Lead and Powder

By Dorman Lowell Chasteen Jr.

This is a post-Civil War Western centered in western Kansas and Indian Territory. It involves life on the very fringe of America in a world without laws or social structure. The main character is all-in-one a Southern draftee, a galvanized Yankee, and a deserter from both the South and North Armies. He would prefer to just be left alone as he t

• Language: English
• Publisher: ReadersMagnet LLC
• Release date: Jul 9, 2020
• ISBN: 9781951775261

Dorman Lowell Chasteen Jr.

"Dorman Chasteen was born in Oklahoma City in 1949. He is a Christian. This story includes many family occurrences. His maternal grandfather was involved in two Indian incidents when he was a boy and his great-great-grandfather was a galvanized (Confederate) Yankee at Fort Laramie at the height of the Great Sioux War. He carried a bullet in his leg until his death in 1915. His paternal great-grandmother stood-off Comanches by holding a broom like it was a rifle. His great uncle was an Indian Agent for the Oglala Sioux, Northern Cheyenne, and Kiowa when Indian combatants from the Indian Wars were still alive. Dorman has a picture of himself and the last Indian survivor of the Battle of the Little Big Horn in taken in 1955. Dorman is a combat veteran of the United States Marine Corps and an Army veteran with Recondo (shortened Ranger School from 1970s) and Jump qualification. He is a graduate of Oklahoma State University and father of three grown girls and a step-daughter. He is retired military and Civil Service."

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Lead and Powder

Copyright © 2020 by Dorman Lowell Chasteen Jr.

Published in the United States of America

ISBN Paperback: 978-1-951775-25-4

ISBN eBook: 978-1-951775-26-1

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any way by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the author except as provided by USA copyright law.

The opinions expressed by the author are not necessarily those of ReadersMagnet, LLC.

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Contents

Why Me?

The Quadrupeds of the Plains

Wagons West

The Guns They Carried

Life Without Hope

A War of Vengeance

A Man’s Worth

Lamentations

Sharpen Your Ax

War!

One Darn Thing After Another

Putting the Pieces Together

Buffalo Hunters

The Sphinx

Growing

Making a Living

Fruits of Labor

Ghost

A Deadly Brew

Home Sweet Home

Homeward Bound

The Day of Reckoning

Some Things Aren’t Meant to Be

Why Me?

Andrew Helm could not have asked for a worse situation. There were more Indian warriors headed in his direction than he cared to count. It was just his luck. Here it was dead winter and they were on a raid. They did not make any effort to conceal themselves. They were like hunting dogs running down an exhausted animal. They had followed the scent until they had at last seen their game. Now their eyes were fixed on Andrew. The individual braves led their string of extra ponies behind them as the war party traveled in a single file. They were strung out below in a curved wash between two hills at the point of the ridge about a half mile to the east of the wagon. There were plenty of Indians to begin with, but the visual effect of the warriors leading their extra ponies behind them gave the sinister appearance of an endless serpentine stream of Indians. To Andrew, it looked as if every painted warrior on the Plains was headed in his direction.

Andrew’s fear did not make his team move faster. No matter how much he encouraged, and whipped his sweaty, tired team, the fatigued animals would not and could not move faster. He dismounted from the wagon seat to lighten the load and walked behind one of the trail mules as he continued to drive the team. If Andrew had a healthy team, he could have unpinned the team and would have had a chance to ride for his life. Even with tired animals, he could have cut individual animals from the harness and switched from one mule or horse to another for maximum speed and distance. Because of his neglect of the animals, Andrew was faced with an entirely different situation. He could almost walk faster than the team.

The war party had probably crossed his trail sometime earlier in the afternoon and simply followed the wagon and horse tracks across the prairie and through the creek bed. A child could have followed the trail.

In all probability Andrew would be dead before it was dark and he knew it. He felt like a trapped animal. Everything was stacked against him. All he could do was to grasp at straws of hope in his mind. Other than simply waiting to be killed or taking his life, there did not appear to be many choices. His mind raced over wild ideas to find some hope for survival.

