Butcher's Crossing

by John Williams

  Miller’s rifle cracked; a young cow, hardly more than a calf, stumbled, got to its feet, and ran erratically out of the circling herd.

  “Damn it,” Miller said without emotion. “A leg shot. That will do it.”

  While he was speaking, he was reloading; he got another shot off at the wounded buffalo; but it was too late. On the second shot, the cow wheeled and ran into the milling herd. The circle broken, the herd halted and was still for a moment. Then a young bull broke away, and the herd followed, the mass of animals pouring out of their own wide circle like water from a spout, until Miller and Andrews could see only a thin dark stream of bobbing humps thudding away from them down the winding bed of the valley.

  The two men stood erect. Andrews stretched his cramped muscles, and almost cried aloud in pain as he straightened his back.

  “I thought about it,” Miller said, speaking away from Andrews toward the dwindling herd. “I thought about what would happen if I didn’t get a clean shot. So I didn’t get a clean shot. I broke a leg. If I hadn’t thought about it, I could have got the whole herd.” He turned to Andrews; his eyes were wide and blank, the pupils unfocused and swimming in the whites. The unbearded skin of his face was black with the ash of gunpowder, and his beard was caked with it. “The whole herd,” he said again; and his eyes focused upon Andrews and he smiled a little with the corners of his mouth.

  “Was it a big stand?” Will Andrews asked.

  “I never had a bigger,” Miller said. “Let’s count them down.”

  The two men began to walk back down the valley, following the loose, spread-out trail of felled buffalo. Andrews was able to keep the numbers straight in his mind until he had counted nearly thirty; but his attention was dissipated by the sheer quantity of the dead beasts, and the numbers he repeated to himself spread in his mind and whirled as in a pool; and he gave up his effort to count. Dazedly he walked beside Miller as they threaded their way among the buffalo, some of which had fallen so close together that their bodies touched. One bull had dropped so that its huge head rested upon the side of another buffalo; the head seemed to watch them as they approached, the dark blank shining eyes regarding them disinterestedly, then staring beyond them as they passed. The hot cloudless sun beat down upon them as they plodded over the thick spongy grass, and the heat raised from the dead animals a rank odor of must and wildness; the smooth swishing sound that their boots made in the tall grass intensified the silence around them; the dull pulsations in Andrews’s head began to subside, and after the acrid smell of gunpowder, the strong odor of the buffalo was almost welcome. He hitched the empty water keg to a more comfortable position on his shoulder, and strode erect beside Miller.

  Schneider was waiting for them where the long swath of buffalo ended. He sat on the mounded side of a large bull; his feet barely reached the ground. Behind him, their horses grazed quietly, their reins knotted loosely together and trailing.

  “How many?” Schneider asked sadly.

  “A hundred and thirty-five,” Miller said.

  Schneider nodded somberly. “About what I figured.” He slid off the side of the buffalo and picked up his case of skinning knives, which he had put on the ground beside the felled bull. “Might as well get started,” he said to Andrews; “we got a long afternoon and a long night ahead of us.” He turned to Miller. “You going to help?”

  For a moment, Miller did not answer. His arms hung long at his sides, his shoulders drooped, and there was on his face an expression of emptiness; his mouth hung slightly open, and his head swung from side to side as he gazed upon the receding field of dead buffalo. He swung his body around to Schneider.

  “What?” he asked dully.

  “You going to help?”

  Miller brought his hands up, chest-high, and opened them. The forefinger of his right hand was puffed and swollen and curved inward toward his palm; slowly he straightened it. Across the palm of his left hand a long narrow blister, pale against the grained blackness of the surrounding flesh, extended diagonally from the base of the forefinger to the heel of the palm near the wrist. Miller flexed his hands and grinned, standing erect.

  “Let’s get started,” he said.

  Schneider beckoned to Andrews. “Get your knives, and come with me.”

  Andrews followed him to a young bull; the two men knelt together before it.

  “You just watch me,” Schneider said.

  He selected a long curving blade and grasped it firmly in his right hand. With his left hand he pushed back the heavy collar of fur around the buffalo’s neck; with his other hand he made a small slit in the hide, and drew his knife swiftly from the throat across the belly. The hide parted neatly with a faint ripping sound. With a stubbier knife, he cut around the bag that held the testicles, cut through the cords that held them and the limp penis to the flesh; he separated the testicles, which were the size of small crab-apples, from the other parts of the bag, and tossed them to one side; then he slit the few remaining inches of hide to the anal opening.

  “I always save the balls,” he said. “They make mighty good eating, and they put starch in your pecker. Unless they come off an old bull. Then you better just stay away from them.”

  With still another knife, Schneider cut around the neck of the animal, beginning at that point where he had made the belly slit and lifting the huge head up and supporting it on one knee so that he could cut completely around the throat. Then he slit around each of the ankles, and ripped down the inside of each leg until his knife met the first cut down the belly. He loosened the skin around each ankle until he could get a handhold on the hide, and then he shucked the hide off the leg until it lay in loose folds upon the side of the buffalo. After he had laid the skin back on each leg, he loosened the hide just above the hump until he could gather a loose handful of it. Upon this, he knotted a thin rope that he got from his saddlebag; the other end he tied to his saddle horn. He got in the saddle, and backed his horse up. The hide peeled off the buffalo as the horse backed; the heavy muscles of the bull quivered and jerked as the hide was shucked off.

