Chapter 6

It turned out that the woman was an accomplished seamstress, so she thought that she could make a decent living with that after her nest egg ran out. Her husband had been a prosperous merchant in Philadelphia, but, as a Quaker, had wanted to escape the turmoil of the big city. Unfortunately, they had run afoul of the Comanches. John helped them find a boarding house, and the militia left on patrol the next day.

John had found the woman attractive, but knew that there was no way they could have formed a firm relationship with him being away from her all but a couple of days a month. He decided that his current job in the militia, trying to protect people from being killed by Comanches, was what he had rather do. He left her, never looking back.

By now, it was late enough in the year so that they hit bad weather fairly often. It was said that Indians were "fair weather fighters," so they were not surprised to find themselves making whole patrol loops without ever seeing a Comanche. However, there was no question that they would be back in the spring.

Eventually, spring of 1858 came around, and so did the Comanches! This started out to be a bad year for Indian raids. John's men fought almost every day, though the fighting was against small bands of 3-6 warriors. Luckily for the Whites, it never seemed to occur to the Comanches that they could clear out the "invading" Whites if they got together and formed one big army. This just didn't fit into the Indian psychology of gaining glory for the individual warrior.

Every once in a while, there was the exception to the small band of Comanches. One morning, Shiply's Troops topped a small ridge and nearly ran head-on into major Indian encampment. They were seen before they could pull back under cover of the ridge and were forced to make a run for a decent defensive position. John ordered, "BACK TO THE RIVER! WE'LL MAKE OUR STAND THERE!"

They made it to the river before the main body of the Comanches could catch them; however, they did have a running battle with a few warriors as they retreated. The Indians were armed with lances which required a close approach to use, but their horses were much less burdened by heavy weight, so they were able to catch the fleeing Whites. Thank God for the Dragoon Colt. As soon as an Indian got close enough to use his lance, he was dead meat for the pistol. As long as no militiaman had to face more than 12 Comanches, he was safe until his horse could no longer run.

The river was about 50 feet wide along here and lined on both sides with large trees. The river was shallow and slow moving, so it provided only a minimal barrier to the horses. However, riding through the water at full speed could result in a broken leg for the horse and a nasty spill for the rider.

John's military experience in the Mexican War came into play here. He had his men hobble their horses among the trees and take cover behind the largest of the trees. The trees were far enough apart that there was no trouble riding between them for one man and his horse, but there was not room for several horses, side-by-side. This prevented the Indians from simply riding over the defenders in a mass charge.

Each militiaman had time to grab his pistols, repeating rifle, extra ammunition, food, and water and take his place behind a suitable tree. There were 7 Whites against nearly 200 Indians, normally, an impossible situation, but the Whites had access to the river for water and excellent protection from the trees.

The river left their flanks and rear open to potential attack, but the Indians were just not inclined toward, nor did they have any skill in, siege warfare. They were more prepared for fighting in open country, never getting off their horses. Thus, they would not use the river as an approach to attack because of the danger of injury to their horses. It was not practical to sit on their horses on the opposite bank and shoot arrows at the Whites because there were too many trees in the way. If the Indians would ever get off their horses and stand behind the trees, this would be a different story, but there was no danger of that. With some other tribes, under a strong leader, the Whites would have been doomed to a certain fate, but not with Comanches—they were too arrogant and set in their ways!

John was sure that the Comanches could be beaten, but he did wish for a cannon with cannister shot; that would have made things a lot easier. As it was, they had plenty of ammunition and a good defensive position, so he wasn't worried too much. The Indians would have to get very lucky to win this battle.

The opening shot was fired by Seth as he dropped a brave apparently trying to count coup. The idiot rode straight at Seth as fast as his horse could run. Seth was aiming for the man's head but hit the horse in the head, instead. The ultimate result was the same, as the Indian went flying over the head of the falling horse and broke his neck on impact. John grinned when he admonished Seth to stop showing off and shoot at the center of mass.