Andrew had heard that Indians thought lunatics were spirit possessed and would not touch them. While it was true Andrew had to be an absolute idiot to be in this position, he was not crazy. He figured he could not put on an act. He would not be able to conceal his fear. The Indians would surely see through this ploy. He soon came to the conclusion that he would have to run, beg, or fight.

Andrew was aware that on occasion Plains warriors were known to spare people who did not resist, but not often. If he made this choice, he could simply surrender and let the warriors surround and disarm him. Andrew was readily willing to grovel to stay alive, but there was no guarantee that even if he surrendered the warriors would not kill him outright or torture him to death. If the warriors had any grievance against white men and he fell into their hands, they would take their anger out on him. He would probably have his jaw slashed open, tongue ripped out, castrated and his privates shoved down his throat. At best, the Indians would surely steal everything he owned and leave him naked, barefoot, and unarmed on the Plains in the dead of winter. If they let him keep part of his clothing, he would still have a sixty-mile walk in bare feet in freezing weather to civilization. In other words, even survival from the Indians would probably be a death sentence on the prairie.

The thought of torture haunted Andrew. He had seen what the Indians could do to a captive. If they were not in a hurry to simply lift his hair and cave in his skull, they could be very creative in causing pain. The thought of being tied upside down on a wagon wheel with a small fire in front of his face made Andrew made his stomach tighten in fear. Andrew had once seen how the Kiowa handled a male hostage. The Indians had sliced the victim’s stomach open. While the poor man was still alive and conscious, Indians had slowly pulled out the poor man’s guts. His insides were still attached to his body cavity as the Indians slowly cooked the man’s intestines in a fire in front of his eviscerated cavity. The man would have been standing on hot coals at the same time. If Comanche Indians had done the deed, it would have been worse and would have involved castration, his jaw slashed open, tongue ripped out, and his privates shoved down his throat. This is just what they had done at Fort Parker and along Elm Creek.

Andrew made up his mind he would avoid torture—even if it meant taking his own life. He was just like anyone else. As long as there was life in him, there was hope. He would put off the act until the last possible moment.

The approaching Indians were sure that they were going to win. Andrew was like a tasty morsel on a plate. They would play with him as a cat might play with a mouse. There would not be any reason for the warriors to pass up this opportunity for goods, sport, and revenge. Although it would take Andrew a while to reach the conclusion, as remote as it seemed, Andrew’s best chance of living longer and any remote chance of survival would require him to prepare to fight. As his mind worked through his few options, he still might have the additional option of initiating a trade for his life. There were three ways he might initiate a trade.

He could abandon most of his goods and animals. He would have to find a good fighting position. While the wagon carried virtually all his entire possessions from a life of thirty-four years, the material wealth did not even enter into his thoughts. If he was in a good fighting position and it looked to the Indians as though any of the warriors might get hurt in the course of finishing him, the Indians might figure he was not worth killing. If he tried this course of action, Andrew would have to keep a minimum of survival items to mount a defense and just enough to travel to civilization on foot. If they let him live, his trip to safety would last four or five days. Even if they let him live by abandoning his goods, there was no telling what the Kansas winter weather would be like for that period. If a northern wind blew in and the temperature dropped for any time, he would probably freeze.

He might find a fighting hole and hoard his goods at his defensive location. Then he would hail the Indians and try to trade with them outright for passage and his life. Andrew would have to find some way to communicate with the Indians before the shooting got too intense. Hopefully, he would find a brave among them who spoke English or a smattering of Spanish.

If he had been born under a rainbow he might recognize a friendly face among the approaching Indians, although this was against all odds. There were probably ten thousand hostile braves from Nebraska to Mexico and Andrew was friendly with only about one hundred of them. What Type of Indians?

Andrew looked desperately at the approaching Indians as he tried to identify their tribe. No way was he going to surrender without some surety of his future. He was going through the preliminaries of defending himself. He checked his weapons. Better than most, he could identify Indians by their dress, hair, and markings.

