As the convoy approached Pecos Canyon,
Ben’s worry was replaced by a feeling of unease. He couldn’t quite pinpoint the
source of the unease, but it was definite and strong; an itchy feeling at the
nape of his neck, as if thousands of gnats were buzzing around him.
As he scanned the surrounding terrain, he
saw nothing to account for the sensation.
The sky was bright blue with wispy trails of clouds. The air was warm; a
hint of a breeze rolled in from the east keeping it from becoming stifling hot.
The jagged walls of the canyon rose on his left, red clay and gray rock mixed
in garish combinations, with the occasional splash of green where either cactus
or scrub pushed its way up through to the surface. The ground fell off gently
to the right, reddish brown earth covered in cactus and scrub. Off in the
distance, Ben could see a lone coyote loping along, its nose close to the
ground. A hawk made lazy circles above the convoy.
Everything Ben could see and hear made it
look like the most peaceful of days; a day when he should enjoy being on the
trail; but, he could feel menace in the air, the smell of trouble in his
nostrils. It was like the feeling he’d had in the past just before going into
combat; but then, he’d known who and where the enemy was. Now, though, he only
had the uneasy feeling.
So strong had been that feeling, when they
set out after eating, he’d instructed the outriders front and rear to station
themselves where they could see the convoy and be seen. He didn’t explain why
he did this, and his men, accustomed to following his instructions without
question, and trusting his instincts, asked for none.
Just as Ben was thinking he might be a
touch paranoid, he looked back over his shoulder.
Tatum and Hall, riding abreast, were
heading toward them, and they had their horses running flat out. So much for
paranoia, Ben thought.
“Convoy, halt,” he yelled.
The two corporals pulled their horses up
as they neared Ben.
“What’s the matter?” Ben asked.
Tatum was the first to catch his breath.
“Riders comin’ up behind us,” he said.
“Was eight at first, but when we started up this last slope, three of ‘em must
of split off, ‘cause I only saw five just now, and they’s ridin’ this way
hard.”
That, Ben knew, meant no good.
“Pull the wagons into the emergency stop
formation,” he ordered.
The drivers, Danford included, immediately
began the drill Ben had had them rehearse. The wagons were positioned, brakes
locked, and horses tethered to the tongues of the two lead wagons in slightly
over a minute. The troopers dismounted, securing their own horses and removed
their pack rolls to create barricades and firing platforms.
Hightower and Holman had been looking back
from time to time to make sure they stayed in sight of the convoy, and when
they saw the wagons begin to move into the defensive formation, wheeled their
horses around and rushed back to join the rest.
Everyone was lying on the ground, weapons
ready, when the first rider appeared over a little rise in the trail. At first,
they only saw his head, but soon rider and horse were silhouetted against the
sky, and he was quickly joined by four others. They stopped, just out of
carbine range.
“What d-do you t-think they’ll do?”
Danford asked. He was prone on the dirt next to Ben.
“They’ll probably wait until their friends
can get around behind us,” he said. He wasn’t sure, but in their place, it’s
what he would have done. “Keep a sharp eye out behind us, and let me know if
you see anything.” That last he directed at George Toussaint, who was guarding
the trail to their front with three troopers lying beside him. “Don’t shoot,
though, until I give the order.”
“Got you,” was all Toussaint said.
Ben patted the bag of currency he’d put on
the ground beside him. Looking back he noticed that Toussaint had put the other
bag beside him along with his ammunition pouches.
The five riders sat motionless, appearing
to be deep in conversation. Then, they wheeled their horses around and
disappeared over the rise.
“Get ready,” Ben said. “I think they might
be about to make a move.”
Just like that, the peaceful scene had
been transformed to a battle in the making. Fifteen men, tense and alert, lay
on the ground in the makeshift fortress made from the three wagons, their
weapons at the ready. The horses, as if sensing the impending peril, whinnied
nervously and pawed at the ground.
