Shadow Riders, The Southern Plains Uprising, 1873 Read Online Free Page A

pointed downstream. “My pony is hardly winded from the ride.”
    â€œIt is time I had a look myself.”
    Minutes later Satanta inched on his belly to the crest of a hill and peered over. Below him stretched the timbered valley of the Llano, like a cool, beckoning ribbon here at midday in the late summer’s heat come to roast the southern plains. The tall grass in the meadows, waving as far as the eye could see, had already been touched by the scorching heat come to stay this late in the season. He saw, smiled, then turned and retreated down the gentle slope to his expectant warriors.
    â€œThe white man is eating his noon meal,” Satanta explained. “The animals are no longer tied to the wagons and are inside the ring made for their safety.”
    â€œThose wagons will not be enough to save them this day!” shouted Big Tree eagerly.
    â€œNow is the time to finish making your medicine and painting your ponies. Very soon we must ride through that gap in the hills and come up behind the white men,” he said, gesturing toward the saddle in the low hills.
    It was through that gap that Satanta led the hundred, for the most part concealed behind the skimpy timber offered along the river’s course. By the time he stopped the warriors and called his two hot-blooded lieutenants to his side, the moment of attack had arrived.
    â€œThey have seen us, my brothers,” Satanta explained, his eyes not straying from the ring of wagons where the white men had suddenly exploded into action upon spotting the Kiowa, yelling, darting about, frantic like a prairie dog town under siege.
    â€œIt does not matter,” said Yellow Chief with a smile.
    â€œYou are eager, aren’t you?”
    â€œI smell blood on the wind, White Bear,” the young warrior answered.
    â€œIt is good. You will take half the warriors. Big Tree will lead the rest today.”
    Big Tree nudged his pony closer, an eager darkness crossing his face. “You are not leading the attack?”
    Satanta shook his head. “I have lived many winters and taken many scalps. I will direct the attack from here.” Reaching behind his shoulder, the Kiowa chief pulled up a shiny bugle he slung over the shoulder on a rawhide loop. “Each time I blow, I want the attack cut off and you both to ride to me. Is this understood?”
    They nodded.
    â€œIt is good. Go now—see what the white men have for us in their wagons!”
    With a whoop, both young war leaders leapt away, quickly dividing the hundred warriors. Big Tree sent a wild cry aloft as he led his band to sweep around the left side of the wagon circle. Yellow Chief led his warriors to the right.
    All the white men had abandoned their tiny mealtime fires and now lay on their bellies in the shade beneath their wagons, their long guns ready.
    For those first minutes, Satanta watched the young warriors hurl themselves down on the wagons, circling the white men, whirling past one another in two blurred rings of noise and terror as they pushed their ponies to great speed in that arc of spraying sand and brilliant summer sunshine. Closer and closer to the wagons they rode with each circuit, firing their arrows from short, Osage-orange bows, then quickly dropping to the off-side so that the white man had no more target than a heel hooked over a pony’s backbone or a brown hand tangled in the pony’s mane.
    For a long time the white man did not fire, seemingly content to watch the brown-skinned riders and their lunging, sweating ponies, content to listen to the arrows hiss overhead and clatter into the branches of the trees where they had circled up for the noon meal. More arrows tore through wagon canvas. Iron-tipped wasps stung the mules kept at the center of the ring, making the animals noisy in their braying, thrashing, crazy dance of confusion and fear while the white man waited safely beneath his wagons.
    Satanta put the bugle to his lips and blew three