Comanche War Read online

  Comanche War

  Arrow and Saber Book 3

  Robert Vaughan

  Comanche War

  Arrow and Saber Book III

  Robert Vaughan

  Kindle Edition

  Copyright © 2018 (as revised) Robert Vaughan

  Wolfpack Publishing

  6032 Wheat Penny Ave

  Las Vegas, NV 89122

  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events, places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced by any means without the prior written consent of the publisher, other than brief quotes for reviews.

  ISBN: 978-1-64119-447-1

  Paperback ISBN: 978-1-64119-448-8

  Contents

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  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  A Look at The Templeton Massacre (Arrow and Saber 4)

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  About the Author

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  For Marilyn

  Comanche War

  1

  Fierce, sharp pain jolted Lieutenant Hayes Bingham’s right elbow. The young officer’s good hand clutched his arm where the Comanche arrow had struck. His uniform sleeve was slick with blood around the feathered shaft. Wounded at the worst of times, when the few folks left alive on the besieged emigrant train needed him most! By an act of will, he fought back the pain and kept his position, but try as he might, he couldn’t lift or fire his service revolver with the injured arm.

  The acrid smell of gunpowder drifted in the prairie wind and mingled with smoke from blazing wagon bonnets. The Conestoga’s had been drawn into a circle, and several dozen dead defenders sprawled around its perimeter. The bulky draft horses, which had been hastily unhitched, were rearing and plunging in the improvised rope pen. On both sides of the officer, men and women knelt under wagon beds, firing rifles as fast as they could.

  The redskins raced past on their paint-daubed ponies, slung low over the mounts off flanks for cover and shooting under their animals necks. The warriors’ war cries rose above the noise of the crackling flames. Hoofbeats drummed, and the rattle of shots went on without letup.

  A painted devil with a quill chest plate broke from the circling party, then steered his mount toward the gap between the wagons where Bingham stood, venting shrill ki-yis. As he closed in, he leveled an iron-tipped lance. Bingham used both hands to raise his heavy Schofield sidearm. He pulled the trigger. The Indian pitched backward and the rider less pony abruptly veered aside.

  Before he could even feel his victory, a bullet punched the officer in the thigh, throwing his legs out from under him. He crashed down hard in the brittle summer grass. The Texas panhandle was a long way from Connecticut and his gracious family home. When he’d first been posted at the edge of the Staked Plains after West Point, Lieutenant Bingham had called the parched, forbidding flatland hell.

  Now he found it hell indeed. Several more warriors had broken from their line to gallop close, shooting and yelling like fury. The lieutenant scrambled along the ground like an injured crawfish, the agony from his wounds racking him. Desperately, he tried to make it to the cover of a wagon off to his left, the one that belonged to Clementine’s father and brother, Seth. Clementine, the woman he’d followed the wagon train in hopes of seeing again.

  A mighty thunder of unshod hooves boiled close. Bingham rolled on his back, cocked his gun and fired. A stocky, muscled Indian dropped his war club and pitched from his mount’s back. Another savage raider broke past the wagons, his pony rearing above the downed officer. This time the Schofield’s hammer fell on an empty chamber. Hayes Bingham prepared to die.

  Then another sound rang out, a fusillade directed from within the wagon circle. As Bingham stared, Clementine sped across the ground, firing and cocking a Winchester as fast as she could — and her slugs slammed home. The redskin who was menacing Bingham toppled. Several more who’d participated in the charge wheeled their animals in retreat.

  The feisty young woman was at the lieutenant’s side. “Hayes! Hayes! Hurry and run with me! Over by Pa and Seth at the wagon.”

  “I’m hit in the leg, Clemmy.”

  “Tarnation! Then get up and lean on me! Hurry! The redskins are riding on back this way!”

  “I can’t!”

  “You’ve got to!” With that, she heaved him up with surprising strength. Half running, half dragging the hobbling man, she led him toward the cover of the wagon wheel. The Drury menfolk stretched flat on the ground under the wagon, firing occasionally at the raiding Indians. Bingham sensed they were low on ammunition. Dwight Drury, the older man, grimaced at each Indian he brought down at long range. Seth, a boy in his teens, just kept firing impassively.

  The Comanches had broken their line again to charge. As the pony-riding hoard spread out abreast, the warriors who possessed guns used them, while the rest launched a rain of arrows. One pierced Dwight’s neck. The old man reared up, gasped and collapsed, dead. Seth, seething with rage, rose and ran at the enemy on foot. He was cut down before he’d gone three steps.

  Clementine kept her head and used her rifle the way her father had taught her. Kneeling in her skirts, she downed one brave while the wounded officer shot a second who rode in so close he fell within arm’s reach. Then the woman was slammed by the impact of a .44-40 round. She spun backward, away from the wheel, and flopped beside the officer. Two-thirds of her face was torn away by the bullet, leaving a hideous crimson mash. Her gingham frock and Bingham’s uniform were splashed with blood.

