jaw and not because some sixth sense had alerted him to danger. Nor could Kicking Bird have foreseen that the pain in one man's mouth would have such devastating consequences for himself, his warriors, and those whose prayers for success they carried. Had he been able to divine any of these things, Kicking Bird might have concluded that the fate of the Comanches and all other free people on the plains had turned cruel.
The man whose aching jaw was a key element in the destiny of an entire people had been suffering for several days. His fellow hunters had done all they could for him, trying that same afternoon to yank it out with a bullet mold, but their latest effort had only succeeded in breaking off a chunk of the afflicted molar.
The sufferer had tried to hasten sleep with a few long gulps of whiskey, but now; as he sat in the night, staring at the slovenly camp, which stank continually with the odor of rotting blood and skin; he decided impulsively to ride for Adobe Walls.
It pained him to do so because he was going to lose a lot of money, but the hurt in his head was too great. He grabbed up his Sharps rifle, scooped his bedding into his arms, and in minutes was riding north across the prairie.
Half a mile out he heard gunfire at his back and turned to look. The fire at camp was only a pinpoint of light far off in the darkness, and though he couldn't make out the action at that distance, he knew instantly from the volume of rounds being fired that the camp was under attack.
Then, as he sat listening, the gunfire suddenly diminished and a different sound rolled across the prairie. It carne to his ears and traveled into his brain with a creeping recognition that stood his hair on end. He was hearing the primal, horrifying screams of Indians. With the finality of a trip-hammer, the hunter whirled his horse around and, even after reaching a full gallop, didn't stop kicking.
Chapter XXXIV
The buffalo-killer who lived the longest managed to get off one round before his head was split in half with an ax. The others barely had time to stir before they died.
But as warriors buzzed over the camp, firing everything but the body parts of the dead, Kicking Bird sat his pony with little sense of satisfaction. The scouts were certain they had counted eight white men, but only seven lay dead. The surrounding prairie was hastily searched for the missing enemy but no one was found, and Kicking Bird sensed they must move quickly in case the missing hunter had somehow escaped to spread an alarm.
Twenty minutes after they attacked, the thousand warriors were ploughing the darkness of the plains, hoping to catch more camps unaware of their presence. As they sped north they saw many more dead buffalo but little of the men who had killed them. By noon of the following day; they had encountered but one recently abandoned camp, and, certain that their presence had been announced, the great force hurried on, clinging to the prospect of overtaking isolated parties of fleeing hunters.
Judiciously alternating between all-out flight and periodic brief rest, the man with the toothache maintained an hour's lead over the huge war party. He had roused one camp of men, who spurned his advice and dashed east instead of following him to Adobe Walls. But he encountered no one else, and as he urged his weary horse on, the sore-jawed man assumed that by a miraculous stroke of luck all the other outfits must be out of the country or laying over at 'the Walls.'
His assumption was confirmed when, only a few miles from his goal, he happened upon three white men — two riding side by side on a buckboard, one mounted on a horse. Though he had never been introduced he knew the bearded, well-appointed men on the buckboard to be the brothers Rath, the wealthy, energetic financiers behind the frontier buffalo trade. The man on horseback was well known to him as the manager of the brothers' holdings at Adobe Walls.
The three men listened to the hunter's story of narrow escape and flight in shocked silence. All of them were unnerved to hear that what seemed to be a very large party of heathens was abroad and obviously bent on murdering whatever lay in their path.
For the Rath brothers, however, the Indian threat represented something other than mere bodily harm. Being inveterate creatures of commerce, the siblings' minds naturally leapt to the problem of how best to protect their investment.
They exchanged a few whispered words, then climbed down from the wagon. The manager dismounted and the three men held a brief conference out of earshot of the surviving hunter. In the tall grass of the prairie a number of quick decisions were reached. A lull in the buffalo slaughter had concentrated many hunters at the Adobe Walls installation. There were at least twenty-five guns there, maybe as many as thirty, but if they knew a large party of marauding savages were headed their way, many were likely to bolt. That would leave the saloon and hotel and processing sheds the Rath brothers owned vulnerable.
In the interest of preserving the empire they had labored so mightily to construct, an empire that produced a juggernaut of wealth to which there seemed no end, a conspiracy between the Rath brothers and their reliable manger was hatched.
Minutes later, assured that he would obtain proper care for his inflamed molar away from Adobe Walls, the hunter traded horses with the manager and struck east in the heady company of the Rath brothers.
The manager started back for the holdings at Adobe Walls, entrusted with executing a plan sure to guarantee that his masters' vastly lucrative industry would be maintained. None of the hunters at 'the Walls' was to be informed of the impending threat to their lives. But that night, through a subterfuge of the manager's devising, the temporary settlement would be caused to prepare for an attack that was sure to come.
The manager was confident in the plan's simple brilliance. He was also certain that the presence of so many crack shots working behind the solid fortifications of the recently erected company town could blunt any hoard of screaming, arrow-shooting wild men.
Chapter XXXV
Kicking Bird and his army of warriors were about ten miles from the place called Adobe Walls when its presence was reported and, in the lengthy council that followed, the discouraging news brought by the scouts was discussed in detail. It seemed that the head of the monster had been located but almost every piece of information spoke against attacking it.
The buffalo-killers had congregated in alarming numbers. The scouts had counted twenty-eight white men with far-shooting guns, guns which could be fired from the cover of several large earthen houses which had risen on the plains. The settlement lay in a denuded bowl of land upon which there was nothing to shield an attack. Four white men seemed to be camped around a wagon perhaps a hundred yards from the shelter of the buildings. They would be an easy target, and that was the only attractive aspect of making an attack.
But a door had closed behind each of the thousand warriors and there was no going back. No one talked against going ahead, despite the fact that everyone knew men were bound to die in the face of guns that could tear holes in flesh as big as a gourd, and that the chances for victory could not be great. Since they had taken the war trail, the party's reason for being and its avowed mission had swelled to something larger than its parts. They could not now shrink from what had become a holy duty. The only question that needed to be decided was how they would assail the monster's head, and Kicking Bird's strategy was so simple and straightforward that it was adopted after a few minutes of perfunctory discussion.
They would attack as one body, slamming their full might against the objective in the hope it would collapse through the sheer weight of their assault. They would not attack in the dark but come out of the sun, using its first, blinding light as a screen. Kicking Bird and half a dozen handpicked warriors would overwhelm the men camped around the wagon in the open while the vast bulk of warriors threw themselves against the hunters' fortifications.