Shortgrass Song (11 page)

“I'm gonna go up in them mountains and split me a mess of rails.”

“The Indians won't like you choppin' that many trees,” Buster warned.

“I don't give a damn what an Indian likes. They gave up all this land in that last treaty they signed. I reckon I'll chop what I want.”

“It's better just to let your cows run loose,” Ab said, turning his eyes from the flower garden, “and round them up every now and then. The wolves and mountain lions will get some, but they'll find plenty of grass, and you won't have to build any fences.”

“How in the hell am I supposed to know what land is mine if I don't fence it?” Horace demanded.

“Where'd you settle?” Ab asked.

“Up on the head of Plum Creek.”

“Well, then, all the grass from there to the divide with Monument Creek is yours. Everything on this side of the divide is ours. There's plenty of room for two herds.”

Horace rolled a wad of chewing tobacco around in his mouth for a while. “What if I catch your cows on my side of the divide?”

“Just run them back on our side. We'll do the same for you. I guess the boys are going to have to learn to rope and brand so we can keep our cows separate. Buster's made us a brand. Looks like a bull's-eye.”

Horace thought a moment, then grinned. “I didn't really want to split all them rails anyhow,” he said. “Just brand 'em and leave 'em run loose? I reckon I can learn a new kind of cow raisin' if that's all there is to it.”

Buster got up and said he was about to cook dinner, and invited Horace Gribble to stay and eat.

“I won't turn my back on cookin',” he said, reaching into the pocket of his saddlebag. “While you cook, Holcomb here can read the paper. I brought a copy of the
Rocky Mountain News
with me. I figured you'd want to read about the battle.”

Ab and Buster looked at each other. “What battle?” Ab said.

“You haven't heard?”

“Heard what?”

“My God, y'all have been out of the way too long. Haven't you heard about the battle of Fort Sumter?”

They shook their heads. “Where's that?” Buster asked.

“Where?” Horace started laughing. “South Carolina. The Confederates attacked it. The war's on, boys!”

“Between the states?”

“Yep. North again' South.”

“If there's a war on,” Ab said, sitting forward on his bench, “why aren't you back there fighting in it?”

Gribble let his chaw fall onto the dirt beside the porch. “Fight, hell.” he said. “I ain't mad at nobody. What do you think I come away out here for?”

*   *   *

Ab's course became clear to him over the next several months. Speculation held that the war would spread west from the states and infest the territories. The Federals would probably blockade the entire Dixie Coast to cut off the sale of Confederate cotton. The secessionists would counter by trying to capture New Mexico Territory and California so they could ship their cotton out through the Pacific ports. The Texans would be coming up the Rio Grande to take Santa Fe. They might even come as far as Denver to claim the gold fields. There were already a good many southern men in Denver.

By May there was talk of raising a volunteer regiment to fight the Confederates. By July thousands of Texans were poised on the southern border of New Mexico, ready to strike. By August, the First Regiment of Colorado Volunteers was drilling near Denver. Colorado Territory had been formed from the western reaches of what previously had been the Kansas Territory.

It was all working out pretty well for Ab. He wanted to beat Caleb to joining Ella without disgracing the Holcomb name, and war seemed the perfect opportunity. He thought of the glory he would bring on his boys when he threw himself into the forefront of some battle. Buster would sing songs about the way he died leading a charge against a whole battalion of mounted Texans. That was the best part: fighting the Texans! They would name a fort after him.

In September he decided to ride to Denver and join the First. He got up early one morning, saddled Pard, and called Buster and the boys out after breakfast.

“I'm going to fight the Texans,” he said, strapping his old Walker Colt around his waist.

Matthew beamed with pride. Pete wrinkled his nose and squinted. Caleb silently contemplated all the horses he would ride while his father was away.

“What about the boys?” Buster said.

“You take care of them. I want Matthew and Pete to look after the cows. See that they learn how to rope. If Caleb ever gets his strength back, you can put him to farming with you. Farming ought to be good enough for him. It was good enough for me.”

