Shortgrass Song Read online

  A dog snarled at his heels as buzzards circled overhead. A rank odor filled his nostrils, and he willed his eyes to focus. Strange people moved around him—men crouching low for a fight, women yanking naked children away. Through them rushed a lean warrior in breechcloth and leggings, his long, flying braids wrapped in spirals of fur, his eyes hot with love of battle. He drew a lance over his shoulder as he charged, turned sideways, and skipped, gathering his weight for the thrust.

  A sharp voice barked, and the warrior with the spear loosened his grip, his palm sliding harmlessly along the shaft as his arm whipped toward his target. His startled eyes cut away from Buster, and Buster followed them.

  From the lodge against which the wind wagon lay, a dark man emerged, holding back the bearskin that covered the entrance hole. Hair fell long and loose around his broad face, and a single black-tipped feather protruded sideways from behind his head. The breadth of his jaw was severe, his mouth straight and thin lipped, his nose like an eagle’s beak. He wore a tawny suit of tanned skins, colored with beads, porcupine quills, and strips of fur. His voice knifed again toward the brave with the spear, and his eyes landed on the intruder.

  The black man forced a grin. As the dark chief came to stand over him, Buster reached for his shirt pocket. Several warriors had gathered with spears or bows—one with a flintlock rifle—but only the brave with the fur-spiraled braids seemed ready to kill and brandished his lance again when the black man reached for his pocket. Buster produced only a harmonica.

  He put the instrument in his mouth, blew a single note, and scanned his audience. He tripped up the scale. The chief smiled. Buster began playing “Old Dan Tucker,” shuffling his feet in time among the buffalo chips. He stopped on a sour note when the chief grabbed his wrist and lifted him.

  “Do you speak the English?” the chief asked.

  Buster nodded, felt his knees wobble under him.

  “I am Long Fingers. What are you called?”

  “Buster.”

  “Buster,” Long Fingers repeated, amused at the sound of the thing. “You make music like I hear at Cherry Creek. You have a fiddle?”

  “Yes, sir,” Buster said.

  “You will make music with that and eat some meat with us.” Long Fingers turned to speak to his braves, then shouted at some squaws, who scattered.

  The brave with the spear finally lowered it, growling with obvious disdain.

  Long Fingers grunted at him. “Kicking Dog wants to kill you, but I will not let him,” he said, turning to Buster.

  “I tell him your scalp is no good.” He put his hand on Buster’s head and felt his hair. “He calls you Buffalo Head, but I think the hair is not the same as tike buffalo.”

  “I wouldn’t know,” Buster said. “I ain’t seen no buffalo yet.” He scratched the curly growth of his ragged beard. “Sorry about your tent,” he said, pointing stiffly.

  “It is your wagon turned over, not my lodge.”

  Men began reaching for Buster’s belongings, showing particular interest in the sail on the guitar and banjo rigging.

  “You have a strange way with your wagon,” Long Fingers said. “Where is your horse to pull it?”

  “I don’t have one,” Buster admitted. “Been pullin’ it myself.” He watched nervously as the braves rifled through his property.

  “You say you pull it, but I see it going the wrong way. The back of it comes down on my lodge. And you cannot pull it from inside. Kicking Dog says he saw you inside. How do you pull it, then? Why do you fly the white flag?”

  “Well, I was ridin’ in the wagon,” Buster explained. “And the wind was pushin’ me with this sail.” He pressed his palm against the piece of old wagon sheet to show Long Fingers how it would catch the wind.

  The chief squinted his eyes and studied the wind wagon’s sail. “How far?”

  “Just two or three miles.”

  “You think the wind pushes your wagon. It is a hill for two miles where you come from and you go down the hill. I do not think the wind pushes you.” Long Fingers gestured skyward. “The wind pushes clouds. Take the flag down and use these things to make music. That is what they are for. A wagon is not a cloud.”

  The Indians helped Buster put his milk wagon back on its wheels and watched as he took apart the catgut shrouds that had held his mast in place. They surrounded him, spoke in their language, laughed frequently. Kicking Dog looked into the crate and squalled when he found the horse pistol. He held it high for all the warriors to see.