Ben was no longer worried. As always, just
before going into battle, his mind became calm, his breathing steady.
As he watched the point from which the men
had disappeared, he noticed a glint, probably the sun flashing off a rifle
barrel. They were on the move. He took a deep breath and eased his Springfield
over the large pack behind which he lay, looking down the barrel as he aimed it
at the rise.
The sound of the bullet smacking into the
side of the wagon above him came a second before he heard the sharp crack. He
looked quickly from side to side and was rewarded with the sight of a wisp of
smoke indicating the shooter’s position.
“Hold your fire,” he said quietly.
He could sense tension in Danford and the
troopers from the wagons. This was probably new to them. His men, though, had
been in similar or worse situations many times. He knew he could count on them.
“What do you see back there, George?” he
asked.
“Thought I saw a movement ‘bout two, three
hundred yards back,” Toussaint answered.
A geyser of dirt erupted in the cactus
field simultaneously with the crack of the shot. The men trying to circle
around to cut them off were closer, and therefore more dangerous.
“Shoot back if you have a target,” Ben
said.
Toussaint made a grunting sound as if to
say he already knew to do that.
Ben meanwhile was scanning the ground to
his front, looking for any sign of movement, any kind of target, while at the
same time watching the civilian who lay next to him, his face ashen with fear.
There was a long moment of silence, which was
broken by a ragged volley of fire from the vicinity of the five concealed
gunmen. Some of the rounds hit the wagons making a dull thudding sound, while
some knocked up dirt and rock around them.
Out of the corner of his eye Ben saw one
of the soldiers, the one who’d been on the wagon with the Mexican driver, raise
up, his shoulders above the line of packs, aiming his weapon.
“Get down -” Ben started to yell, but
there was a sharp crack and the man grabbed his shoulder, rolling over against
the soldier beside him.
“Ow, I been hit,” the man moaned,
clutching at the widening dark spot on his shoulder.
“All of you stay down,” Ben said with as
much force as he could muster.
He scooted over and look at the man’s
bleeding shoulder. He could from the hole in the back of his tunic, where blood
was already spreading, that the bullet had gone completely through.
“Keep down and see if you can stop the
bleeding,” he said to the wide-eyed Mexican. He put a hand on the wounded man’s
knee. “It went clean through. When he stops the bleeding you’ll be okay.”
Ben eased back into his position as the
man’s jacket was removed, a difficult task with them all lying down. The man
gritted his teeth against the pain.
“We just lay here,” George Toussaint said.
“They gone keep shootin’ and pick us off one by one.”
Ben was all too aware of that. He had no
answer for Toussaint, though. His mind worked feverishly to think of a plan to
get them out of the trap the robbers had sprung.
As if to underscore their predicament,
there was a volley of shots from the road ahead of them where the other three
gunmen were concealed. The robbers’ strategy was clear to Ben now; they would
alternate shooting from each position. Those not shooting would move forward
while Ben and his men were distracted by the shooting, moving ever closer. It
was just a matter of time until one group or the other was in a position to get
clear shots them.
He couldn’t maintain the position for
long.
“You’re right, George,” he said. “We need
to take the fight to them somehow.”
Toussaint’s dark face lit up in a smile.
The man relished a good fight.
“What you got in mind?” he asked.
Ben explained what he thought the robbers
were doing, and suggested using a variant of it themselves. The three men who’d
circled around them were closest, and therefore, the most dangerous. His plan
was relatively simple. While the rest of the group would lay down a volley of
heavy fire at both groups of robbers, four troopers, Davis, Tatum, Hightower,
and Buckley, the best shots besides Ben and Toussaint, would slip out of the
barricade and work downslope through the scrub and make their way up the trail
toward the three, who, if things worked, would have their heads down to keep
out of range of the withering fire.
“It might work,” Hightower said. The other
three nodded agreement.
As the four men eased to the side,
preparing to crawl underneath the wagon and into the brush, Ben repositioned
the remainder of the group to have an equal number of weapons firing in each
direction.
