Shortgrass Song Read online

  He couldn’t explain the gunfire that came next. It was too torrential for accident; too cruel for intent. The body of the little girl jerked, then crumpled and reeled under the hail of bullets. Women and children poured out of the burning lodge. Some dropped to their knees for mercy, some ran for their lives, but none escaped the deluge of lead. One wounded old woman attempted to crawl away. A soldier rode over her and fired down into her head.

  Most of the soldiers rode on then, but two got down to search the bodies. When one pulled out a knife and grabbed a handful of hair, Horace holstered his pistol and turned away, choking to keep the whiskey down in his stomach.

  A wounded soldier was returning from the fight in the creek bed, almost falling from his saddle for loss of blood. Horace caught the man before he fell and guided his horse back through the smoldering Sand Creek village. He looked at the bodies he had galloped past earlier. All women and children, except for one young brave.

  Horace helped the wounded man to the hospital tent, then sat in the sand outside to watch the swarms of soldiers riding like vultures on the winds, looking for victims. He could hear the roar of the howitzers and the rattle of pistol shots.

  “Are you wounded, too?” the surgeon asked.

  Horace shook his head.

  “Run out of bullets?”

  “No. I didn’t fire a single round, thank the Lord.”

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Long Fingers’s wife lay behind him in a pit they had scratched into the creek bank with a knife. After each volley, she poured the powder down his rifle muzzle, patched the bullet with a bit of cloth, and rammed it home with the rod. A constant rain of sand fell on them, and the grit kept jamming the lock on the chief’s rifle.

  After assaulting the creek from every quarter, the soldiers had failed to rout the defenders. But the Indians were running low on shot and powder, and Long Fingers knew that another wave or two of soldiers would finish them.

  He caught Black Kettle’s attention across the creek bed. The Cheyenne chief had dug in nearby, his wife shot several times but still living. They used the sign language to organize a final desperate maneuver.

  The women and children would attempt a mass retreat up the creek bed while the warriors covered their escape. Then the men would bolt in every direction, dispersing the soldiers. Maybe some of them could escape in that way. Otherwise they would all die.

  Long Fingers gave the shout, and the women and children jumped from their trenches, running up the creek bed. The warriors staggered their gunfire to hold the soldiers back, but a vast wave of white men rushed down on them.

  Long Fingers fired, rolled out of his pit, and prepared to meet the attackers with his hands. He would hold back as many as he could until his wife had died or escaped. Perhaps she could hide between the sand hills and make her way north.

  As he glanced over his shoulder to watch out for her, he saw white men on the creek bank above her. One of them—buckskinned and top-hatted—slid down the sandy embankment in pursuit of the defenseless women and children: ugly features, hobbling gait, iron-gray shocks of hair jutting out from under the dowdy hat. The chief whirled to protect his wife, but Dutch caught her, tackling her from behind. The scout grabbed her hair, wrenched her head back, and drew his knife.

  Long Fingers was there, swinging his rifle stock. He knocked the scout’s head out from under his feathered beaver hat. His wife jumped up and ran again. The chief shoved his knife between Dutch’s ribs and prepared to drive the blade around to the chest, but bullets struck him in the back, and he could not finish it.

  He fell on Dutch and rolled over to stare at the sky. His body would not work after the shock of the slugs. Warriors were retreating behind their families, running past him, pausing to fire, then running again. Sand and smoke blurred the sky.

  A blanket fell beside him. Kicking Dog was there, rolling him onto the wool. He grabbed two corners and ordered two braves to take the others. They carried Long Fingers up the creek bank, saw the soldiers scattering in pursuit of victims. They sprinted around a bend with the chief and collapsed, dropping the blanket. One of them climbed the bank to look for the best avenue of escape.

  “Why do you help me?” Long Fingers asked. “Leave me here and run.”

  Kicking Dog was on his knees, heaving for air. “I am taking you north,” he said. “I want you to hear the scorn of your people. I want you to see them laugh at your pain.”

