Goodnight's Dream (A Floating Outfit Western Book 4) (2 page)

Still terrified, the mule fought against its
lead rope and was almost free when a cursing Sid left his post to
run towards it. Seeing that his companion could not calm the
animal, Loving joined him. Between them, they managed to free the
packsaddle and let it fall to the ground. Then they released the
mule, watching it stampede from the cave and go crow hopping off
along the edge of the river.

‘
Damned good riddance! I hope the
Comanches get you and eat you. It’d serve you and them right!’ Sid
yelled after the departing beast. ‘Where in hell did Colonel
Charlie get that fool knob-head from, boss?’

‘
John Chisum gave it to him as boot for
the cattle-deal they made.’

‘
Figures,’ Sid sniffed. ‘Chisum’d
never’ve parted with it was it any danged use at all.’

‘
That’s for sure,’ Loving admitted.
‘But he can supply us with the cattle we need to fill an Army
contract should we get one.’

Sid spat on the ground, but refrained from
expressing further thoughts on Chisum. While the man in question
had not yet gained his title of ‘The Cattle King’, he already
showed the manner in which he would rise to fame. Sure the bosses
needed cattle, but Sid felt he personally would rather not depend
on the shifty-eyed, if jovial-seeming Chisum to supply the stock.
However, it was the bosses’ affair. One of the blessings remaining
to an ordinary cowhand was that Sid did not need to worry about
such things.

Even if Loving had felt inclined to discuss
Chisum’s shortcomings, it was neither the time nor place to do so.
Instead there were preparations to be made against a resumption of
hostilities.

Crossing to the packsaddle, Loving removed
and opened his bedroll. From the war bag he extracted a box of
cartridges for the rifle. The crack of a shot, mingling with the
vicious ‘spang’ as a bullet ricocheted from the walls, drew his
attention to the entrance.

‘
I knowed that young cuss with the
rifle’d get hurt if he went on the way he was going,’ Sid remarked,
lowering his smoking carbine. ‘He won’t be worrying us no
more.’

‘
Good,’ Loving answered, for none of
the other braves showed an equal skill with their
firearms.

Sitting with his back against the wall,
Loving rested the Henry’s butt on the ground. Drawing the catch
under the magazine towards the muzzle, he compressed the loading
spring and opened the tube. With the spring’s catch held in its
slot, he dropped sufficient flat-nosed B. Tyler Henry .44 rimfire
bullets down the tube to replace those already expended. With the
magazine full, he turned the tube back into place under the barrel
and lowered the head of the spring on to the uppermost round. With
his rifle once more holding sixteen bullets, he changed places and
allowed Sid to gather ammunition.

While watching the other slope,
Loving silently cursed his
luck. So far all the attackers appeared to
be
tuivitsi,
young and inexperienced warriors. However, if he knew
the
Kweharehnuh,
the smoke-signals ought to bring
tehnap
on the run;
seasoned braves with battle-savvy and capable of planning future
attacks with more skill than had so far been shown. So the
defenders faced a long, hard struggle and, despite its advantages,
the cave was far from impregnable. Even if Spat had made good his
escape and reached the herd, help might not arrive in time. In
fact, Goodnight could muster at most twenty men. A small enough
force to take on a band of Antelope Comanches.

There was another aspect to disturb Loving.
Against his partner’s advice, he had insisted on pushing ahead of
the herd so as to reach Fort Sumner more quickly than would be
possible accompanying the cattle. The earlier he arrived. Loving
had figured, the greater his chance of picking up a lucrative
contract to supply the Army with beef needed to feed and hold the
Apache Indians peaceably on the reservations.

While Goodnight agreed with the
possibility, he also saw the dangers of a small party making the
journey. Before finally agreeing, he had asked Loving only to
travel by night. Although Loving began by intending to follow the
advice, seeing no sign of Indians led him to indiscretion. Jumped
by the
Kweharehnuh,
his arrival at Fort Sumner would be at least
delayed if not cancelled entirely under the Pecos rim. In the
latter case, Loving hoped that Spat would reach Goodnight. Even if
Charlie failed to save his partner, he would know of Loving’s fate
and not continue the drive expecting the other to have reached the
Fort and made the all-important deal.

