Chapter 10

It looked like the Comanches had decided to send a small group at us. There wouldn’t be much glory in that, so we didn’t need to be concerned with coup sticks. Yeah, here came five of them charging straight at us, Hell bent for leather (I wonder what that literally means). Okay, there they went, swinging off to our right. I guess they must have figured that our left side was bad luck.

Josh was still loaded with regular buckshot in his shotgun, but I had hog-loads in mine. That means that I should shoot first. Okay, they were about 75 yards away and coming at us like a locomotive at full blast. I would try to take out the lead horse and cause the following one to trip, if we were lucky. Oh, my God. That horse seemed to explode when my shot hit him low on his neck. Two horses also tripped over the mess in front of them.

My second shot tore up the lead horse this time, just as before, but the following rider was able to swerve around and miss the fallen horse in his way. That makes me out of ammunition, so it is now up to Josh.

Josh fired at a range of about 30 yards. Most of his buckshot hit the horse and badly wounded him, but some of the pellets did hit the Indian on his back. The sudden swerving of the horse and the pellets that hit the man caused him to fall to the ground. From the angle of his head on his shoulders, the man’s neck was broken. Okay, we have now accounted for seven of the Comanches. What will they try next?

The Comanches were already down to 23 men, counting the war chief, so we wondered what they could try, except for sending everybody at us all at once. That was going to be hard to do because of the width of the arroyo that their horses would have to jump if they hit us straight on. Undoubtedly, some of the Comanches would fall to their death if they tried to jump, so they have to come at us on one side or the other. I can’t see them splitting up and coming at us from both the right and the left because they would run into each other when they came to us. Surely, the war chief must recognize that fact.

Here they come, the whole bunch of them, which was what they should have done at the beginning. The more we have to shoot at, the more we are going to miss. At least, their fooling around had given us time to reload all of our weapons, but I sure was missing one of those SAWs (Squad Automatic Weapons) about now!

Well, we would just do our best and hope to kill enough of them to make them turn off before they killed us. Josh and I had loaded our shotguns with hog-loads for our first shots, but we were going to switch to regular shells if we had time. It was going to be close for us to have enough time for that, even if it did take only 3-5 seconds for us to reload our shotguns.

For whatever reason, they have chosen to come at us from our left, maybe because there were only two dead horses and men in the way from that side and five each from the other side. At 75 yards range, Josh and I started shooting. I suppose that it was just luck that we aimed at different horses, but we fired our first and second shots as quickly as we could bring our guns to bear. I managed to knock down one horse and trip another with each of my two shots, and Josh did the same. Dammit, that left 14 Comanches charging at us, and we didn’t have time to reload the shotguns.

All we could do was to drop our shotguns to the ground at our feet and draw our revolvers. Oh, my God, that was a few seconds of pure chaos. We fired both of our revolvers until both were empty. The only thing that kept us alive was the fact that the way the Comanches were bunched, not all of them could reach us with their lances.

We had jumped back away from the arroyo’s bank out of reach of the lances by the time the Comanches were that close to us, but some could have reached us if they had thought to throw them at us like throwing spears. Luckily, none of them thought of that, and the surviving Comanches passed us by. They had been riding so fast that they had trouble turning around for another pass at us, and that gave us time to reload our shotguns.

We reloaded with hog-loads and fired at the Comanches before they had reorganized for another run at us. Josh and I fired at the massed Indians about 60 yards away, and managed to hit four horses. Josh reloaded his shotgun with regular shells while I swapped cylinders in my two revolvers. There was no time for us to do more.

We hit three horses and one man when we shot at the bunch as they were turning around and got ready to meet another charge. Oh, damn, here they come, and I had to marvel at their courage. It was at this point that Ajax could stand it no longer and ran up the bank and at the charging horses. He had no chance to attack the charging horses or men, but he did disrupt the charge because very nearly every horse swerved to run around him. That messed up what little coordination there was in the charge, and did a lot to slow down the riders as they came at us.

