Chapter 7

I was lucky in that I came to a cabin where there was a woman who could fix my wound for me under my direction. She even sewed it up and wrapped it with a clean bandage. She did a great job, and I paid her $1 for the service. She was amazed to be paid so much, but I reminded her that a doctor would have charged that much and not have sewn nearly as fine a seam. She chuckled at that and invited me to supper. I ate with the family and spent the night on a hay stack in their barn.

When I woke up the next day, I felt like Hell in a chamber pot! I asked if I could spend the day in the hay stack. The woman said that I looked like she had missed some trash in my wound and wanted to open it back up to clean it again. Man, it was obvious that I was in trouble, so I drank a double shot of laudanum and had her give my wound another try. Yeah, on this pass, she found some shirt fibers that she had missed the first time. She was extra careful at washing out the wound with whiskey before she sewed me back up.

I spent the night on the same hay stack and woke up the next morning feeling a whole lot better. I spent that day on the hay stack, and woke up the next day feeling so much better, that I was sure that I could travel the next day. The woman would not hear of it, and I spent another day "in bed." I will say this: I could not have had more tender care than that woman gave me, and she was right about me needing that extra day of rest.

Finally, after my fifth day in bed with her looking after me like I was her own kin, I felt like traveling again. In fact, I felt an urge to move on that must be coming from my handlers. I ate breakfast with the family at their table and felt so good that I knew that I had recovered as much as I could with the current treatment. All I could do now was to exercise to get my strength back, and I could do that while traveling. I gave the woman a Half-Eagle ($5) and refused to take it when she tried to give it back to me. This was one of those rare times when I was more stubborn than a woman, so she finally gave in and accepted the money.

I rode away, and I held a stone in my left hand to use as an exercise aid as I moved my arm around. I was lucky to stay out of trouble for the next couple of days, and my arm was back to full functionality by then. I was sure that my handlers had something to do with that: I was a fast healer, but I had never recovered from a wound that fast before.

As I traveled more toward Western Kansas, I saw fewer and fewer of the Red Legs, but I started to see more and more signs of hostile Indians. I thought that they were either Pawnee or Arapaho, but it made little difference, since either one would have been happy to lift my hair. I started to pass burned-out homesteads, so I figured that I was into the edge of the area I was looking for. I was not yet to what would eventually become Colorado, but that was a technicality. The Indians paid no attention to such artificial boundaries, so I did not either.

My first encounter with a hostile gang came about one day as I was riding over the treeless plain; I had finally gotten that far west. I rode over a little ridge that silhouetted me against the sky. No, I was not careless; I had gotten somewhat bored and was trying to get a little action. A war party of Pawnees spotted me and came charging in my direction. There were nine warriors in the group, and they were armed with lances and bows. This was too early in the conflict for the Indians to have guns.

I was always on the lookout for a defensive position; I never got too careless to be that sloppy. I knew that a place where the Indians could not approach me en masse on horseback would give me the advantage I needed. There was a gully off to my left that had looked promising as a defensive position, so I headed for that.

The gully was deep enough and wide enough that the Indians could not charge me on horseback and survive encountering the gully. Of course, they could approach me on foot, but my pistols would make that a fatal choice for them.

I beat them to the gully and had time to prepare before the Indians got within 100 yards, which was the perfect range for my Henry. I picked off four of them before they realized that they were never going to defeat me with a simple frontal charge. One brave had demonstrated that by charging at me and trying to use his lance. His horse was forced to try to jump the gully, but it did not make it. Both horse and rider died as a result of the impact against the far wall of the gully. I did take pity on the horse and shot it in the head before it had time to suffer. The Indian was left to die of natural causes—his own stupidity.

I saw the Indians ride up and down beside the gully. They were checking it out to see if their horses could maneuver along the bottom of the gully near where I was, but they gave that up as not being a good idea. Every time one of the Indians got within reasonable range on horseback, I used my Henry, and that kept them at a distance.

I was about to drag out my Sharps to start sniping at them when they finally decided to try their last logical choice. They dropped from their horses and started moving toward me with their bows. I assumed that they were going to try using arrows in indirect fire; that is, they were going to aim high into the sky and try to drop an arrow down on me. That was not an accurate way of shooting, but they might get lucky.

At this point, I was not worried because they had to get closer to make that work. I figured that 50 yards would be an appropriate range. Not only that, they would have to rise as far as their knees to use a bow like this, and I would be presented with a perfect target for my Henry. All I needed to do was to wait for them to get closer. I could see that they were not fools, since they stayed low to the ground as they approached me. I might have hit one with a bullet from my Henry if I had tried, but I wanted to see how the indirect fire ploy would work out.

They crawled to about 40-50 yards away and rose to their knees to shoot at me. That was when I opened up with my Henry. I had reloaded while they moved up, so I had 14 bullets to use against four enemies before I had to reload. I figured that would be enough at the relatively close range.

I was ready, so when the first one rose to shoot his arrow, I put a bullet into his chest. He flopped back, and there was considerable consternation among his fellows. Apparently, they had not expected such accurate shooting. I jacked another cartridge into the chamber and waited further developments.

This time, they got smart and waited until all three were ready to launch an arrow. There was no way that I was going to be able to shoot all three if I had the usual Mississippi Rifle, a muzzle loader, that was all they had ever experienced previously. They were just not yet fully aware of the capabilities of a repeating rifle, so they did not know how to combat it.

The three Indians rose as one to launch an arrow at me. Only three arrows were not likely to do much physical damage, though there might be some physiological damage against an inexperienced foe. I put a bullet into the first man before an arrow was even launched, and I shot the second man only seconds later. The third man dropped to the ground without even firing when he saw the damage being done to his companions.

Not long ago, this would have resulted in the third man leaving the battle. At that time, there would have been little point in continuing to fight from the Indian's point of view. His companions were dead, so there would be nobody to witness his bravery if he did kill me, but the situation had changed. Now, this was a war of annihilation of the Whites, and he was determined to do his part in furthering that war. Therefore, he reverted to doing what the Indians had done best before the arrival of the horse—he drew his knife and slithered along the ground toward me.