Pony Express Page 7

  ‘I’m fifteen years of age.’

  ‘God almighty!’ he exclaimed and then hastily added, ‘I’m sorry. But I never heard the like. Tell me, do you make a habit of exploits such as this?’

  I wasn’t sure how to frame a reply to this question, but fortunately Rawlings came back with a man who was saluted by the officer to whom I had been talking. These two went off out of earshot and had a brief consultation.

  The upshot was that the adjutant, who introduced himself as Major Conway, asked if I would be kind enough to accompany him to the commanding officer’s quarters. He spoke in a courteous and educated voice and treated me with such politeness that I almost felt like grown-up person. This was something of a novelty after the way that I had been dealt with by various people up to that time.

  As we walked across the square towards some buildings which were against the rear wall of the fort, Major Conway said, ‘Just tell the officer all that you have told Captain Daniels. Stick to the facts, Miss…?’

  ‘Taylor. Beth Taylor. But please don’t call me Miss Taylor, for it makes me feel like somebody’s maiden aunt.’

  He laughed at this and said solemnly, ‘Very well. Beth it shall be.’

  The officer in charge of the whole, entire fort was called Colonel Parker and he listened very closely to everything which I said, not interrupting at all until I had completed my account. Then he asked three or four questions, chiefly I think to make sure that I had left out no vital information. After that he sat back at his desk and drummed on the table-top with his fingers. I was sitting opposite him, but Major Conway was standing respectfully, if not to attention, then certainly not slouching.

  ‘What do you make of all this, Conway?’ asked the colonel.

  ‘I believe it’s a true bill, sir.’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ said Colonel Parker irritably, ‘I make no doubt of that. I trust the girl perfectly. But how many men would you say that we might be facing?’

  ‘It’s hard to say, sir. There were better than a hundred at Crooked Creek. If that wasn’t the main body, then I don’t rightly know. Five hundred? Could be more.’

  ‘And they could be anywhere in the territory. It’s the hell of a thing. All right, sound muster. Let’s get onto a war footing while we plan our next move.’

  I think that Colonel Parker had almost forgotten about me while considering his military options, for he suddenly said, ‘Miss Taylor, I suppose that you will be needing a bed for the night? I can’t tell you how grateful we are to you for this. When things have settled down somewhat, I hope that we shall be able to talk at more length.’

  This was all very pleasant and just exactly how I had hoped my news would be received. The adjutant offered to sort out somewhere for me to stay for the night and before going off to organize the men for action, he handed me over to a practical-looking half-breed woman, who, he said, looked after the spare rooms.

  I said, ‘My pony needs to be turned out. Will it be all right to put him in the corral I saw?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘What about his tack?’

  ‘There’s a big tent for that. Just tell them that Major Conway said it was all right.’

  It was coming on towards evening now and I was pretty well spent. There was a tiny little room which was used for guests and this was allocated to me. The woman said that she would have food sent to me and that she hoped that I would be comfortable there. Having said all this, she lingered and I thought it likely that people staying as the colonel’s guests might be in the habit of tipping her. I had no money and so she was out of luck.

  Now that I was left alone I kicked off my boots and lay down on the bed. After all that had happened, I was sure that I had now reached the end of my adventures, for what more could possibly befall me, surrounded by soldiers and in a fort belonging to the US Cavalry?

  Which is just a small example of how wrong one can be when trying to gauge what the future might hold!

  CHAPTER 7

  After what I had been through in the last few hours it was hardly surprising that almost as soon as I lay down on that bed I promptly fell asleep. When I awoke it was to find the room in darkness. I had earlier noticed a lamp standing on a little table, but I had not the wherewithal to light it. In the moonlight streaming through the window, I saw that somebody had left me a tray of food and a jug of water. It was half a chicken, along with a hunk of bread. I fell to and devoured it ravenously.