  “And that’s all there is to it,” Schneider said, getting down from his horse. He untied the rope from the bullhide. “Then you spread it out flat on the ground to dry. Fur side up, so it won’t dry out too fast.”

  Andrews estimated that it had taken Schneider a little over five minutes to complete the job of skinning. He looked at the buffalo. Without its hide, it seemed much smaller; yellowish white layers of fat thinned upon the smooth blue twists of muscle; here and there, where flesh had come off with the skin, dark clots of blood lay on the flesh. The head, with its ruff of fur and its long beard beneath the chin, appeared monstrously large. Andrews looked away.

  “Think you can do it?” Schneider asked.

  Andrews nodded.

  “Don’t try to hurry it,” Schneider said. “And don’t pick an old bull; stick to the young light ones at first.”

  Andrews selected a bull about the same size as the one Schneider had skinned. As he approached it, it seemed to him that he shrank inside his clothes, which were suddenly stiff upon him. Gingerly he pulled from his case a knife similar to the one Schneider had used, and forced his hands to go through the motions he had seen a few moments before. The hide, apparently so soft on the belly, offered a surprising resistance to his knife; he forced it, and felt it sink into the hide and deeper into the flesh of the animal. Unable to draw the knife in the smooth easy sweep that he had observed Schneider use, he hacked an irregular cut across the belly. He could not make his hands touch the testicles of the buffalo; instead he cut carefully around the bag on both sides.

  By the time he had slit the hide on the legs and around the throat, he was sweating. He pulled at the hide on one of the legs, but his hands slipped; with his knife, he loosened the flesh from the hide and pulled again. The hide came from the leg with large chunks of flesh hanging upon it. He managed to get enough hide gathered at the hump to take the knot of his rope, but when he backed his
horse up to pull it loose, the knot slipped, and the horse almost sat back on its haunches. He pulled a bit more of the hide loose and knotted the rope more firmly. The horse pulled again. The hide ripped from the flesh, half spinning the buffalo around; he backed his horse up, and the hide split, coming off the side of the buffalo and carrying with it huge hunks of meat.

  Andrews looked helplessly at the ruined hide. After a moment, he turned to seek out Schneider, who was busily engaged some hundred feet away ripping at the belly of a large bull. Andrews counted six carcasses that Schneider had stripped during the time of his own work with a single one. Schneider looked in his direction, but he did not pause in his work. He knotted his rope about the hide, backed his horse up, and spread the shucked skin on the grass. Then he walked over to where Andrews waited. He looked at the ruined hide that still was attached to the rump of the buffalo.

  “You didn’t get a clean pull,” he said. “And you didn’t cut even around the neck. If you cut too deep, you get into the meat, and that part pulls loose too easy. Might as well give this one up.”

  Andrews nodded, loosened the knot around the hide, and approached another buffalo. He made his cuts more carefully this time; but when he tried to shuck the hide, again the hide split away as it had done before. Tears of rage came to his eyes.

  Schneider came up to him again.

  “Look,” he said, not unkindly, “I don’t have time to fool with you today. If Miller and I don’t get these hides off in a few hours, these buffs will be stiff as boards. Why don’t you drag a calf back to camp and dress it down? We need some meat, anyhow; and you can work on the carcass, get the feel of it. I’ll help you fix up a rig.”

  Not trusting himself to speak, Andrews nodded; he felt a hot, irrational hatred for Schneider welling up in his throat.

  Schneider selected a young cow, hardly more than a calf, and looped a rope around its chin and neck; he pulled the rope short, and knotted it around Andrews’s saddle horn, so that with the pull of the horse the head of the buffalo did not drag on the ground.

  “You’ll have to walk your horse back,” Schneider said. “He’ll have enough to do dragging this cow.”

  Andrews nodded again, not looking at Schneider. He pulled the reins, and the horse leaned forward, its hooves slipping in the turf; but the carcass of the young buffalo slid a little, and the horse gained its footing and began to strain its way across the valley. Andrews plodded tiredly before the horse, loosely pulling it forward by the reins.

  By the time he got back to the camp, the sun had gone behind the western range of mountains; there was a chill in the air that went through his clothing and touched his sweaty skin. Charley Hoge trotted out from the camp to meet him.

  “How many?” Charley Hoge called.

  “Miller counted a hundred and thirty-five,” Andrews said.

  “’I God,” Charley Hoge said. “A big one.”

  Near the camp, Andrews halted his horse and untied the rope from the saddle horn.

  “Nice little calf you got,” Charley Hoge said. “Make good eating. You going to dress her down, or you want me to?”

  “I’ll dress her,” Andrews said. But he made no movement. He stood looking at the calf, whose open transparent eyes were filmed over blankly with a layer of dust.

  After a moment, Charley Hoge said: “I’ll help you fix up a scaffold.”

