Comanche Sundown: A Novel

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337 29 T he horses had been snorting and sidestepping, anxious to go. Quanah aimed his black forward, then banged his heels against its ribs and raised the lance. The war whoop erupted at the center of the column and as thousands of hooves thudded it billowed upward and out and reached full cry. Prairie dogs skedaddled; meadowlarks and a covey of quail blew upward, followed by the ungainly flapping of the buzzards. Bose had licked his lips constantly and squeezed the bugle in his hand. His heart was beating so hard he thought he was going to fall off the paint. Quanah threw a look back in the direction of Bose, raised his left hand, and swept his arm in an arc. Bose blew a squadron call, then the four-note “Left Oblique,” and watched amazed and proud as, on the flank, riders he’d been drilling peeled off neatly to round the hunters’ horses and mules back toward the old-timers coming along to herd them. At the gallop he put the horn to his mouth and blew the sixteen-note cavalry charge. Out before them a hobbled mule spun a circle in panic, going down with hooves flailing. From a wagon, he saw the starburst of a lone muzzle flash. Bose saw white men jumping up and running all over the compound . Caught far out in the open, two of them almost didn’t make it to the nearest door. Three buildings were set in line about fifty yards from each other, and in no time the crowd of horses around them was ten deep and jostling, the tiny windows shot and broken out. Warriors swung up and ran screaming across the roofs, and from what Bose could see and hear, almost all the gunfire was going in, not out. As he followed Quanah in a circle of the compound he 338 saw the shaman maintaining a distance on his yellow-painted horse. Wolf Shit pointed here and there, dispensing his magic, like a man conducting an orchestra. Behind him the sunrise looked cool and flameless, a ball balanced on a plate. │• Near the building with the picket walls, some Comanches moved their horses around a wagon with a white canvas tarp. Inside it, the German teamsters Ike and Shorty Scheidler were hiding under a pile of buffalo robes. They had awakened too late to run. They had their arms tight around Hans, their black Newfoundland retriever, trying to keep him quiet. A Nokoni reservation runaway named Cheyenne swung off his horse to the wagon ledge and with a knife slashed the tarp to see what loot awaited them. Shorty panicked , threw off the robes, and rewarded the warrior with a pistol blast. The force of it forced Cheyenne backward and dumped him on the ground. The gunshot didn’t kill him but it sealed the immigrants ’ fate. Quanah kicked the black and rode through the cries and swirling bullets. Ike Scheidler fell back riddled, sock feet kicking. Quanah drove his lance deep in the brother’s belly, then he made the man waltz with him, turned his horse’s head around, and slowly set him down on the ground beside Cheyenne, who found his knife and buried it in the teamster’s throat. Then the real fight began. This scene would be played out again and again, painted on Comanche shields and the walls of tipis, long after the fighters of that morning were unsteady getting up on a horse. The Indians had never seen a dog that big. The Newfoundland’s head was the size of a buffalo calf’s, and in one roaring leap it was all over them. Hans’ teeth looked as big as a mountain lion’s. Quanah backed his horse up, trying to free the lance from Shorty, and almost lost his seat trying to get away. A Quohada named Yellowfish was up in the wagon. The dog vaulted on the ledge, then they 339 disappeared—heavy thumps against the canvas, cries of terror, until at last the warrior dove out the back, chewed up good. Soon a dozen Comanches were riding around the dog, which was tiring and roaming like a bull, but then it would rally and charge the horses, trying to knock them down. The horses weren’t thrilled with the game. At last Cohayyah shot the Newfoundland three times with a pistol, and its massive...