Life and Adventures of 'Billy' Dixon

Time and again, with the fury of a whirlwind, the Indians charged upon the building, only to sustain greater losses than they were able to inflict. This was a losing game, and if the Indians kept it up we stood a fair chance of killing most of them. I am sure that we surprised the Indians as badly as they surprised us. They expected to find us asleep, unprepared for an attack. Their "medicine" man had told them that all they would have to do would be to come to Adobe Walls and knock us on the head with sticks, and that our bullets would not be strong enough to break an Indian's skin. The old man was a bad prophet.

Almost at the beginning of the attack, we were surprised at the sound of a bugle. This bugler was with the Indians, and could blow the different calls as cleverly as the bugler on the parade ground at Fort Dodge. The story was told that he was a negro deserter from the Tenth Cavalry, which I never believed. It is more probable that he was a captive halfbreed Mexican that was known to be living among the Kiowas and Comanches in the 60's. He had been captured in his boyhood when these Indians were raiding in the Rio Grande country, and grew up among them, as savage and cruel as any of their warriors. How he learned to blow the bugle is unknown. A frontiersman who went with an expedition to the Kiowas in 1866 tells of having found a bugler among them at that time. The Kiowas, he said, were able to maneuver to the sound of the bugle. This bugler never approached the white men closely enough to be recognized.

In the fight at Adobe Walls, the fact was discovered that the Indian warriors were charging to the sound of the bugle. In this they "tipped" their hand, for the calls were understood, and the buffalo-hunters were "loaded for bear" by the time the Indians were within range. "Bat" Masterson, recalling this incident long after the fight, said:

"We had in the building I was in (Hanrahan's saloon), two men who had served in the United States army, and understood all the bugle calls. The first call blown was a rally, which our men instantly understood. The next was a charge, and that also was understood, and immediately the Indians come rushing forward to a fresh attack. Every bugle call he blew was understood by the ex-soldiers and were carried out to the letter by the Indians, showing that the bugler had the Indians thoroughly drilled.

"The bugler was killed late in the afternoon of the first day's fighting as he was running away from a wagon owned by the Shadler brothers, both of whom were killed in this same wagon. The bugler had his bugle with him at the time he was shot by Harry Armitage. Also he was carrying a tin can filled with sugar and another filled with ground coffee, one under each arm. Armitage shot him through the back with a 50-caliber Sharp's rifle, as he was making his escape."

Billy Tyler and Fred Leonard went into the stockade, but were compelled to retreat, the Indians firing at them through the openings between the stockade pickets. Just as Tyler was entering the door of the adobe store, he turned to fire, and was struck by a bullet that penetrated his lungs. He lived about half an hour after he was dragged into the store.

The Indians were not without military tactics in trying to recover their dead and wounded. While one band would pour a hot fire into the buildings, other Indians on horseback would run forward under the protection of this fusillade. They succeeded in dragging away a good many of the fallen.

Once during a charge I noticed an Indian riding a white horse toward where another Indian had gone down in the tall grass. The latter jumped up behind the Indian on the horse, and both started at full speed for safety. A rifle cracked and a bullet struck the horse, breaking one of its hind legs. We could see the blood streaming down the horse's leg. Both Indians began whipping the poor brute and, lurching and staggering on three legs, he carried them away.

By noon the Indians had ceased charging, and had stationed themselves in groups in different places, maintaining a more or less steady fire all day on the buildings. Sometimes the Indians would fire especially heavy volleys, whereupon wounded Indians would leap from the grass and run as far as they could and then drop down in the grass again. In this manner a number escaped.

Along about 10 o'clock, the Indians having fallen back at a safer distance from the buffalo-guns, some of us noticed a pony standing near the corner of a big stack of buffalo hides at the rear of Rath's building. We could see that an Indian behind the hides was holding the pony by the bridle, so we shot the pony and it fell dead. The pony was gaily decorated with red calico plaited in its mane.