  I had no idea what time it might be, but I could hear a lot of noise from people talking and laughing, so I figured that it couldn’t be that late: not the middle of the night or anything. Nobody had said that I had to stay in my room and since I had never before been on an army base and perhaps would not get another opportunity to do so, I decided to go and explore a little.

  One of the first things I noticed when I left the building in which I was staying and went into the main square of the fort, was that the mighty gates were still standing wide open. A single soldier was standing around at the gates, chatting to a couple of women, but other than that, anybody could come in and out. Young and inexperienced as I was, I felt instinctively that this was not a good way to carry on when there was a danger of attack.

  As I wandered aimlessly across the square I was hailed by name, which greatly surprised me. Somebody called, ‘Hey, Miss Taylor!’

  I turned and saw the man called Rawlings, the soldier I had first met when I arrived at Fort Richmond. When he came nigh to me, he said, ‘You’re the theme of general conversation, you know. Never knew one girl to stir up so many people.’

  ‘I don’t rightly understand you,’ I replied. ‘Who’ve I stirred up?’

  ‘Why, only the whole fort. Everybody’s left, you know.’

  I was still feeling a little muzzy and sleep-befuddled. I said, ‘I’m sorry, I’ve been sleeping. Who has left?’

  ‘Why,’ said Rawlings, ‘All those men as were encamped outside here and ’most every person from this fort. There’s hardly but twenty of us been left behind. Everyone else has gone off to hunt for the Comanches you told ’em of. Say, tell me the truth, Miss Taylor. Did you send ’em off on a snipe hunt for the hell of it?’

  So merry and free with his speech was the man that I looked a little harder at him. It was not my eyes, though, that provided confirmation of what I had suddenly suspected: it was my nose. As Rawlings swayed nearer to me I caught the unmistakable odour of whiskey on his breath. The man was inebriated!

  ‘I don’t know anything about all this,’ I told him a little coldly. ‘I just explained what I knew to your colonel. Whatever action he’s taken after that is nothing to do with me.’

  ‘Well, it’s surely given us a little holiday!’ said the intoxicated soldier cheerfully. ‘So whether or no, I’m greatly obliged to you.’

  I turned away in some disgust, but then, as I walked away, I said, ‘Who’s in charge of this fort now? Is the colonel still here?’

  ‘Not he! Catch him missing out on a moment of glory. He rode out at the head of the column and hour back.’

  ‘So who is looking after this place?’

  ‘Senior officer is Lieutenant Bryson. But he’s in the sack with some young lady. I tell you straight, tonight we’re standing easy.’

  I felt uneasy after talking to Rawlings, because from all that I could apprehend, Fort Richmond was now in the hands of a lot of foolish young men, some of who had no more sense than grasshoppers. I thought that I would go and check up on my pony. Although he was not mine, I felt a responsibility for the mount which had been provided for me by the Pony Express and wished to ensure that I would be returning him to his rightful owners in prime condition.

  Once through the gates and out of the fort I could see many small fires burning outside the tepees. There were so many of these that I wondered momentarily whether the Indians hereabouts did not now outnumber the cavalry. I felt a little concerned notwithstanding the fact that I had been assured of the friendliness of this particular tribe. T
he plain before the fort was a twinkling constellation of little fires.

  It was sheer chance that when everything began I was out in the corral and not sleeping in the room which had been assigned to me. The corral was set up in the lee of Fort Richmond’s mighty wooden walls. It contained only a half-dozen other animals, in addition to my own. The pony seemed to be in good company and I was about to leave the corral when something extraordinary occurred. From the top of the wall, some fifty feet about my head, a body fell and came crashing to the ground. I looked up, but could see nobody there and guessed that whoever had just plummeted down must have toppled from the walkway which ran around the top of the wall.

  As I jumped over the fence of the corral and ran to where the figure lay, silent and still, I was thinking that there must have been some kind of tragic accident: a man fainting perhaps, or tripping over the edge by clumsiness. I recall wondering, though, even as I approached the prone body, why there had been no cry of alarm as the man fell down.