  A woman approached, wearing a calf-length deerskin dress and moccasins. She led a fat dog on a rope and carried a large club. She spoke timidly, her eyes on the ground. When Long Fingers grunted in approval, she raised the club. But before she could hit the animal, Kicking Dog shouted and stepped forward with Buster’s horse pistol. He pointed the pistol at the animal and shot it in the head, splattering brains and blood across the sandy ground. The squaw dragged the carcass away, leaving a trail of gore.

  The warrior shook the pistol in the air and laughed, then threw it back into Buster’s crate.

  “Kicking Dog says your gun is good only to kill dogs,” Long Fingers said. “No good for hunting buffalo, or fighting.”

  Buster figured the dog must have bitten one of the children. The casual way in which Kicking Dog had killed it made him nervous. And now the warrior was looking at him the same way he had looked at the dog, muttering something in an accusing tone of voice.

  “Kicking Dog says the black people are only slaves of the whites,” Long Fingers said. “I hear this same thing in Cherry Creek. You are a slave?”

  Buster hardly suspected that the Indians doubled as slave hunters. He decided to tell them the truth. Maybe they would respect him for escaping the whites. “The blacks who live in the South are slaves,” he said, trying to put a string back on his guitar with shaking hands. “I lived there. I was a slave. But I escaped.”

  Kicking Dog drank from one of Buster’s canteens as the chief translated for him. It seemed to Buster as if the chief were serving the brave.

  “Now he says he was one time a slave, too,” the chief said, listening to Kicking Dog boast. “The Ute catch him when he was a boy. He killed three of them when he escaped. He wants to know how many Buffalo Head killed when he escaped?”

  Buster held up his finger. “One.” He didn’t much like being called Buffalo Head.

  “How did you kill this one?”

  “Drowned him.”

  The warriors muttered among themselves when Long Fingers translated. It was most glorious to kill one’s enemies hand to hand. Kicking Dog threw the canteen back in the wagon and asked another question.

  Long Fingers smiled. “Kicking Dog believes there are no more white men in the east. He believes they have all crossed our land now and there are no more of them. He does not believe there can be any more.”

  Buster looked Kicking Dog in the eyes. The little warrior may have been scary, but he sure was ignorant. “Tell him he ain’t even seen the half of ’em yet.”

  When he got the answer, Kicking Dog stalked away to his tepee.

  “I tell him that before,” Long Fingers said. “I go across the plains two years ago to see how farming works. I see plenty whites there.”

  “Is that where you learned to speak English?” Buster asked.

  “No. I learn long time ago. The Arapaho trade with whites. Our people stay friendly. I learn the English to trade better with whites.”

  Arapaho! The word lifted a load of fear from Buster’s innards. But if that Kicking Dog was friendly, he would sure hate to see a hostile Indian. “Do you want your people to learn farmin’?” he asked.

  The chief frowned, shaking his head. “The whites say we should learn, but our people do not like that kind of work. It is our way to live on the buffalo, but the white hunters are killing too many, and the wagons going everywhere scare the buffalo away. If the buffalo all go away, maybe so we will have to make a ranch for cattle or horses. But our people do n
ot want to do fanning. We do not like to dig up the ground. Maybe so you know about work with cattle?”

  Buster smiled at a man who touched his guitar as he tuned it. “No. But I’m goin’ to a ranch. Maybe I’ll learn about it.”

  “What ranch?”

  “Close to here. On Monument Creek.”

  “You know Holcomb?” the chief asked.

  The familiar name rang in Buster’s ears like a bell of salvation. “Not yet, but I’m supposed to find him.”

  “You will not learn about cattle there. Holcomb knows nothing about it. His cattle get away all the time. When we find them, we bring them back and Holcomb’s wife trades with us. Sugar, flour, coffee. After we eat, I will show you which way to go to find Holcomb. It is half a day if you pull your wagon.”