The falling of the pony left the Indian somewhat exposed to our fire, and the boys at Hanrahan's and Rath's opened upon him full blast. They certainly "fogged" him. No Indian ever danced a livelier jig. We kept him jumping like a flea back and forth behind the pile of hides.

I had got possession of a big "50" gun early in the fight, and was making considerable noise with it. I sized up what was going on behind the pile of buffalo hides, and took careful aim at the place where I thought the Indian was crouched. I shot through one corner of the hides. It looked to me as if that Indian jumped six feet straight up into the air, howling with pain. Evidently I had hit him. He ran zig-zag fashion for thirty or forty yards, howling at every jump, and dropped down in the tall grass. Indians commonly ran in this manner when under fire, to prevent our getting a bead on them.

I managed to get hold of the "50" gun in this manner. The ammunition for mine was in Rath's store, which none of us was in the habit of visiting at that particular moment. I had noticed that Shepherd, Hanrahan's bartender, was banging around with Hanrahan's big "50," but not making much use of it, as he was badly excited.

"Here, Jim," I said to Hanrahan, "I see you are without a gun; take this one."

I gave him mine. I then told "Shep." to give me the "50." He was so glad to turn loose of it, and handed it to me so quickly that he almost dropped it. I had the reputation of being a good shot and it was rather to the interest of all of us that I should have a powerful gun.

We had no way of telling what was happening to the men in the other buildings, and they were equally ignorant of what was happening to us. Not a man in our building had been hit: I could never see how we escaped, for at times the bullets poured in like hail and made us hug the sod walls like gophers when a hawk was swooping past.

By this time there were a large number of wounded horses standing near the buildings. A horse gives up quickly when in pain, and these made no effort to get away. Even those that were at a considerable distance from the buildings when they received their wounds came to us, as if seeking our help and sympathy. It was a pitiable sight, and touched our hearts, for the boys loved their horses. I noticed that horses that had been wounded while grazing in the valley also came to the buildings, where they stood helpless and bleeding or dropped down and died.

We had been pouring a pile of bullets from our stronghold, and about noon were running short of ammunition. Hanrahan and I decided that it was time to replenish our supply, and that we would have to make a run for Rath's store, where there were thousands of rounds which had been brought from Dodge City for the buffalo-hunters.

We peered cautiously outside to see if any Indians were ambushed where they could get a pot shot at us. The coast looked clear, so we crawled out of a window and hit the ground running, running like jack-rabbits, and made it to Rath's in the fastest kind of time. The Indians saw us, however, before the boys could open the door, and opened at long range. The door framed a good target. I have no idea how many guns were cracking away at us, but I do know that bullets rattled round us like hail. Providence seemed to be looking after the boys at Adobe Walls that day, and we got inside without a scratch, though badly winded.

We found everybody at Rath's in good shape. We remained here some time. Naturally, Hanrahan wanted to return to his own building, and he proposed that we try to make our way back. There were fewer men at Rath's than at any other place, and their anxiety was increased by the presence of a woman, Mrs. Olds. If the latter fact should be learned by the Indians there was no telling what they might attempt, and a determined attack by the Indians would have meant death for everybody in the store, for none would have suffered themselves to be taken alive nor permitted Mrs. Olds to be captured.

The boys begged me to stay with them. Hanrahan finally said that he was going back to his own place, telling me that I could do as I thought best. Putting most of his ammunition into a sack, we opened the door quickly for him, and away he went, doing his level best all the way to his saloon, which he reached without mishap.

CHAPTER IX

In the restaurant part of Rath's store, a transom had been cut over the west door; this transom was open, as no glass had even been put in. This door had been strongly barricaded with sacks of flour and grain, one of the best breastworks imaginable, the Indians having no guns that could shoot through it.