“Get ready,” he said quietly. He looked at
Hightower, who would be the first to go. Hightower nodded. “Fire,” Ben yelled.
The
crash of eleven rifles firing almost simultaneously was deafening. A cloud of
gun smoke hung over the wagons, causing Ben and the others to cough. But,
between coughs, he ordered them to continue firing.
It worked; no return fire came from either
direction.
While part of his mind focused on
reloading and firing his carbine, another part was counting off seconds since
the four troopers had slipped from the relative safety of the wagons. Ben knew
that Hightower, with the skills he’d learned when he and his mother had lived
with the Indians that had kidnapped them, would be able to move quickly and
quietly through the brush. The others wouldn’t be as quick or quiet, but each
had experience in the field and would follow Hightower’s lead.
“Cease fire,” he said, when he felt the
four men had had enough time to get well away.
The sudden quiet was as deafening as the
gunfire had been.
“Think we hit anybody?” Danford asked.
“Probably not,” Ben replied. “But, the
idea was just to keep their heads down, and we did that.”
“What do we do now?”
Ben gave the man a sympathetic look.
“We wait a few more minutes to see what
they do next.”
The crestfallen look on Danford’s face
told Ben that this wasn’t what he’d been expecting, wanting to hear, but it
would have to do. He looked over at the wounded trooper who seemed to be okay.
His tunic had been removed and his shirt torn away so that a bandage could be
wound around his shoulder. The bandage was bloodstained, but there was no sign
of seepage, indicating that the bleeding had stopped. One less thing to worry
about, Ben thought.
“You feeling better?” He asked the man.
“It
hurt like the devil,” the man said, wincing. “But, I think I gone live.”
“Next time, stay down.”
“That for sure.” The wounded soldier
smiled weakly.
The sound of gunfire caused Ben’s head to
whip around. It came from the direction of the three gunmen. He recognized the
unmistakable crack of the Springfield carbine along with what he suspected was
a Winchester repeater; Hightower and the others had encountered the outlaws.
The fire kept up for about two minutes and
then as quickly as it had started it stopped.
For Ben, the next few minutes were the
longest of his life. Had Hightower and the others been able to prevail, or had
he sent four men to their deaths? This was one aspect of command he’d never
learned to view dispassionately, this possibility that his decisions could
cause the death of his friends. Just when he thought he couldn’t take the
waiting any longer, a figure appeared on the trail. He could see that the man
coming over the curve of the slight hill wore a cavalry uniform, so he began to
breathe easier. Then, he recognized Hightower’s lanky form when he raised his
carbine high above his head and waved it. The mission had been a success.
Ben crawled toward the opening between the
two wagons and began waving toward Hightower. First he pointed to his rear, and
then he made a sweeping motion to the left. Hightower waved and disappeared
over the hill.
Toussaint chuckled.
“So, you gone use they trick right back at
‘em, huh?”
Ben smiled.
“What’s good for the goose is good for the
gander, my pa always says.”
Ben rearranged the men, leaving only two
to cover the east side, while moving the rest to aim west toward the remaining
five outlaws.
“W-what are you planning to do, sergeant?”
Danford asked when Ben returned to his position under the settler’s wagon.
Ben moved to a position on his back, with
his shoulders against the packs, so that he could see everyone.
“Marcus, Hezekiah, Tom, and Lucas are
coming with me,” he said. “We’ll ease out front here, grab our horses and ride
off toward the southeast to get out of range. Then we’ll turn around and head
back along the bottom of that ridgeline south of us until we’ve flanked the
outlaws. That way, we’ll have ‘em in a crossfire from Samuel and the others. If
you fellas down here see one of ‘em pop his head up, take a shot as well.”
The four men Ben had named to accompany
him nodded, slight smiles creasing their faces. Toussaint, however, frowned
deeply.
“Shouldn’t I be the one to lead this,
Ben?” he asked quietly. “You in charge of the whole shebang, so you oughta stay
here where you can watch everything, you know.”
