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Authors: Mike Blakely

Shortgrass Song (7 page)

BOOK: Shortgrass Song
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“If you're so smart, Mr. Thompson, you'll get me some seeds!” she yelled when he started back.

He knew she was right. “Buster, you've got to learn to keep your mouth shut,” he muttered to himself.

That evening he walked down the creek to look at the wildflowers. He found five or six varieties in bloom. If they were like other plants he had studied, he figured they would go to seed a couple of weeks after blooming. He would just have to watch them closely, check them every other day or so.

He squatted down to study an orange variety with tiny five-petaled blossoms. Another type grew pink flowers on the ends of meandering stems. He wondered if he could transplant them to Miss Ella's garden. He decided to bring a spade next time and dig some up.

The most prolific tribe was the fire wheel. It had multiple lancelike petals, flame-red with yellow tips, leaping like fire from a central hub the size of a vest button.

A hummingbird attracted him to a stalky variety with small purple blossoms. He thought Miss Ella might like something that would attract hummingbirds. He got down on his stomach to inspect the roots.

“Buster, what in Hades are you doing?”

He jumped and retreated halfway down the creek bank before he realized it was Ab. “I'm studyin' these flowers,” he admitted.

Matthew started laughing. Ab and the boys had gone downstream looking for the cattle and were herding them back toward the dugout for the evening.

“What do you want with flowers?” Ab said.

“Miss Ella needs some seeds,” Buster answered.

“She's already got five gallons of flower seeds,” Ab said. “Come on and help with these cows—quit wasting your time.”

“Hey, Pete!” Matthew shouted. “We caught Buster looking at flowers!”

*   *   *

Matthew caught Buster in the wildflower patch several times in the weeks that followed. Buster spent almost every evening there, studying the plants. He tried transplanting a specimen of each to Ella's garden, but the yellow primrose was the only one that took.

As summer began, he painstakingly collected the tiny seeds shed by the different varieties. He put them in envelopes he made of paper scraps and labeled them: fire-wheel, butterfly weed, bird's eye, primrose, prairie aster. When the time was right, he intended to make a gift of them to Ella.

While on his last foray down to the wildflower patch, Buster happened to glance across the creek to see Long Fingers and a dozen braves watching him. The chief waved. He had seven spare horses and three Holcomb cows with him. As he led his party across the creek, he put Buster's old harmonica in his mouth and began to blow on it. He avoided the high notes and droned monotonously on three or four of the lower tones.

Buster put his paper envelopes in his pocket and stood to greet the warriors. Mounted and painted, they appeared ten times prouder than when he first met them in the stinking gully on the plains. Kicking Dog rode behind Long Fingers and carried a lance with a scalp of black hair, stiff with blood, tied to the shaft.

“Buffalo Head,” Long Fingers said, “I see you and Holcomb cut down more trees. Why do you cut down that many? To build a lodge?”

“Yes,” Buster said.

“A lodge of trees is better than living in the ground like a prairie dog. But I hope you do not cut down all the trees.”

“We won't,” Buster said. “We cut the last ones we needed today. Where'd you find those cows?”

“In the mountains. My boys want to eat them. I do, too, but they do not belong to my people. Not like the trees you cut for Holcomb's lodge.”

On the way to the dugout, Buster had to explain what he had been doing with the flowers. Long Fingers wanted to know if the whites used them for medicine. When he found out that Buster was trying to grow them, he said, “Leave them alone and they will grow plenty good all by theirself.”

Snake Woman was gathering firewood when she saw the Arapaho coming. A breath caught in her throat, and she dared to hope that maybe Long Fingers had come back for her. She hated living with the whites. She was so ashamed of the cloth dress they made her wear that she kept it covered with a blanket except in the heat of the day.

She had never eaten so well or worked so little, yet she knew the white people and Buffalo Head would do something horrible to her sooner or later. The crazy white woman had already started a daily torture of pulling her hair with a fine-toothed comb. She feared she would be scalped alive, but so far the white woman had managed only to rid her head of lice and nits. Now her scalp felt barren and unhealthy because nothing lived there anymore.