Climbing to the top of this barricade, to take a good look over the ground west of the building, I saw an object crawling along in the edge of the tall grass. Levelling my gun, and taking aim with my body resting on one knee, I fired. The recoil was so great that I lost my balance and tumbled backward from the top of the barricade. As I went down I struck and dislodged a washtub and a bushel or two of cooking utensils which made a terrific crash as they struck the floor around me. I fell heavily myself, and the tumbling down of my big "50" did not lessen the uproar. The commotion startled everybody. The boys rushed forward believing that I had been shot, even killed. I found it quite difficult to convince them that I had not been shot, and that most of the noise had been caused by the tub and the tin pans.

I was greatly interested in the object I had shot at, so I crawled up on the sacks again. By looking closely, I was able to see the object move. I now fired a second time, and was provoked at seeing the bullet kick up the dirt just beyond the object. I tried the third time and made a center shot.

By 2 o'clock the Indians had fallen back to the foot of the hills and were firing only at intervals. They had divided their force, putting part on the west side and part on the east side of the buildings. Warriors were riding more or less constantly across the valley from one side to the other, which exposed them to our fire. So we began picking them off. They were soon riding in a much bigger circle, and out of range.

This lull in the fighting was filled with a kind of disturbing uncertainty. Since early morning, we had been able to hold the enemy at bay. We were confident that we could continue to do so as long as we had ammunition. We thanked our stars that we were behind thick adobe walls, instead of thin pine boards. We could not have saved ourselves had the buildings been frame, such as were commonly built in frontier towns in those days. Still, there was no telling how desperate the Indians might become, rather than abandon the fight; it was easily possible for them to overwhelm us with the brute force of superior numbers by pressing the attack until they had broken down the doors, and which probably would have been attempted, however great the individual sacrifice, had the enemy been white men. Luckily, it was impossible to set the adobes on fire, or else we should have been burned alive.

Though we did not relax in watchfulness when the Indians withdrew, yet we were able to throw off some of the high tension that had kept our nerves and muscles as taut as bowstrings since daybreak. A man's mouth gets dry and his saliva thick and sticky when he fights hour after hour, knowing that if he goes down his death will be one of torture, unless he should be instantly killed. All forenoon the Indians had been descending upon us like a storm, taunting us in every imaginable way, even pounding upon the doors with their guns and lances, and vying with each other in feats of martial horsemanship. They had flaunted the bloody scalps of the poor Shadlers with devilish glee. Time and again, however, we had ripped into them with our guns and brought down horses and warriors until in many places the grass around Adobe Walls was wet with blood.

About 4 o'clock in the afternoon a young fellow at Hanrahan's, "Bermuda" Carlisle, ventured out to pick up an Indian trinket which he could see from the window. As he was not shot at, he went out a second time, whereupon others began going out, all eager to find relics. For the first time, we now heard of the death of Billy Tyler at Leonard & Myer's. Tyler had been killed at the beginning of the fight, as had the Shadlers.

When I saw that it was possible to leave the buildings with reasonable safety, I determined to satisfy my curiosity about three things.

An iron-gray horse had been standing for hours not far from the south window of Hanrahan's saloon. I could not understand what had held him so long, before he was finally shot by the Indians themselves. When I reached the carcass, the mystery was clear – there lay a dead warrior who had fallen in such a way as to make fast the rope that held the horse. The horse wore a silver-mounted bridle. With a buffalo bone I pried open the stiffened jaws and removed the bridle, also taking the rawhide lariat.

On one of the reins, about ten inches from the bit, was fastened a scalp, which evidently had been taken from the head of a white woman, the hair being dark brown in color and about fifteen inches in length. The scalp was lined with cloth and edged with beads. Several other scalps were found that day. One was on a war shield.

My attention likewise had been attracted by an object at the rear of the little sod house west of Rath's store. We had fired at it over and over until we had cut a gap in the corner of the sod house. The object finally had disappeared from sight. For a considerable time we had seen feathers whipping round the corner in the wind, and had thought that probably three or four Indians were concealed there. Every time I had turned loose my big "50" I had torn out a chunk of sod.