  The brave came down from the creek bank. “They are running all around, shooting at the people, but they are scattered out. Maybe we will get away if we lie down and hide when they come close.”

  Kicking Dog grabbed the corners of the woolen litter and prepared to run. “Now you will tell your people it is time to fight,” he said.

  Long Fingers shook his head. “They will kill us all if we fight.”

  “What do we have to live for? We have no food, no land, no honor.”

  “Our tribe is the mother of all people,” Long Fingers said as the blanket tightened under his weight. “The children have no hope who have no mother.”

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Sometimes Caleb and Buster lost track of the time at night as they practiced in the toolshed where Buster lived. On cold nights they would build a fire in the sheet-metal forge and play for hours. If they went on too late, Caleb generally spent the night in the shed with Buster. He had a cot there that was just as comfortable as his bunk in the cabin.

  Through this arrangement, Caleb had made a wonderful discovery. When he wasn’t in the cabin, his father assumed that he was with Buster. And when he left the toolshed late at night, Buster assumed he was going home. If he wanted to stay up past his bedtime, all he had to do was leave Buster’s shed and wander around the Holcomb homestead. Then he could sneak quietly into the cabin whenever he got sleepy.

  He had no fear of the night as long as Wild Man stayed with him, and Wild Man would follow Caleb anywhere. Wild Man was the surviving hound left at Holcomb Ranch by Cheyenne Dutch four years before. He had grown into a ridge-hackled protector of considerable size, strength, and courage. He disappeared sometimes for days, then came down from the mountains, lame and bleeding from fighting with wild animals. Caleb would nurse him back to form and sneak him food at all hours.

  One moonless night, Caleb left Buster’s toolshed and headed toward the cabin with Wild Man at his heels. He passed by the bunkhouse where Javier lived alone. The Mexican foreman would have the place to himself until the ranch could get more cattle and hire cowboys to work them.

  When Caleb reached his home, he stopped to look up at the stars. They covered the sky like sugar sprinkled thick on a soot-blackened hearth. He had tunes in his head. His fingertips still tingled from plucking music from the instruments. He sucked a measure of cold air in through his nostrils and scorned the houses of civilized men.

  After quietly picking up an armload of wood from the pile, he left the cabin behind and walked toward a bend in the creek upstream. He made his fires there on cold nights, out of sight of the cabin. He would quench the fire with creek water before finally coming home, and hide the ashes under cow chips.

  A twisted bundle of dead grass took the flame from his match and passed it to the kindling above, then to the sticks and split logs. He leaned back against the creek bank with Wild Man pressed to his side and pulled his harmonica out of his coat pocket. He watched the orange sparks rise as he played and studied the lines of the Rampart Range, so strange and distant in this darkness.

  He played the harmonica low and mournfully until his hands got so cold that he had to shove them into his pockets. The warmth of the fire and the dog contented him, and he rested his head against the creek bank to look at the sky. The sounds of the popping fire lulled him, and the sky became blacker and filled with fanciful visions of horses and mountains.

  He woke when Wild Man moved suddenly, felt the sting of smoke in his nostrils. It was as if the sun had risen under him. The prairie was on fire! The grass at his very feet was bu
rning, and the orange rope of flame was spreading outward from his fire. He jumped to his feet and began stomping, but the fire spread faster than he could put it out. He ran desperately to the creek and filled his hat with cold water. He climbed the bank again, poured the water in the path of the grass fire. But his hat would not hold enough. A mischievous wind came down from the north and fanned the blaze toward the Holcomb cabin.

  The winter had been a dry one, and the grass was like tinder. Each blade flared briefly and lit the next. Caleb thought about the firebreaks. Buster had plowed them around the ranch to keep prairie fires from burning down the buildings—three giant semicircles of plowed-under grass, one inside the next. The ends of the curves ran down to the creek, completing the ring of protection. But Caleb had built his fire inside the innermost ring. No break stood between the fire he had set and the buildings where his friends and family lived.