Ben and George Toussaint hadn’t exactly
hit it off when they first met, but over the many months they’d served
together, had developed a close friendship. He also knew that it would have
been tactically sound to put his second in command in charge of the little foray
he was planning, but he had to occasionally demonstrate to the men that he
wasn’t sending them out to do anything he wasn’t prepared to do himself.
“I’m tired of layin’ here on my backside,”
Ben said. “I’m leaving you in charge here and getting out to stretch my legs.”
He smiled broadly. He lifted the canvas
bag and tossed it to Toussaint. “Keep hold of that until I get back.”
He didn’t have to say, “and, if I don’t
get back, it’s your responsibility to get these two bags to the adjutant;” the
look in his friend’s eyes told him the message was received and understood.
“Okay,” Toussaint said. “We’ll provide
cover fire when you ready to slip out.”
Ben and the others checked their weapons
and ammunition.
“You ready?” he asked them. They nodded.
“Okay then, let’s move out.”
As they wormed their way to the horses,
dragging their saddles, Toussaint and the others took aim at the rise to the
west and began firing methodically. There was no return fire.
They kept as low as possible as they
saddled their horses. When they were done, they took the reins and moved east
along the trail a ways and then to the south into the tall scrub. Once they
were about a hundred yards deep into the grass, they mounted and began moving
at a trot southwest to make their way to a point somewhat south of where they
figured the outlaws were.
The firing from their position kept up.
Ben knew that Toussaint understood what he was trying to do, and was doing what
he could to keep the outlaws distracted.
When they’d reached a point that Ben
estimated was directly south of the top of the rise, Ben had them ride a bit
further west in hopes they would come out behind the outlaws. At they swung
north, he heard the crack of rifle fire from somewhere to his front; Hightower
and the others must have arrived and engaged the outlaws, he thought. He
spurred his horse to a gallop and pulled his carbine from the scabbard. The
other four followed suit.
As they burst from the tall grass onto the
trail, he saw that they had indeed worked their way past the outlaws who were
now moving toward their horses, firing as they ran. He could hear the crack of
carbines and see puffs of smoke from a clump of trees to the northeast.
“Let ‘em have it, fellas,” he yelled as he
brought his carbine to his shoulder and fired one-handed.
Taking fire from two sides, the five
outlaws panicked. They were now scrambling madly toward their horses. The
animals, picking up the fear from their owners, were bucking and shying, trying
to pull free from the small bushes they’d been tethered to. The outlaws were
firing back over their shoulders as they ran, but their shots went wild.
Ben, on the other hand, was calmly aiming,
and as the carbine bucked against his shoulder, one of the outlaws threw his
hands in the air and pitched forward. He twitched once and was still, face down
in the dirt. Another screamed and dropped to his knees, grabbing at his right
leg, where a large dark stain was spreading along his trouser leg.
The three outlaws in front, ignoring their
comrade’s cries for help, leapt for their horses, ripping the reins from the
bushes. Lying low across the horses’ shoulders, they kicked them into action,
all attempts to fire back at the cavalrymen forgotten in their desire to get as
far away from them as possible.
Hightower got to the wounded outlaw just
before Ben did. The man was sitting on the ground, his hands clasped around his
thigh, moaning as he rocked back and forth.
“Ow, it hurt,” he cried. He looked up at
Hightower, fear in his eyes. “Please don’t shoot me.”
Both Hightower and Ben regarded him
impassively. Ben walked over and kicked the man’s rifle away. He then reached
down and removed the pistol from the man’s holster.
“Patch him up as best you can, Samuel,”
Ben said. “Then tie him up and put him in one of the wagons. We’ll take him
back to the fort and let the colonel decide what to do with him.”
“What about the dead ones?” Hightower
asked. “This one here and the three at the other end of the trail.”
Ben took a deep breath and shrugged.
“Guess we ought to bury ‘em.”
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