Chapter 5

Things changed a bit on the second day of the second week. We had moved into the reach of hostile Indians, in this case Chiricahua Apaches. The worst part of all of this was that the sand dunes were higher than farther back on the trail. The result was that I could not see over or past many of the dunes, and that forced me to ride along the top of the dunes so that I could see more than a few feet from the road.

Well, it was a good thing that I had taken the chance that I did. Down in the valley between the dune I was on and the next one away from the road, I could see where several horses had been ridden in the direction of the wagon train. Shit! This looked like an ambush and Indian attack just looking for a place to happen.

Now, the question was whether or not to rush back on the road to warn the wagon train or to follow the horses to see where the ambush was being set up. I thought about it for only a minute or so before deciding that my main task was to warn the wagon train. The road had a hard surface from exposed hardpan, so my horse with its steel shoes could make much better time than he could in the loose sand that the Indians were using.

I turned and raced as fast as my horse could travel back toward the wagon train. I had gone about 2 miles when I heard gunfire that seemed like it was almost in my ears. This was when I found out that Chiricahua Apaches could be just as foolish as anybody else. By shooting at me, they had given away their ambush site. If I could get through, they had lost all chance at surprise. If they had not shot at me, I would not have known where they were, and their ambush might well have been successful.

I was riding so fast that I was able to get through the fire aimed at me. I am quite sure that was because I was moving so fast, and Indians rarely “wasted” ammunition by practicing with it. The result was that a few bullets did snag my clothes or did hit my saddle, etc., but none wounded me or my horse. A mile farther on, I came upon the wagon train lugging its way along the road.

Immediately, I looked up John Anderson to report the Indian ambush. He wasted no time in arranging a defensive box in the Army style and sending men up the surrounding sand dunes to look for trouble. It was hard to judge what the Indians would do because there were at least 15 of them. I had managed to count that many plumes of gunsmoke. That was one time when I was happy that black gunpowder always marked its spot.

It turned out that Ed Cooper had an abiding hatred for Chiricahuas. They had raided his homestead and killed his wife and two sons while he was away from the house. Ed was headed for California just so that he might start over with a new family “safely” away from marauding Indians. Nobody could convince him that the Indians in California could be as bad as the Indians in AT.

Anyway, it took no salesmanship to get Ed to join me in hitting the Chiricahuas from behind. I would have no difficulty in finding the ambush site, and we could shoot at Indians to Ed’s heart’s content if they were still there. John Anderson was going to wait on a report from me before continuing the journey.

Ed showed me how to doctor our shotgun shells to make them even more deadly, so I did that to a dozen shells. What we did was to cut a line around the circumference of the shell at the first wadding so that the shell itself would break away when it was fired. This would keep the shot all together until it hit the target. At that point, the paper cup holding the shot would break up and throw the buckshot in many random directions through the body of the target. Ed called the shells modified like this “hogloads.” The effect was akin to shooting the target at impossibly close range with a full load of .33 caliber bullets. It was almost impossible to survive such a hit.

I borrowed a 10-gauge shotgun with a regular length barrel from Johnson and swapped for a fresh horse. Ed drew a horse from the remuda and we were ready to go. To try to ensure that we were not spotted by the Chiricahuas, we rode back down the road about half a mile and crossed three lines of dunes. That seemed safe enough, so we headed toward the ambush site.

We rode past it and turned back toward the road. We rode in that direction until we had found the tracks left by the Indians. We found a spot of temporary shade about 100 yards toward the Indians and left our horses there. They were only hobbled, so they could move if they had to.

Though the Indians were using rifles, they had a tendency to operate as if they were still using bows. Therefore, they were at the crest of the dune prepared to shoot down onto the wagon train as it passed by. Ed announced with disgust, “This must be a training run for boys just past their 12^th birthday. The war chief must not have much confidence in them because they have not moved. Oh, well, I still think that the only good Chiricahua is a dead Chiricahua.”

The war chief was to be our first target. Without him, the young boys would not know what to do and probably would stay where they were until they were all killed. Ed had no trouble convincing me that was the preferred outcome.

We waited until the war chief was distracted over something before attacking. He was in the process of berating one of the boys and not paying attention to anything else. That was the opportunity that we were looking for. We ran as fast as we could in the loose sand toward the war chief who was sitting on his horse. He was such an important target that we both were both going to shoot at him.

Well, those hogload shotgun shells behaved exactly as advertised. We each fired one shot from our double-barrel shotguns and we both scored hits in the war chief’s chest. We were only about 70 feet away from him, and his body actually seemed to explode when those hogloads hit. We certainly had no further need to concern ourselves about him!

Naturally, the other Indians turned to see what had happened. They practically froze at the sight of the lower half of the war chief’s body still sitting on his horse and nothing but blood spatters and torn flesh to be seen of him.

Ed and I dropped to a kneeling position and began to pour fire into the Indians lined up on the dune. The range was never more than 130 feet, and Ed worked the line from the left and I worked it from the right. The Indians shot back at us, but they were suffering from the lack of shooting practice. Neither one of us were hit, though some bullets did come quite close.

On the other hand, we never had to fire more than one shell at an Indian. We were hurrying and our aim was something less than perfect, so we did not always score a kill, but we did always score a hit. In this case, one was as good as the other, because none of the wounded Indians were able to continue shooting at us.

The whole battle, from start to finish, took less than five minutes. Part of the problem from the Indian point of view was that their rifles were all Spencers picked up from dead soldiers. Therefore, none of the guns were ever cleaned or oiled by the Indian, and that meant that they were almost beyond use. We did smash each one to make sure that it would never be used again. A smashed receiver was enough to turn the rifle into useless junk.

Ed wanted to leave the wounded Indians to their fate with the scavengers, but I was not able to do that. Instead, I cut the throat of the four Indians who were still alive. All these Indians had for us to salvage was some jerky and pemmican and the unused ammunition. The ammunition was so old that it was of questionable quality, but we wanted to destroy it before some other Indian tried to use it against a White man.

We found the horses belonging to the Indians and took them back to the wagon train. They were of marginal use, but we could sell them at the next livery stable.

I was sold on the value of the hogload and its 12 #00 buckshot. Therefore, I planned to replace my Winchester with a regular 10-gauge shotgun as soon as I could find one. I was still going to keep my sawed-off shotgun because of its value at close range, but I never shot at anything over 100 yards away, so the shotgun loaded with hogloads was an excellent choice for me.