Chapter 13

I wondered what these inept fighters were doing out here where they could be so easily killed without the protection they so obviously needed. Running Fox cleared up the mystery for me. These were shamans who were on a mission to commune with the spirits. From the number of amulets that were hanging from the rock walls, he guessed that they were preparing charms against bullets.

It was kind of axiomatic among the Indians that you could never be sure what craziness a shaman would come up with next, but the shamans were always humored, if not honored, because the craziness might actually be useful this time. However, all of the shamans were wearing one of the amulets, and none of them had done the shamans any good, so it looked like they were wrong again!

The workmanship on the amulets was not up to what the Navajos did, so we didn't bother to take any with us. There was nothing else worth taking, either, but their horses which we found after a short search. One of the horses actually had a White Man's brand, so I picked that one to be my replacement mount. By the time we got my stuff stripped off of the dead horse, it was too late to do any hunting, so we headed back to the wagons. Though we did not plan to eat them, the five horses we found did offset the lack of antelope meat. Alice was not too peeved at us for returning without her requested meat. We would just have to make up for the discrepancy tomorrow.

We had an easy couple of days, and then it hit us! We saw a sandstorm forming in the distance, so it did not catch us completely by surprise, but we did have a lot of work to do to get ready for it. The first thing we did was to get the wagons formed into a tight box with the least amount of space between them as we could manage. The oxen were gathered inside the box and left pretty much to fend for themselves. But the horses had canvas hoods applied to give their eyes and nostrils some protection from the sand. Meanwhile, the humans put canvas covers on all of the wagons that did not have them, and everybody hunkered down in a wagon with some water, jerky, and pemmican to wait out the storm.

Joe and John climbed into the wagon with Running Fox and Sunshine, while the rest of my family huddled in the big red wagon. Alice, Mary, and Adam were not so badly frightened, but Elizabeth was beside herself with fear. She spent the whole storm in the arms of either Alice or me, mostly me, and she cried whenever the wind blew hard enough to rock the wagon.

Before the storm was over, we had to cover our faces with a damp cloth to catch some of the dust that blew everywhere. I was sorry for the animals, but there was nothing that I could do to help them. The storm lasted almost 36 hours at full blast, and did not quit until the wind had blown for 43 hours. Let me tell you, there were some full chamber pots before it was over! Even Elizabeth came to the realization that there were some things that Pa Jeff couldn't fix.

Everybody survived, including all of the animals, and one of the first comments from Running Fox was that we were lucky that this was not a really bad storm. He attributed that to this being the wrong time of the year for the really bad storms. I couldn't help wondering if he was kidding me, but a check with Abe Jackson bore him out. Shit, that one was bad enough for me!

We had to dig out the wagons on the windward side of the box. That's when I saw how the oxen had survived. They had turned their rear ends to the wind and gotten as close to the wagons as they could. That combination kept them safe. The horses just stood in place like the dumb brutes that they were. If their eyes had not been covered by the hoods, the horses would probably have tried to run ahead of the wind. That would have killed all of them for sure!

It took us a full day to recover from the storm, and that was a day of back breaking labor. Now I knew why the Arabs had such a fear of sand storms. Eventually, we got squared away, and we ate one of Alice's meatless dinners. It made no difference, everybody was so tired that we just collapsed when the sun went down.

The next morning, Running Fox and I had our work cut out for us. The first thing we had to do was to FIND the road! At least we knew approximately where to look. Having found the road, we set out east to try to locate a route that the wagon train could handle. It turned out that was not such a difficult job after all. The wind had scoured the sand from most of the road so that we had a relatively easy time finding the route, and the oxen had a relatively easy time negotiating it. We actually made 16 miles that day, a record for us.

That afternoon, Running Fox and I went out to hunt. We got lucky and found a herd of antelope early in the afternoon. They were resting in the heat of the day, and I was able to take out three of them with the Remington. The herd did not even move until after the second shot. As usual, Running Fox did the field dressing and we returned in triumph to Alice with our surplus of meat. She was happy, so we were happy. With Sunshine to help her, she was able to jerk most of the meat, so we were fixed for meat for the next three or four days, and there was enough to make more pemmican. Alice had stocked up on raisins before we left Yuma, so she had plenty for the best pemmican in the territories.

That wagon loaded with the salt was turning into a real pain in the ass! Running Fox and I found it difficult to judge just how hard the sand had to be packed to give the eight oxen in the team a chance to pull it through. On occasion, Abe had to halt the train while two, or even four, more oxen were added to the team to get it through an especially difficult spot. We just could not find a hardpan route all of the way on any day, and some days we had trouble finding any hardpan. The hardpan was there, it was just too deep under the sand to do us any real good.

Sometimes I wondered if the Indians were really serious about getting rid of us, or if they were just playing some sort of game. If they had really wanted to kill all of us, all they had to do was to wait until the crew was fighting with the salt wagon in one of those sand traps. Hell, they could have walked up and tapped any one of us on the shoulder before driving a knife into a kidney. We were so intent on getting that accursed wagon through that we just did not pay the proper attention to our surroundings.

As it happened, our last fight with Yaquis was about the time we were looking for Tucson. We never knew exactly where we were relative to a settlement, but we did know when we spotted a significant land mark. Therefore, we were looking for Tucson for three days before we actually found it. On that first day was when it happened. We were on our way back to the wagons when Running Fox spotted some footprints in the sand. We stopped for a moment, and he said "Three Yaquis." Well, after our previous experiences, I wasn't worried by "only" three Yaquis. Shit, when will I ever learn?

We hurried back to the wagons with our report, and we were almost there when Running Fox's horse dropped dead from a bullet. He, by some miracle of dexterity, managed to jump free of the horse as it fell, but he broke his leg when he landed. That was not the only shot fired at us, but it was the only one that did any harm. Fortunately, the people at the head of the train saw what happened, so they prepared for an Indian attack.

Meanwhile, I hurriedly dismounted and dragged Running Fox to shelter behind his dead horse's body. The horse had fallen on his left side, so there was no problem in pulling Running Fox's rifle from its scabbard. Running Fox was in pain from the broken leg, but he was not completely incapacitated. Running Fox had seen as well as I did where the initial shots had come from, but there was no guarantee that the Indians were still there.

We used our hats as enticements for the Indians to shoot, and we saw that they had, indeed, moved closer to us. Furthermore, there were only three rifles in action on their side, as attested to by the puffs of powder smoke. The Indians were still out of effective range of the Winchesters on both sides, so we needed a way to bring them a little closer. That's when I had an inspiration.