  When I reached the man I could see at once that he was not stirring at all and nor could I hear breathing. I did something which my brother had once taught me, which was to feel on the throat for a pulse. Not that I really expected this person to be dead, it was just that I had never had occasion to use this method in a reallife situation. So I crouched down and began fumbling around the side of his neck, where it was possible to feel for a pulse.

  To my disgust I found that my hand was slippery with some liquid and I thought that maybe it was dribble. I jerked away and saw that the hand which had touched the throat looked black in the moonlight, as if I had grasped a handful of tar or something.

  Then, of a sudden, the explanation hit me. The dark substance was blood and the reason why this man had not cried out as he fell was that he was already dead or dying when he was pitched over the top of that wall. From the quantity of blood I hazarded a guess that his throat had been cut.

  While I was digesting the strange implications of my discovery, and before I had had a chance to become at all disturbed, I heard a shriek of fear, a woman’s voice, which was abruptly cut off. It was not difficult to work out that the fort might be under attack by enemies and that it was defended only by a skeleton crew of drunken libertines.

  *

  Once the woman’s screaming had been briefly heard, things moved very rapidly. As I got to my feet, the first shot came: from a rifle by the sound of it. Then there was shouting, which sounded as though it might be soldiers in the fort raising the alarm. This was followed by one or two more shots and then a perfect fusillade of rifle fire.

  Now I might have been little more than a child at that time, but even so I figured that there was no percentage in being anywhere near a bunch of angry or fearful men firing off rifles in the dark. You just know that this is apt to end badly. So it was that I moved closer to the wall of the fort, in order to melt into the shadows until I knew properly what was going on.

  This did not take long to figure and it tied in very well with the apprehensions that I had had about the gates of Fort Richmond standing wide open while the few soldiers within became intoxicated or otherwise fooled around like they might have been in a sporting house.

  As I watched I could see men running from the tepees and racing towards the gate of the fort. Again, it didn’t need a master of military strategy to work out what had chanced. Some of the Comanches had infiltrated the peaceful village camped outside Fort Richmond and had now entered the place and taken full advantage of the lack of preparation which existed now that the commanding officer and other senior officers had departed.

  I guessed that other Comanche warriors had probably been waiting near by until nightfall and now saw their opportunity to kill and loot at will. Then again, young as I was, I knew that if you were a girl there were things other than killing or looting to worry about. I had only the vaguest idea on the subject, but knew that I had best not show myself while these fellows were on the rampage.

  So it was that I was the only white witness to the sacking and burning of Fort Richmond, which was one of those events that later came to define the year before the Civil War broke out.

  After that first flurry of screaming, shouting and shooting, the only thing I heard was men speaking in a language that was not English. Then there came the sound of smashing glass and many heavy thuds. From where I was huddling, right against the exterior wall of the fort, it was clear that all these noises were coming from the central square, which you came upon as soon as you passed through the gates. That there was no more shooting or screaming was ominous, suggesting as it did that any resistance had been pretty well quashed early on in the attacks.

  I knew that I should be making tracks out of that area, but the problem was to find the best way of slipping inconspicuously away while several hundred Indians went crazy with the desire for blood and fire. Because now that those in the fort had either been killed or otherwise silenced, the Comanches set out to to destroy the place entirely. The roughly dressed tree trunks that made up the walls of Fort Richmond were fixed side by side, but not precisely so; there were many cracks and gaps between one trunk and another. Through these I could see flickering lights and dancing shadows which told of more than one fire having been kindled within the fort.

  My position was now becoming increasingly desperate. The horses in the corral, including my own pony, were growing restless as they smelled the smoke and perhaps caught glimpses of the flames. Some primeval fear was upon them and if I didn’t get my pony away from this scene soon, he might become ungovernable with fear.