Andrew was just south of the Arkansas River. Many war-like tribes traversed the area. One tribe was the Kansas. They were sometimes called the Wichita. Their name meant the raccoon-eyed people. They would have tattooed eyes that made them look like raccoons. Unfortunately, they were one tribe that readily adapted to and were proficient with firearms. They were not numerous. They could probably finish him off at a distance without endangering any of their own.

More than likely the approaching Indians were from another tribe or a mix of tribes. The most likely were the Kwuda, or Nermernuh. The Kwuda were known as the Kiowa. Most people called the Nermernuh by their Ute name. In the Ute language the word for enemy was Comanche. There were also plentiful numbers of the Tsis-tsis-tas who were know as the Cheyenne, the Lipan Apache, the Kiowa-Apache, and the Skidis who were known by the Comanche word for slave: Pawnee. Additionally, there were the tattooed Arapahoe and any number of renegade Indians from reservations.

Despite the variety of tribes that could be in the area, the Comanche were the dominant Indians. This was the northern extent of the Comanche range. Other tribes recognized that these warriors were the bosses in the area. Despite his knowledge of their reputation, Andrew actually hoped the warriors were Comanche or a mix of Comanche and their Kiowa allies. The reason was this: the tribe of Indians coming at him would determine if a trade might be possible. The Comanche would trade.

In the fading light, Andrew could not yet make out any characteristics of the Indians. He hoped to find buffalo headdresses, half-black faces, glittering silver necklaces, snake symbols on their horses and shields, and blue leggings on at least some of the braves. Those features would have been indicative of a war party headed by Comanche with Kiowa allies. Despite their reputation, they would offer his best chance of survival.

Andrew had traded with the Comanche several times in the last few years. Just before his wife and children’s death a month earlier, he had worked through an Osage intermediary to set up a trade with the Comanche. He had met with two representatives of the tribe to trade for white captives. One of the Indians had been an older brave named Liver Eater and the other was a young warrior of the Quahadi. His name was Quannah, and he had blue eyes. His name meant odor. He was already recognized as a great warrior. With the death of his family, Andrew had not pursued the deal.

Each Plains tribe had its own personality. The Comanche were unique Indians in the way that they handled the theft of livestock. They often stole entire herds of cattle or horses. They would eat what they wanted and drive the rest to some location for barter or sale. Stolen Mexican horses frequently found their way to army posts. It was not unusual for a team of mules taken from white travelers to show up in Santa Fe or Austin for trade. Prior to Texas independence, the Comanche were so successful at stealing horses that the Mexicans authorities did not have enough animals left to pursue the thieves.

The Comanche and Kiowa probably killed more whites than any other Indian tribes with each tribe killing well in excess of five thousand white men. From 1840 to 1874, in Texas alone the Comanche killed an average of two hundred white men a year. There was no telling how many Mexicans they killed in Texas, Mexico, and New Mexico. They also killed white men as far north as Nebraska and as far west as Santa Fe. They raided the reservation Indians of Indian Territory and Texas. A local maxim said that the only thing a Comanche liked more than chasing a horse across the prairie was riding his horse across the prairie after another horse with a Mexican seated on its back. They once raided so far south that they brought back tales of black men who sat in trees and did not talk but screamed. Mexicans knew these men as the monkeys of Central Mexico.

Until around 1850, the Comanche had been a real threat to the very survival of the Republic and State of Texas. To protect themselves from the Comanche, Texans recruited Germans as settlers and gave them land on the Texas frontier in Comanche territory. The Germans promptly made a treaty with the Comanche. In exchange for annual goods and a single German hostage to learn the Indian language and serve as a go-between linguist, the Comanche left the Germans alone. They crossed German land to raid the Texans. The Comanche kept the agreement until they went off the warpath. This was indicative of how great practical traders the Comanche were.

Credibility in trading, profits, and a good chance of survival caused traders to return. The Comanche realized this and could be expected to stick to a deal. Many of the wagons and teams hauling freight on the Plains were stolen from Mexicans and traded to white men or vise versa. Andrew’s own mule team came from such a trade. Besides stealing and trading entire herds of cattle, wagons, and horses, they bartered in captives. Among the Comanche were captives, renegades and half-breeds. There were also numerous white and Spanish children among them who had been raised as Comanche. Some of these people could speak a variety of languages including French, Spanish, German, or English. Many of the Comanche themselves picked up a foreign language from traders, women and children captives, and peace negotiations.