She hated the wagon they made her sleep in. The wind whistled under it at night. And that oldest boy kept watching her when he should have been hunting rabbits. If he came after her—she didn't care what the whites did to her—she would kill him.

But now maybe she wouldn't have to. Long Fingers was driving three cows before him. Maybe he had brought them to trade for her. She picked up one more stick of wood and scrambled toward the hole in the ground where the white people lived.

“Hey, Pete, here comes the snake lady,” Matthew said as the squaw neared the dugout. “I'm gonna ask her.”

“She doesn't understand English, stupid,” Pete replied.

“Ask her what?” Caleb said. He missed out on everything.

Matthew approached the squaw and pulled on her sleeve as she dropped her wood on the pile. She ignored him and watched the Arapaho ride nearer over the rim of the creek bank.

“Hey,” he said, pulling on her sleeve again.

She looked at him.

“Open your mouth.”

She stared, her lip curling with hatred.

“Open your mouth, I want to see your tongue.” Matthew wiggled his tongue at her and motioned for her to open her mouth.

Snake Woman looked away and prayed the three cows would be enough. She hated living with the whites.

“Leave her alone, Matthew,” Pete said.

“Yeah,” Caleb said. He didn't know what it was all about, but he usually sided with Pete.

Buster looked like a captive walking among the horses of the Indians. He waved at Ab to let him know everything was all right.

“Hello, Chief Long Fingers,” Ella said, formally, when the Indians stopped near the roof of the dugout. “I see you've found some of our cattle again.”

“I bring them back to you. Your children need them like mine need the buffalo.”

“Chief, why don't you keep that big bull calf. We owe it to you for bringing so many of our cows back.”

Ab was stunned. “What? Didn't you give them some sugar or something before?”

“Oh, Ab, one calf won't hurt. We wouldn't have any by now if it wasn't for them.”

Long Fingers told his warriors to cut the bull calf from the bunch. “Now our women will be happy to see us. We have a calf to eat, and the horses we steal, and scalps of the Utes.” He saw Snake Woman peering over the rim of the cutbank. “You make new clothes for Snake Woman.”

“Yes. I think she likes it here.”

“Maybe so she will come to our camp and cut up this calf. It is a job women like to do.”

“I'll mention it to her,” Ella said.

“Buffalo Head, tonight you come to our camp and play music on the thing that pushes your wagon like a cloud. The round one. I will play the harp with you this time.”

Matthew was rolling on the dirt threshold of the dugout, giggling.

“What?” Pete asked.

“He called Buster ‘Buffalo Head'!”

The chief and his war party drove the calf about a quarter mile downstream. As the Holcombs looked on, Kicking Dog goaded the calf into a run and killed it with his lance.

“My God, woman,” Ab said. “Why did you go and give them that calf.”

“I had to, honey. I was wrong before when I told you this land was free for the taking. It's their land, really, and we owe them something for using it.”

“Who says it's theirs?”

“It's theirs by treaty. I read it in that newspaper you got at Denver City. We'd better stay friendly with them if we don't want them to take it back.”

“I can't be friendly with a bunch of murdering savages.”

“They're not murderers.”

Ab gestured fiercely. “Didn't you see that scalp?”

“They're at war with the Utes. You went to war once, you should understand.”

“I didn't take scalps.”

“The scalps are their war medals.”

Ab gawked at his wife in silence. What had brought on this sudden love for red men? Then he recognized the fiery glaze over her eyes, and he understood. There were not enough fugitive slaves in the West. Caleb was getting better, and Ella was looking for a new cause. These Arapaho seemed available.

*   *   *

Buster got his banjo and told Snake Woman the chief wanted her to go to the Indian camp and butcher the calf. He had picked up much of the Indian hand language from her and could communicate adequately.

Snake Woman took the news as a good sign. It would give her a chance to beg Long Fingers to take her back onto the plains. She put her blanket over her shoulders and walked to the Arapaho camp several steps behind Buster.

Long Fingers and Buffalo Head made a peculiar kind of music together with the banjo and the harmonica. The banjo picker found it hard to play the correct chords with the harp blower playing the wrong notes, but Buster pretended to enjoy it. After playing, he had the honor of eating the calf tongue with the chief, looking askance at the scalp on Kicking Dog's spear as he ate.