When I reached the sod house, I was startled at what I saw. There sat a painted and feathered warrior in a perfectly upright position with his legs crossed and his head turned to one side in the most natural way imaginable. His neck was broken and he was as dead as they ever made 'em. I am bound to admit that I jumped back, fearful that he was alive and would bore me through and through before I could pull down on him.

What we had been shooting at so frequently was the dead warrior's lance, which was covered with webbing and adorned with black feathers at intervals of every five or six inches. The lance had been stuck upright in the ground, and had been shot in two, which caused the feathers to disappear – the upper part had doubled over across the dead Indian's legs. I added the lance to my "prizes of war."

The object that I had seen crawling along the edge of the tall grass was the third that demanded my attention. I found a dead Indian lying flat on his stomach. He was naked, save for a white cloth wrapped round his hips. His six-shooter was in his belt. The Indian had been shot through the body, and one knee had been shattered. I could plainly see the trail he had made by the blood on the grass. A short distance away lay a shot pouch and a powder horn; there were about fifteen army cartridges in the pouch. A few steps further, was his 50-caliber needle gun, an army Springfield. Next, were his bow and his quiver. I confiscated the whole outfit.

One of the noisiest and most active spectators of the fight was a young crow which some of the hunters had captured shortly after our arrival at Adobe Walls. The crow had been petted by every man in camp. All of us were acquainted with the old superstition that the crow is an omen of death. During the worst of the fight this crow flew from one building to another, in and out of the open windows, calling "Caw! Caw! Caw!" in the most dismal way. It would alight on some object in the room, and sit there calling and cawing until somebody, tiring of the noise, would shout, "Get out of here, you black rascal!" and then chase him from the building. The crow would fly to another building and repeat his performance. Despite the bullets, this crow was never injured and, save our horses, was the only thing left outside.

There were several dogs at the Walls, but all of them cut for tall timber when the fighting began and did not show up for several days. All our horses were killed or run off. The five horses that had been left in the stockade were quickly shot down, the Indians poking their guns between the cottonwood pickets. Four head tied to a wagon near Rath's were cruelly killed. I saw the Indians when they first rode up and tried to cut the rope with a butcher knife. One was a gray mare that was notorious for her vicious kicking. She would not let the Indians approach her, so all were shot. My own saddle horse, which I had owned for years and highly prized, was among the first to be shot, and still lay tied to the wagon when I found him.

The Indians were not without military strategy. They had planned to put every man of us afoot, thereby leaving us without means of escape and powerless to send for aid save as some messenger might steal away in the darkness, to traverse on foot the weary distance and the dangerous and inhospitable region that lay between us and Dodge City. By holding us constantly at bay and keeping fresh detachments of warriors rallying to the attack they probably thought it possible to exhaust our strength, and then overwhelm us. It should be remembered that Adobe Walls was scarcely more than a lone island in the vast sea of the Plains, a solitary refuge uncharted and practically unknown. For the time we were at the end of the world, our desperate extremity pressing heavily upon us, and our friends and comrades to the north ignorant of what was taking place.

At the first dash, the Indians had driven off all the horses they had found grazing in the little valley, and which Billy Ogg had gone in the dusk of dawn to round up preparatory to our departure for the hunting grounds. We counted fifty-six dead horses scattered in the immediate vicinity of the buildings, some with arrows sticking in their bodies, and others bored with bullets. Of these ten head belonged to the hunters. Added to this slaughter were the twenty-eight head of oxen that belonged to the Shadler brothers. In nearly every instance, a horse that had been wounded far from the buildings would stagger in our direction, apparently to get as close as possible to his friends. There they would stand in agony until the Indians shot them down, which happened in every instance.

The last victim of their cruelty was a mustang colt owned by Mrs. Olds. This colt had been captured by some of the hunters among a bunch of wild mustangs, and given as a present to Mrs. Olds who had petted the graceful, affectionate little creature until it followed her from place to place like a dog. Some rather romantic stories have been written about this mustang colt and the part it played in the fight at Adobe Walls. The truth, however, unadorned, is the colt remained near the buildings throughout the fight, and when I saw it a feathered arrow was sticking in its back. I never knew whether the colt died of this wound or was afterwards shot to put the poor little thing out of its misery.

