Brothers of the Buffalo Page 29

  Wait for me, Wolf signed down to his mother.

  We wait, she signed back up.

  Wolf circled back to their deserted camp. He tied Wind to a small juniper. Then he crawled up a small rise. Two of Gray Head’s young men, Bull and Horns, were there. They were waiting in a little hollow on that rise above the camp. They were well concealed, but they could still see the two little girls. They sat as they had been told.

  Soldiers were walking now into the empty camp.

  “Will they be blind again?” Horns whispered.

  “Wait and see,” Bull whispered back.

  The three young men watched the approaching soldiers. Their job was to be sure that this time Ah-dleyt and Choo-lee were noticed by the white soldiers.

  Two moons ago Gray Head had tried to return the little girls to their people. He had left them on a blanket for the soldiers to find. But those blind soldiers had galloped right past them. They left the little girls sitting on the prairie, where they might have starved. Luckily, three Cheyenne scouts had happened across them days later. The girls had wandered back to the deserted camp site and were half-starved, eating wild fruit and left-behind scraps of food.

  “Why are ve’hoes so stupid?” Horns asked now. He was one of the scouts who found the little girls the first time Gray Head tried to give them back.

  “Be thankful for their blindness,” Bull replied. “If they were able to see as well as an owl in the daytime, our lives would be harder.”

  The first of the mounted soldiers had reached the far end of the camp. Amazingly, he rode right past the little girls. He did so even though Ah-dleyt was standing up, waving at the man with one hand. Her other hand still clutched the doll Wolf’s sister had given her.

  Horns looked at Wolf and rolled his eyes. “Not again,” he said.

  “No,” Wolf said, “not again. Look.”

  One of the Indian scouts, a Delaware, had gotten off his horse. He was walking toward the little girls. All three of the young men sighed with relief.

  The Delaware scout turned quickly. He looked up at the rise, looked right at the place where the three were hidden. He raised one eyebrow. A thin smile came to his lips. Then he made little signs with his right hand.

  Good. Go now.

  The Delaware scout turned back to the little girls. He went down on one knee. Ah-dleyt reached out her hand toward his.

  Bull, Horns, and Wolf crawled backward to their horses. Despite the fact that once again they had been forced to flee, one good thing had been done that day.

  As he followed the tracks into the twisting coulee, Wolf reached one hand up to the bandolier slung over his shoulder. His fingers counted the bullets. Twelve. Twelve more than most other Cheyenne men had now. Everyone was short or out of ammunition. If there were no ve’hoes nearby, he might use those bullets to hunt for game.

  But he did not dare not risk the sound of a gunshot. Ve’hoe soldiers were too close. A party of black white men led by Tonkawa scouts had been chasing them for days.

  Wolf was not sure now where those Buffalo Soldiers might be.

  The Buffalo Soldiers were not as foolish as Bearcoat. Bearcoat was the Cheyenne name for General Nelson Miles, the white chief leading the largest group of ve’hoes trying to catch Cheyennes. Bearcoat fired off his cannons every morning and every night. That made Wolf smile. It seemed as if he was trying to tell them where he was so they could avoid him.

  With the Buffalo Soldiers, the only sign of where they were was the small smoke from the cooking fires of their camps. And sometimes they made no such fires at all.

  Wolf thought this place might be safe to hunt. It was a long ride in the opposite direction of where the Buffalo Soldier campfires had last been seen. He leaned forward and ran one hand along the scabbard that hung on Wind’s right side. His rifle was not a good one. But this scabbard was one of the best ones he had ever made. He had spent a long time decorating it. He had cut the fringe just right. He had painted the leather with symbols that came to him in dreams. He felt as if it protected him. He trusted it more than his rifle.