‘
Some more of ’em come up, boss,’ Sid
remarked, joining his employer. ‘They’re sure talking up a storm
there.’

‘
Likely the
tuivitsi,
telling the others
about my Henry,’ Loving guessed. ‘I’d say them fellers who’ve just
come’ll have to see if it’s true.’

Verification of the rancher’s assumption came
swiftly. Most of the newcomers let out challenging war whoops and
charged down the slope. Wanting to impress them with his rifle’s
firepower, Loving started shooting fast. Some bullets flew in
reply, striking the wall around the entrance or whining into the
cave. At a hundred yards from the river, with two braves down and a
couple more wounded, the attackers turned aside. Scooping up their
fallen companions, they returned to the rim amid jeers and comments
from the first party.

If Loving hoped that a further
reverse would send the
Kweharehnuh
on their way, he was disappointed. Although they
withdrew, the braves went no farther than the top of the rim.
Dismounting, they gathered about the senior warrior present and
listened to his advice. Then men armed with rifles found positions
from which they could cover the cave’s mouth. The rest took the
horses out of sight. Clearly they were prepared for a long siege;
probably with the intention of eventually gaining possession of the
wonderful ‘medicine’ rifle that could fire so many times without
needing to be reloaded.

There were no further attacks
made that day. Nor did the watchers waste lead and powder by
shooting at the cave. More braves came at intervals, including a
war-bonnet chief and many
tehnap.
Each group of new arrivals appeared on the rim,
studied the situation and then withdrew without hostile action. For
all that, Loving and Sid knew the Comanches would not give up
without further attempts to dislodge them.

‘
What do you reckon, boss?’ Sid
inquired as the sun sank towards the western rim.

‘
Likely they’ll try to jump us at
dawn,’ the rancher replied. ‘It’s a full moon tonight, so we’ll be
able to see if they try sneaking up too close.’

‘
With the moon we can’t chance slipping
out,’ Sid remarked. ‘Might’ve tried to get by ’em and to their
horses but for that.’

‘
Not a hope of it,’
Loving grunted. ‘They’re
Kweharehnuh,
not a bunch of Mission
Tejases.
We
could
take a whirl at
going up the rim on this side but we’d be a-foot comes morning and
they’d have found out we’d gone.’

‘
I surely hates walking,’ Sid declared.
‘’Specially when the fellers after me’s got hosses. Looks like it’s
root, hog or die right here until Colonel Charlie comes to fetch us
out.’

‘
That’s what we’ll do,’ Loving
agreed.

Although aware that the
Comanche did not normally attack at night—figuring that
Ka-Dih,
the Great Spirit,
might not find the soul of a warrior killed in the darkness—the
Texans took no chances. While Sid made up a meal of biscuits,
pemmican and water, Loving watched the slope. Then they alternated
a constant guard as the night went by. With the land before them
illuminated by a bright full moon, they could see the Pecos well
enough to detect any attempt to sneak up on them.

Apart from the glow of fires beyond the rim
and the occasional coming and going of braves watching the cave’s
entrance, there was no sign of activity from the Comanches. Yet
Loving and Sid knew the Indians would be planning their next move,
being temperamentally unsuited for passive siege warfare.

Sitting with his back against the wall and
his Sharps carbine resting on his knees, Sid was waiting out the
last hour or so before sun-up. Soon he would wake up his boss so
that Loving could make preparations to meet the attack when it
came.

A faint scuffling clicking noise from above
drew Sid’s attention from the slope. Something fell, clattering
lightly to the ground before the entrance. Sid tensed slightly as
he saw the thing that disturbed him. A few small rocks had fallen
from the rim over the cave. Which meant somebody was up there—and
that somebody must be the Comanches. A puzzled frown creased Sid’s
brow and he wondered what the Indians hoped to achieve from their
new position. Rising sheer for a good forty feet, the wall could
not be climbed. So the braves on top posed little threat to the
defenders. Most likely they were a newly arrived group who were
surveying the situation before joining the main body.

