Shortgrass Song Read online

  “What are we gonna do with this thing when its finished?” Caleb asked one winter night. Buster was working by lantern light, and Caleb was practicing a song on the banjo.

  “Ride in it,” Buster said, adjusting the rawhide cables around the steering-wheel hub.

  “Where to?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe we’ll go to Colorado City and play for a couple of dances on Saturday night. Pass the hat and make some money.”

  “Can we carry anything in it?”

  “It ain’t very big,” Buster admitted. “But it’ll carry a little. And, if it works, then maybe I’ll build us a bigger one. I’ll build one out of a Conestoga that’ll carry a whole ton.”

  “What for?”

  “Go into the freight business. No oxen. No mules. No hay to buy. A man could freight between the Platte and Arkansas almost all year long the way the wind blows around here.”

  “Where are you gonna get a Conestoga wagon?” Caleb asked with a smirk. The Conestogas he had seen were high enough to walk under without bumping his head, and almost as big as his house. He knew Buster didn’t have the money to buy something like that.

  “That’s what I need this little one for,” Buster explained. “I can use it to show folks how a big one will work. Maybe some of those rich gold men up in Denver will put up some money for me.”

  “Will they put up some money for me, too?” Caleb asked.

  “Sure. You’re my partner, ain’t you? Now, tune that thumb string up. Can’t you hear it’s flat?”

  * * *

  The wind wagon was ready to roll by February, but its captain decided to postpone the maiden voyage until the snows melted. He did not want for inventions to tinker with, however. Javier had been complaining about the wolves killing his calves, and wanted Buster to do something about it.

  “Why don’t you make something we can use,” he asked one evening, “instead of cutting up that wagon? Make one of these.” He slapped a newspaper down in front of Buster and pointed to an ad in the center column. The ad included a woodcut of a diabolical firearm called The Wolf-Getter. It was made to be driven into the ground on a steel spike. The trigger was a hook that extended forward into the path of the bullet. The idea was to bait the hook with meat, load a metallic cartridge into the breech, and leave the weapon cocked in the woods. When a wolf or another predator came along and tried to eat the bait, the gun would discharge, blasting the carnivore in the head almost point-blank.

  Buster bought an old single-shot pistol from a gunsmith in Colorado City and had it bored to take a forty-five-caliber cartridge. Then all he had to do was mount a spike on the butt of the pistol and rig the trigger with an extension that ended in front of the muzzle.

  Javier baited the wolf-getter with veal from a wolf kill and set it in the timber about a mile up the creek.

  The first victim was one of the dogs that Cheyenne Dutch had left at Holcomb Ranch. Caleb cried for an hour.

  The next victim was a white wolf. Javier made a daily point of loading and setting the wolf-getter from then on. Raccoons, foxes, and coyotes triggered the gun more often than wolves, but any dent in the predator population was welcomed by Javier.

  * * *

  When the snows finally melted in the spring of 1864, they joined one night with the runoff of a thunderstorm in the mountains and flooded Monument Creek. The torrent filled in Buster’s irrigation ditch and ripped away the timber and rock dam he had begun to build to impound his irrigation reservoir. Then the storm roared down onto the plains, pounding the land with rain and hail. The creek ran icy cold, choked with hailstones the size of hens’ eggs. It climbed high enough on its banks to lap into the old dugout nobody had used since Buster moved into the toolshed. The winter wheat was beaten flat, annihilated.

  Buster was slogging through the mud, surveying the damage, when the low drone of a mouth harp reached his ears. He hadn’t seen Long Fingers since he went to the Indian Territory after Caleb, two years before, but he knew the chief’s musical style. He looked downstream to see Long Fingers riding alone.

  “Howdy-do, Buffalo Head,” the chief said. He was still wearing winter fur, and his magnificence surpassed that of any Indian Buster had ever seen. His mood, however, was somber.

  “Hello, chief. Look what the weather did to us.” He swept his arms to indicate the obliterated wheat field.

  “It is a circle. Your tribe does not know the circle of time?”

  “My tribe?”

  “African Baptist.”

  “Oh, yeah. Well, where my tribe comes from the circle goes a different way. I ain’t never seen no hail like this.”

  “You better learn the way the circle goes here, or it will kill you.”