  No man had ever been killed by his own scabbard. But Wolf had already seen two men shot dead by their own rifles. They had guns just like his. Stone Boy had been careless. He was killed when he allowed his gun to fall to the ground. It had bounced off a stone and fired, and the bullet struck him in the heart. It had killed him right away. Mouse, though, had been careful. He had gently placed his rifle on a cottonwood tree that had fallen across the trail. Then he had started to climb over the trunk. He got only partway across. He was not even touching the gun when it discharged, sending a bullet into his throat. It took some time for Mouse to die. After they buried Mouse, Black Horse and Wolf had broken that gun into pieces and scattered the pieces to the four directions.

  “A bad way to die,” Black Horse had said. “Better to be shot by ve’hoes than killed by your own weapon.”

  Wolf had not said anything. He had not even nodded his head in agreement. It was bad luck to speak about being shot.

  Probably bad luck to think about it, too.

  Wolf turned his attention again to the trail. The tracks along the stream were very fresh. He took his big war bow into his hand and nocked an arrow to the sinew string.

  The wall of a red cliff rose just ahead. Because the ravine turned and twisted so much, he could not see very far ahead. He had never been to this place before. Still, something about it felt familiar.

  I will get meat here. I will bring it back to my family. We will eat and be happy.

  Then maybe the heavy sadness he had been feeling would leave him. Then maybe he would sleep peacefully. Maybe his dreams would not take him back to the sounds of guns. He would not choke on the smoke of burning lodges. He would not smell the sweat of fleeing people. He would not see his best friend pierced by bullets, dying. He would not imagine his family suffering that same fate.

  A small brown bird was playing in the stream. The sun glistened off its back. Wolf paused for a moment to watch it. It ducked into the water and came out with something in its beak. A water insect. The bird tossed its head back to swallow, cocking one bright eye up at Wolf. Then it flew right past his face. Its wings spread a little rainbow of mist in front of him. Some of that moisture touched his forehead. He took it as a blessing.

  He continued on up the little canyon. The tracks were very fresh. Large tracks and small ones. Two animals at least. More food for their camp. He rounded another sharp bend, and Wind planted his front hooves and stopped. A big buffalo bull stood there, facing them. It was almost close enough to touch with a long lance. Its massive head was lowered. It snorted and pawed the earth.

  The old bull turned its head so that one of its great dark eyes was staring up at Wolf. Foam dripped from its mouth onto the yellow soil. Wolf raised his bow. If it charged, Wind would leap aside. Then Wolf could aim for that spot between the bull’s ribs. His arrow would bury itself up to its feathers and pierce the heart.

  But the bull did not charge. It began to walk backward, never turning its gaze away from Wolf, even as it backed around three small cottonwood trees. It reached the bend where the stream wound back into the narrow canyon. The buffalo went around the bend and was lost from sight.

  Wolf sat there for a moment. Why had it seemed as if that old buffalo was about to speak to him? He shook his head.

  “Let’s go,” he said. He kicked his heels into Wind’s sides and held his bow ready.

  They rounded the bend. The old bull was not there, but its fresh tracks were clear in the soft earth. So, too, were the tracks of other buffalo. More than two. The canyon had widened some. It looked as if it would widen out even more around the next bend. And there it seemed the canyon would end. Wolf could see where the stream was coming out high on the farthest wall. It was a box canyon. Whatever animals were here would be trapped ahead of them. The cliffs were not that high, but they certainly were too steep for buffalo to climb. Unless they were spirit beings.

  Wolf
could now hear the voice of the waterfall. Another sharp turn. The canyon opened up, and there was the waterfall. It trailed down the face of the cliff like an old woman’s white hair, unbraiding itself near the bottom into a wide fan. The pool of water below the falls was larger and deeper than Wolf had expected. And the buffalo were there.

  There were seven of them. The great bull, three cows, and three calves. One calf was brown. One was yellow. The third was as black as the carving Wolf carried in the pouch at his waist. All of them had their sides toward him. Their heads were turned in his direction. He had enough arrows. During his seventeen winters he had killed more than fifty buffalo with his arrows. It would be easy to take all seven of them here.

  Then Wolf saw a movement at the top of the cliff. He looked up and saw the soldier. He must have come from the opposite direction and climbed the slope of the hill that ended at the cliff edge over this box canyon.

