The Searchers by Alan LeMay

“I got to do my share of the work. No matter
     what.” His ears were beginning to ring. The others stood about in loose meaningless positions, not huddled, not restless,
     but motionless, and very watchful. When they spoke they held their voices low.
    Then Amos’ rifle split the silence down the middle, so that behind lay the quiet night, and ahead rose their hour of violence.
     They saw what Amos had shot at. A single file of ten Comanches on wiry buffalo ponies had come into view at a thousand yards,
     materializing out of the seemingly flat earth. They came on a light trot, ignoring Amos’ shot. Zack Harper and Brad Mathison
     fired, but weren’t good enough either at the range.
    “Throw them horses down!” Amos shouted. “Git your backs to the marsh and tie down!” He snubbed his pony’s muzzle back close
     to the horn, picked up the off fetlock, and threw the horse heavily. He caught one kicking hind foot, then the other,
     and pig-tied them across the fore cannons. Some of the others were doing the same thing, but Brad was in a fight with his
     hotblood animal. It reared eleven feet tall,striking with fore hoofs, trying to break away. “Kill that horse!” Amos yelled. Obediently Brad drew his six-gun, put a bullet
     into the animal’s head under the ear, and stepped from under as it came down.
    Ed Newby still stood, his rifle resting ready to fire across the saddle of his standing horse. Mart lost his head enough to
     yell, “Can’t you throw him? Shall I shoot him, Ed?”
    “Leave be! Let the Comanch’ put him down.”
    Mart went to the aid of Charlie MacCorry, who had tied his own horse down all right and was wrestling with a mule.
     They never did get all of the animals down, but Mart felt a whole lot better with something for his hands to do. Three more
     of the Comanche single-file columns were in sight now, widely spread, trotting well in hand. They had a ghostly look at first,
     of the same color as the prairie, in the gray light. Then detail picked out, and Mart saw the bows, lances bearing scalps
     like pennons, an occasional war shield carried for the medicine in its painted symbols as much as for the bullet-deflecting
     function of its iron-tough hide. Almost half the Comanches had rifles. Some trader, standing on his right to make a living,
     must have taken a handsome profit putting those in Comanche hands.
    Amos’ rifle banged again. One of the lead ponies swerved and ran wild as the rider rolled off into the grass. Immediately,
     without any other discernible signal, the Comanches leaned low on their ponies and came on at a hard run. Two or three more
     of the cowmen fired, but without effect.
    At three hundred yards the four Comanche columns cut hard left, coming into a single loose line that streamed across
     the front of the defense. The cowmen were as ready as they were going to be;they had got themselves into a ragged semicircle behind their tied-down horses, their backs to the water. Two or three sat
     casually on their down horses, estimating the enemy.
    “May as well hold up,” Mose Harper said. His tone was as pressureless as a crackerbox comment. “They’ll swing plenty close,
     before they’re done.”
    “I count thirty-seven,” Ed Newby said. He was still on his feet behind his standing horse.
    Amos said, “I got me a scalp out there, when I git time to take it.”
    “Providin’,” Mose Harper tried to sound jocular, “they don’t leave your carcass here in the dirt.”
    “I come here to leave Indian carcasses in the dirt. I ain’t made no change of plan.”
    They could see the Comanche war paint now as the warriors rode in plain sight across their front. Faces and naked bodies
     were striped and splotched in combinations of white, red, and yellow; but whatever the pattern, it was always pointed
     up with heavy accents of black, the Comanche color for war, for battle, and for death. Each warrior always painted
     up the same, but it was little use memorizing