Chapter 1

"Dear God, please let my horse last for another hundred yards!" Otto Bendrich prayed as he raced for the arroyo. The Comanches were gaining as his horse slowed down. It was fighting valiantly to stay on its feet and keep running, as if it knew how much Otto's life depended on making it to the arroyo. The bullet in its chest was taking its toll, and his faithful horse was literally on its last legs.

It stumbled, but managed to regain its balance without falling. The fall would have been enough to kill Otto, either from the impact with the ground, or the torture the Comanches would put him through. If he had to choose a death, it was obvious which one he would take. The Comanches had long since stopped shooting at him for they wanted him alive if they could manage it. Otto was sure that they had some great plans for him after he was caught. He had no idea why these Comanches were out to kill him, unless it was just a case of him not being a Comanche from their particular band; therefore, being fair game for a little sport and a chance to count coup.

It was late summer of 1877, and all of the Indians west of the Mississippi had heard of the defeat of Custer. This had given them hope of defeating the encroaching Whites and driving them back across the Mississippi. Of course, all of the Whites and a lot of the Indians knew that this would never happen, but many Indians were going to try. This chase appeared to be just one more minor sideshow on that great play of forces shaping the West.

Otto was now only 50 yards from the arroyo, but his horse was slowing down too much to stay ahead of the Comanches, even if it did manage to stay alive for a few more minutes. Otto saw that he was going to have to make a stand before reaching the arroyo, so he halted his horse and made it lie down in such a way as to make a minor breast works for him to shelter behind, such as it was. He jerked the horse around to the location he needed and put a bullet through its head. This was not an act of cruelty, the horse was about to die in the next few minutes, anyway, but Otto needed for it to lie still as soon as it was down, and this bullet was the only way he could insure it would happen the way he required.

Otto jerked out his Winchester .44-40 and took aim at the first Comanche in line. By now, he was only 60 yards away, so Otto had little time to act. He dropped his aim slightly and fired. As he hoped, the bullet plowed into the head of the horse and it went down immediately, throwing its rider to his death in a tumble over the head of his horse. Otto gained the free prize he had hoped for, because the horse immediately behind the falling lead horse swerved to one side to miss that horse, and, in so doing, caused several other horses to swerve to avoid hitting it. This caused two more Comanches to fall off their horses and be seriously injured. Otto couldn't see whether or not the men were dead, but he didn't care, all he wanted was to have them out of the current fight, and they were.

There must have been more than 30 Comanche warriors in the band that was chasing Otto, so he knew that his chances of surviving this encounter were damned small. But he also knew that he had a chance as long as he kept his senses about him and did not panic. Otto was better armed than the Indians, since he had a nearly new Winchester '73 in excellent condition and two Smith & Wesson .44-40 pistols, also in excellent condition.

Most of the Comanches had virtually worn-out Spencer carbines left over from the civil war. A few had Henrys from the same period, but none of the rifles were particularly accurate at this late date, since they had not had adequate maintenance. Most had badly worn and pitted barrels, and, in some, the barrels were so badly worn that the gases badly leaked around the bullet as it was fired. The result was a significantly reduced range and penetrating power. It was only by pure bad luck on Otto's part that his horse had been fatally wounded, but that showed that, with enough bullets fired, one had a chance of doing significant damage.

Otto poured bullets at the charging Indians as fast as he could operate the lever of his rifle and take aim. Actually, he was still not shooting at the men, but shooting at their horses. The horse was the most valuable thing that an Indian could own, and Otto hoped to discourage a mounted charge by showing the Comanches that he had no compunction about killing a horse. Once they realized that, the Indians were going to be very reluctant to let their horses get too close to that damned White man who shot at a horse. They could accept an accidentally killed horse, but it was almost sacrilegious to shoot at a horse deliberately.

Fortunately, he had plenty of ammunition, so he was not reluctant to shoot in the mere hope of hitting something. Later on, if he lived that long, he was going to have to be a bit more judicious in his choice of shooting style as he ran low on ammunition, but now he needed to discourage the Comanches if he could by showing them that they were facing a foe who was not afraid to use his resources to the fullest.

He did succeed in making the Comanches pull off and not charge right over him. This was their first mistake, for if they had been willing to continue their charge, they would have captured or killed Otto in the first few minutes of the battle. Twenty years earlier, the Comanches would have been using bows and lances, and they would have known the power that lay in the charging horse, but they had been psychologically weakened by the mystic of the White man's guns. So now they pulled off instead of winning easily by making that all-out charge. A fact for which Otto was eternally grateful.

Otto's biggest problem, now that the impetus of the Comanches had been stifled, was conserving his water. Fortunately, he had two large canteens which he had refilled just before he had encountered the Comanches. The horse was lying on one, but the other was lying, unprotected, on the upside of the dead horse. Otto was going to have to expose a lot of his upper body to recover that canteen, but there was no question as to whether or not he was going to try to get hold of it. Oh, well, the time to act was now, before the Indians had time to get organized.

The sun was already high enough in the sky to be beating down relentlessly, so Otto didn't dare take his hat off, but he did beat down the crown to keep from making himself such a tempting target. He knew that he was going to draw fire as soon as he showed any part of himself, but he had no choice. Otto was right handed, so he used his left hand to reach over his horse's body and pull the canteen toward him. He was right about drawing fire—the sound of all those guns firing was like the rattle of a battery of Gatling guns all going off at once.

When the shooting started, Otto knew that he had to hurry, so he just jerked on the shoulder strap of the canteen. The bottle was snatched to safety as the bullets began flying all around and over Otto and his horse. None of them hit Otto, and only one grazed the canteen as it was jerked behind the breast work of horseflesh, but it didn't penetrate. On the other hand, several bullets did land where the canteen had been, so it was well that he had moved it when he did, and quickly, at that.

Otto knew that he was stuck in his current location for at least the term of daylight and, maybe, into the night. Therefore, he looked to improving the defensive capabilities of his one-man fort. He decided that he could use a deep hole to hide in, but that was not practical, so he started scraping out and away some of the sand that he was lying on. He got down about a foot and struck hard pan; well, that was the end of that, there was no way he was going to go any deeper in his current location. Nevertheless, the sand was cooler at the bottom of his shallow hole, so he shoved his canteen into the deepest part of his hole and covered it with some loose sand—cool water always tasted better.