  The man saw Wolf at the same instant Wolf saw him. Their eyes met. The man’s rifle barrel turned in his direction.

  Wolf recognized the man. It was his little Buffalo Soldier. Wolf thought of the long shot that man had made the day they caught the horse thieves.

  I will be dead before I can lift my bow.

  A story, a story. Let the story come.

  There were two young men whose friendship was so great that they regarded each other as brothers.

  The maidens that they loved were sisters who lived in another village.

  One day, the first of those young men went to get those two sisters. But as they traveled along,

  a great lion sprang from the forest and attacked them. It leaped upon one of the girls and knocked her down. But that first young man was a great warrior. He pulled out his sword and thrust it into the lion’s heart, killing it with one blow.

  When he rolled the lion’s body off the girl

  he saw she was not hurt, even though her body

  was covered with the lion’s blood. An idea came to him. He would test his friend’s loyalty.

  “Go,” he said to his friend’s young woman.

  “Tell my friend that your sister and I have been

  attacked by a lion.”

  Then, as she ran off, he had the first young

  woman lay herself down upon the ground

  beneath the lion. He wiped more of the lion’s blood onto his own body, crawled beneath

  the lion, and closed his eyes as if dead.

  When the second young woman reached the village,

  she ran straight to the first young man’s friend.

  “My sister and your friend have been attacked

  by a lion.”

  As soon as she spoke those words,

  the second young man leaped up.

  He did not take time to grab any weapon

  but ran as fast as he could to the place where

  the lion’s body lay on top of his friend

  and the other young woman. He leaped upon the lion.

  It was not until he began to wrestle with it

  that he realized it was dead.

  The first young man rose up and embraced him.

  “My brother,” he said, “you are a true friend indeed.”

  And if you do not know which of them

  was the better friend, then I cannot tell you.

  Off with the old rat’s head.

  ON THE CLIFF

  It had been quite a struggle making his way up the slope, picking his way through prickly pear and bushes with branches like bayonets. Nothing new about that, though. That last week, half of every day had been taken up with scrabbling through brush on a landscape where Old Nick himself might have felt at home.

  To say it was unfriendly country was an understatement. There was cholla cactus everywhere, so vicious it seemed to jump up and grab you as you tried to ride or walk past. Rocks big as boxcars were strewn about everywhere, so many that to see more than fifty feet around you, you had to get some height. But the rocky outcrops and ridges were mostly too steep for any horse to climb, even one as fine as Blaze. Thus, day after weary day they had to sweat and cuss their way up one hill after another in futile attempts to catch a glimpse of their Indians. Climbing, descending, picking the prickers out of legs and hands, then climbing yet again. Doing it so many times a man might expect to meet himself coming up whilst he was going down.

  “I figure it is your turn to climb and take a lookout, Wash,” Josh had said when they reached the base of the broad hill. “I will wait here and watch your back.”

  Then he had grinned, waiting to see if Wash would give him any argument about it, knowing full well that Wash was the one who had undertaken such a chore the last two times in a row. And also knowing that, despite how steep the slope might be, Wash liked reaching those high places better than anyone else did.

  So Wash had just slid off his horse and begun the climb without protest.

  However, as he paused to take a breather, fanning himself with his sombrero, he did think again about how it came to be that he was lucky enough to end up on those desolate Staked Plains.

  He had been a model cavalryman for the last ten months, so much so that he’d been praised by Lieutenant Pratt more than any other man in his company. And the lieutenant had rewarded him by keeping him close, trusting him as flag bearer, even engaging in man-to-man conversations with him. Treating him not like a negro servant, but as a soldier and a man. And that had been gratifying to Wash.

  But not as gratifying as he had expected. At the start, his mind has been set on doing his best, making his way up in the ranks, having enough of a career to provide for his family back home in the South. It was different now. More different than he could ever have imagined. After hearing of how well his mother and sister were doing without him, he no longer fooled himself that he and he alone could provide for them. Why, they hardly needed him at all now! And after meeting Bethany, he’d begun to think about a life other than one in uniform. In fact, nothing had made him happier now than those moments they had shared together at the fort. Those moments were now gone.