Caleb's hopes sank. He wanted to ride the horses and chase the cows, not drag in the dust wake of a plow stock.

“You boys go on to work now. I want to talk to Buster.”

“I get to ride Crazy!” Matthew said as he and Pete ran for the corral.

“She's mine! You have to ride Soupy!”

“I'm biggest,” Matthew argued.

Caleb stood in front of the cabin, not having any work to run to.

“Caleb,” Buster said, “you can carry my spade and pick on down to the creek. I'm gonna dig some more on the irrigation ditch today.”

When Caleb had walked beyond earshot, Ab looked at Ella's grave. “Keep some flowers cut for her, Buster.” He cinched the saddle tight around the spotted gelding's barrel. “And keep that flower garden growing.” He put his foot in the stirrup and climbed up to the saddle. “She told me just after that log crushed her that I had better not let Caleb die. I promised her I'd look after him. I'm trusting you to keep my word for me.”

Buster said nothing. He never understood all the concern over Caleb.

“One more thing,” Ab said, reaching into his pocket. “This is Caleb's pocketknife. Give it to him when you judge he's old enough to use it safely.”

Buster took the knife and nodded. Ab turned the Nez Perce gelding up Monument Creek for Denver, looking one last time over the grave of his wife. He expected never to return.

Buster shook his head in consternation and trudged down to the creek. He found Caleb digging ineffectually, standing on the spade.

“What did he want to tell you?” the boy asked.

“Here.” He put the pocketknife in the little hand. “He told me to give you this.”

TWELVE

Snake Woman hated everything about living the way of white people. She hated the wagon she slept in, its hollow sound and cold iron fittings. She hated the buckets she carried water in and the wounded ground she emptied them on. She hated the oldest boy, who leered at her from the back of the spotted mare.

Most of all, she hated Buffalo Head. Actually, she despised all grown men, but none did she loathe more than Buffalo Head—the one who had brought her to live with the whites; the one who had told her to sleep in the wagon; the one who had made her teach him the hand language.

Yet, in the signs from the spirit world, the gods had told her how she must use Buffalo Head, and she found the thought repulsive. She tried to interpret the signs differently, but they fit together in just one way. The shooting star had shown her the way to the Comanche. Buffalo Head had counted coup on Cheyenne Dutch. The oxen had killed the crazy white woman. And now, a dream of two warriors, one white and one black, both wearing the dress of the Comanche, had wakened her under the canopy of the wagon she hated so much. It could mean only one thing.

It took her several days to steel herself to the idea. She hid in the cottonwoods across the creek and watched Buffalo Head dig the ditch to his truck patch. She watched as he taught the boy how to play the instruments. She watched as he crawled on the ground among the wildflowers, picking up seeds.

What made the spirits so cruel that they would require such a sacrifice of her to earn her own tribe?

*   *   *

A week after Ab left for Denver, Buster had Caleb working full days and enjoying his work, except when Matthew rode by to flaunt his saddle and the spotted mare he had taken from Pete.

“How come your mother never let you work?” Buster asked one evening when he and Caleb were carrying their tools to the shed from the creek bottom. “You can pull your weight good as anybody.”

Talk of his mother mustered a nameless guilt in Caleb. “She said I was too sickly.”

“Sickly? With what?”

“Consumption, asthma, flux.”

Buster laughed. “Who told her you had all that?”

“Some doctors.”

Buster hung his shovel blade on a catch made of a forked pine branch. “I think them doctors wanted her to keep comin' and spendin' her money. She was a fine lady. Smart, too. But I think them doctors tricked her. Ain't nothin' wrong with you.”

“Papa thinks there is.”

“Well, when he gets back from the war and sees how straight and strong you are, he's gonna change his mind for sure. Now, let's play a few songs before I fix supper.”

“Okay,” Caleb said, his eyes twinkling. He forced the vision of the falling ridge log aside and contemplated music.

“You can play the fiddle today.”

“I don't know how to play the fiddle.” He balled his little fist up and punched Buster in the stomach playfully. He had become more familiar with Buster than he ever had been with his father, or even Matthew for that matter.