  When they arrived at the cabin, Long Fingers merely glanced at Ab’s peg leg. He shook Javier’s hand and gladly agreed to join the Holcombs for supper. While Buster cooked, the chief gave the reason for his visit.

  “Kicking Dog is a dog soldier now with the Cheyenne,” he said. “He makes big trouble for everybody. On the beaver moon, before the winter, he took a bunch of my boys away from me and they catch a white woman at a ranch on the Platte. I think they sell her to the Sioux. He makes war for everybody. We have no buffalo. No good land. Kicking Dog believes he can kill all the whites and have buffalo again, and land. Now he is coming this way. I think he will come to get your cattle, Holcomb.”

  Ab regarded the chief suspiciously.

  “The Comanche want that boy back.” He pointed at Caleb. “The little one. Snake Woman tells them that boy is strong medicine for them. I think maybe Kicking Dog will catch him to sell to the Comanche.”

  Caleb knew Long Fingers was a friend, but he had a terrible dread of any Indian that looked and pointed at him that way.

  “Comanche?” Ab said. He scratched his head. He had almost forgotten Buster’s wild tale about the winter in the Indian Territory. “Buster, what in Hades does he mean?”

  “It’s Snake Woman. She thinks the spirits gave her a sign to make Caleb be an Indian. She’s got the Comanche all believin’ it.”

  Ab took the first good look at Caleb he had indulged in for a long time. He had a hard time envisioning Indians riding all the way across Colorado Territory for one scrawny boy. It didn’t make sense, but he was not about to take any chances with Caleb’s safety. He had Ella’s ultimatum hanging over his head like the ridge log that had killed her.

  “We better post a guard by day and keep the doors barred by night. Javier, you and me and Buster will take turns standing guard on that hill across the creek. You can see a long way from there.”

  Buster frowned. He had too much to do to spend every third day standing on a hill, looking for Indians. “Matthew could stand guard, too,” he said. “He’s fifteen now, and he can shoot good.”

  Matthew couldn’t believe his ears. Ol’ Buffalo Head rarely had anything good to say about him. “Will you let me, Papa?” he asked.

  “Well, all right,” Ab said.

  After supper the boys ran to Buster’s shed to get the instruments so Long Fingers could hear “Old Dan Tucker.” He and Buffalo Head were alone on the cabin porch for a minute.

  “What else have you heard about Snake Woman?” Buster asked. “Last time I saw her, she was gettin’ big.” He indicated her shape around his own stomach.

  “She has a papoose now,” Long Fingers said. “Very black, with hair on the head curly, like the buffalo. They say it is your son.”

  Buster pictured the baby, felt his remorse. He should have been strong enough to resist Snake Woman in the dugout.

  * * *

  The hailstorm pulled a chinook down from the mountains. It blustered across the plains and caused the men to walk around outside with their hands on their hats. Wind conditions were perfect for the maiden voyage of the Thompson Wind Wagon. The ground was still muddy, but Buster wanted to test the wind wagon while Long Fingers was at the ranch so the old chief could see how the wind could move a wagon like a cloud.

  �
��Well, do you want us to come with you, or what?” Ab asked as Buster hitched a horse to the buggy. Buster and Caleb had dismasted the vehicle and covered it with its own sail so no one would figure out what it was. They intended it to surprise.

  “No, sir,” Buster said. “Just stand there on the porch and we’ll ride back by and demonstrate. Don’t let on what we’re up to, chief.”

  Long Fingers gave the sign for silence, putting the fingers of his right hand over his thin lips.

  The inventors drove south and disappeared behind a rise in the ground about a mile away.

  Ab waited a quarter hour. “Pete, go saddle me a horse,” he said. “I’m going to find out what they’re up to.”

  Pete sprinted for the shed and soon brought Pard back, cinched under Ab’s hull. Buster had built a socket in the right stirrup of Ab’s saddle that enabled him to keep the end of his peg leg firmly seated. Just as he fixed the peg in the socket and got ready to ride, he saw Buster’s buggy horse running back toward the ranch, her hooves kicking up clods of mud, her head high and cocked to one side as if fleeing from the worst order of horror.