  As Charley often said, in the army no good deed goes unpunished. Wash’s outstanding conduct had meant that—along with Josh and Charley, who though they complained more than he did were actually fine soldiers themselves—he’d been hand-picked from the various companies to go with Lieutenant Pratt and his Indian scouts to maintain pursuit of the elusive Cheyennes. As always, it had been like trying to lasso the wind. The ones they were after had been moving fast since two weeks before when Lieutenant Frank Baldwin had hit Gray Head’s camp and started them all to running.

  That bold assault of Baldwin’s, outrageous as it was brave, must have been a sight to see. When Baldwin came upon Gray Head’s camp, it had been wholly by accident. Lieutenant Baldwin had been escorting an empty train of twenty-three wagons back to the Washita for supplies. He had with him but one mounted troop, Company D of the 6th, a handful of infantrymen, and four Tonkawa scouts. Gray Head still had fully a hundred warriors.

  “Baldwin, though,” Sergeant Brown had said, “is a staunch fellow with considerable grit. He drew up them empty supply wagons into two columns, put one infantry man in every other wagon alongside the driver. Then, dividin’ his scouts and cavalry so as that they spread wide on either flank, he told the bugler to sound the charge. What with them few men firing their rifles, the wagon wheels rumblin’ across that hard-packed soil, and them scouts and cavalrymen screamin’ like wildcats, it was some show. My, my.”

  Seeing all those wagons and horsemen coming at them, Gray Head’s camp had been fooled into believing they were set upon by a large force. Those hostiles were so taken by surprise that they broke and ran out onto the Staked Plains, leaving just about everything behind. Every tipi was full of all sort of belongings—robes, food, even ammunition. And in front of one of those lodges was the biggest prize of all. There on a blanket sat the youngest of the two white girls who had been taken by the Indians.

  And now, most likely
, all those fleeing Cheyennes are a hundred miles from here and still running.

  Wash wiped his face with his bandanna and looked back down. Josh, who was holding the reins of both his horse and Blaze, waved and motioned for him to go higher. Wash avoided the temptation to make an impolite gesture back at him. Climbing the hill had been something he’d wanted to do. But Lord, it was hot. The air rising off the Staked Plains behind him rippled like the heat from a cooking fire. Hot as it was, though, he knew that when night fell it would be cold enough to freeze the fires of Hades. Winter was coming on. If it was as bad as it was the previous year, their poor Cheyennes would be hard-pressed to survive. All that was left for them to do was surrender or perish.

  Halfway to the top. Wash paused again to wring out his kerchief. He let his eyes drift over the yellow and brown of the wide plain. Nothing like old Virginny. And though his life there had been mostly as a slave, Wash realized now just how much he missed it. Missed the land itself. Grass so green that it almost stopped your heart to see it. The sweet taste of ripe peaches in late summer. The heaven-bright blue of its lakes and ponds. Were it not for the curse of slavery, Virginia might have been the Garden of Eden.

  And might I be there one day with my own Eve beside me?

  The thought was a sweet one, even though he feared it was far from realistic. A month had passed since Bethany had departed for the East. And he had yet to receive a letter from her. It had broken his heart to see her go.

  Their friendship had progressed to the point where, with the permission of the sergeant and his wife, he had been making regular visits to sit, like a proper gentleman, in their little parlor and engage in conversation with their niece.

  But Bethany had not planned to be a servant for anyone—not for her relatives or for a well-off white family. Her time in the West had been but a way station for her.

  Another of her uncles, the brother of Sergeant Brown’s wife, was involved in politics in the South, one of the new breed of black politicians. He had just been elected to the United States House of Representatives. And he had kept his promise to help his bright niece gain an education. She had been granted admission to the Hampton Institute, a new normal school for former slaves and their children.