That slowing turned out to be crucial because that gave Josh time to swap the cylinder in one of his revolvers. We now had 18 bullets and two shotgun rounds to use against the charging Indians. That certainly should be enough as they came bearing down upon us. Ajax was left in the dust, but he had done his job maybe better than we could have hoped for because of the way he had confused the charge.

At this point. Josh and I went for shots with our revolvers simply because they were so much faster to maneuver and fire than his shotgun. Thank God that the slug from a .44 caliber pistol was a horse-stopper, because it was impossible to get clear shots at the Indians. Besides, we were having to choose a target and fire so fast that we had very little time to aim our guns.

I don’t know if it were true, but it seemed like every shot hit a man or a horse, but some horses and men surely were hit by more than one bullet. Anyway, the Indians rode past us and they got a little bit luckier. Both Josh and I were wounded by lances this time, but none of the wounds were serious.

On the other hand, we killed all but three of the Indians who were trying to kill us. Those three did not try to turn around this time, but rode directly to where the war chief was waiting. They talked for a few minutes and rode away. I assumed that they would be back to pick up the dead once they had found some help.

Ajax ran up toward us, and Josh called him in. He was congratulated for his efforts, and that seemed to satisfy him. Josh and I decided that one of Josh’s lance wounds needed stitches, so we headed back to Willow Run and the doctor. She had a good reputation, so we had no qualms about trusting our wounds to her.

We took a week off while Josh’s wound healed enough for him to get around as he usually did. Most of our time off was spent in bed. Besides the obvious things to entertain ourselves in bed, we discussed the fight with the Comanches. We agreed that it was just as well that we had not tried to use our rifles even though they held more shots than our shotguns or our revolvers. They were just too awkward to swing around and aim in the time we had available. The sawed-off shotguns were bad enough, but the long barrels on the rifles would probably have gotten us killed.

We did decide to look for more Starr DAs and to carry three pistols if we could find them. Neither one of us cared that someone might think that we looked ridiculous with that many pistols. Hell, looking ridiculous was a lot better than being dead!

Well, we told the story of our fight with the Comanches in the saloons in town because that was the kind of thing that the men wanted for amusement. The Comanche attacks had become a serious problem with Whites being killed almost every day. Several men asked if they could go with us the next time we went out. It was their hope to find some Comanches to kill. That was both to get revenge on the Comanches, and also to show them that the Whites were no longer going to put up with the nonsense from the Comanches. Josh and I discussed the idea and agreed that we would give the idea a try.

As a joke, we decided to call our group “McIntyre’s Militia.” To my surprise, at Josh’s insistence, I was elected commander of the group. Okay, I was willing to take on the responsibility after I got a promise from everybody that they would follow my orders without arguing. We wound up with four men joining with us, and all of them had some military experience. One man had been a sergeant of artillery, but the other three had been privates in the CSA cavalry. They were all reasonably good shots, so I figured that they were safe to have along. Ajax was along as a member of the party, but he didn’t get paid.

The sheriff of Parson County appointed us all deputies, so we were paid 50¢ per day that we were patrolling. Of course, this made no difference to Josh or me, but it was a useful contribution to their income, and the men were happy to get it. We actually made a significant contribution to the fight against the Comanches on several occasions.

One time we were out north of Willow Run when we heard gunfire off to our left. Immediately, we turned and headed in that direction. The sound made it obvious that this noise was not coming from hunters, so it was worth looking into. We knew that there was a small farm in that direction, so we feared that was the source of the gunfire.

Yep, when we got close, we could tell the difference between sounds of rifle fire and pistol fire. Once we were close enough, we could see that a bunch of Comanches, 10-12, were riding around the adobe house firing Spencer carbines at it. There seemed to be four people inside the house firing back with revolvers.

I had our people ride to within about 100 yards of the house and dismount. The ex-cavalry men were reluctant to do so, partly because the were used to fighting from horses and partly because they were wearing high-heel cowboy boots. Finally I won my point by saying that I would not have them run anywhere. They still weren’t happy, but they did go along with me.