  Over the swell in the prairie a white triangle appeared. It grew until it looked as broad across the bottom as a chief’s tepee. Under it a black dot appeared, rolling toward the ranch so fast that the buggy horse could barely keep her distance ahead of it.

  “What in Hades…” Ab muttered.

  Pete squinted.

  Matthew and Javier stood with their mouths open.

  “The wind pushes it like a cloud,” Long Fingers said, pointing.

  The buggy horse ran right past the cabin. Pard caught her fear, snorted, and perked his ears forward. He heard the rattle of the buggy, saw the cloud-sail billowing over it, and pulled against the reins in Ab’s hands.

  The wind wagon sailed past the cabin, Buster grinning at the wheel, Caleb waving with the sheet in one hand. Pard lunged against the reins until the hollering voices faded away.

  Ab kicked his mount and gave chase.

  With a smile on his face, Long Fingers jumped from the porch and ran for his horse in the corral.

  Buster turned the wagon to the starboard to circle the ranch again. “Jibe!” he ordered, and Caleb swung the boom across the wagon. “Beam reach. The wind’s at our stern now.”

  Caleb followed the commands and glanced behind. “Hey, Papa’s racin’ us!” he said.

  Buster turned and saw Ab riding in his wake, waving his hat over his head. Caleb waved back. There was no catching the wind wagon for Ab. Pard refused to approach it. The wheels kicked up chunks of mud and splattered them against the bottom of the buggy.

  Long Fingers slipped a bridle bit between his mount’s teeth, grabbed a handful of mane, and jumped on. He galloped through the corral gate, angling across the plains to intercept the cloud on wheels.

  The wind wagon drove into an old buffalo wallow like a sloop into an ocean swell. Its wheels left the ground when it shot out, and the springs under the wagon seat almost launched Caleb overboard.

  “Turnin’ starboard again,” Buster said. “Give me a close reach when I make the turn.”

  Hand over hand, he turned the wheel as Caleb hauled the sheet in. But the boy took in too much rope, and the boom swung down the center line, the stiff crosswind pushing against the sail. The wagon stalled; its right wheels quit the ground. Buster tried to correct to the port, but the wagon balanced precariously on two wheels for a long moment, then fell over sideways, the pine mast slapping against the ground.

  Buster and Caleb landed on the canvas and lay there laughing until Ab rode up. Pard still didn’t like the flapping white canvas but could bear to approach it on the ground.

  “Buster!” Ab said, jumping down from his horse and pivoting on his peg. “What do you mean carrying that boy in that contraption? Are you trying to kill him?” He stalked toward the overturned buggy, his fists clenched in anger. “Pick him up, let me look at him!”

  Buster pulled Caleb to his feet as Long Fingers arrived. Ab shook the boy, turned him around, felt his arms and legs.

  “He’s fine,” Buster said.

  Ab bent over Caleb and scowled at him. “If you ever get in that thing again, I’ll take this stick off my knee and whop you with it. I’ll whop you, too, Buster. You ought to know better.” He hopped back to his horse and trotted to the ranch.

  Caleb knew now that his father would never forgive him. He never heard Ab talk to Pete or Matthew in such a tone. His brothers could have all the fun they wanted, but he wasn’t allowed to have any. He was not a full-fledged son of Ab Holcomb. He could sense that he was nothing more than a trial and a burden to his father. It had to be because of the way his mother died. He would pay for that as long as he lived at Holcomb Ranch.

  Long Fingers sat stoically on his horse, as if he had missed Ab’s entire outburst. “Now I learn something new,” he said to Buster. “A wagon is not always a wagon. It can go like a cloud with the wind. Now you will have a new name, and it is Man-on-a-Cloud.”

  Buster put a hand on Caleb’s shoulder as the boy watched his father ride back to the ranch.

  “Good,” Buster said. “I never much liked being called Buffalo Head.”

  TWENTY-TWO

  Matthew loved few things more than the feel of a gun in his hands, and hated few things more than standing orders not to shoot. On his first two turns at guard duty, he had panicked everyone on the place by shooting at shadows in the woods. But now he hadn’t fired a round in three weeks. His father had guaranteed him that if he gave another false alarm, he would scalp Matthew himself.

