The Holy Road

Chapter XLVIII

Six days after the deadline for the ultimatum passed, Captain Bradley's command was hit by a large, combined force of well-armed warriors.

The attack came a few minutes before dawn, and though it had been repulsed, four troopers were dead and six were wounded. Seven of the enemy had been killed. The captain was certain that more Indians had died but he listed only the bodies that had been recovered.

Enemy wounded weren't counted. A lesser officer would have been tempted to embellish his report, but Captain Bradley was a rare bird. He laid out only the plain facts of the engagement in the official report he scribbled to General Mackenzie barely an hour after the fighting had ceased.

The night before, his command had bivouacked in a small valley nestled in rolling, mesquite-covered country. The site, which was spotted with growths of cottonwoods at its deepest point, had been chosen because a large spring of pure, clear water had been discovered there.

He didn't mention it in his report, but Bradley had begun to feel restless as soon as they made camp. In the days before, they had encountered more and more Indian sign, much of it fresh. None of the hostiles had been sighted, but having led his column so deep into enemy territory the captain was on high alert.

The wide ravine was, from a military point of view; neither the worst nor the best place he might have chosen to spend the night. His ambivalence about the spot left him vaguely queasy, and after dark he ordered the herders to move the horses and mules closer to camp. once this was accomplished he ordered that a half dozen more men be detailed to guard the livestock. Auxiliary fires were lit and tended through the night. Sentries were doubled, and instead of reporting once an hour, they were required to signify their presence to the sergeant of the guard every fifteen minutes.

Despite these measures, Captain Bradley found himself unable to rest and spent the balance of the night in sporadic checks of the camp. He had just returned from an inspection of the guard when, according to best estimates, nearly half a hundred screaming savages charged out of the blackness and attacked the horse herd.

Captain Bradley remained coolheaded through the ensuing ripple of chaos, giving strict and specific orders for the mounting of no more than twenty-five soldiers, who sped to aid the defenders of the precious herd. As firing echoed up the ravine, Bradley ordered the deployment of skirmish lines on either side of the bivouac and instructed the Gatling gun crew to set up their weapon in a position facing east.

The young commander had not guessed that an attack would come that morning, nor did he have any inkling of the Indian plan of battle. But his few engagements with the aboriginals had been enough to give him a feel for the enemy. Bradley understood, as did few of his peers, that to fight Indians effectively required leadership of an instinctive sort. In a land bare of all but the most natural elements it behooved any commander to make himself as much a part of the landscape as possible. He had realized after his initial debacle that the only individual he should rely upon was himself and to do that he had better “listen” to the enemy and to the country as much as possible. The captain had listened attentively in succeeding months, and though it could not be said he understood the language of nature, he was open to it and responding instinctively.

Captain Bradley had organized his defenses with little analytical thought and it was well that he did for in deviating from normal practice he successfully parried the surprisingly clever strategy of his native adversaries. The attack on the horse herd was no more than a ploy to divert attention from the real attack, which came a few moments after the sky had lightened, when a legion of warriors, estimated at more than two hundred, thundered out of the east' seeking to overrun the bivouac and kill everyone in it.

In a state of calm he could not have explained, Captain Bradley had his waiting troops hold fire until the charging wave of Indians was within a hundred yards. When he did give the command, the line of rifles exploded as one, lashing the first ranks of horsemen with a fiery galelike blast that shattered their momentum. As riflemen reloaded and the enemy tried to gather itself the Gatling gun sprayed a lethal curtain of bullets over the field. In less than a minute it malfunctioned, but by that time critical damage had been done to the enemy, who were withdrawing in disarray.

For more than an hour afterward, Indian snipers shot into the camp but the firing dwindled steadily until, at mid-morning, it was ascertained that the enemy had forsaken the field.

Aside from the three enlisted men and one officer who had been killed, the only material loss was a significant portion of stores and this was due entirely to bad luck. A stray enemy round had struck a keg of gunpowder packed on a mule and the crazed animal, exploding in flame, had careened into the tents, setting several on fire.

Included among the completely and partially destroyed tents were two belonging to the quartermaster which contained a large supply of rations, and Captain Bradley concluded his report to General Mackenzie by expressing doubt that his command could remain much longer in the field without being resupplied.

He was tempted to include the interesting anecdote of a white man riding with the savages who attacked the horse herd, but, deciding that it was not germane, omitted the strange sighting attested to by several of the horse-herd defenders. He did add that, while he was impelled to detach some manpower to escort the wounded back to For Richardson, he would stay in the field and continue his mission for as long as was feasible, or until he received contrary directives.

As his dispatch was carried east by two good horsemen, accompanied by a pair of Tonkawa scouts, Bradley turned his energies to sorting through the fight's aftermath and the Indian bodies collected for examination. There were four Comanche, two Kiowa, and one Cheyenne, which led to the quite logical conclusion that the hostiles had formed a working alliance.

The Tonkawas requested the bodies, and despite Captain Bradley's refusal, they eventually managed to purloin one. The remaining six were left where they lay and after burying his own dead and salvaging all useable goods, Captain Bradley marched his column back onto the prairie. Though he knew he would not go very far that day, he wanted to impress the enemy with his resiliency.

As they angled west, the latest in the never-ending series of storms lifted, a break in the weather that mirrored a rising of the young commander's spirits. Morale was high and he perceived a renewed snap in the attention to orders and their execution. The attack on the horse herd had resulted in the loss of only six animals, and despite the necessity of reducing rations by half, it was likely that the command could last another two weeks in the field without being seriously compromised.

Three days later as the command was meandering about in broken country adjacent to the great caprock barrier to the Staked plains, the captain's spirits received another boost with the return of his messengers.

With them was a reply from Fort Sill, signed by Mackenzie's adjutant but obviously dictated by the general. The new instructions acknowledged receipt of Captain Bradley's report and directed him to march north and east to a point where he would rendezvous with a supply train being sent our from Fort Belknap. Once refurbished, he was to continue his long sweep up from the south for an eventual rendezvous with a column from Fort Sill under the command of General Mackenzie, whose departure was imminent.

Best of all, there was a postscript floating below the adjutant's signature which read as follows:

"The general wishes to convey his complete satisfaction at results of the late engagement described in your report. Additionally, he wishes to express his affirmation of the initiatives you have taken subsequent to the skirmish with hostile forces."

Captain Bradley had his own adjutant read the postscript aloud at roll call the following morning. The rank and file greeted the reading with cheers and, as they marched off to the northeast after breakfast, all recent privation was forgotten. The campaign's foundation had been unerringly laid. Now it was going into full motion, and for Captain Bradley it was easy to believe that the final outcome would be total victory.