  Along the ring of burning wagons, resisting gunfire ceased. Men, women and children lay in motionless heaps — all dead. Panic clutched Hayes Bingham. If he couldn’t run without aid, he could crawl. With his brass buttons combing grass, he desperately sought a hiding place.

  Behind him, ponies galloped up and the warriors who rode them shouted with savage rage. Then he heard a new sound cut the air, high and thin, distant but growing closer at the speed of a racing horse It was an army bugle, frantically blowing the charge. Heavy gunfire followed it. The United States Cavalry was on its way!

  “Fire at will, men! Damned red rascals! Kill all of ’em ye can!” Hayes Bingham heard the faint shout of a commanding officer. The wounded man’s brain swam and he fainted from loss of blood.

  2

  The wide lines of cavalry galloped across the hilly terrain toward the burning wagon train. Major Marcus Anthony Cavanaugh, the commander of C, D and F Companies on a march west from Fort Sill, rode in the center of the charge. To his left, a guidon- carrying corporal spurred his mount, and to his right, the trumpeter blasted his brass horn for all he was worth. Directly ahead stood the ring of wagons, most of them aflame. The attacking Comanches turned their attention from their emigrant prey, and wheeled their ponies about to confront the new threat.
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  Cavanaugh listened for shouts and renewed firing from the settlers with the train, hoping they were in time to save some lives. He lifted a gauntleted hand.

  Sergeant Keogh’s voice rang out. “Open fire!”

  An early scattering of shots from the troopers turned into a deadly volley. Feather-bonneted Indians pitched backward from their mounts’ backs.

  They were clearly outnumbered, and this time by a well-armed force led by a seasoned officer. Marcus signaled again, and the troopers fanned out wider, riding hard to keep the hostiles from an easy retreat. The crack of dozens of army Springfields made an ominous rattle, their smoke forming a line of tiny white clouds under the bright sky.

  At the urging of a bold war chief, the Comanche band rallied. As the soldiers rode into bow range, arrows flew in earnest, and with them came casualties. Before Marcus’s eyes, a dragoon’s blue uniform was pierced, the rigid shaft protruding from the man’s chest. He somersaulted backward off his mount and was trampled by the horse coming up behind him. Another soldier was lifted from his McClellan saddle by a hurled lance. Marcus Cavanaugh’s campaign hat gained a bullet hole.

  Still, the cavalry rode onward.

  Abruptly, the resistance stopped. One moment the opposing groups of riders were about to meet and clash. Suddenly, the Indians took to their heels, urging their ponies away to avoid being boxed in by the troopers on the flank. Marcus tossed several shots with his Colt, but already his targets had departed from range, jinking frantically from side to side.

  There was a brief skirmish beyond the bunched wagons. Riding hard toward it, Marcus was forced to watch from afar. Aghast, he saw Corporal Henley’s troop fall inexplicably back. The savages broke through into open prairie.

  A few seconds later, the redskins split into dozens of groups of two or three riders and disappeared beyond the rolling hummocks of the terrain, abandoning their dead. Marcus Cavanaugh cursed quietly. His was an untried, newly formed command, but he thought the veterans, at least, would fight strongly if called upon. He’d been wrong.

  The only thing left to do was to ride in and view the emigrants situation. The sky-high billows of smoke that had drawn the cavalry to the scene had diminished, since the burning wagons were mostly consumed and caved in.

  Still young in years for his rank, the trials of command had taken their toll on Major Marcus Cavanaugh’s weathered face. Under his campaign hat, his forehead was scored and his hair had gray streaks about the temples. His carefully trimmed mustache was a salt-and-pepper blend of brown and gray. When his lieutenants came up beside him to receive directions, he barked out orders with his mouth set in a hard, straight line.

  “Lieutenant Ambrose, deploy some lookouts to make sure the hostiles don’t return. And have the recall sounded. Lieutenant Hazelcrest, see to accounting for our wounded and dead. The surgeon’s already busy in the field, I see. Have him report inside the wagons’ perimeter as soon as possible. There may be settlers in need of attention, too. Captain Turnbo and Sergeant Keogh, call some troopers along, and we’ll ride on in.” Under his breath, he cursed. “There are bound to be women and children killed by the savages. Damn!”

  He urged his lathered black mount ahead, though it balked and grew skittish at the heavy scent of death. The party rode past damaged wheels and charred wagon tongues, their horses quivering and dancing nervously. High in the sky, the buzzards gathered, drifting lower and lower.

  The carnage was terrible. The downed and thrashing horses in the rope pen were the least part of it. Marcus saw Keogh motion to some privates to put the animals out of their misery. Every person who had been with the wagon train, it seemed, had met the same fate already. The heaped corpses made a ghastly sight.

  Marcus stepped from the saddle. At his feet, two children lay shot, their clothes dyed red with gore. The major’s ice-blue eyes blinked briefly. A pregnant woman had caught an arrow in her belly and died. Several older females had been killed with bullets, and another’s skull looked cleft with a hatchet.

