The shot sounded strangely flat, there being nothing at all for it to echo from. I never knew a loud bang to fade away so swiftly and completely before. I holstered my pistol and then set to, rummaging through the saddlebag and thinking about what I had best take with me. One thing was certain-sure and that was that I would have to travel pretty damned light.
While I was engaged in sorting out my gear for what promised to be a long and arduous walk I chanced to glance up and see a lone rider heading straight towards me. So level and flat was the plain that I could see for several miles in any direction and I guessed that this person must be about two miles away. As can be imagined, I was feeling very vulnerable and exposed.
I stopped what I was doing and turned my attention to whoever it might be who was coming in my direction. It was a mercy that there only appeared to be one rider, rather than a whole host; but then again, this might be merely a scout. Naturally, and almost as a matter of course, given recent events, I was thinking in terms of Indians at this point.
Not until the lone horseman was less than a quarter mile from me did I recognize him, and I was engulfed in a sense of enormous and overwhelming relief. It was just that miserable young trooper from Fort Richmond, who had apparently taken it into his head to dog my footsteps. When he was near enough, I hailed him, crying,
‘Hidy, there! You following me or what?’
Tom Rawlings reined in and shot me a look for which I did not altogether care. He said,
‘What’s happened to you, Miss High and Mighty? You never hear that pride goes before a fall?’ He chuckled unpleasantly and I could see that he still held some kind of grudge about the very different ways that the two of us had been treated back in Eldorado.
‘How’d you acquire that horse?’ I asked curiously.
‘Just took it is all,’ came the reply. ‘I’m tellin’ you, I had to ride hard to catch you up!’
‘Took it? You mean you stole it?’
Rawlings shrugged his shoulders nonchalantly, saying, ‘That don’t signify.’ He gave me a silly smirk.
At these words a chill went through me and I knew at once that I had been quite mistaken in my estimation of the young soldier. I had taken him for an amiable, if petulant, fool. I was wrong. He was likely to be dangerous.
Of all the misdemenours and offences one could commit in those days, few were regarded with more fury than the stealing of horses. Taking a man’s horse could leave him stranded in the wilderness and at risk of death. In many places, horse-thieves were lynched more or less as a matter of course. This was especially likely to be the case in a tiny, out-of-the-way town like Eldorado, where the residents relied upon their horses for contact with the outside world. The fact that Rawlings was either indifferent to, or unaware of, this, was worrying and gave me to suppose that he was perhaps slightly mad or more of a menace than he had looked at first sight.
‘You crazy or what?’ I enquired. ‘You stole a horse and don’t think nothing of it? Boy, I think there’s something wrong with you.’
My words hit home, because Rawlings narrowed his eyes and said, in a queer, tight voice,
‘Don’t you call me crazy, you stuck-up, trashy piece of goods. You’ll see how crazy I am in a minute.’
Then it all made sense to me. This young fellow really was crazy and that was the explanation for all the erratic and unpredictable conduct that he had displayed. It also explained why he was now looking so all-fired mean about being called ‘crazy’. I said lightly,
‘I was only joshing. Don’t take on so.’ I turned away and continued to poke about in the dead pony’s saddlebag, trying to decide what to take with me. This seemed to enrage Rawlings further, for he said,
‘Don’t you turn your back on me, like I don’t mean aught.’
‘I’m busy, Tom,’ I said in as pleasant an voice as I could muster. ‘I got a long journey ahead of me and I needs must make preparation for it.’
Out of the corner of my eye I could see that Tom Rawlings was dismounting and I knew then that I was in serious trouble. Here was a fellow who could hazard his neck by stealing a horse and think nothing of it. And I was stuck out here in the middle of nowhere with this mad young man; someone who was, from all that I was able to collect, nursing a big grudge against me. It was a tricky position in which to find myself.