‘
Boss!’ Sid hissed, figuring that
Loving would want to know about the arrivals.

‘
Stirring in his blankets, Loving sat
up and looked around. Then he rose with the Henry in his hand and
joined the other man at the entrance.

‘
Anything doing?’

‘
Not across the river, but I thought I
heard something on the rim.’

‘
Cover me!’ Loving ordered, then moved
cautiously out of the cave.

Looking up, the rancher could see no sign of
life on the rim. His thoughts ran parallel to Sid’s on the matter
and he withdrew to shelter as a rifle cracked on the opposite
slope, its bullet whining off the wall above his head.

‘
Couldn’t see anything up there,’ the
rancher stated on his return. ‘And there’s no way they could climb
down near enough to do them any good.’

‘
The chief’s on the other side,’ Sid
answered. ‘Maybe come to see what the shooting’s about. It won’t be
long now.’

‘
That’s for sure,’ admitted Loving.
‘Unless they call it off now they know they can’t take us by
surprise with a dawn rush.’

‘
If they do hold off, Colonel Charlie
ought to be getting here afore long.’

‘
And running into odds of
maybe ten to one. You can’t stack up against that
many
Kweharehnuh
and hope to come out of it winning.’

‘
Which won’t stop Colonel Charlie
trying,’ Sid said. ‘We’d best hope that we can down enough of ’em
so they’ll reckon their medicine’s all ways bad when our boys get
here.’

Nodding grimly, Loving inched himself forward
until he could look along the wall of the rim in each direction.
Despite the area being in shadow, he found no signs of the Comanche
having sent braves across the river to stalk the cave entrance on
foot ready to attack when the main body made their assault.

Slowly the sun crept up and the dawn’s
grayness lessened by the second. Sid wiped his palms on his shirt
and exchanged a glance with his boss. On the rim, the chief and
many braves sat their horses. At an order from their leader, the
warriors armed with rifles opened fire on the cave. Then the
mounted men swept forward in a fast-moving line. Leaving their
places of concealment, the men with the rifles bounded on to the
mounts led to them by companions. Down the slope thundered the
savage warriors, yelling their war-whoops and exhibiting no caution
or concern at the idea of facing the repeating rifle.

‘
Give ’em hell, Sid!’ Loving ordered,
lining his Henry.

Whipping the carbine to his
shoulder, Sid took aim at what he figured to be the best target. To
lay a better aim at the war-bonnet chief, he extended the barrel of
the Sharps beyond the mouth of the cave. Two brown hands flashed
into view from the wall at the entrance, grasping the barrel and
giving a savage heave at it. Taken by surprise, Sid was jerked
forward and fired the Sharps only to see its bullet throw up
sand on the nearer
bank of the stream. Unable to stop himself, the cowhand stumbled
into the open and fell to his knees. Releasing the carbine after
dragging its owner into sight, a Comanche brave snatched the
tomahawk from his belt. Around whistled the sharp blade, biting
into Sid’s skull and tumbling him to the ground.

An instant later the brave also died.
Swiveling around Loving held his Henry at waist-level but drove a
bullet into the center of the savage, paint-decorated face. Even as
the Comanche went over backwards, another brave came into sight but
from Loving’s side of the entrance. Swiftly the rancher swung his
rifle, working the lever as fast as he could, and fired with the
muzzle almost touching the buck’s chest. Thrown backwards by the
impact, the Indian fell under the feet of two more braves as they
leapt from the way he had come.

Loving’s thoughts on how so
many
Kweharehnuh
had managed to cross the river and reach the wall flanking
the entrance undetected received a rapid answer. Coiling down from
above, a rope’s end descended before the mouth of the cave and
agitated violently. Following the rope, a pair of legs slid into
view, followed by the all but naked body of a
tuivitsi.
At the crack of the Henry, the
young buck released the rope and crashed down.