Boone's Lick

"No, they don't want us, but the frenzy's on them," Pa said. "They might not be able to stop killing. Some of the young warriors might want a few more easy scalps."

Most of the woodchoppers were like frozen men, staring at what was happening in the valley below. The cavalry had long since been scattered into many groups, pockets of five or six men, all fighting for their lives and losing--falling.

Even Sam seemed frozen by the spectacle.

"I would never have expected Indians to hold an ambush this well," he said.

"Well, they're learning," Pa said. "Come on, boys--whip up! Now's our chance, if we've got a chance."

The woodchoppers came unfrozen and we began a wild race for the fort. I suppose the Indians might have loped over and killed us, if they'd 124

noticed: our f *»-•'» mules weren't capable of much speed. But there were some hardy soldiers in that troop of cavalry--a few of them forted up behind a little bump of rocks and put up stiff resistance. The Indians were ten deep around them, so it was hopeless, but while they were firing their last bullets or taking their last whacks with their sabers we flailed our team and rumbled back across that ridge, only to meet Ma and Uncle Seth, plunging along in the other direction.

Pa pulled up and stopped them, while the other wood wagons raced on to the fort.

"Stop, goddamnit! It's a massacre--are you crazy?" Pa yelled.

"No, but I've come for my boys, that you ought never to have taken off,"

Ma said.

"They're my boys too--I guess I'm allowed one day with them, even if it is a perilous day," Pa said.

"Quiet down, you two!" Uncle Seth said sharply.

"This is no time for a family quarrel--it looks like the massacre's over."

Uncle Seth was right. Below us, across the valley, the Indians were going around, picking up rifles and pistols, pulling cartridge belts off soldiers, picking up arrows and hatchets, collecting their own dead. The ones who had taken all they could carry were already trailing away, into the woods.

In only a few minutes, every single Indian was gone; they melted right back into the forests that they had come racing out of.

"There may be a few wounded," Uncle Seth said. "It would be unusual for every last man to be killed stone dead, in a fracas like this."

"Let's go," Ma said.

"Go where?" Uncle Seth asked.

"Go pick up the wounded," Ma said. "You just said there might be some."

"We might want to wait a few minutes, in case there are some young braves who aren't satisfied," Pa suggested. "It wouldn't be wise to tempt them."

"But the wounded might die," Ma said. "These Indians just killed a whole army--I doubt they'd bother with a scrawny bunch like us."

"Where's Marcy?" G.T. asked. "Where's my pup?"

"Left with wife number three--is that the right number, Dick?" Ma asked, giving him a look.

"Close enough," Pa said. "Why don't you take the youngsters back to the fort--me and Seth can gather up the wounded, if any."

"No, it might require two wagons," Ma said. "Besides, Seth's so gimpy he's worthless, in this chill weather."

125

"It's going to be a bad sight, Mary Margaret," Pa said. "You don't have to see it."

"I'm a woman who's buried four sons--by myself," Ma said. "Bad sights don't affect me."

Pa turned his wagon and said no more.

12 WE took our two wagons down into J that valley of death, to search for the JL <•• wounded among the dead, but there was not a single wounded man--not one. Though the fight had lasted only a half hour at most, the Indians had managed to do the same things to Colonel Fetterman's troop that they had done to the miners we had found back on the trail. Eyes were gouged out, guts spilled, privates cut off, legs split, faces smashed in. Some of the bodies were naked, some not.

Colonel Fetterman's body was leaning against one of the rocks, on the little outcropping. His throat had been cut and it looked as if he might have taken a few licks to the head, but he wasn't torn up as badly as some of his men.

If Ma remembered that she had once told Colonel Fetterman that if he had eighty men to put at risk he would probably lose every one of them, she never mentioned it--but it had turned out to be an accurate prophecy: eighty cavalrymen died that day, on the field beyond Lodgepole Ridge.

Pa and Uncle Seth checked every corpse, to be sure it ivas a corpse, but we didn't remove the bodies. We only had two wagons, and Pa was nervous besides.

"That many Indians could take this fort," he said. "I have never seen that many Indians in one force, and Sam hasn't, either. I doubt there's bullets enough in the magazine to hold them off, if they come at us. A victory like this will surely pump them up."

"I expect we better bunk in the fort tonight, then," Uncle Seth said.

"Colonel Fetterman won't be there to throw Mary out."

Already, because of the chill, the dead cavalrymen had stiffened--all over the field we could see legs and arms sticking up. Of course, growing up during the Civil War I had heard many stories of the hundreds and thousands that died at Gettysburg, Chancellorsville, Vicksburg, and the other great battles. Eighty dead would have been the result of just a small skirmish, in that war.

But we had seen these eighty dead men ride over the ridge that morning, in the full glory of their lives, racing down on their foe like cavalrymen are supposed to--and now they were all dead and stiff, their limbs sticking out at crazy angles--I felt like

I was seeing all the dead, of all the wars, not just these few poor soldiers.

Pa and Uncle Seth shot four or five badly wounded horses--the Indians had taken most of the rest, though a few had run off in panic and made it back to the fort.

126

Ma got down and walked among the bodies for a while, satisfying herself that they were all beyond our help.

"I'd hate to have a fault like this on my conscience," she said.

Not a man slept in Fort Phil Kearny that night-- not unless it was Colonel Carrington, who we never glimpsed. Pa said this would ruin him, even if it had been Colonel Fetterman who led the reckless charge. What interested me more was whether we would survive the night. Every man in the fort expected the Indians to attack, and the general view was that we lacked the ammunition to repel them.

Besides that, the fort Indians pointed out that tonight's moon would be a special moon--a power moon that the Sioux and the Cheye

The full moon that floated up into the sky that night was brighter than any lamp. A flare couldn't have lit the plains any brighter. Not a star was visible--the moon was too bright. It lit the prairies and shone into the forests where the Indians had hidden that day.

Every man in the fort stood in arms that night-only Neva, anxious for a dance, found the waiting boresome.

I don't know where all those Indians went, those hundreds of Sioux and Cheye

Toward morning the wind rose, and it began to snow.

"Here comes that blizzard," Uncle Seth said.

"It's a shame they didn't bring in those bodies," Pa said. "Now we'll have to wait for a thaw."

The soldiers had been too scared, that day, to secure the bodies.