  Buster nodded. “Thank you.”

  “Now, my boys want to hear you make music with all these things. Come into my tepee and show us how the black people make music.”

  Buster got up with his guitar.

  “Are there tribes with the black people?” the chief asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Which tribe are you?”

  “African Baptist.”

  “African Baptist,” Long Fingers repeated. He paused at the entrance hole to his tepee and looked toward the east. “There are many tribes of people on the earth.”

  Buster found the ground inside the tepee covered with buffalo robes, rolled robes forming couches. Light streamed down from the smoke hole, illuminating a pile of ashes circled by rocks in the middle of the lodge. The hide tent was surprisingly cool and well ventilated, though the rank smell of the camp wafted here, too.

  He sat on a rolled hide and played, using the guitar first, then the banjo, then the mandolin. Between songs, he smoked a pipe with the warriors, though he was not fond of tobacco. He could hear giggling and the shuffling of feet outside, and knew the women and children were listening. When he started fiddling, Long Fingers put his hands over his ears and made him stop.

  “Make the fiddle sing outside,” the chief said. “It is too loud.”

  When Buster played “Old Brass Wagon” on the fiddle outside, Long Fingers called for his wife. The fiddler was amazed to see the chief and his wife square-dance together like white folks. The rest of the Indians laughed at the mockery, except for Kicking Dog, who considered white dancing scandalous.

  “Where did you learn those dances?” Buster asked when he sat with the chief to eat a gruel made of corn from a tin plate.

  “The whites at Cherry Creek do not have many women with them, so they like to dance with our women when we camp there, and they teach us their dances. But their dances do not mean anything.”

  The squaws brought meat after the gruel. It was cooked black and cut into chunks. It was the first fresh meat Buster had eaten since leaving the bull train, and he quickly finished the small helping on his plate.

  “That’s the first buffalo I’ve had,” Buster said. “I didn’t know it would taste so good. Kinda sweet.”

  Long Fingers laughed. “That was not buffalo you eat. That was the dog that Kicking Dog killed with your pistol. You eat more now?”

  Buster’s jaw muscles seized up on him, and he took a long drink from his canteen. “No, thanks.”

  “We will eat the rest if you will not,” Long Fingers said. He thought Buffalo Head took to dog meat much more admirably than the white men at Cherry Creek. Some of them had actually gotten sick after he told them what they had eaten. It didn’t make sense.

  “My boys will help you get your wagon across this place,” the chief said after they ate. “But first you will make some music with that thing you carry in your pocket. It has the most music to be so little.”

  “It’s called a harmonica,” Buster said.

  Long Fingers tossed his loose hair over a shoulder with an almost feminine motion. “I know what it is called. But that is a hard word for me to say in the English.”

  “You can call it a harp if you want to.”

  “Harp?” He smiled. “I say that plenty good. Make some music on that harp. Then we will push your wagon out of this place.”

  After Buffalo Head played, Long Fingers ordered a few warriors to haul the little wagon up to the west side of the gully. Kicking Dog sat on the brink of the sand bluff and frowned.

  “That is the mountain that guides you,” Long Fingers said, pointing at the prominence of Pikes Peak. “You go to the north of it and come to the creek. Then you go up the creek and find Holcomb’s Ranch on the east side of the creek. It is at our camp where our trail goes into the mountains. Holcomb does not ask us, but I think he wants to stay a long time. It is Arapaho land where he lives in his hole in the ground.”

  On the bluff the air smelled dry and clean and made Buster realize just how bad the Indian camp had stunk. Bad enough to attract the buzzards. But he had it figured. The Arapaho liked to move, follow the buffalo. Everything they owned would travel, even their houses. It made no sense to bother with sanitation at a camp that would soon be struck for a fresh site. Maybe next time he visited an Arapaho camp, it would be a fresh one.

  “I want to give you something, chief,” Buster said before he picked up his wagon tongue. “I think you can learn to play this harp. It travels good, too, because it’s small. Maybe we can play some music together next time I see you.”

