On that memorable night, June 26, 1874, there were 28 men and one
woman at the Walls. The woman was the wife of William Olds. She had
come from Dodge City with her husband to open a restaurant in the rear
of Rath & Wright's store. Only eight or nine of the men lived at the
Walls, the others being buffalo-hunters who by chance happened to be
there. There was not the slightest feeling of impending danger.
As was the custom in the buffalo country, most of the men made their
beds outside on the ground. I spread my blankets near the blacksmith's
shop, close to my wagon. I placed my gun by my side between my
blankets, as usual, to protect it from dew and rain. A man's gun and
his horse were his two most valuable possessions, next to life, in
that country in those days.
Every door was left wide open, such a thing as locking a door being
unheard of at the Walls. One by one the lights were turned out, the
tired buffalo-hunters fell asleep, and the Walls were soon wrapped in
the stillness of night.
Late that evening I had gone down on the creek and caught my saddle
horse--a better one could not be found--and tied him with a long
picket rope to a stake pin near my wagon.
About 2 o'clock in the morning Shepherd and Mike Welch, who were
sleeping in Hanrahan's saloon, were awakened by a report that sounded
like the crack of a rifle. They sprang up and discovered that the
noise was caused by the big cottonwood ridge pole.
This ridge pole sustained the weight of the dirt roof, and if the pole
should break the roof would collapse and fall in, to the injury or
death of those inside. Welch and Shepherd woke up a number of their
companions to help them repair the roof. Some climbed on top and began
throwing off the dirt, while others went down to the creek to cut a
prop for the ridge pole.
This commotion woke up others, and in a little while about fifteen men
were helping repair the roof. Providential things usually are
mysterious; there has always been something mysterious to me in the
loud report that came from that ridge pole in Hanrahan's saloon. It
seems strange that it should have happened at the very time it did,
instead of at noon or some other hour, and, above all, that it should
have been loud enough to wake men who were fast asleep. Twenty-eight
men and one woman would have been slaughtered if the ridge pole in
Hanrahan's saloon had not cracked like a rifle shot.
[Illustration: _Chief Quanah Parker of the Comanches._]
By the time we had put the prop in place, the sky was growing red in
the east, and Hanrahan asked me if I did not think we might as well
stay up and get an early start. I agreed, and he sent Billy Ogg down
on the creek to get the horses. Some of the men, however, crawled back
into bed. The horses were grazing southeast of the buildings, along
Adobe Walls Creek, a quarter of a mile off.
Turning to my bed, I rolled it up and threw it on the front of my
wagon. As I turned to pick up my gun, which lay on the ground, I
looked in the direction of our horses. They were in sight. Something
else caught my eye. Just beyond the horses, at the edge of some
timber, was a large body of objects advancing vaguely in the dusky
dawn toward our stock and in the direction of Adobe Walls. Though keen
of vision, I could not make out what the objects were, even by
straining my eyes.
Then I was thunderstruck. The black body of moving object suddenly
spread out like a fan, and from it went up one single, solid yell--a
warwhoop that seemed to shake the very air of the early morning. Then
came the thudding roar of running horses, and the hideous cries of the
individual warriors, each embarked in the onslaught. I could see that
hundreds of Indians were coming. Had it not been for the ridge pole,
all of us would have been asleep.
In such desperate emergencies, men exert themselves almost
automatically to do the needful thing. There is no time to make
conscious effort, and if a man lose his head, he shakes hands with
death.
I made a dash for my saddle horse, my first thought being to save him.
I never thought for an instant that the oncoming Indians were
intending an attack upon the buildings, their purpose being, as I
thought, to run off our stock, which they could easily have done by
driving it ahead of them. I overlooked the number of Indians, however,
or else I might have formed a different opinion.
The first mighty warwhoop had frightened my horse until he was
frantic. He was running and lunging on his rope so violently that in
one more run he would have pulled up the stake pin and gone to the
land of stampeded horses. I managed to grab the rope, and tie my horse
to my wagon.
I then rushed for my gun, and turned to get a few good shots before
the Indians could turn to run away. I started to run forward a few
steps. Indians running away! They were coming as straight as a bullet
toward the buildings, whipping their horses at every jump.
There was never a more splendidly barbaric sight. In after years I was
glad that I had seen it. Hundreds of warriors, the flower of the
fighting men of the southwestern Plains tribes, mounted upon their
finest horses, armed with guns and lances, and carrying heavy shields
of thick buffalo hide, were coming like the wind. Over all was
splashed the rich colors of red, vermillion and ochre, on the bodies
of the men, on the bodies of the running horses. Scalps dangled from
bridles, gorgeous war-bonnets fluttered their plumes, bright feathers
dangled from the tails and manes of the horses, and the bronzed,
half-naked bodies of the riders glittered with ornaments of silver and
brass. Behind this head-long charging host stretched the Plains, on
whose horizon the rising sun was lifting its morning fires. The
warriors seemed to emerge from this glowing background.
