Shortgrass Song (15 page)

When he woke, the frightened private from Glorietta Pass was beside him in a cabin.

“Where is this?” Ab asked. The leg still hurt.

“Pigeon's Ranch, sergeant. Hey, Doc! The sergeant is wakin' up.”

Ab saw the regimental surgeon looking down at him, haggard, emotionless. The tired eyes checked the bandages around the shattered knee. “How do you feel?” he asked.

“I'm alive,” Ab said. “The Texans…”

“They're whipped,” the private said. “The day after you and Dutch jumped that bridge we fought 'em for six hours straight. They backed us up and took our hospital. You were their prisoner for two days. But while we were fightin' here, Major Chivington snuck around behind 'em through the mountains and blew their whole supply train up. They're licked and runnin' for Texas now.”

“You owe your life to Cheyenne Dutch and the Texas surgeons,” the doctor said.

Ab remembered Dutch's interference. But the Texans? The Texas surgeons had saved his life? “What do you mean, the Texans?”

“They took that leg off,” the doctor said. “They could have left it to rot and kill you, but they sawed it off. I don't guess you'd remember, but they said it took three privates and a one-armed lieutenant to hold you still. You almost lost all the blood you had, but you'll mend.”

Ab kicked at his right leg with his left one and felt nothing. He lifted his head and saw his leg ending in a bulb of bloody bandages at the knee. He gasped, almost exhausted by the simple task of lifting his head. “Sons of bitches,” he muttered.

The surgeon put his hand on Ab's shoulder. “Try to remember, sergeant. They did it to save your life. Private, get him to take some soup.”

Ab couldn't swallow much of the broth. He felt sick with anger and failure. As he slurped occasional spoonfuls of soup, the private told him about the battle of Glorietta Pass.

“All the infantry seen you and Dutch jump the bridge,” he said. “It got 'em fightin' somethin' fierce, sergeant. The next day Dutch kept yellin', ‘Remember Holcomb's Charge!' That's what kept us scrappin'. That's what beat the Texans.”

*   *   *

Ab stayed at Pigeon's Ranch for almost three weeks, acquiring a deeper hatred for the Texans who had sawed off his leg and foiled his suicide. When he learned to walk on one leg with crutches, the surgeon made him get out of bed twice a day for exercise around the ranch.

After the Union Army chased the Texans south of Albuquerque, the Pigeon Ranch vaqueros began bringing cattle down from the mountains and back to home range. Only Mexican cowboys worked the ranch, and they knew their trade. The wild longhorn cattle required all their skills as riders and ropers.

One evening, as Ab was sulking under the low porch roof of the cabin that had served as the Union hospital, a pair of vaqueros brought fifty head down from the hills. Two others had a branding iron heating over a fire. The mounted vaqueros began cutting the unbranded yearlings out of the herd of fifty so the branders could apply the hot irons to their hips. The beauty of the work diverted Ab from his hatred of Texans, his agony over his lost limb, his grief over Ella, and his dread over Caleb.

The vaqueros used rawhide lariats sixty feet or more in length. The wide loops settled over horns and around necks like living snares. One vaquero could make a loop crawl under the flanks of a steer and stand on edge for a mere instant, so the animal would step in as if trying on a pair of bloomers. Then the roper would wrap the rawhide around his pommel and, with his partner's loop pulling on the opposite end of the same steer, stretch the animal out so the branders could tail him down for the burning and earmarking.

The heel roper swirled the dust with his swinging loop and whistled through his teeth at the dumb beeves. He might just as well have been netting butterflies.

For the first time in months, Ab thought of his ranch in Monument Park. He saw Matthew and Pete swinging ropes like the vaqueros. He had failed at trying to kill himself. He was not going to try again. The consequences were too horrible. He had to find a reason to live: a regimen of some kind to occupy his mind through the daily tortures. With a few good ropers, he could set his mind to building a ranch for Pete and Matthew to inherit. Caleb, of course, would be a farmer. Ella would never have approved of him riding wild cow ponies.

When the fifty cattle were sorted, penned, branded, and marked, the Mexican heel roper rode past Ab on the way to the water gourd.

“Is that your horse with the spots?” the vaquero asked.

Ab nodded.