  Frantically, he ran to the creek to fill his hat with water again, but the fire had spread beyond his control. Wild Man romped around him in confused excitement. Finally Caleb abandoned hope and sprinted to the cabin to warn his father.

  “Papa!” he yelled, bursting in through the cabin door. He heard his father move in bed. “Fire!”

  Ab appeared at his bedroom door, the right leg of his long handles swinging empty below the knee.

  “The grass is burnin’!” Caleb said.

  His father hopped to the door of the cabin and looked north. “That’s inside the firebreak!” he said. He looked at Caleb. “Why are you dressed at this hour? Why aren’t you in bed?”

  Caleb couldn’t answer.

  “What in Hades have you done, boy?”

  “I don’t know,” he said, his tears catching the orange flare of the approaching fire.

  Matthew and Pete had woken and stumbled out of their room.

  “Go wake Javier and Buster up,” Ab ordered. “Hurry!”

  Caleb tore away from the cabin.

  “Get dressed!” Ab said, hopping back to his room. “Matthew, you go turn the horses out. Pete, soak some sacks with water!”

  The fire had almost reached the cabin by the time all the men and boys were dressed. Ab ordered them to beat the fire out upwind of the cabin. “Let it burn around the house!” he said. “Just keep it away from the logs. Caleb!”

  The boy was standing between the fire and the cabin, coughing in the smoky air. He wanted to do something, but didn’t know how.

  “Get in the house!” his father ordered.

  Caleb looked at the fire and pointed.

  “Get in the house before you choke to death!”

  He ran past Matthew on the way to the cabin.

  “Stupid!” his brother said.

  Through the cabin window, Caleb watched them fight his fire. His tears and the uneven panes of glass blurred and bent the images into unearthly visions. He watched helplessly as they split the line of fire around the cabin. Then they beat the flames down with wet sacks in front of the bunkhouse and in front of Buster’s toolshed. They couldn’t save the corrals. The rails went up like match-sticks and crumbled to embers.

  After the flames passed the buildings, the firefighters worked the edges, letting the grass burn itself out inside the firebreak. When they were sure it was out, they trudged back to the cabin.

  Caleb lay facedown on his bed when he saw them coming. He was full of shame. He dreaded facing any of them, especially his father.

  “… but it’s lucky,” Buster was saying when they came in. “We would have burned up all the grass from here to Colorado City if we hadn’t plowed them firebreaks.”

  “You mean Caleb would have,” Matthew said.

  “What was that boy doing?” Ab asked. “I thought he was with you, Buster.”

  “He left the shed. Said he was goin’ home. I guess he wanted to sit out by a campfire. He didn’t get to go up to the mountains with Pete and Matthew when you took ’em huntin’. I guess he wanted to see what it was like.”

  “I had reasons for not taking him hunting. He’s not old enough, and he’s not up to riding those mountain trails.”

  “He would have burned the mountains down,” Matthew said.

  “I know a place to take him hunting with no dangerous trails,” Javier said. “Up on the divide where the Pinery comes out of the mountains.”

  “There’s plenty of deer up there,” Buster said. “Me and Javier could take him.”

  Matthew stomped his boot on the floor. “He dang near burned our whole ranch up! How come he gets to go huntin’?”

  “Hush!” Ab said. “Nobody’s going anywhere except to bed. We’ll have to get up early and find the horses.”

  Caleb pretended to be asleep. Even when Matthew poked him, he lay as still as a corpse.

  “Leave him alone,” Pete said.

  They were too tired to argue and soon went to sleep.

  Caleb dreamed of fire, but when he woke, it all seemed like a vague nightmare. He felt glad to be awake as he walked groggily out to the cabin porch to pee, relieved to be free of the shame he had felt in his dream.

  Then his eyes focused, and he saw the charred ground spreading all around his house. He saw the burned trunks of the cottonwood trees and was mortified to think that he might have killed them after Buster had gone to so much trouble to plant them and make them grow. He saw the black corral posts smoldering near the bunkhouse.

