Shortgrass Song (10 page)

“Those boys caught any cows yet?” Buster asked.

“No, they don't know what to do with a rope. I sure can't show them. There's grass for a lot of cows here, but you have to know how to rope if you want to work them.”

“Yes, sir. Maybe they'll learn.”

“By the time they learn all the cows will be gone.”

Buster laughed, as if Ab were joking. “That fellow in Denver who made the saddle I brought back for Matthew said he used to work a ranch in Texas. Maybe next time I go, I'll look him up and see if he can teach us something.”

“Buster, don't you ever let a Texan teach a single thing to any one of my boys. Understand?”

Buster said he understood, but he really didn't. He didn't understand half of what Ab said anymore. “Where's Caleb?” he asked.

“Still sleeping.”

“I've got some things he can do if you'll let me put him to work.”

Ab remained silent.

“Nothing hard. Just fixing up some things. He can help me fetch my tools.”

Buster knew there was nothing wrong with Caleb. The boy tended to catch cold every now and then, and cough and sneeze a lot, but that was common with some kids. He was short of breath, too, but that was because he needed exercise. He didn't do anything all day but sit around and play the mandolin. Buster had bought him a new one in Denver, though it wasn't as pretty as the one the ridge log had crushed. By the time Buster got back with it, Caleb was already getting familiar with the guitar, which he had taken up after the loss of his mandolin. When he played, he sat on the porch and looked across the bald hill at the mountains, his back to his mother's grave.

“I think the exercise will do him good,” Buster said.

“All right,” Ab replied. “For a while. Just look after him.”

“Yes, sir.” Buster opened the door to the cabin. “I'll go get him up.”

“Buster.”

He paused in the doorway. Ab was looking across the flower garden at Ella's grave. The seeds she had planted had sprouted and brought forth blooms of red, yellow, orange, purple, and blue. The day's first sunlight was just striking them. Ab sat silent on a split-log bench, looking at the flowers for a long moment. “She told me you got her those seeds,” he finally said.

“Yes, sir.”

“I'd be obliged if you'd get some more.”

It didn't take Buster long to get Caleb out of bed and moving. Caleb looked at Ab's boots when he left the cabin to go to work, but avoided looking him in the eyes. His father hadn't said much to him all winter long. He thought Ab was mad at him for getting his mother killed. Matthew had told him that it was his fault; if he hadn't been standing under the ridge log when it came thundering down from the roof, their mother would still be alive. Caleb just knew his father felt the same way.

After Buster and Caleb went to work, Ab cut some flowers and put them on Ella's grave and wondered how he would join her. He thought about little else. Matthew and Pete rode up and said they couldn't catch any cows. He told them just to watch the calves and make sure no wolves got close enough to kill any. Then he went back to contemplating suicide. Snake Woman brought a bucket of water to pour on the vegetable garden. He told her to get another bucket to pour on the wildflowers. Drowning was one way, he thought, but there was no water around that was deep enough. Not even a well to fall into. A funny thought struck him. His sons would be raised by a fugitive slave and a tongueless squaw. Ella would like nothing better. He continued to imagine his death until he noticed the Indians coming down through Monument Park from the north.

*   *   *

Matthew and Pete galloped their spotted horses to the lean-to shed built of leftover logs, to tell Buster about the Indians.

“Hey, Buffalo Head,” Matthew said, “here come your Indians.”

“My name is Buster Thompson, not Buffalo Head,” he said sternly.

“It's Buffalo Head. I heard 'em call you that.”

Matthew had taken a mean streak since his mother's death. Buster suspected the streak had been there all along, but that Ella had merely constrained it.

“Mama said to call him Mr. Thompson,” Pete said.

“She's dead.”

“Just call me Buster. That's fine with me. But I don't much like bein' called Buffalo Head.”

“You gonna get you another squaw from those Indians?” Matthew asked.

“She's not Buster's,” Peter said. “She just lives here.”

“He bought her.”

“You can't buy people,” Pete said. “Anyway, what would he want her for?”

“To do what Cheyenne Dutch did to her.”

“What did he do?” Caleb asked. He had been happily handing Buster his tools from the wooden crate.