I stood up and turned to face Rawlings, thinking that he would stop a certain distance from me and then say some angry things. Instead, he marched right up until his face was only a foot or so from my own. I observed that he was becoming red in the face and that he was also breathing heavily. In my own brother these signs and symptoms frequently signalled that he was about to lose his temper and so it proved in Rawlings’s case. He fairly shouted in my face,
‘I ain’t crazy! You just say it, you damned snot-nose. Say as I ain’t crazy.’
If I’d been fooling round with my brother I would at this stage have taken him literally at his word and said, ‘I ain’t crazy.’ I somehow thought that Tom Rawlings would not appreciate me playing games of that sort and that I’d do better trying to placate him. I said,
‘All right, I was only kidding. You ain’t crazy. There, you happy now?’ It appeared that Rawlings was anything but happy though, for his hand snaked out and he slapped me fairly hard around the face.
The shock of the blow spurred me into action and I knew now that here was a young man, taller and perhaps stronger than me, who was intent upon hurting or humiliating me over some fancied slight. Whether it was me or if perhaps he had been stung by what he perceived the attitude of the folk at Eldorado to be towards him, here was a man who was determined to show that he was the boss.
Perhaps a softer approach on my part would, even now, have smoothed things over, but I had never in my life allowed anybody to take the liberty of striking me and I was damned if I was going to make an exception for Tom Rawlings. I flung myself at him like a wildcat.
So taken aback was he by my assault that at first Rawlings gave back, raising his hands to protect his face after I had raked one cheek with my nails. It didn’t take him long to counter-attack though, and when he did it was with considerably more vigour than I was accustomed to when in a rough-and-tumble with my brother. Rawlings swung a fist at my head and although I succeeded in deflecting it, I was thrown momentarily off balance.
Then he was on me, grabbing and punching. This furious onslaught took me by surprise and before I knew what was happening I had been shoved roughly to the ground and the young man, whom I had so gravely misjudged, was on top of me, fumbling with my clothing.
Until that moment, incredible as it might seem, I had not really known what was going on. I’d seen Rawlings’s behaviour as obnoxious and thought that he simply wanted to slap me about a little in order to teach me a lesson. Now I could see where all this was tending. He was hoping to teach me a lesson all right, while at the same time satisfying his baser instincts. His clear intention was to force himself upon me. The knowledge of this hit me like a hammer blow.
If anybody, man, woman or boy believed that they could take liberties with my person, then I was the one to disabuse them of such a notion. While Rawlings was concentrating on trying to pull down my pants I drew the pistol at my hip, cocking it as I did so. I presented the barrel to his face and said,
‘You don’t desist now, I’m going to blow your brains out.’
The young man stopped, but then said,
‘You wouldn’t dare!’ Whereupon, without further ado, I pulled the trigger. Now although Rawlings palpably flinched as heard the harsh, metallic click, it was not followed at once by the roar of gunfire. I cocked my piece and fired again, with the same result.
‘Why,’ said the young man triumphantly, ‘you ain’t even knowed enough to load the thing. If that’s not just like a girl!’
This was just the sort of ill-considered and foolish remark that my own brother was apt to make. What one will tolerate from a close blood relative and what, on the other hand, one will endure from a stranger, are clean different things. I might put up with a comment like that from Jack; I certainly was not about to let this Tom Rawlings get away with such sassing.
All else apart, I was still in imminent peril of losing that precious jewel that, at least according to some fancy writers, is more dear than life itself to a well-brought-up girl. For that reason I swung my pistol against the side of the boy’s head with all the force I could put into the blow. The effect of having two pounds of steel slam into his head like that was not all that I could have hoped and so I repeated the process twice more. By the third blow I had knocked Tom Rawlings out cold.
At first I feared that I had killed him, but when I bent my head down cautiously I found that I could just about hear him breathing. Not that I would have been overly distressed had I discovered that he was dead. I was faced with a choice, which was really no choice at all.
First off was where I could follow my original plan and set off on foot. This would mean that when Rawlings came to he would hop on that horse he had taken and come galloping after me, even madder than he had been before. This was not an attractive proposition.