When we found that we could move around outside the buildings without danger of immediate attack, we blanketed the bodies of Tyler and the Shadlers and dug a single grave near the north side of the corral. There they lie to this day, without a stone to mark the spot. Many a spring and many a summer have come and gone, and many a winter has sent its blinding snows across the Panhandle since that far-off day. The Indians and the buffaloes have vanished from the scene, and the plow is running over the land where they ranged. After all, the boys are sleeping as quietly and as restfully as if they had been buried in the village churchyard back at their old homes.

Despite the utmost efforts of our savage foes to carry away their dead and wounded, thirteen dead Indians were left on the ground near the buildings, so closely under the muzzles of our guns that it would have been suicide for their comrades to have attempted their recovery. By the time we had buried our three comrades, darkness had come, and we abandoned further outside work and returned to the protection of the buildings, completely exhausted by the strain and excitement of the day's fighting.

What we had experienced ate into a man's nerves. I doubt if any of us slept soundly that June night. Somewhere out there in the darkness our enemies were watching to see that nobody escaped from the beleaguered adobe buildings. Inasmuch as Indians rarely, if ever, attack at night, preferring the shadows of early morning when sleep is soundest, and when there is less chance of their being ambushed, we felt reasonably certain of not being attacked before daybreak. As for myself I dreamed all night, the bloody scenes of the day passing in endless procession through my mind – I could see the Indians charging across the valley, hear the roar of the guns and the blood-curdling war-whoops, until everything was a bewildering swirl of fantastic colors and movements.

All my comrades at Adobe Walls that day showed much courage. It is with pride that I can recall its many incidents without the feeling that there was the slightest inclination on the part of any man to show the "white feather." To be nervous or fearful of death is no sign of weakness – sticking at one's post and doing the thing that is to be done is what counts.

"Bat" Masterson should be remembered for the valor that marked his conduct. He was a good shot, and not afraid. He has worked his way up in the world, and has long been a successful writer for a New York newspaper. He was sheriff of Ford county, Kansas, at Dodge City, in 1876-77. It has always seemed strange to me that finally he should prefer life in a big city, after having lived in the west. I have been told that he has said that he had no wish again to live over those old days, that they no longer appealed to him, but I never believed it. Such a thing is contrary to human nature.

All that long night after the first day's fighting not a sound was heard nor did an Indian come near. Next morning the pet crow was the only living object to be seen in the valley, where he was holding high carnival on the dead horses, flying from one carcass to another.

By this time such an awful stench was rising from the dead Indians and dead horses that we were forced to get rid of them. As we had no teams with which to drag them away, we rigged up several buffalo hides and tied ropes to them, then rolled the bodies onto the hides and pulled them far enough away to prevent the evil smell from reaching the buildings. In this way three or four men could move a horse.

At one place, between Rath's and Hanrahan's, twelve horses lay piled together. We dug a pit close at hand and rolled them in. The other horses and the Indians were dragged off on the prairie and left to the coyotes and buzzards.

On the second day we saw only one bunch of Indians. They were on a bluff across the valley east of us. Some of our men opened up on them at long range; the Indians returned the fire and disappeared. It was plain to them that there was still a lot of fight left in us.

Our situation looked rather gloomy. With every horse dead or captured, we felt pretty sore all round. The Indians were somewhere close at hand, watching our every movement. We were depressed with the melancholy feeling that probably all the hunters out in the camps had been killed. Late that afternoon our spirits leaped up when we saw a team coming up the valley from the direction of the Canadian. This outfit belonged to George Bellfield, a German who had been a soldier in the Civil War.

A black flag was flying from one of the buildings, and when Bellfield and his companions saw it they thought we were playing some kind of joke on them. In broken English Bellfield remarked to his men, "Dem fellers tink day's damn smart, alretty." But when he drew nearer and began seeing the dead horses, he put the whip to his team and came in at a dead run.