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

the pony. And the animal was rearing back as well, flinging its rider into the grassy sand like a child’s doll. The pony landed atop Yellow Chief’s legs.
    Satanta’s lungs did not breathe, watching the young war chief’s hands claw desperately at the crusty earth, raking at the grass, trying to yank himself free as frothy blood gurgled from his lips.
    His insides are torn!
    As Satanta yanked the bugle to his lips, he saw Yellow Chief stop moving, his two hands slowly opening, freeing the unyielding earth and grass beneath him.
    Before the Kiowa chief’s bugle call was finished, two more warriors had spilled from their ponies. As that pair of horsemen crawled away from the deadly wagon ring, their ponies thrashed and kicked in death throes … then lay still, raising only their heads as they cried out in a pitiful, humanlike scream of torment.
    When the two young ones believed they were safe enough, both clambered to their feet and dashed toward the trees.
    Bullets found them both in a renewed frenzy of firing from the wagons.
    Satanta felt each body go down in a bloody splatter, as if it were his own.
    â€œBig Tree!” he shouted. “The toll is too great.”
    â€œYou are calling off the attack?”
    He nodded. “We will find some other white men, another wagon train to attack. We leave now, but not until you have first sent your men to get those who have fallen!”
    Big Tree looked over his shoulder at the open ground sloping down to the Llano Crossing where the white men huddled in the midday shadows with their big, long guns. “We can get four. Yet … Yellow Chief—he is too close to the wagons.”
    Satanta tore his eyes from the white men and the greasy white smoke that hung in a hot, bitter-smelling cloud over the wagon ring. Now he glared at the young war chief.
    â€œI am an old man. I have fought many battles in my many summers of raiding. Yet you are sitting here, telling me none of these young men will ride in to rescue the body of Yellow Chief?”
    Big Tree wiped his lips. “He is … surely he is dead, White Bear.”
    â€œHere!” Satanta snapped, pulling the rawhide loop from his shoulder, removing the bugle and flinging it at Big Tree. “I will show you the true courage of a Kiowa warrior! Watch—all of you! And behold your chief!”
    With a cool, arrogant courage, Satanta slowly led his prancing war pony within rifle range of the thirty white men, then suddenly hammered his heels into the animal’s ribs and in a burst of furious speed tore straight for the body of Yellow Chief. As he neared the fallen pony, Satanta gripped the reins in one hand, his heel locked on the pony’s hip, inch by inch leaning to the side, his fingers raking the brittle, bloodstained grass.
    For some reason, the white men did not fire their weapons at that lone horseman. Perhaps they were awed with his courage, presenting his full, brown body to their long guns. Then only one man fired, and that shot went wild. In the next instant he was over the bloodied body, reining his heaving pony to a stuttering halt.
    Satanta grasped on the warrior’s arm with the strength of two men and with a mighty shout pulled the broken, crimson-smeared body from beneath the dead pony. As the white men began urging one another to shoot, the Kiowa chief slung Yellow Chief across the back of his pony, gave the wagon ring a sneer and a profane wave of his arm, then reined for the timber at a lope, presenting his wide, brown back to his enemy.
    â€œWe go now, warriors!” Satanta said as he let two others take the body of Yellow Chief from him. Clearly, most of the hundred still burned with battle fever.
    â€œDo not worry, my brothers,” the Kiowa chief told them as they abandoned the white man’s wagons and the Llano Crossing. “Someone … and soon … will pay in blood for the life of Yellow Chief!”

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