Shortgrass Song (49 page)

Another shot rang from Caleb's pistol.

“Two bits a hide,” Seth muttered to himself, “and he's wanderin' over five acres, wastin' bullets on half-dead cows.”

Caleb fired his third round and looked over the rest of the carcasses. More than twenty of them lay in the prairie mud between two low, rolling swells. Washita Jack Shea, the hunter who had downed them, had done a good job of picking off each cow that had tried to lead the herd away, and they had all been slaughtered in a small space. He wound his way through the dead animals, his blood-crusted clothes clinging stiffly to him, and tried to get a whiff of cool north air that didn't smell like offal.

He had hired on with the outfit at Fort Griffin. For five solid weeks he had followed the carnage of his camp's hunters and peeled the woolly pelts from wasted death. The hunters—besides Washita Jack—were Smokey Dean Wilson, Roy Badger Burton, and Tighe Frost. Frost didn't claim a nickname but was sometimes called Railroad Tighe because his wealthy father manufactured locomotive parts, or Red Hot Frost because he had already ruined one rifle by shooting too frequently without cooling the barrel.

There was one other hunter who worked out of the Salt Fork camp, but he worked alone, skinning his own kills, scouting for bigger herds, returning only for provisions. He was an old man named Elam Joiner.

Ten skinners and a camp rustler filled out the ranks of the party—sixteen men in all. For the first two weeks of their foray for hides, southern winds had blistered them day and night. Then the northers had started bringing blasts of cool air and rain. Now the cool periods were outlasting the hot spells. The moderate temperatures made the skinners' work a little less repugnant because the beasts didn't bloat and stink as quickly.

By the time Caleb drew his skinning knife, his partner had already slit the hide down the legs and was ready to start peeling it off.

“It's about time,” Seth said. “Look at Joe and Eddie. They've got theirs half skinned.”

“Don't blame me,” Caleb said. “It's that damned Washita Jack and his lung shots. If he'd hit 'em in the neck like Badger does, they'd go down dead instead of kickin' a half hour.”

“At least Washita knows when to quit. Next time Badger shoots more than we can skin in a day, I'm gonna shoot him. I'm sick and tired of skinnin' stiff stinkers.”

The skinners worked the kill into the afternoon, when Tighe Frost rode up. He had used his family's money to stake the hunting party. He was not much of a buffalo hunter, but thought he was.

“Holcomb!” he shouted. “You and Corley get on your horses and come with me. I've killed a dozen cows for you to skin across the river.”

Seth wiped his bloody hands on his shirt. “Can't it wait till we get through with these?”

“No,” Frost said. “It will take you all day to finish the ones I killed. They're spread out.”

“Well, why don't you get Joe and Eddie to do it?”

“You two are the fastest, aren't you? I need fast workers to get through before dark. Get your horses.” Frost nudged his mount forward to bother Joe and Eddie.

“If that's our prize for bein' the best, I don't know that it's worth it,” Seth grumbled as they walked to their horses.

“I'll bet he's got dead buffalo strung out from here to the Double Mountain Fork,” Caleb said, “and not a one of 'em with less than three bullet holes.”

“He shoots more lead into a buffalo than the hide is worth,” Seth added, “not to mention the shots he misses altogether. I wish I had the likes of powder he burns in a day. I could hunt a lifetime on it.”

“Red Hot Frost, the gut-shot champion of the Southern Plains,” Caleb said. He and Seth laughed as they cinched their saddles tight.

*   *   *

At twilight they loped into the camp on the Salt Fork of the Brazos, covered with mud, blood, and hair from their day's work. They trotted past the stake ground where the hides were stretched flat and pinned with willow pickets, past the buffalo tongues drying on the pole racks, past the wood and buffalo chips the camp rustler collected for fuel. They rode to the wagons, threw their saddles down, and let their horses drink from a tub that had collected some rainwater. They briefly rinsed their hands in the same tub.

“The wagons are plumb full of flint hides,” Seth said. “I guess Frost will drive them to Denison in the morning.”

“I hope so,” Caleb said. “I wouldn't mind gettin' shed of him for a while.”