“Whose hair is that?” he finally asked.

Long Fingers considered his reply as he chewed a mouthful of the delicacy. “Kicking Dog kills this Ute to get the horses,” he finally said. “We need more horses to hunt the buffalo now. They are harder to find. White men kill too many.”

Buster shifted his eyes to the fire and watched the flames spout from the embers.

“What do you want to say?” Long Fingers asked.

Buster looked at the chief, draped in blankets and sprawled across a buffalo robe, a feather sticking out of his hair. “I thought you said the Arapaho traded with the other tribes. Why don't you trade for your horses?”

“We have nothing left to trade with. And anyway, how will my boys prove their courage if they do not fight? They want to fight somebody, and I do not want them to fight the whites, so I take them to fight the Utes. We have been fighting Utes a long time anyway.”

“Any of your boys get killed?”

“Not this time.”

“Did you kill anybody?”

“No. I carry only my stick to count coup.”

“What's that?”

“I show my boys I have a good heart. I go to battle with a stick. I hit the Utes with it when we fight, and that is called counting coup. It means more than taking the scalp.”

“You mean, you'd rather do that than kill 'em?”

“Sometimes I kill them, then count coup. But I do not want to kill all the Utes. They are easy to steal horses from.” He smiled briefly, stroked his greasy fingers across a tuft of buffalo grass. “My boys believe you can count coup on your enemy, Buffalo Head. The one you drown.”

Buster was hoping the chief had forgotten that empty brag. He had only drowned Arbuckle's Jack in a figurative way and had mentioned it only as a joke to himself. He doubted the Arapaho would honor the counting of coup on a past identity. “Who else do you raid for horses?” he said, avoiding the matter of the drowning.

“We do not raid whites,” Long Fingers said. “I want the whites to show us how to make a ranch. Our old ways are going, but if we try to fight the whites to keep our old ways, everything will go. You tell Holcomb we do not raid his ranch. He only has one horse anyway, and it is old.”

“He wants to get more horses.”

“It changes nothing. We will catch them and bring them back to him when they get away. Then maybe so Holcomb's wife will give us one of them. That is a woman with a good heart. I am happy Holcomb brings her here. She is like you, Buffalo Head. She wants to know our way.”

*   *   *

Buster had to be back at the dugout early enough to give Caleb his mandolin lesson before bedtime. It had been decided that if Caleb could learn to play “Camptown Races” in three different keys, he could have the instrument. So he said his farewells and left not long after dark.

When he left, Snake Woman stayed behind to haggle with Long Fingers in the hand language. She asked the chief to give something to Buffalo Head so she could rejoin the Arapaho. She said Buffalo Head put little value on her and he would take almost anything in trade for her.

The chief let her know that Buffalo Head was needed to help the Arapaho stay friendly with the whites at Holcomb Ranch, and that trading to regain possession of her might insult him.

Snake Woman said she could not live with the whites much longer because the white woman was crazy and had already tried to pull her hair out several times. If Long Fingers would not take her back she would run away to join the Cheyenne.

Long Fingers said he was very good friends with all the Cheyenne and if she ran away to them he would catch her and trade her back to the Comanche, who would use her more harshly than any crazy white woman.

As she trudged back to the drafty wagon Buffalo Head made her sleep in, Snake Woman wondered why the spirits would not allow her a tribe. Between the Indian camp and the hole in the ground where the whites lived, she threw herself down violently, pulled her hair, and rubbed her face in the dirt. She prayed for a sign. She wanted to know what she had to do to be taken into a tribe and given honor. She thrashed about on the ground like a dog rolling on a carcass until she was exhausted. Then she lay on her back and stared at the sky. As she searched desperately among the stars, one of them suddenly flared and shot to the southeast, leaving a trail longer than a river across the sky.

To the southeast was Comanche range. She didn't know what it meant, but she believed the shooting star flew for only her eyes to see. The Comanche? She didn't understand. But it was only the first sign.

BOOK: Shortgrass Song
12.36Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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