  Every male corpse held a gun in a stiffening grip, but there the similarity among them ended. Some were sprawled grotesquely on their backs, others lay face down. Still more had curled up tightly, clutching their wounds in fatal agony. Entrails had been blown from abdomens by .45-caliber rounds. Heads were pierced by slugs. One peaceful-looking gent had a clean, gaping hole above one eye. Most defenders had sustained arrow wounds, and some of them resembled pincushions.

  “Major! You’d best come here and take a look!” The voice belonged to the swarthy scout, Sabine Gilliam, a half-white, half-Delaware tribesman from the Indian Territory. Somehow he’d come to be called by the name of the Texas river. Now his dark eyes flashed across the space of the circled wagons at Marcus Cavanaugh.

  The major strode toward Gilliam. He passed a lowly recruit private who was puking his guts out beside the body of a woman without a face. The major grimly noted the burnished-golden hair.

  “For God’s sake, be a man, Private! Pull yourself together!”

  “Y-yes sir!” The kid looked barely better after his commander’s stern words. Marcus stepped past him and stood beside the buckskin-clad scout.

  “A survivor of the raid, then!” He took in the form of a man in a blue uniform stretched out in the wagon’s shade, his chest heaving with labored breaths. “A cavalryman shot here, inside the circle! And an officer! Not one of ours?”

  “Oh, you’re going to recognize him, sir, when I crouch down and turn his head your way. Just watch.” Gilliam knelt, cradled Hayes Bingham’s shoulders in his wiry arms and lifted the injured man. He was careful not to touch the protruding arrow.

  “I see what you mean. It’s Bingham, the man we sent ahead to occupy the cantonment till we arrived and made preliminary preparations.”

  “So’s he’d be able to tell us how the land lay with the Comanches.”

  “Now he’s told us. More than we anticipated.” Captain Phil Turnbo came up and stood at Marcus’s shoulder. His features were frozen in a mask. “Major Pike the surgeon is on his way. It’ll be hell to pay if the boy dies, won’t it, Major Cavanaugh?”

  Marcus shrugged. “That depends on his father, General Bingham.”

  Brigadier General Cyrus Bingham normally worked at the department headquarters in San Antonio, but the reins that this military leader held reached far. One of the facts known throughout the division of the Missouri, of which Texas was a part, concerned the general and his son. The general wanted great things for the boy.

  Lieutenant Hayes Bingham was under Marcus Cavanaugh’s direct command, but at the moment, wounded and dying at a place where he didn’t belong. Only if he regained consciousness could he explain.

  The surgeon, a big man with a walrus-sized mustache, bustled up with his kit. His tunic sleeves were rolled high, his hands, wrists and clothing stained with blood. He knelt by Hayes Bingham’s pale form.

  “Will he regain consciousness?”

  “We can always hope, Major. Let me examine the boy. I’ll be a few minutes. Nothing you can do to help, so if you have anything else that needs attending.”

  Marcus ordered Sergeant Keogh to put burial details to work. He stood silently with Captain Turnbo and waited. Finally, the surgeon motioned them over.

  “Well?”

  “It’s a hard choice. An arm bone and a leg bone, both of them badly shattered.”

  “For God’s sake, man, out with it!” Turnbo snapped.

  “I’m going to have to amputate.”

  The United States Army provided its medical men with superb tools. A seventeen-by-four-by-seven-inch field-surgery kit bound in leather held an array of instruments, from scalpels to skull-piercing trepans and a sturdy bone saw of Toledo steel. The trouble with battleground amputations was the poor conditions. Major Pike had a supply of laudanum to kill the pain, but not a generous supply. And he would do his sterilizing with searing heat and boiling water.

  He set a couple of enlisted men to kindling a roaring blaze. They
found a barrel in one of the wagons that they tapped for water. By the time steam was pumping from the large kettle — also found among emigrant effects — Pike had his patient stretched out on a ground blanket. Four burly privates gathered to perform holding chores. Scalpels and saw were laid out, ready for Pike’s hand. Unluckily, the patient came awake before he could begin, moaning his pain. Young Bingham tried to sit up, but fell back from weakness. But by then, Marcus had seen the effort and approached.

  “Major Cavanaugh?’ the wounded man said weakly through half-closed eyes, seeing his commanding officer materialize overhead.

  “Don’t try to salute, Lieutenant, considering how you’re hurt. We’re planning on good Doc Pike here pulling you through, you know.”

  The shavetail groaned anew. “Never should’ve ridden out to the wagons from the post alone . . . Clementine ... by God, she was a beauty! Savages killed her.” Sweat stood out like bullets across his forehead, and his sandy hair was dark with it. Then, abruptly, a look of fear clouded his youthful features. “The general, he doesn’t need to hear about this escapade, sir! There'll only be a scar or two from my wounds.”

  The enlisted men’s eyes studied their boots. Marcus knelt beside Hayes Bingham. “Your father, the general, he has ways of finding out most things that go on in this man’s army.”