This was enough to stir the Comanches up and they tried a mass charge at the defending Whites. The Comanches didn't know about the repeating rifles, so they were somewhat bunched as they started their charge. Seven repeating rifles put on quite a show as they mowed down men and horses at a prodigious rate. Forty-two bullets were fired as fast as the men could cock, aim, and pull the trigger. This resulted in 31 downed men and 16 downed horses. The Indians were appalled at losing that many horses and the charge broke before it really got started.

It was probably a good thing that the powder smoke was so dense after so many shots had been fired. It made the Indians think that they had run into a whole company of soldiers, and they were reluctant to charge that many men until they had time to consult the shamans. So the battle halted, and the smoke had time to clear.

There was some confusion among the Comanches leaders about how many enemies they were facing. The scouts reported only 12 horses, 7 saddled and the the rest with packs, hobbled among the trees. This didn't gibe with the number of shots fired by the defenders. Maybe this was a trap set up by the Whites, and there were more defenders than the Indians were supposed to believe. The consensus was, if it was a trap, there was no way, yet, to tell who was caught; the Whites may have outsmarted themselves.

However, it was obvious to even the most conservative war chief that their usual tactic of charging the foe with their lances as the chosen weapon would not work this time. They decided that a large body of men hidden in those trees would be vulnerable to a large number of arrows all fired at once.

The problem was that these arrows would not be aimed, since they couldn't get close enough for direct fire. The arrow trajectory would have to be through the tree leaves; this would result in deflected arrows, but it couldn't be helped. Hopefully, if they shot enough arrows, this wouldn't be a significant problem.

This was selected as the next form of attack, so preparations were made. All of the spare arrows were brought in from camp and parceled out. This was to be an all-out effort, so every able bodied warrior was sent to the firing line. This made 153 archers firing at a stretch of about 50 feet of battle front.

This was the first time any of John's men had ever seen Comanches voluntarily fighting from off their horses. Such a thing was thought to be impossible, but there it was. On command, the warriors launched their arrows and kept shooting arrow after arrow. So many arrows were in the air at once that there was a noticeable shadow cast by them.

John, as soon he recognized what was happening, ordered, "DRAW UP CLOSE TA YER TREE SO THAT YA MAKE A SMALL TARGET! SHOOT THE BASTARDS AFORE THEY HAVE A CHANCE TA DO ANY REAL DAMAGE!" The men started shooting at the Indians and managed to hit quite a few, since they were only about 100 yards away.

A few of the arrows caused minor wounds simply because they were deflected by the leaves and limbs. But these were all scratches and easily ignored by the men as they shot at the Indians. The rain of arrows was only an inconvenience, even though the situation would have been different if they had not been protected by the trees.

On the other hand, the Whites put out a volume of fire never before experienced by these Comanches. The very nature of the revolver rifle made it very easy to load without exposing the user to hostile fire. Thus, they were able to kill and wound 57 Indians before they finally gave up and moved back out of range of the rifles.

The war chiefs were facing a mutiny. Nearly half their strength had been lost and they had nothing to show for the effort. The warriors wanted to go back to the familiar tactics of charging on horseback with lance in hand, but the more able chiefs realized that this was a recipe for disaster. There was a lot of discussion of possible methods of attack, and one was finally agreed upon.

The younger and less experienced warriors would make a frontal attack while the better warriors would ride down the river until they got close to the defenders. At that point, they would come up on the bank and charge, single file, at the defenders between the trees and the river. They realized that there was not enough space between the trees and the river for more than one horse to run at full speed; if they were going to slow down, they might as well remain in the river.

The Indians had put themselves at a disadvantage by shooting so many of their arrows in the second attack. They no longer had enough to equip both sets of troops with a full complement of arrows. Therefore, the Comanches making the frontal attack would be given all of the arrows and the Indians making the flank attack would have to be content with only the lance. A few of the Indians in the flanking attack realized that this would put them at a disadvantage, but most of the Indians never gave it a thought.