Next, I could go off on foot after untacking the horse and setting it free. This would mean that Rawlings would be tracking me on foot.
Finally, I could commandeer his mount and leave him here to make his own way unmounted.
It is my belief that I was no more dishonest than anybody else, but I couldn’t see that leaving Tom Rawlings in possession of that stolen horse would be of any benefit to the owner. Similarly, if I turned it loose it would be a hundred to one against the rightful owner ever seeing it again.
If, however, I took the beast for my own self and rode it south, then I might be able to hand it over to a sheriff at some point and he could return it somehow to Eldorado.
That this scheme would also accord well with my own plans was neither here nor there. In the end, after engaging in all sorts of sophistry and self-justification, I took off the saddle and replaced it with the one from the dead pony. I also slung the mochila over the saddle, intent once again upon making sure that the mail got through.
If the Indians found Tom Rawlings lying out there alone and unprotected, then they would most likely make an end of him. This did not so much as even tickle my conscience. He had come damned close to taking advantage of me against my wishes and that was almost as bad as horse-thieving for most folk. So it was that I saddled up and left without so much as a backward glance at my erstwhile companion.
Those who think that I had no conscience at all for taking a stolen horse in this way and then abandoning somebody leaving him helpless in the middle of nowhere, will mistake my feelings entirely. I knew that I was not behaving as I had been raised to do; but then the circumstances in which I found myself were uncommon and the usual rules and regulations that govern the way we act in polite society had broken down.
It was a case of every man, or girl, for his or her self. Not wanting to die out there, hundreds of miles from home, I found that I had no alternative than to act like that.
As I cantered along I fell to thinking about my pistol and why it had misfired. The explanation was a simple one. In the all the excitement of the encounter at Eldorado, when I had fired a few shots at the backs of the departing Comanches, I must have fired not one or two, but three shots. This would account for my only have one loaded chamber ready when I wished to destroy my pony. The worst of it was that I had no powder or shot to reload. I would just have to hope and pray that I would have no cause to need a gun again until I was safe back home.
As the day wore on and the morning gave way to afternoon and then evening, I was beginning to be hopeful that either that day or the next I would strike the trail that I had passed along on the way to Smoky Mountain. There was no lack of fresh water to be had in streams and such, and the food that Martha had given me back in Eldorado was sufficient to hold body and soul together, at least for the time being. It looked as though I was going to make it in one piece after all.
The range of hills and low, rocky mountains still ran along to my right, preventing me from veering east at all. There might have been some path through those hills, but after the mishap that had felled my pony I was in no way inclined to take any chances. The trackless land across which I was riding was dull and flat, but as long as I kept my eyes open for any hazards such as holes or rocks, I thought that I’d be all right.
As it became obvious that the line of hills ran on without a break, I began to press further in that direction, riding closer and closer to the hills, so that I shouldn’t miss any little pass which might allow me to head east.
By late afternoon or early evening I was riding up the gentle slopes that led into the hills. This meant that I was able to watch for anything in the nature of a track that might take me to the east and also, because the land was a little higher on the slopes, that I could see far across the plain.
I reined in and scanned the horizon for any sign of life. I was hoping that maybe I would stumble across another little town like Eldorado. What I actually saw, away to the left, was a tiny cloud in the distance. As I watched, it resolved itself gradually into a large party of riders, who were moving across the dusty and parched grasslands in my direction.
At first I hoped that this might be the column of cavalry that had set out from Fort Richmond, but by straining my eyes, I could just make out flashes of white and red on the heads of some of the riders. Unless I was altogether mistaken, these were eagle-feather war bonnets and it wasn’t hard to figure out that they were worn by Comanche warriors who were now bearing down in my direction. It was hard to calculate, but I would say that there could have been as many as a hundred horsemen in total.
The nearby hills were an uninviting sight for a rider, growing increasingly steep and rocky once the gentle slope I was on came to an end. I gazed around in vain for any opening between the hills and rockfaces, through which I might be able to lead my horse. There was nothing. It was impossible to say whether the men heading towards me had yet caught sight of the lone rider up by the hills, but they surely would if they carried on along their present path.