If the Comanche could get Andrew’s gear without a fight, they would do it. Andrew might be able to walk away from the situation with enough equipment to have a chance of making it to the next settlement. He would not have more than the hair on his head, a blanket, the clothing on his back, maybe a worn-out animal, and a rifle, but he could be able to survive.

There were downsides to the type of Indians. Kiowa were easily recognizable from a distance. They would be gaudy in dress and might wear buffalo heads. They would have silver necklaces, quilled and pipe-bone breastplates, red-painted bodies, and tattoos. Their hair would have been plucked above one ear on one side of the head. They would have beaded tassels on the top of their blue moccasins.

The Kiowa raided from Mexico to Kansas. Except for the Comanche, these Indians were the most warlike tribe of the Plains. Despite their few numbers in relation to the Sioux of the Northern Plains, the Kiowa actually killed more white soldiers than any other tribe. Kiowa warriors often raided other Indians and took many Indian hostages. They rarely took white hostages. They often killed their women and children prisoners. They certainly would not take white male captives. While Andrew had recovered hostages from the Kiowa on two occasions and had dealt with Santana, he had never dealt with the Kiowa without going through an Indian intermediary. The few times he had dealt with the Kiowa, he always felt as though he got something extra out of the trade: his hair. They often teamed with the Comanche and recognized Comanche leadership. So if Comanche and Kiowa were mixed, a trade could still be made.

While most Pawnee lived farther north and east, lived in huts, were peaceful farmers and hunters, and even allied with white soldiers, any of them encountered in this part of the country could be hostile. They would also surely kill him to get rid of a witness. They could be identified at a distance from the way they had plucked the hair from both sides of their heads making their scalps looked like a rooster’s comb. Then they would paste the hair upwards with buffalo fat and combed it backwards. That did not appear to be the hairstyle of the approaching Indians.

Despite the gaudy dress of the approaching Indian’s, they did not have as much glitter in their apparel as most Comanche or Kiowa would wear. However, many of the approaching Indians still sparkled with accoutrements in their dress. They clearly wore colored bone or quill collars around their necks and carried shields. Most had bone pipe-stone, quill, or bone breastplates and colored vests. None of their scalps looked as though they had been plucked.

The braves who were rapidly approaching him were now removing their cold weather clothing and were down to their breeches and leggings. A few had already donned feathered headdresses. As they rode towards him, some of the braves sat on their buffalo robes while others had already put some of their gear on the backs of other extra ponies. This was obviously a fresh war party. They did not drag travois behind their horses. They did not have families or dogs. They were not burdened with goods, cattle, stolen horses or wounded.

If it were earlier in the day, the Indians could have taken their time and spread out as they approached Andrew. The approaching darkness caused them to take as direct a route as the ground would permit. In all likelihood, they would probably attack as quickly as they could get to Andrew. As he peered at them, Andrew’s heart started to sink. He could not be absolutely sure, but the sign of the wolf instead of the snake appeared to decorate their shields and some appeared to have blue, circular tattoos. Their braided hair was on each side of their heads. That meant the Indians were Cheyenne accompanied with a couple of Arapaho. Many of the Indians’ faces were painted the traditional Cheyenne black and white. The horses had different colored tails and manes with different colored ribbons were woven into them. Many of the ponies had hand prints or coup characters painted on their bodies.

The Indians were probably members of one of the seven warrior societies; in all probability they were Dog Soldiers. These were Cheyenne who had left their tribe to conduct war. These warriors would not have any dealings with the peaceful elements of the Southern Cheyenne. They did not usually take prisoners. This even extended to women and children. Despite having been married to a Kiowa who had been raised as a Cheyenne, Andrew had only traded with Cheyenne once over the last two years, and then he had not traded with Dog Soldiers.