  He was almost anxious for his punishment. He wanted to stop feeling guilty. But day after day the black ground reminded him of his foolishness, and his father refused to speak of it. He would do anything to make up for his stupidity. He would forget about riding and roping, and let the plow drag him. He didn’t deserve to go hunting. He would build a new corral all by himself. He yearned to make it right.

  But his father wouldn’t forgive him. He wouldn’t even address the subject. He wouldn’t let Caleb make amends. And that was his punishment.

  II

  GLORY & HORROR

  1871

  TWENTY-SIX

  Caleb picked up a half-rotten log and hefted it over his head. He dropped it in place at the top of the log wall, pieces of decayed wood shaking loose and falling in his eyes. Of all his hated jobs, building the homestead huts no one would ever live in demoralized him the most. Buster had taught him to love fine workmanship, but he was not allowed to use any of it in the rotten little log shacks or the crooked sod huts his father made him build in mock satisfaction of the homestead laws.

  As he shook the wood flakes down the legs of his overalls, he saw a rider coming along Monument Creek from the north. He knew at a glance it was his oldest brother, the last person he cared to see.

  Matthew loped to the square of stacked logs, his full-sleeved red gingham shirt flapping in the wind, and reined in his spotted horse. “Had any whores since I been gone?” Matthew asked, resting his hand arrogantly on the grip of his Colt revolver.

  “None of your business.”

  “That’s what I thought. How old are you now?”

  “I’m four years younger than you. Can’t you figure it out?”

  “You’re seventeen and you ain’t had you a whore yet? What are you waitin’ on? I had my first one when I was…”

  “I know, when you were fourteen. You’ve only told me a couple of thousand times.”

  “Hell, even Pete got him one when he was sixteen. As often as you and Buster go down to Colorado City to play at them dances, I would think you could have had you a dozen whores by now.”

  “Maybe I have.”

  “Like hell you have. How’s my house comin’?”

  Caleb picked up another log and threw it in place. “What difference does it make to you? You aren’t gonna live in it.”

  “I might want to camp out here once a year or so. Just so I can tell them up at the land office that I lived here. What’s that other load of logs doin’ up the creek on the next quarter section?”

  “I have to build another shack there.”

  “For who?”

>   “Some fellow named Sam Dugan that Papa just hired.”

  “He’s hirin’ more men?” Matthew asked.

  “Just one to take Blackie’s place.”

  “What happened to Blackie?”

  “If you stayed around here more, you’d know. Papa fired him.”

  “Fired him for what?”

  “Same reason he fires anybody. Blackie proved up on his claim, and Papa bought him out. Didn’t need him anymore, so he fired him and hired this fellow Sam to file on more land.”

  “Papa don’t fire nobody just because they prove up. Blackie must have done somethin’ else to get fired.” Matthew rode around the pitiful log box Caleb was throwing together. “Where’s my door gonna go?” he asked.

  “If you want a door in it, you can saw it in yourself.”

  “Saw it? I could rake a hole through them rotten logs with my spurs.”

  “Well, do it, then. It’s supposed to be your house anyway.”

  “It’s your job to build it, though, and I say it’s stupid to build a house without no door.”

  “I don’t know why you’d even care,” Caleb said. “You won’t ever use it except maybe to piss on, and I doubt you’ll even come around to do that. You spend all your time whorin’ in Denver and Colorado City while Pete does all your work.”

  Caleb heard the saddle leather creak and thought Matthew was coming down after him. But Matthew had only thought of tangling with Caleb for an instant. Caleb was getting too stout from all that work he did afoot.

  “You better watch your smart mouth or I’ll climb down and clean your plow,” Matthew threatened. “I haven’t been whorin’ any more than you have. I have me a proper sweetheart now. I’m gonna ask her to marry me. I just went to Denver to get her a ring.”