Chapter 51

I was captivated for a moment by the sounds and the colors. The braves were yelling and whooping. Their horses hooves were thundering on the short grass of the valley we were in. Our rifles were firing and our men were cursing. Women were screaming and children were crying.

Three of the Indians had war bonnets that reached their horses. Many had a dozen feathers or more and the rest had at least one feather. The war bonnets and feathers were red and white. Most of the braves were wearing navy blue loin clothes. Their faces were painted and they were riding horses of every color imaginable.

I think that all of their riding and whooping were to scare us more than anything, but I didn't let it stay my hand. I lined up on a brave and fired. He tumbled from his horse and I started to reload, but Maddy tapped me on the foot and handed me another rifle. She had several women busy reloading.

I lined up on another brave and fired again. This time, his horse went tumbling, but he got to his feet. I handed my rifle back to Maddy and watched as Tina and Cassie both shot almost at once. Both of the men they shot at hit the ground.

This went on for about fifteen minutes, then the Indians pulled back a ways and stopped, watching us. I scooted out from under the wagon and went around to check on everyone else. I almost wish I hadn't.

Brad White and Hans Gunderson were dead. Three more of the men and one of the women were wounded. I walked dejectedly back to the wagon I had been firing under and I saw Tina coming right behind me. I let her catch up and she said, "I count twenty-one of their braves dead. It looks like there are another eighty or ninety of them still out there."

"Thanks, Tina. We have two dead and four wounded. This really sucks," I said.

"They're coming!" Cassie yelled.

Tina and I ran back and piled under the same wagon. Maddy and Mina handed us rifles and we started lining up on new targets. This attack was almost a carbon copy of the first one. The braves did seem to get a lot closer this time.

Again they pulled up about two hundred and fifty yards from they train and stopped to watch us. Andy came over and said he'd gotten three of them. I had lost track.

Andy went off to check on everyone while the rest of us tried to prepare for the next assault. When he came back, the news wasn't good. "Leonard Burton, Frank Tipton, and little Monty Jamison are dead. At least seven are wounded," he told us.

"I've got an idea," Tina said. "There are three big time chiefs out there. If we could knock them off, they might decide we're too much trouble."

"Yeah, but they must be two hundred and fifty yards out."

"I think Cassie and I might be able to hit them with those .69 caliber Hawken. Should we give it a try?"

"It can't hurt anything. Get them loaded."

Tina ran off to get the rifles and load them while I walked over to where Mark and Jim Crockett were talking. I told them what Tina was planning.

"Well, it can't hurt nothin," Crockett said. "I'd bet my saddle that they can't hit them from here though."

"I'm not a betting man, Jim, but at least one of them will bring down the man they're shooting at," I said.

Tina was getting back under the wagon we were firing from so I went back over to watch. "I'll take the one in the middle," Tina said. "You take the one on the right. These rifles are sighted in at two hundred yards, so aim about two inches high."

"Okay, sis," Cassie said. "On three. You do the count, Ed."

"Okay, one... two... three..."

Two big rifles fired as one and two white puffs of smoke momentarily obscured my vision. Then I saw that both of the chiefs were on the ground.

Everything was frozen for what seemed like an endless time, then around forty of the braves screamed a war cry and charged straight toward us. I was sighted in on one of the lead braves when they were about a hundred yards from us. I squeezed my trigger then watched him fall.

Rifles were going off all around me. I fired one more shot with a rifle Maddy handed me, then I pulled my revolver. I waited until they were around thirty yards away and started shooting for their horses. Cassie, Tina, Kate, and Delia must have seen what I was doing, because they started shooting horses as well.

I handed Maddy my revolver and she pushed another one into my hand. When the first horses went down, several others tumbled over them. There were braves on foot and some on horse as they kept coming. I heard a scream over to my left, but I didn't have time to see who was hurt.

By the time they were fifty feet from us, there couldn't have been more than a dozen of the braves left alive. The ones on horseback reached down and helped the ones on foot up behind them and they rode off to the main group.

I breathed a sigh of relief as I saw that all of my wives were safe. Maddy handed me my own revolver back as I climbed from under the wagon. I looked to my left, where I had heard the scream and saw Mark Lester on the ground. I ran over to him, but he didn't look good.

Mark had an arrow in his gut. He was conscious and when he saw me he said, "Shit, Ed, this is a bad one."

"Maybe there's a doctor at Fort Laramie," I said. "We'll get you there."

"Maybe," he said. "I may not make it that far. I'm gut shot, Ed. That's bad."

"Just relax, Mark. We'll get you there."

Tina ran up beside me and said, "They're leaving, Ed. They're heading back the way they came."

"Okay," I said. "Let's make sure they're gone before we move."

"I'll tell everyone," Crockett said.

We waited almost an hour before we decided they weren't going to come back. We were very watchful as we headed west. We put all of the wounded people in the coach and loaded our dead into one of the freight wagons. We'd bury them at Fort Laramie.

I don't think we ever traveled as fast in the wagons as we did the rest of that day. The cattle and horses were already at the fort when we finally got there. Mark didn't make it to the fort.

Everyone who has seen a western movie, or watched a western on TV knows what a fort looks like, right? Wrong. Fort Laramie was built in 1841 to replace Fort William. Fort William was a wooden stockade, like you saw in the movies. Fort Laramie was constructed of adobe brick.

The official name of the fort at that time was Fort John. It was named for John Sarpy, a partner in the American Fur Company. Since it stood on a bluff, overlooking the Laramie River, employees and travelers alike started calling it Fort Laramie almost from the time it was built.

The primary purpose of Fort Laramie was to trade for buffalo robes with the Indians of the area. In 1848, there were no soldiers in the fort. In 1849, the fort was sold to the army so it could be used to guard the Oregon Trail.

Until recently, Fort Platte had been a near neighbor of Fort Laramie. The two forts were less that two miles apart and were owned by rival fur trading companies. In 1847, Fort Platte was sold to the American Fur Company, who then demolished it.