They walked between two tents made of green hides and joined the group of men sitting around the fire. Caleb noticed that old Elam Joiner was in camp, rubbing his trigger finger on the rough side of a whetstone. He claimed his Sharps Big Fifty had the hairiest trigger in Texas, and he had to keep his finger almost raw to give it the right touch.

“Where have you boys been?” asked Mort Fletcher, the camp rustler. He was always the jolliest man in the group, though he worked longer hours than any hunter or skinner in the outfit. “I had to fight these other fellers off with a ladle to keep them from eatin' all the biscuits. I've got fresh tongue, boiled tender and fried in bone marrow. Hurry up and get yourself a plate of it, so I can wash the dishes.”

“Not tongue again,” Seth complained. “I'd give my front teeth to taste somethin' I knew wasn't tastin' me back.”

“Bring me some hump ribs tomorrow and I'll roast 'em,” Mort suggested.

“If you cut it off of a buffalo, I'm sick of eatin' it,” Seth replied.

They got their food and sat on rolled hides to eat.

“I met up with some soldiers three days back,” Elam said, continuing the conversation he had started before Caleb and Seth arrived.

Smokey Dean Wilson was pouring measured amounts of black powder into the brass shells he had emptied during the day. “What did they know?”

“Said Colonel Mackenzie wiped out a whole village of Comanche up at Palo Duro Canyon. Burned their lodges and shot a thousand horses.”

“Where the hell is Palo Duro Canyon?” asked a skinner named George Karnes.

“Don't worry, George,” Seth said, spraying biscuit crumbs as he spoke, “it's away up in the Panhandle. It'll take them Indians all winter to walk down here and scalp you.”

“Go to hell, Seth. I ain't scared of no Indians.”

“Then you're a damn fool,” Elam said. “About the time you decide you ain't scared of 'em, well, that's when they cut you into little chunks. Some Delaware scouts with them soldiers I run onto said one band has a camp up on the Pease River nearly every winter. That's not even a day's ride from here for a Comanche.”

“We can do without seein' Indians,” Washita Jack said, “but we need to find some buffalo. We've just about killed this range out.”

“There's good herds up on the South Wichita,” Elam said. “Hides as good as I've ever seen.”

“Any hunters up there?” Smokey Dean asked.

“I didn't meet up with any. As far as I can tell, nobody's further west than us.”

Washita Jack ran a piece of rag greased with buffalo tallow down the barrel of his Sharps Big Fifty. “How was your huntin' up there?”

“I killed and skinned about a dozen cows a day,” Elam said. “I've got seventy-five hides staked and dryin'.”

Tighe Frost had been listening with a cup of coffee in his hand. “What's your total now, Elam?”

The old hide hunter glanced disdainfully at Frost. “Hell, I don't know. Ask Mort, he keeps the tally.”

Frost handed his cup to Mort and motioned for him to pour in some more coffee from the pot. “What's Elam's total?” he asked.

Mort set aside his knife and the willow stake he had been whittling, took the coffee cup in one hand and a chunk of buffalo tallow in the other. He threw the tallow on the fire, causing it to flare brightly. Then he poured Frost another cup. “Let's see,” he said, “with seventy-five staked out, that brings Elam's total to four hundred and thirty-one hides. That's three hundred and eleven cow hides, seventy-two bull hides, and forty-eight kip hides.” Mort possessed a remarkable facility with numbers.

“I believe I've shot a few more than that, haven't I?” Frost said, posing flamboyantly by the fire with his fresh cup of coffee.

Mort picked up his knife and willow stake and started whittling again. “You've killed fourteen more than Elam, Mr. Frost, but Elam scouts and does his own skinning.”

Frost glowered at the camp rustler. “Well, I have to freight the hides!”

“That's true,” Mort allowed. “Smokey's shot four hundred and fifty-two. Washita's shot four hundred and seventy-five. And Badger Burton's killed more than anybody: five hundred and nine.”

Seth whispered to Caleb: “That's ‘cause he don't know when to quit.”

“I've killed more than that,” Badger said, through teeth clenched tight on a pipestem.

“Yes, but the wolves got some of those you left overnight and ruined the hides.”

The skinners shadowed their faces with their hat brims and grinned.