“Nothin'!” Buster said. “Now, Matthew, if you don't stop talkin' about things like that, I'm gonna have to tell your papa!”

“I don't care.” He kicked Pard in the ribs and loped to the cabin.

“What did he do to her?” Caleb asked again.

“Nothin'. Just scared her, that's all. She did worse to him with that ax. Now, come on, let's go wait for Long Fingers.”

Pete walked the mare beside Buster and Caleb as they went back to the cabin.

“Let me ride Crazy with you,” Caleb said.

Pete hesitated, looked toward the cabin, reined Crazy to a standstill to let Caleb get on. Then he changed his mind. “No, Papa will beat my tail end if I let you. Sometime when he's not around I'll let you ride old Soupy if Buster won't tell.”

“I don't know nothin' about ridin' no horses,” Buster said.

“We'll wait till Matthew's not here, either. He'll tell if he sees you ridin' with me.”

“He's always here,” Caleb complained. “Just let me ride with you past the wheat. Then I'll get off. Nobody's watchin'.”

Pete looked at the cabin again. “All right. Hurry up while Papa's lookin' at Long Fingers. Come on. Buster, help him get on.”

“I told you I don't know nothin' about it.” Buster walked on alone.

Pete pulled Caleb up behind him. Caleb kicked Crazy in the flank several times on the way up, but she stood calmly. She in no way deserved the name Cheyenne Dutch had unknowingly christened her with.

The view from Crazy's back reminded Caleb of the way things looked from the bald hill across the creek. He could see over the roof of the lean-to shed. He could look down on the top of Buster's head. The edge of the wheat field was too near, his ride too short. “Make her run,” he said.

“No, get down,” Pete ordered.

“Just a little farther.”

“Caleb, get down. Papa's gonna see. Get down!”

He swung his elbow around and knocked his brother off, but Caleb caught Pete's shirt to break his fall. He landed on his feet and fell back into the corner of the wheat field.

“Thanks a lot,” Caleb said sarcastically.

Pete shrugged as he kicked the mare. “I told you to get down.”

Buster laughed, pulled Caleb up, and went on with the boys to the cabin.

ELEVEN

Long Fingers rode at the head of his band. Behind him trailed his warriors. Then came the women and children and old folks, and the horses hauling the lodge poles and all the camp equipage. Some boys were driving two Holcomb yearlings. The nomads dragged a cloud of dust behind them as they filed past the Holcomb cabin to their campground downstream.

Snake Woman went across the creek to gather wood when she saw them coming. She had no further use for Long Fingers. She had spent the winter interpreting her signs from the spirit world and was waiting for the proper time to act upon them. The Arapaho didn't fit into her interpretations.

The chief stopped at the cabin as his people passed by. “Holcomb,” he said. “I find your cows again.”

“Take them,” Ab said. “The boys can't rope them anyhow.”

Matthew blushed with shame.

The chief ordered his men to drive the cattle to camp. “Big lodge,” he said, looking at the cabin. “You make it better than they make at Cherry Creek. It will last a long time and you will not cut any more trees. At Cherry Creek their lodges fall apart, so they cut more trees all the time. They cut trees and carry them into the holes where they dig up the gold. It is no good to camp there anymore.”

“You can look inside if you want to,” Buster suggested, proud of his workmanship.

Long Fingers swung his leg over his mount's withers and landed flat-footed on the ground. He followed Buster into the cabin, carefully inspecting the ridge log overhead. He had heard about Ella. After touring the cabin and pushing on the walls, he went back outside and studied the Nez Perce horses. “You trade with Cheyenne Dutch,” he said.

“No,” Ab explained, “he went crazy here last summer and left them. Tried to get the Snake Woman, but Buster stopped him.”

Long Fingers scowled. “He does not go crazy. It is a trick with him.”

“I guess Ella was right,” Ab said vacantly. “We should have shot him when we had the chance.”

“Yes, your wife was smart about people,” Long Fingers said, looking at the grave with the cut flowers on it. “Her heart was good. Next time you see Cheyenne Dutch, you shoot him, like she tells you.”

Buster sat down on the porch and motioned for the chief to join him. “Where's Kicking Dog?” he asked. “I didn't see him.”