I could not work out what to do for the best. Unless the men were actually coming up to these hills, and there was no real reason why they should do so, then they would most likely swerve off long before they got to me. Perhaps they knew of some pass which led through to the other side of the hills.
If I began to move now, though, the movement might catch somebody’s eye and I might precipitate the very crisis which I was hoping to avoid. Since I had no present hope of passing over to the other side of the hills I chose, by default really, to remain where I was and hope for the best.
Sometimes, avoiding a decision and just letting nature take its course is not the best way of proceeding. So it proved that afternoon, because as they crossed the grassy plain, kicking up grey dust as they came, the Indians, who I was sure, now that I could see them closer to, numbered at least a hundred, showed not the least sign of deviating from their chosen direction. Which is to say that they carried on, heading straight for me.
It was too late to think of fleeing now, and when they were a half-mile or so from me some of the braves gave warbling cries of triumph, like hunters who have sighted the quarry. It was a spine-tingling sound, because on the present occasion the quarry was me.
There was no doubt that the men had seen me, because they were close enough now for me to see which way they were facing and every one of them appeared to be looking at me. It was an unenviable situation in which to find myself. I toyed briefly with the notion of galloping off madly, but it would have been sheer suicide. There was little I could do, other than bide my time and wait to see what developed.
I had all but given myself up for lost, when a sharp, clear sound rent the air; remote, but not so far away as to be indistinct. It was the brassy voice of a bugle.
The Indians below me heard the bugle as well and their reaction was swift; like a flock of birds they all wheeled together to face the source of the sound. Now, instead of coming on straight at me they were facing to the right, and when I looked that way as well I nearly fainted with joy.
There, about a mile further on from where I had so far reached, must be the pass for which I had been seeking. From the hills there rode a column of blue-coated cavalry, their sabres drawn and shining in the evening sun. They were the most splendid sight I had ever seen in my life.
So it was that I had what you might term a grandstand seat at one of the most famous actions of the Indian Wars, which was known in later years as the Battle of Hebden Pass. It was named after the pass through the hills and mountains that I had been looking for as I rode south that day.
The forces in the fight that I witnessed that day were more or less equal, with about a hundred men on each side. In fact there were slightly more soldiers than there were Indians, but only by a dozen or so.
Although it was called a battle by historians who wrote of this incident in later years, I can say honestly that it was more like a massacre. If the fighting had been between the troopers with their curved swords on side and the Indians with their lances and knives on the other, then the outcome might have been uncertain. The cavalry might have had an edge, due to their discipline, but then the Indians were utterly fearless and unafraid of death. As it was, there was no real fighting at all to speak of.
The horse soldiers rode on at a trot and then, at a signal from the bugler, halted. There was a shout of command from an officer at which, as one, they sheathed their sabres. I thought that this was a crazy move, for the Comanches were now heading towards them at a fair pace.
There was another command, which drifted to me on the evening breeze; it was too distant for me to make out the words clearly. The import of the order was plain though, for as I watched every soldier reached back and withdrew from the scabbards on their saddles the short carbines hanging there.
There was only fifty yards now between the stationary line of cavalry and the charging Comanches. I heard one more barked command, then every one of those men on horseback raised his weapon and fired. Even at the distance away that I was the volley of shots sounded like a protracted roll of thunder.
The consequences of this were immediately and dreadful. Around three-fourths of the Indians and their horses were felled, tumbling heads over heels into the path of the other riders. Even those who had not been killed in that first round of firing found themselves thrown from their mounts as their horses’ legs became entangled in the men and horses who had fallen from the gunfire.
Only a pitiful remnant of the charging braves reached the cavalry and were able to engage in hand-to-hand combat with the troopers. Even then, it was hardly a fair fight. Some of the soldiers drew their swords and fought in that way, but most simply used their pistols to deadly effect.
Within little more than a minute it was all over and every one of those hundred Comanches lay dead.