“That brings the overall tally to two thousand, three hundred and twelve,” Mort said. “Not bad for five weeks of huntin'. You boys through with those dishes yet?” He took the tin plates from Seth and Caleb and threw them into a caldron of water he had been heating over some coals beside the fire.

“I had figured two thousand hides to break even,” Frost said. “That means everything from here on out is pure profit.” He slung the coffee from his cup. “Have those oxen hitched by dawn, Fletcher. I want to get an early start for Denison.”

“Yes, sir, Mr. Frost.” Mort was the only man in camp who could take an order cheerfully.

FIFTY-EIGHT

The three huge Murphy wagons had wheels waist-high at the hub and carried two hundred fifty hides each. Mort had festooned the rims of the wagon boxes with hundreds of buffalo tails. He hooked the three wagons together in a train and had them hitched to six yokes of oxen by daybreak.

With the wagons ready to roll, Mort roused the skinners to help him tie down the hides, stacked loosely in the beds. They threw ropes over the stacks of hides, tied the ends of the ropes to wagon wheels, and coaxed the oxen forward. The ropes wound around the wheel hubs, tightening over the cargo, until Mort stopped the oxen. The skinners then lashed the hides down with twisted rawhide thongs before untying the ropes from the wagon wheels.

In each wagon they left a space in the middle of the cargo large enough for a man to hide from Indians. With Sharps rifles, the hide freighters could hold off attackers at half a mile.

It was the third load Frost had freighted to Denison. He took the two slowest skinners with him, to help drive the oxen, and rolled out of camp about an hour after sunup.

After the ox train left, Elam Joiner took off in a buck-board for the South Wichita to find a new campsite. Badger Burton offered to go along, but old Elam said he preferred to travel alone. He knew Badger only wanted to get first crack at the thickest herds before the other hunters could arrive. Badger wanted more than anything to shoot a hundred buffalo without moving his sticks.

The other hunters and skinners were to follow Elam as soon as they could gather all the hides they had staked or rolled in various locations around the Salt Fork camp. Mort put some of the skinners to work pulling up hides from the stake ground, folding them, and stacking them. When each stack reached about seven feet, a hide was spread across the top to turn the rain, and the stack was staked under rawhide thongs. Frost would pass back through the Salt Fork camp and load the hides in the freight wagon before moving to the new camp on the South Wichita.

All the hides were stacked and tied down by dusk, and the hunters made the decision to move north the next day. They believed a fortune in hides awaited them on the South Wichita. That night, around the fire, their predictions ran as high as a hundred hides a day for the rest of the season.

“Whet your knives and brace for some real work,” Smokey told the skinners. “Elam says he's never seen the likes of hides, and he's hunted longer than any man I know.”

Hide fever burned in them all.

Caleb sang “Rye Whiskey” and “The Wounded Ranger” and the hide-camp favorite about old Crego, who refused to pay his skinners the wage promised:

The season being over, boys,

old Crego wouldn't pay.

He said we'd been extravagant

and he was in debt that day.

We coaxed him and we begged him,

but still it was no go.

So we left his damned old bones to bleach

on the range of the buffalo.

There was some loud talk about allowing Red Hot Frost's bones the same opportunity if he did not come back from Denison with some cash. He had deposited the money from the first two loads in his own account, claiming he had to recoup his investment before anyone received wages.

In the morning the men broke camp, loaded the rustler's wagon, and headed north. Elam's trail was easy to see in the range grass. It followed the Salt Fork of the Brazos northward until the river made a bend to the east. Here the hide hunters left the river and continued north on Elam's trail, crossing rolling plains and beautiful ranges grown green with recent rains. After noon they began to see buffalo herds on distant ridges and knew Elam had chosen well.

As evening approached, the hunters and skinners watched the rolls of prairie for signs of their scout. He had told them the trip to the South Wichita would take only a day. Toward nightfall they saw a wisp of smoke rising from a tree line in the valley of the South Wichita. Elam's wagon tracks led directly toward the place.

Powder River had wanted to run all day, so Caleb rode ahead with the hunters to join their scout. The horses smelled the river on the north breeze and stretched their necks to get to it. Washita Jack and Badger Burton let loose a few hoots to warn Elam of their approach. It looked as though the old man had chosen a good place to camp. He had found good water and ample timber for fuel, shade, and shelter.