  Moreover I needed his tack, which was in a large tent nearby that served the purposes of a tack room or barn. One comforting circumstance was that I had not yet caught sight of any mounted men. From what I was able to see, all the Indians were on foot; if once I could get that pony cantering away with me on his back, then we might be safe, at least for a spell.

  Just as I was screwing up my courage to the sticking point, as some old poet put the case, I realized that a tall man was striding in my direction with a flaming torch in his hand. At first I was naturally a-feared that he had seen me and was minded to put an end to my life, but this was not how things stood. Rather than being intent on causing mischief or harm to me, this wretch was about to set fire to the tent in which my saddle and bridle were currently stowed. Indeed, with no ado, he thrust the brand against the fabric of the tent and held it there until the canvas had begun to blaze. Then he simply turned on his heel and went back in the direction from which he had come.

  Before going on, I have to admit that I was mightily puzzled by this behaviour at that time. You might have thought that the Indians would want the saddles and other material in the tent so that they could take the spare horses for their own. There were two explanations for this. The first was that these boys had taken some kind of oath that they would offer up the goods belonging to the army as some burnt offering to their gods. The other reason for this crazy conduct was that somehow they had found a crate of whiskey and were busily engaged in drinking themselves stupid. Both of which made for a pretty lethal combination.

  Unless I acted quickly there would be no possibility of escape on horseback, so I gritted my teeth and ran to the burning tent. The flap sealing the entrance was closed with buckled straps and I did not have the time or inclination to fiddle about opening it. Fortunately, by this time a large hole in one wall of the tent had been eaten away by the fire, and I thought that I might be able to risk jumping through it, so gaining access to the tent. Jumping into a burning structure in that way is not something most of us will be able to do without a lot of hesitation, but what spurred me on was a dull boom from near by, which sounded like a barrel of powder going up. The horses were now neighing and whinnying, and if I left it any longer they would most likely be kicking down the fences and vanishing into the night. I took a brief run and then leaped through the hole and into the tent.

  There was more smoke in the tent than I had bargained for, an
d at least a dozen saddles. Luckily, mine was distinctive enough, with the mochila and all. Finding the bridle took a little longer and by then I was coughing and choking with all the smoke that I had inhaled.

  The night was rent with warbling war cries as the flames took hold of Fort Richmond. There were sparks floating up into the sky now, and it surely would not be long before those stout and all but impregnable walls themselves went up in smoke. Now that I was near my pony, talking calmly and fastening on his saddle, he calmed a little, but he was not at all happy about the strange noises, sights and smells. His natural instinct was probably to bolt and there was a limit to how long I would be able to restrain this impulse. I just hoped that I would be securely on his back when he did make a break for it.

  The gate to the corral was padlocked and it was necessary for me to heave a few parts of the fence down to make a way for the animals to run free. By the time I had finished that, flames were licking the top of the walls of Fort Richmond and it was not hard to see that the structure would, by morning, be reduced to a charred ruin.

  Not having the least notion of where to go for the greatest safety, I led the pony away from the the Indian tepees and in the general direction of the part of the plain that appeared to me to be least inhabited. Not wanting to attract attention by generating the noise of hoof beats, I waited until we were a quarter-mile from the fort before I mounted. Even then I maintained only a sedate trot for a time.

  Before I risked speeding up a little I paused and turned back to survey the scene. The whole fort was alight now and the blaze must have been visible for miles. If anybody doubted that there was now a full-scale Indian rebellion in progress, then that massive bonfire alone would be enough to convince them of their error.

  I did not feel inclined to travel through the whole night. The risk of laming my horse in the darkness apart, I had no idea at all what the morrow would bring and wished to be fresh and ready to tackle anything. On coming to a sizeable forest I dismounted and led the pony in among the trees. When once I was assured that, even in daylight, nobody would be able to see us from the open country that lay beyond the edge of the wood, I tethered the horse and lay down to sleep.