  Long Fingers took the harmonica with a strangely fearful expression. He turned the gift over a few times in his hand, then sent one of his warriors back to the camp. “Now you must wait. I also give something to you.”

  “Well, you don’t have to…” Buster cut himself off short when he caught the chief glaring.

  The warrior came back from camp with a skinny girl, about seventeen years old, dressed in ragged, grease-stained skins. Her eyes never looked up from the ground.

  “I give you this squaw. She is called Snake Woman.” He blew into the harmonica.

  Buster looked horrified. “But … One of your people?”

  “No. I get her from the Comanche. They keep her for a slave. They say they catch her in the south. Maybe so Mexico. I trade plenty skins for her. She was a slave like you. You will like her. She work hard. Now, go. You will go all day to find Holcomb.”

  When Long Fingers spoke to Snake Woman, she picked up the tongue of the little milk wagon, grasped one end of the crosspiece, and started to pull west.

  “But … Does she speak English?”

  “She does not speak. The Comanche cut her tongue out. She knows the hand signs. She will teach you some. Go, hurry. Your wagon goes like the wind pushes it. It goes like a cloud without you.” He blew through the harmonica again.

  Buster nodded, forced a smile, and ran after his milk wagon, feeling most uncomfortable about his trade. He hoped Ab Holcomb would know what to do with the former Comanche slave.

  “Why did you give Snake Woman to Buffalo Head?” Kicking Dog asked as the black man ran away. “I have told you many times to trade her to me.”

  “I had nothing else to give to him. I would not trade him a horse for what he gave me. A horse makes better music than this harp. A horse would have been a bad trade.”

  “You could have given him one of your robes. We will kill some more buffalo soon, and you could have a new robe.”

  “I like the robes I have now. I have slept on them enough with my wife and now they feel just right. But you are not old enough to know about that.”

  They watched the wagon become a speck in the west.

  “I would like to drive a wagon,” Long Fingers said. “It is a good way to move things. Maybe so I will trade for one.”

  Kicking Dog scoffed and tossed a fur-wrapped braid over his shoulder. “My lodge poles are my wagons.”

  FOUR

  Ella Holcomb put the bucket of water down at the door of the dugout and sat on a three-legged stool to rest. She would have to catch her breath before she carried the burden up the steepest part of the cutbank.

  She had her homesite chosen
above, and Ab had promised to build her a cabin after he planted. She had already started her flower garden near the site. She meant to make sure the lily and tulip bulbs got enough water to take root.

  She turned her ear to the door of the dugout but heard no sounds from Caleb. She figured he must have cried himself to sleep after his near-fatal fall from the roof. She decided to let the poor little thing rest.

  Ella would have enjoyed a rest herself. But the flowers needed water, and no one would carry the bucket if she didn’t. Ab was too busy breaking ground, while Matthew and Pete were trying to keep the cows together out on the plains. She stood, hefted the bucket, and scrambled up the cutbank, sloshing water.

  As she poured the water, her eyes swept the plains for signs of her boys, or the cattle, or Indians. She saw only Ab, breaking virgin ground behind the oxen. He had given up everything he loved because of her and she knew it. Yet she wondered sometimes why she had married him. She took a broad view of the world—its cultures and its peoples. Ab saw only that which passed under his heels.

  Poor Ab missed his farm in Pennsylvania. He missed his frame house and his toolshed and his forge. He missed his rail fences and his neighbors and his church. The only things he didn’t miss were the roots that snagged his plowshares as he turned the soil over. There were no roots on the plains except for grass roots. There were no trees to clear, no stumps to pull. But this rootlessness was virtually the only advantage he saw to living in the West.

  There was plenty of excitement in the wilderness, what with wolves killing his calves, and Indians visiting his dugout, and rough characters malingering about from time to time. But what did he need with excitement? He had left plenty of that back in Pennsylvania, harboring the runaways the Underground Railroad sent north, hiding them from slave hunters, moving them on midnight runs to the freedom boats waiting on Lake Erie. Even that excitement was more of Ella’s doing than his own.