool of Paco’s quickly drying blood. This time, as he rose, he ran his fingers across his bare chest, leaving four horizontal crimson streaks that stood out starkly against the pale, white skin of his chest. A breeze rustled the buffalo grass and brought the blood’s metallic smell to his nostrils. Jake picked up one of the Sharps and stood with one booted foot up on Paco’s prone body. He then began to sing in a rich baritone trained in his Daddy’s church choir in Michigan a lifetime ago, long before he became a heathen, a godless killer of two-legged then four-legged prey. He sang through the first verse of “Amazing Grace.”

The braves remained behind cover, reloading, preparing for their final rush toward this warrior with his many guns and strong medicine. Each brave knew the tale of this battle would be told many times around campfire after campfire by all those who managed to stay alive. As they made ready, the braves listened patiently, waiting for the white warrior to finish his haunting death song.

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Charles D. Phillips is a public health professional who lives and teaches in College Station, Texas. His short fiction has appeared in Flashshot, flashquake, HeavyGlow, Long Story Short, and Vestal Review. He also has additional pieces of short fiction forthcoming in Flashshot and Long Story Short. His non-fiction essays have appeared in The Touchstone Magazine and been produced by Touchstone Radio.