He dipped the gourd into a cask of well water and held it before his mouth.
“Guapo, señor.
I would like to have some horses like that.”

“To rope cows?” Ab asked.

“Yes. And to chase the
Tejanos
like the Pikes Peakers. I spit on those goddamn
Tejanos.
” He demonstrated.

The one-legged sergeant smiled for the first time in over a year.

SEVENTEEN

After four months, Buster had even Snake Woman convinced that he and Caleb had turned Indian. In fact, Caleb was becoming pretty sure of it himself. Buster had given him a horse and told him to get used to riding it. He had traded Moon Bull his old single-shot pistol for the horse, a long-tailed, silver grulla mustang with blue eyes and a Texas brand on the shoulder. Caleb knew no better-looking animal among the hundreds of horses grazing around camp.

Snake Woman was beginning to show her pregnancy, and it made Buster feel full of regret. She was going to have his child, and he would probably never see it. By the time the papoose came, he would either be back in Monument Park with Caleb, or dead. It was his own fault. He should have resisted her in the dugout.

He could feel the members of Laughing Wolf's band watching him constantly. Not because they mistrusted him anymore, but because he was supposed to be big medicine. He tried his best to fulfill the image. He hunted hard and brought down more than his share of game with the long rifle Laughing Wolf let him use. But he knew he had to do more. The Comanche expected something great of the strange black warrior who had figured in Snake Woman's signs from the spirit world.

Buster's chance came when Moon Bull began organizing a hunt. The brave had some trouble finding warriors to follow him at first. He had lost some status since Buffalo Head had beaten him so soundly in the rock-throwing contest. But when Buffalo Head said he would go with Moon Bull on the hunt, the ranks suddenly swelled with willing participants.

The day before Moon Bull's party was to attack the buffalo, Buster and Caleb rode to the top of one of the Wichita Mountains to survey the country for herds. Caleb rode his blue-eyed mustang, and Buster took Crazy.

“Are those buffalo?” Caleb asked in astonishment.

“Yep,” Buster said. “Look like muddy rivers, don't they?”

Veins of bison streamed between the hills in every direction. Around them the barely visible wolf packs loitered—gray, white, and brown specks against the dried grass. Between the clots of buffalo, antelope grazed or moved like low-flying birds over the plains. The wind was cold whipping over the mountain peak, but the odd Comanche pair had buffalo robes. Cotton-white clouds raced across the winter sky, their shadows undulating over every rise and fall in the topography below.

“Is this what it looks like from the top of Pikes Peak?” Caleb asked.

“Oh, Lord, no, boy. Pikes Peak must be twice as high as this mountain. Maybe we'll climb it when we get home and you'll see.”

“Home?”

“After I go huntin' with Moon Bull, I'm gonna let Crazy rest a few days, then we're gonna sneak away. You let Blue Eyes rest up, too. We'll have to ride fast. They might come after us.”

Caleb pulled the buffalo robe around his shoulders and looked back across the plains at the Indian camp. He could just see the tops of some of the tepees in the creek bottom. “I thought we might stay here,” he said. When he thought of home, he remembered the ridge log and his mother's grave and the guilt he felt in his father's presence.

“We ain't Indians, Caleb. If we stay here too long, they're gonna expect us to go kill some white folks. That's what these Indians do when they ain't huntin'. Besides, don't you miss your mandolin playin'?”

“Yeah,” Caleb admitted.

“Well, that's where we belong, playin' music in Monument Park. Workin' our farm.”

“I'd rather chase the cows like Matthew and Pete,” Caleb said.

“You can do that, too. Your papa will let you when he sees how good you've learned to ride. Just let Blue Eyes rest, and don't let nobody know we're leavin'.”

Caleb nodded. He didn't mind leaving so much if he could take Blue Eyes with him to chase the cattle with when he got home.

The next morning Buster found himself riding with Moon Bull and about thirty other warriors toward the largest herd of buffalo in the area. He had watched several hunts from the mountain and knew what to do. He had borrowed a lance from Moon Bull, choosing to use the lance instead of a rifle because hunters who dared to gallop within spearing distance of a buffalo earned the highest respect. It was the most dangerous way.

