something and he begins to depend … and in a fighting matter no man should
depend. He should do what has to be done himself.
My canteen was full and I’d some jerked meat in my saddlebag, lots of fresh
meat, and plenty of ammunition.
They would try to come over the rise behind me. That crest, only a couple of
feet away, masked my view of the far slope. So I had out my bowie knife and
began cutting a trench. That was a nine-inch blade, sharp enough to shave with,
and I worked faster than ever in my born days.
It took me only minutes to have a trench that gave me a view of the back slope,
and I looked around just in time. Four of them were coming up the slope toward
me on foot and running bent over. My shot was a miss … too quick. But they hit
dirt. Where there had been running Indians there was only grass stirring in the
wind.
They would be creeping on their bellies now, getting closer. Taking a chance, I
leaped up. Instantly, I spotted a crawling Indian and fired, then dropped into
my hole with bullets spearing the air where I’d been. That was something I
couldn’t try again, for now they’d be expecting.
Overhead there were high streamers of white clouds. Turning around I crawled
into my trench, and just in time. An Indian was coming up that back slope, bent
over and coming fast and I let him come. It was high time I shortened the odds
against me, so I put my rifle in position, reached down to ease my Colt for fast
work in case the others closed in at the same time. That Ute was going to reach
me with his next rush. Some were down, but I doubted if more than one was
actually dead. I wasn’t counting any scalps until I had them.
Minutes loitered. Sweat trickled down my cheeks and my neck. I could smell the
sweat of my own body and the hot dust. Somewhere an eagle cried. Sweat and dust
made my skin itch, and when a big horsefly lit on Montana, my slap sounded loud
in the hot stillness.
Eastern folks might call this adventure, but it is one thing to read of
adventure sitting in an easy chair with a cool drink at hand, and quite another
thing to be belly down in the hot dust with four, five Indians coming up the
slope at you with killing on their minds.
A grasshopper flew into the grass maybe fifteen yards down slope, then took off
at once, quick and sharp. That was warning enough. Lifting the rifle I steadied
it on that spot for a quick shot, then chanced a glance over my shoulder. Just
as I looked back that Ute charged out of the grass like he was bee-stung.
My guess had been right, and he came up where that grasshopper had lit. My
sights were on the middle of his chest when I squeezed off my shot and he fell
in plain sight.
Behind me their feet made a whisper in the dry grass and rolling over I palmed
my Colt and had two shots off before I felt the slam of the bullet. The Utes
vanished and then I was alone but for a creeping numbness in my left shoulder
and the slow welling of blood.
Sliding back from the trench I felt sickish faint and plugged the hole with a
handkerchief. The bullet had gone through and I was already soaked with blood on
my left side. With bits of handkerchief I plugged the bullet hole on both sides
and knew I was in real trouble.
Blinking against the heat and sudden dizziness I fed shells into my guns. Then I
took the plug from my canteen and rinsed my mouth. It was lukewarm and brackish.
My head started to throb heavily and it was an effort to move my eyebrows. The
smell of sweat and dried grass grew stronger and overhead the sky was yellow and
hot as brass. From out of an immeasurable distance a buzzard came.
Suddenly I hated the smells, hated the heat, hated the buzzard circling and
patient—as it could be patient—knowing that most things die.
Crawling to the rim of the buffalo wallow my eyes searched the terrain before
me, dancing with heat waves. I tried to swallow and could not, and Tennessee and
its cool hills seemed very far away.
Through something like delirium I saw my mother rocking in her old chair, and
Orrin coming up from the spring with a wooden bucket full of the coldest water a
man could find.
Lying in a dusty hole on a hot Colorado hillside with a bullet hole in me and
Utes waiting to finish the job, I suddenly remembered what day it was. It had
been an hour … or had it been more? It had been at least an hour since the
last attack. Like the buzzards, all those Utes needed was time, and what is time
to an Indian?
Today was my birthday … today I was nineteen years old.
Chapter VIII
Long fingers of shadow reached out from the sentinel pines before I took my next
swallow of water. Twice I’d sponged out the mouth of that Montana horse, who was
growing restless and harder to keep down.
No chance to take a cat nap, or even take my eyes off the country for more than
a minute because I knew they were still out there and they probably knew I was
hurt. My shoulder was giving me billy-hell. Even if I’d had a chance to run for
it Montana horse would be stiff from lying so long.
About that time I saw the outfit coming up the slope. They rode right up to that
buffalo wallow bold as brass and sat their horses grinning at me, and I was
never so glad to see anybody.
“You’re just in time for tea,” I said, “you all just pull up your chairs. I’ve
got the water on and she’ll be ready any minute.”
“He’s delirious,” Tom Sunday grinned like a big ape. “He’s gone off his rocker.”
“It’s the heat,” Orrin agreed. “The way he’s dug in you’d think he’d been
fighting Indians.”
“Hallucinations,” Rountree added, “a plain case of prairie sickness.”
“If one of you will get off his horse,” I suggested, “I’ll plain whip him till
his hair falls out, one-handed at that. Where’ve you been? Yarning it in the
shade?”
“He asks us where we’ve been?” Sunday exclaimed. “And him sitting in a nice cool
hole in the ground while we work our fool heads off.”
Rountree, he cut out and scouted around, and when he rode back he said, “Looks
like you had yourself a party. By the blood on the grass you got two, anyway.”
“You should backtrack me.” I was feeling ornery as a stepped-on baby. “If I
didn’t score on five out of nine Utes, I’ll put up money for the drinks.”
“Only three took off when we showed up,” Sunday agreed.
Grabbing my saddle horn I pulled myself into the leather; for the first time
since I’d sighted those Utes I could count on another day of living.
For the next three days I was cook which comes of having a bum wing on a cow
outfit. Cap was a fair hand at patching up wounds and he made a poultice of
herbs of some kind which he packed on my shoulder. He cleaned the wound by
running an arrow shaft through with a cloth soaked in whiskey, and if you think
that’s entertainment, you just try it on for size.
On the fifth day I was back in the saddle but I fought shy of Sate, reckoning
he’d be too much for me, feeling like I was. So I worked Dapple and Buck to a
frazzle, and ended up riding Montana horse who was turning into a real cow
horse.
This was rougher country than before. We combed the breaks and drifted the
cattle into a rough corral. It was hot, rough, cussing work, believe you me.
Here and there we found some branded stock, stuff that had stampeded from trail
herds further east, or been driven off by Indians.
“Maybe we should try Abilene this time,” I suggested to the others. “The price
would be better. We just happened to be lucky in Santa Fe.”
Seven hundred head of cattle was what we started out with, and seven hundred
head can be handled by four men if they work like dogs and are passing lucky.
As before, we let them graze as they moved. What we wanted was fat cattle at
selling time. In that box canyon they had steadied down a good bit with plenty
of water and grass and nothing much to do but eat and lie around.
First night out from the Purgatoire we bedded down after a long drive with the