“Get down,” I whispered to Chuck. “Get down… or they’ll see you.”
He said without trying to keep his voice down: “They’ll never see us. The fire blinds them… let alone the whiskey. They’ll never see us. Come on. We want to make every bullet tell.”
It was plain that he intended to go through with his bloodthirsty scheme. He directed me to go to one side of the fire, and he would go to the other.
“When you begin,” he said, “shoot as fast as you can… without missing. That’ll make them think that they’re surrounded by a lot of us, perhaps. Take your horse. They’ll see the horse no more than they’ll see you.”
I never went at anything in my life that I liked so little. Not that the idea of cold-blooded slaughter troubled me any. I had seen the work of those red devils too recently. I would have been glad to blow the whole tribe into their happy hunting grounds. What I worried about was simply the safety of my own skin. Those fellows who were still trying to dance were obviously helpless. But some of the sleepers might have worn off the effects of the liquor, and they might come to their feet quite capable of fighting effectively.
However, I did as Chuck had directed me to do. I went to one side of the fire with the brown gelding and watched him go to the other. It seemed a miracle that the Indians didn’t spot us. Because, even looking across the firelight, I could see Chuck, like a ghost, moving on the other side. I suppose the reason was that I was looking out from darkness to darkness, across the light, but the Indians were in the full flare of the fire, and even while I looked, taking out my revolver, one of the Indians heaped more brush on the fire and sent the flames crackling and towering into the sky.
Then Morris’s gun cracked, and he who had brought the fuel leaped up into the air with a screech like a wounded cat and fell on his back in the fire, knocking up a vast cloud of sparks twice as bright as the flames themselves and showing me, I thought, the face of every prostrate Indian.
Only they weren’t prostrate very long. The alcohol fumes were not able to keep them numb and stupid with that death shriek ringing in their ears. They came swaying to their feet. Out of the grass not twenty feet in front of me rose a giant I had quite overlooked.
I shot at the first human being that had ever been my target, and that man slumped to the side and lay still. He had not uttered a sound. I wish I could say that I felt a great pang of horror and remorse when I saw that Indian fall. But I didn’t. Instead, there was a rush of savage delight, and I knew in a flash what the Indians themselves must have felt as they swooped in on that helpless caravan of traders. I took the ones nearest me, as they came staggering to their feet. On the far side of the fire the revolver was chattering from Morris’s hand. My own work was almost as fast, and every bullet found a mark.
In the meantime the whole hornet’s nest was up, screeching and waving their hands, leaping and catching up weapons, and shooting them into the air or into one another for all I knew. No, there were a good many in that lot who were not dead with drink. Half a dozen seemed to locate me at the same moment, and they lurched in my direction. I had only two shots left in the Colt, and I dropped two of that crowd and then snatched up the rifle and downed a third before the others had enough of it and broke and ran back toward the fire.
Then I swung into the saddle. Morris was already in his and was charging through the frightened herd of Indian ponies, waving his hat and shouting. They broke away before him and stormed across the prairie with Morris, whooping along in their midst. That living wall of horseflesh undoubtedly saved his life, for it was on him, for some reason, that the braves centered their fire, while they let me go galloping off with only a bullet or two singing around my head to make me ride harder.
Three miles or more away I joined Morris, who was reining the gray mare in to wait for me. I was well over my enthusiasm and covered with cold perspiration by this time, but Morris was laughing and shouting like a madman. He seemed to feel that he had performed one of the best of good deeds. I didn’t pause to moralize, for I could hear those red wasps buzzing far behind us as they caught horses and rushed on in pursuit.
I have no doubt that they would have caught us in half an hour, considering the weariness of our horses, but Morris adopted a new and very brave maneuver. He turned at more than right angles to our original course, actually inclining back somewhat toward the fire, which we could still see glowing like a great, angry red eye far away. On this new course we put our tired, galloping horses. At least, I can answer for it that the gelding was so spent that every stride he took I feared might be its last. Yet the gray mare with the strain of White Smoke in it was still flaunting along with head held high. Even in my terror I could not help admiring the wonderful animal.
So we got out of the hornet’s nest for the time being, though we still had not heard the last of them. At the end of an hour, when the brown no longer so much as flinched under spur, but stumbled along at a trot, head down, Morris called a halt, and we stripped the saddles from the nags and lay down to rest.
I have narrated this event with care, and, looking back over the details, one by one, I see nothing that is not the truth, as far as I can remember. The whole thing is still bright in my mind, and I can still quiver with that fear and then that savage rage which I felt as I crouched in the glimmer of that campfire and shot into the drunken crowd.
I want to be peculiarly exact, because I realize that the great fame of Chuck Morris is largely built on that slaughter of the Cheyennes. If the name of Lew Dorset is also fairly well known to some of the old-timers, I have no doubt that the same bit of slaughter is more closely connected with my name than anything else that I have ever accomplished. That story rang so loudly, for a time, that nothing else was talked about when men sat over campfires. To this day, I know that there are many honest men who lived on the prairies during the early days who contend that the whole tale is a fabrication.
To them I need only reply that old Chief Black Feather himself - and he was as honest as any horse-stealing Cheyenne who ever lived - made statements corroborating everything that I have said. Except that he always declared mat, from the fact that the fire was so rapid, he was sure that more than two men were there. Also he declared that no two men would have the courage to attack a war party - even a drunken war party - from two separate sides where they would lack the support of one another. However, he also confesses that, when they struck our trail, they only found two sets of hoof prints, though he explained that away by supposing some of the party had ridden off in a different direction. Nonetheless, the truth is exactly as I have stated it. There were only two men at that fight, and no third person has ever so much as claimed a share in it.
For my part, I freely confess that I don’t think the thing was so creditable as it may sound. In the first place, those Cheyennes were a pretty groggy lot with the alcohol they had in them. In the second place, the fire from the two sides undoubtedly made them feel, at first, that two large bodies of men were attacking them. In the third place, the surprise was complete. I have done other things of which I am much prouder.
Of course, the vast majority of the credit goes to Chuck Morris, because he originated the plan and led in its execution. Though when we had passed the age of foolhardy youth, neither he nor I would ever have attempted such desperate work. The Cheyennes themselves have always declared that the Great Spirit was punishing them for their sins.