Moon Bull led his hunting party up a dry creek bed, out of sight and downwind of the herd. Sliding from his hunting pony, he climbed the bank and peeked over the rim, the yellow feather in his scalp lock rising only as high as the top blades of grass.

After observing the movements of the herd, he crawled silently back into the creek bed and issued his orders in sign. The hunters would spread out and surround the herd, closing around the buffalo on the upwind side last. Then they would circle the animals the way the whirlwinds blew, force them into a mill, and close in on them to kill as many as they could.

Buster nudged Crazy along the creek bed about two hundred yards, emerged on the plains, and galloped around the right side of the herd. He pressed himself low against the mare's back to keep from alarming the buffalo. As the horsemen closed the surround at the upwind side of the herd, the animals caught scent of the hunters and stampeded downwind.

The circling began, the riders moving counterclockwise around the animals. A few bison broke through the surround, but the downwind hunters managed to turn the major portion of the stampede with the circling motion. The best of all possible circumstances resulted for Moon Bull. The herd began to mill, and the hunters closed in ever tighter, pressing the terrified bison closer together, as if a whirlpool were drawing them down into the prairie.

Buster held his spear overhead and yelped like a Comanche. “You better hope the Lord forgives you,” he said to himself, suddenly feeling like a pagan. He looped his reins around his left forearm and grasped the spear shaft with both hands. Crazy was running well around the herd, but Buster wondered how she would react when asked to press against the very flanks of a huge, bellowing beast.

The humped brutes were running with remarkable speed when a young bull veered from the whirlwind of bison in front of Crazy. To Buster's surprise, she almost shot out from under him in pursuit. He didn't twitch the reins or give his mount the slightest nudge with his knees to guide her. She closed quickly on the right of the errant bull and carried Buster within lancing distance.

The painted spear shaft was longer than Buster was tall. The point of sharpened rasp was eight inches and honed to shave. When he drove it between the bull's ribs, he felt Crazy leaning with him on the thrust and pulling away as he withdrew the bloody blade. She was taking Buster buffalo hunting.

The stuck bull stumbled once and turned to destroy the spotted mare. A hideous bellow rattled from his punctured lungs, his eyes rolled back in his huge head, and his twin horns hooked violently at the mare. Buster barely held his seat as Crazy sprang to safety, leaping almost like a cat avoiding a snakebite. He looked behind and saw the wounded bull drop and roll through the grass.

The slaughter mounted at every point around the milling herd. Dying beasts peeled away from the vortex of hooves and pitched headfirst into the sod, shuddering in their death pangs. Buster squinted at the herd through the dust and guided Crazy nearer with a nudge of his knee. He couldn't hear himself shout above the thunder of hooves. He drove the shaft into another body, angled away, returned for a third victim, circled, felt the warmth of the herd, smelled their cuds. He speared a fourth, a bull with a head that looked as big as a bass fiddle.

Then, with one sudden change, the entire herd broke from the swirl as if possessed of a single brain. Moon Bull was caught in the stampede for a couple of minutes as it rushed through the dry creek bed, but he managed to work his way to the edge without falling. The surviving bison fanned out and trampled a swath of earth a quarter mile wide as they left the exhausted buffalo horses behind. The squaws were already arriving on the grounds, leading old jaded horses that would pack the meat back to camp. They raced one another, laughing as they pretended to count coup on the carcasses.

Moon Bull rode like a king back to his band of hunters, whipping his heaving horse with a buffalo tail he had cut from one of his kills. He asked how many Buffalo Head had killed. The black warrior held up four fingers.

“There are four seasons in the great circle of time,” Moon Bull said to his followers. “There are four points of the sky and the earth. There are four legs under our horses. Now Buffalo Head kills four buffalo. It means Big Medicine.”

*   *   *

It was the last and most successful hunt of the winter. There was plenty of work ahead for the squaws, pounding the meat into pemmican, tanning the hides, making the robes. But for the braves there was nothing to do but lounge. Buster figured he would give Crazy about a week to recuperate fully from the punishment of the hunt before he made his escape on her.

However, three days after the hunt, a warrior rode into camp with news that started every tepee buzzing with excitement. The main winter camp of the Tonkawa had been located a hundred miles east.