The Cheyenne were also furious with white men over the Sand Creek Massacre of November 1864. That act caused many peaceful Indians to join the warrior societies. With anger came the high probability of treachery. If Andrew attempted any arms trade at all with them, all that he would be doing would be to eliminate his already negligible chance for life.

While Andrew could see that most of the warriors carried bows, coup sticks, and lances. They probably had other arms. Indians were changing the way they conducted war. The white man, his arms, and his manner of fighting had produced this change. Andrew did not see any firearms among the approaching warriors. He hoped that would remain true. Many Indians of the Plains still preferred the lance as a point of bravery and culture. Before the five or six-shooter, an Indian was often better armed than his white adversary. If a Cheyenne brave killed, wounded, or even touched an enemy with his bare hand, lance or coup stick he could tell of his feat at a feast. The telling of the feat would be at the Scalp Dance held in the presence of all the warriors. The Cheyenne, particularly one of those out of one of the warrior societies, would want to kill an enemy.

The Quadrupeds of the Plains

Another glance behind him revealed to Andrew that the Indians were closing on him quickly and were at the bottom of the long ridge beneath and behind him. Andrew was thankful that they would have to travel uphill the final quarter of a mile to catch him and that his wagon, while on a slight incline, was now on fairly level ground. When they reached the more level ground up the steep incline from the creek bed, the Indian horses might be tired for any final burst. While Indian horses were fast, they did not have much endurance.

To use a phrase associated with the taking of necessity, Andrew had been caught with his pants down. He had not been paying attention. He had been nursing a hangover that dulled his senses and had not been watching or listening for trouble as he rocked along in the wagon seat. The dampness of the prairie from the melting snow had prevented the Indian ponies from raising a dust cloud behind him that he might have seen. The softened ground also permitted less sound from the Indian horses’ hooves than on the stony ground in the wash. Their animals would whinny and snort occasionally, but Andrew was not paying attention. When Andrew’s own shod animals traveled that same stony ground at the base of the ridge, the wagon wheels’ iron rims and the team’ iron horseshoes created sparks and crushed rocks. That was enough noise to cover the sound behind him. The squeaking and rocking of the springs on the seat and axles as he traveled on the solid bottom had been agony to his head. He had not even paid attention to the vocals of his own team animals. If Andrew had even been watching his own animals, he would have seen the indication that something was not right. Despite their fatigue, for the last hour his team had moved their ears and flared their nostrils and snorting as they picked up the scent and sound of the Indian ponies. The exhausted mules had even tried to raise their tails and bray. A simple look behind him should have revealed the glitter of the Indian’s gear and the bright colors of their horses at a distance. Once he left the wash and started up the grassy ridge to what appeared to be a mesa, there was less noise from his own animals and wagon. For some reason he and looked behind and seen his dilemma.

In typical Indian fashion, as usual, each of the approaching braves led several unshod ponies. Their horses were smaller than most white men’s horses, but the animals usually carried less gear. These horses rarely if ever ate grain so they had little stamina. After a climb up the hill toward Andrew, they would be worn-down some. An examination of the animals at a distance revealed their protruding ribs.

Indians rarely fought in the cold because their horses were in such bad shape once winter set in. Indian horses could not cope with the cold and starvation. A favorite pony might get a buffalo hide tied around him for warmth in the cold, but for the majority of animals, the only protection an Indian could offer his ponies was a draw or canyon out of the wind. Many animals died and those who survived were weakened. Some were eaten. While Indians loved their horses, they did not have the means or need to care for them. They did not have a place to store fodder. If the need arose they figured they could steal or breed more animals. They knew little about the care of horses except to water them and to keep them from eating locoweed or buckeyes. For winter forage, Indians could only move their ponies to places where they grazed on selected dead grass or browse. Squaws occasionally cut browse such as willow, hickory, and sassafras limbs for fodder. They often killed their own horses by feeding them maple or Johnson grass. Often the stomachs of the poor beast showed bulges from sticks and branches they had eaten.

During the winter was when hostile Indians were vulnerable to attacks from the U.S. Cavalry. For winter food, a cavalryman’s horse might have good fodder or a grain bag to supplement grazing. For warmth, a cavalryman’s