“You mean I forgot to tell you? You play it just like a mandolin, except you use a bow, and you hold it under your chin. Shoot, you can halfway play it already and you just don't know it.”

“But it doesn't have any frets!”

“You don't need frets. Your fingers know where they're goin' now without no frets.”

“Really?”

The moon was so full and the sky so clear that night that under them Buster could read the headlines of the
Rocky Mountain News.
He sat in the moonlight for a while and played the banjo, but he was tired, and soon crawled into the dugout to find his pallet. He was looking at the dark wedge of a mountain against the pale sky, thinking about building a flume so he could irrigate more than just bottom land, when a figure appeared outside.

Buster tensed and propped himself up on his elbows. Snake Woman stepped into the dugout and became a silhouette against the open doorway. He saw both hands. She wasn't carrying a knife, thank God. Or an ax. Did she have a weapon concealed?

As if to answer his question, Snake Woman pulled her dress from her shoulders and let it fall to the floor. Buster was almost unconscious with disbelief. He said nothing. She wouldn't have understood whatever he might have said anyway. He made no attempt to communicate with the sign language either. What was the point, in the dark? He just scooted across his blankets and backed away from her until he was against the cool dirt wall. She knelt beside him. He tried to get up, but she held him down by the shoulders. She was strong. Her hands moved down his body to the button of his pants.

Buster didn't know much about it, but it wasn't supposed to happen this way. Master Hugh had sold most of the slave girls his age by the time he had had his first few experiences with them. None of them had ever come to him naked in the dark before.

But Snake Woman's carnal experiences far surpassed those of Buffalo Head. Her Comanche captors had often traded her services to bull whackers and mule skinners at Bent's Fort for whiskey and tobacco.

She mounted Buster as she would a horse, wedging her knee between him and the wall, pinning him against the floor with her hands on his chest. She felt hot as the coal in Old Dan Tucker's shoe on top of him, and his urges took their courses in spite of his protestations. It didn't take her long to get what she had come for, and then she rose in silence, slipped on her dress, and vanished without once looking back.

The next morning Buster was still wondering why. Was it delayed gratitude for kicking Cheyenne Dutch over the creek bank? Was it his good looks? Did it really happen? Yep, it happened. The thought of that tongueless savage forcing herself on him tormented him all morning as he went about his chores. He supposed he should have fought harder and wondered why he hadn't. Would she do it again? No, that was too terrible to consider. Or too much to hope for. He watched her all day. She did not so much as glance his way.

That night Buster had almost fallen asleep when she appeared again. He resolved to run her off. It wasn't proper for a woman to sneak in on a man like that. But this time she simply lay down beside him. She didn't even touch him, yet he could feel the warmth of her body. He made the mistake of putting his hand on her, to push her away, he told himself. But his arms rebelled and pulled her under him instead.

Five nights in a row she appeared and vanished. Buster was getting nervous. What would Mister Ab think? Or Miss Ella? If Matthew saw anything he would never let Buster forget it. Caleb would ask a lot of questions. What if she got pregnant? There would be no doubt of the baby's lineage. He was pretty sure that he was the only black man between Denver and Santa Fe. He was going to have to drive her off. It was simple as that.

The sixth night he sat outside the dugout instead of lying down inside. He intended to meet her standing up in the moonlight where she could see his hand signs. He stayed awake as long as he could, then fell asleep leaning against the creek bank. He woke shivering in the morning. Snake Woman had failed to appear.

*   *   *

With the next moon, a snow fell in the high country and dusted the mountains white like the rumps of Nez Perce horses. The nights came earlier, until they began catching Buster and Caleb playing songs on the brink of the creek bank.

Buster was teaching Caleb a ballad one night when he was almost moved to tears to hear the boy's little voice singing it. Caleb sang in a child's voice, but in a voice that never wavered or missed a note. “Ben Bolt” almost always made tears well up in Buster's eyes anyway. But now, when he thought of Miss Ella, and heard her son singing, it was all he could do to keep them from cascading down his cheeks.