  He was sitting on the bald hill west of the creek, holding a new Henry repeater his father had bought in Denver. Since he couldn’t shoot it, he aimed and made various noises intended to resemble a rifle blast. One of his favorite targets was the dam Buster was building up the creek valley. He could imagine the water leaking out of it through a hundred bullet holes. Another favorite target was the wildflower garden near the cabin. First he would aim at the orange row, then the red one, then the blue one. When he felt particularly sure of his marksmanship, he would aim at the cut flowers on his mother’s grave, though, at that distance, the bead at the end of the barrel could have covered four gravestones at once.

  The sun was two hours high, and aiming at things was already a monotony. Matthew sat down on the grassy pate of the hill and watched the clouds float across the sky, slowly, the way time passed on guard duty. He watched Buster and Caleb climbing on the dam in the creek bed. He saw Javier training a colt in the corral.

  Ab and Pete were working cattle somewhere. Matthew swept Monument Park with his eyes, looking for them, from the mountains to the Pinery and southward out over the open plains. He spotted a rider in the shadows along the creek bed downstream and watched for a second, trying to figure out if it was Pete or Ab. Then there was a second horseman, and he knew it had to be both of them. Then there was a third.

  Those were not Holcomb horses. Those were … Cheyenne!

  He fired his rifle in the air and ran for his horse. By the time he reached the creek he could hear the warriors whooping. A tingling sensation crept from under his shirttail and crawled all the way up into his hat. It gave him power. He rode to the top of the cutbank about the time Buster and Caleb got there on foot. He saw Pete and his father coming in off the plains, barely beating the Indians to the cabin. Javier was there, too, shooting a pistol at the attackers.

  The war party had come so quickly that Matthew, Buster, and Caleb were unable to reach the safety of the house. The three of them dropped back under the rim of the creek bank for protection. Gunshots were already coming from the cabin.

  Matthew dismounted. Holding his reins, he rested his elbows on top of the creek bank. He aimed at the Indians circling the house. One of them climbed up on the roof to look down the chimney. Matthew took careful aim and fired. To his surprise, the brave twisted in the air and rolled down the cedar shakes, dead.

  “That’s Kicking Dog on the pa
int horse,” Buster said, crawling up by Matthew’s side. “Give me the Henry, and take Caleb with you into the woods. I’ll hold ’em back.”

  “I ain’t givin’ my rifle to nobody,” Matthew said. “You take Caleb to the woods yourself.”

  “Give me the gun, boy.” Buster reached for the rifle barrel, but Matthew jerked it away and pointed it at him.

  “I’ll shoot if you try to take it, Buffalo Head.”

  Buster saw a hateful glint in Matthew’s eyes and considered it a possibility that the boy might really shoot him. He had no choice but to grab Caleb by the arm and run for the timber across the creek as Matthew fired again at the Cheyenne and levered a fresh round from the magazine.

  Buster and Caleb crossed the creek below the dam and hid in the trees. When they turned to watch the battle, they saw Matthew retreating, riding across the creek. Four braves leapt the bank behind him and chased him into the trees. Just before the Indian ponies ran into the timber, a puff of black smoke knocked one brave from his horse, and the others turned and ran into the trees at another place farther down. The downed Indian tried to get up, but another blast of smoke erupted from the trees, and the brave rolled into the water.

  “Matthew got another one,” Caleb said, pointing.

  “Come on,” Buster said between gasps for breath. “We got to find more cover.”

  The gunfire from the cabin faded as Buster and Caleb retreated farther up the creek, looking for a thick stand of trees. Buster knew of a little draw that entered Monument Creek from the west above Holcomb Ranch. A thicket poured down from the foothills and filled the draw. It wasn’t very big, but it was the best chance of survival for him and Caleb. He wished for a gun. Only Matthew stood between him and the three raiding warriors, and he wasn’t sure the boy could hold them off long.

  Two loud blasts sounded downstream, and Buster knew they had come from Matthew’s repeater. He peeked out from the tree line and saw Matthew retreating again, only two Indians chasing him now. When the boy turned into the timber again, the Indians stopped and talked a moment before going in after him. One of them went through the willows lining the creek bank and rode up the hill to the west. The other charged east across the creek. They had decided to go around the boy with the repeater. They weren’t after Matthew anyway. They wanted Caleb. The Comanche had probably offered a bounty of a dozen horses for his return.