I must confess, however, that the landscape possessed little interest
for me when I saw that the Indians were coming to attack us, and that
they would be at hand in a few moments. War-whooping had a very
appreciable effect upon the roots of a man's hair.
I fired one shot, but had no desire to wait and see where the bullet
went. I turned and ran as quickly as possible to the nearest building,
which happened to be Hanrahan's saloon. I found it closed. I certainly
felt lonesome. The alarm had spread and the boys were preparing to
defend themselves. I shouted to them to let me in. An age seemed to
pass before they opened the door and I sprang inside. Bullets were
whistling and knocking up the dust all around me. Just as the door was
opened for me, Billy Ogg ran up and fell inside, so exhausted that he
could no longer stand. I am confident that if Billy had been timed,
his would have been forever the world's record. Billy had made a
desperate race, and that he should escape seemed incredible.
We were scarcely inside before the Indians had surrounded all the
buildings and shot out every window pane. When our men saw the Indians
coming, they broke for the nearest building at hand, and in this way
split up into three parties. They were gathered in the different
buildings, as follows:
Hanrahan's Saloon--James Hanrahan, "Bat" Masterson, Mike Welch,
Shepherd, Hiram Watson, Billy Ogg, James McKinley, "Bermuda" Carlisle,
and William Dixon.
Myers & Leonard's Store--Fred Leonard, James Campbell, Edward Trevor,
Frank Brown, Harry Armitage, "Dutch Henry," Billy Tyler, Old Man
Keeler, Mike McCabe, Henry Lease, and "Frenchy."
Rath & Wright's Store--James Longton, George Eddy, Thomas O'Keefe,
William Olds and his wife; Sam Smith, and Andy Johnson.
Some of the men were still undressed, but nobody wasted any time
hunting their clothes, and many of them fought for their lives all
that summer day barefoot and in their night clothes.
The men in Hanrahan's saloon had a little the best of the others
because of the fact that they were awake and up when the alarm was
given. In the other buildings some of the boys were sound asleep and
it took time for them to barricade the doors and windows before they
began fighting. Barricades were built by piling up sacks of flour and
grain, at which some of the men worked while others seized their guns
and began shooting at the Indians.
The number of Indians in this attack has been variously estimated at
from 700 to 1,000. I believe that 700 would be a safe guess. The
warriors were mostly Kiowas, Cheyennes and Comanches. The latter were
led by their chief Quanah, whose mother was a white woman, Cynthia Ann
Parker, captured during a raid by the Comanches in Texas. Big Bow was
another formidable Comanche chieftain; Lone Wolf was a leader of the
Kiowas, and Little Robe and White Shield, of the Cheyennes.
For the first half hour the Indians were reckless and daring enough to
ride up and strike the doors with the butts of their guns. Finally,
the buffalo-hunters all got straightened out and were firing with
deadly effect. The Indians stood up against this for awhile, but
gradually began falling back, as we were emptying buckskin saddles
entirely too fast for Indian safety. Our guns had longer range than
theirs. Furthermore, the hostiles were having little success--they had
killed only two of our men, the Shadler brothers who were caught
asleep in their wagon. Both were scalped. Their big Newfoundland dog,
which always slept at their feet, evidently showed fight, as the
Indians killed him, and "scalped" him by cutting a piece of hide off
his side. The Indians ransacked the wagon and took all the provisions.
The Shadlers were freighters.
At our first volleys, a good many of the Indians jumped off their
horses and prepared for a fight on foot. They soon abandoned this
plan; and for good reason. They were the targets of expert
rough-and-ready marksmen, and for the Indians to stand in the open
meant death. They fell back.
The Indians exhibited one of their characteristic traits. Numbers of
them fell, dead or wounded, close to the buildings. In almost every
instance a determined effort was made to rescue the bodies, at the
imminent risk of the life of every warrior that attempted this feat in
front of the booming buffalo-guns. An Indian in those days would
quickly endanger his own life to carry a dead or helpless comrade
beyond reach of the enemy. I have been told that their zeal was due to
some religious belief concerning the scalp-lock--that if a warrior
should lose his scalp-lock his spirit would fail to reach the happy
hunting grounds. Perhaps for the same reason the Indian always tried
to scalp his fallen enemy.
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.