The chief threw a blanket from his shoulders to the cabin porch and sat on it. “Kicking Dog is not Arapaho anymore. The Arapaho are friends to the white people. Kicking Dog takes some young braves to join the Kiowas. They attack the wagons south on the Arkansas River.”

“Why did he run off with them?” Buster asked.

“The Indian agents trick us, Buffalo Head. They bring a new treaty and tell us to sign. We all sign. All Arapaho and Cheyenne chiefs. They tell us we will get a new reservation on the Republican River with buffalo to hunt. They tell us they will teach us how to make a ranch. We do not read, but we believe them, so we sign the paper. Then they send us to Sand Creek and tell us this is what we sign for. No buffalo, no cattle, no trees. We cannot live there. Kicking Dog and some other young ones go to join the Kiowa—very mad.”

Ab saw a sudden vision of Caleb dying in an Indian attack. “What if they come around here?” he asked.

“Kiowa stay south,” Long Fingers said. “I will tell you if they come north.”

“What if you don't know about it?”

“I am Arapaho. The Arapaho nation is the mother of all tribes. A mother knows where her children go. We have traders with all the tribes, so we know where they go. If Kicking Dog brings the Kiowa, I will send one of my boys to tell you. Buffalo Head knows the hand talk. I will send one of my boys to tell Gribble, too.”

“Who?” Ab said.

“You have a neighbor now.” He pointed north. “Twenty-two miles. Gribble makes a ranch there on Plum Creek. He did not know about you, but I tell him. He will come here maybe so tomorrow to see your cows.”

“Well, what do you know,” Buster said. “This country might settle up after all.”

Long Fingers put his fingers into a fold of his deerskin shirt and had his harmonica in his hand as a magician would produce a dove. “Yes,” he said. “It will settle with white people. So I play the white music.” He blew into the harp. “Let me hear this little one play this time, Buffalo Head.”

Caleb saw the huge red man pointing at him. He took half a step behind Pete. How did the chief know he played anything? Matthew said the Indians had magic powers. Caleb thought it was true with Long Fingers.

“Boys, go get us our instruments,” Buster said.

“Okay, Buffalo Head.” Matthew hooted and led his brothers at a sprint to Buster's dugout.

They played “Camptown Races,” of course. And Buster fiddled “Listen to the Mockingbird” as Caleb tried to keep up on the mandolin and Long Fingers droned on the harmonica. The chief's favorite verse came from “Old Dan Tucker:”

Old Dan Tucker and I got drunk,

He fell in the fire and kicked up a chunk,

The charcoal got inside his shoe,

Lord bless you, honey, how the ashes flew!

Ab knew Ella would not have approved of such lyrics at her home. But it was time to let Buster make those decisions. He would have his say soon enough.

*   *   *

Horace Gribble showed up about dinnertime the next day. He rode a fine Kentucky stud and carried a Remington revolver under his belt. His face was tanned, smooth with the bloom of youth, and bulging with tobacco. He made himself right at home—took his saddle off and threw it over a porch rail, poured a bucket of drinking water over his head, spit tobacco juice on the steps. Matthew admired him immediately.

“I'm alone for now,” he said in answer to Ab's inquiries. “But I got two brothers comin'. Hank and Bill. They're bringin' the cows from Kentucky.”

“How many?” Ab asked.

“Couple of hundred head. I thought I'd jiggle on down here and see how y'all do your ranchin' before they show up. How come you ain't got no fences up, yet?”

“We have a corral,” Buster said, somewhat offended, “and a rail fence around the crops.”

Gribble fanned himself with his hat and squinted at the black man. “How come you fence in your crops?”

“We ain't fencin' 'em in, we're fencin' the cows out.”

“That's backwards,” Gribble declared. “I aim to fence my cows in.”

Buster waited for Ab to set the newcomer straight, but, as he seemed removed from the conversation, Buster had to do it himself. “They'll eat all the grass if you fence 'em in,” Buster explained.

“I reckon that's what makes 'em into beef, ain't it? Grass grows back anyhow.”

“It don't grow here like it does in Kentucky. Don't rain enough. You'll have to build twelve miles of fence to feed that many cows. What do you plan to fence with?”