  The two men went to the area where earlier Charley Hoge had been working on the corral for the livestock. The corral, roughly hexagonal in shape, had been completed; but there were still a few long aspen poles lying about. Charley Hoge pointed out three of equal length and they dragged them back to where the buffalo calf lay. They pounded the ends of the poles into the ground, and arranged them in the form of a tripod. Andrews mounted his horse, and lashed the poles together at the top. Charley Hoge threw the rope, which was still attached to the calf’s head, over the top of the tripod, and Andrews tied the loose end to his saddle horn. He backed his horse up until the calf was suspended, its hooves barely brushing the short grass. Charley Hoge held the rope until Andrews returned to the tripod and secured the rope firmly to the top, so that the buffalo would not drop.

  The buffalo hung; they surveyed it for a moment without speaking. Charley Hoge went back to his campfire; Andrews stood before the hung calf. In the distance, across the valley, he saw a movement; it was Schneider and Miller returning. Their horses went in a swift walk across the valley bed. Andrews took a deep breath, and put his knife carefully to the exposed belly of the calf.

  He worked more slowly this time. After he had made the cuts in the belly, around the throat, and around the ankles, he carefully peeled the hide back so that it hung loosely down the sides of the animal. Then, reaching high above the hump, he ripped the hide from the back. It came off smoothly, with only a few small chunks of the flesh adhering to it. With his knife he scraped the largest of these chunks off, and spread the skin on the grass, flesh side downward, as he had seen Schneider do. While he stood back, looking down at his hide, Miller and Schneider rode up beside him and dismounted.

  Miller, his face streaked with the black residue of powder smoke and smears of brownish-red blood, looked at him dully for a moment, and then looked at the hide spread on the ground. He turned and shambled unsteadily toward the campsite.

  “Looks like a clean job,” Schneider said, walking around the hide. “You won’t have no trouble. Course, it’s easier when your carcass is hanging.”

  “How did you and Miller do?” Andrews asked.

  “We didn’t get halfway through. We’ll be working most of the night.”

  “I wish I could help,” Andrews said.

  Schneider walked over to the skinned calf and slapped the naked rump of it. “Nice fat little calf. She’ll make good eating.”

  Andrews went to the calf and knelt; he fumbled among the knives in his case. He raised his head to Schneider, but he did not look at him.

  “What do I do?” he asked.

  “What?”

  “What do I do first? I’ve never dressed an animal before.”

  “My God,” Schneider said quietly. “I keep forgetting. Well, first you better de-gut her. Then I’ll tell you how to cut her up.”

  Charley Hoge and Miller came around the tall chimney rock and leaned against it, watching. Andrews hesitated for a moment, then stood up. He pushed the point of his knife against the breastbone of the calf, and poked until he found the softness of the stomach. He clenched his teeth, and pushed the knife in the flesh, and drew the knife downward. The heavy, coiled blue-and-white guts, thicker than his forearm, spilled out from the clean edge of the cut. Andrews closed his eyes, and pulled the knife downward as quickly as he could. As he straightened up, he felt something warm on his shirtfront; a gush of dark, half-clotted blood had dropped from the opened cavity. It spilled upon his shirt and dripped down upon the front of his trousers. He jumped backward. His quick movement sent the calf rocking slowly on the rope, and made the thick entrails slowly emerge from the widening cut. With a heavy, liquid, sliding thud they spilled upon the ground; like something alive, the edge of the mass slid toward Andrews and covered the tops of his shoes.

  Schneider laughed loudly, slapping his leg. “Cut her loose!” he shouted. “Cut her loose before she crawls all over you!”

  Andrews swallowed the heavy saliva that spurted in his mouth. With his left hand he followed the thick slimy main gut up through the body cavity; he watched his forearm disappear into the wet warmth of the body. When his left hand came upon the end of the gut, he reached his other hand with the knife up beside it, and sliced blindly, awkwardly at the tough tube. The rotten smell of the buffalo’s half-digested food billowed out; he held his breath, and hacked more desperately with his knife. The tube parted, and the entrails spilled down, gathering in the lower part of the body. With both arms, he scooped the guts out of the cavity until he could find the other attachment; he cut it away and tore the insides from the calf with desperate scooping mot
ions, until they spread in a heavy mass on the ground around his feet. He stepped back, pale, breathing heavily through his opened mouth; his arms and hands, held out from his body, dripping with blood, were trembling.

  Miller, still leaning against the chimney rock, called to Schneider: “Let’s have some of that liver, Fred.”

  Schneider nodded, and took a few steps to the swinging carcass. With one hand he steadied it, and with the other reached into the open cavity. He jerked his arm; his hand came out carrying a large piece of brownish purple meat. With a few quick strokes of his knife, he sliced it in two, and tossed the larger of the pieces across to Miller. He caught the liver in the scoop of his two hands, and clutched it to his chest so that it would not slide out of his grasp. Then he lifted it to his mouth, and took a large bite from it; the dark blood oozed from the meat, ran down the sides of his chin, and dropped to the ground. Schneider grinned and took a bite from his piece. Still grinning, chewing slowly, his lips dark red from the meat, he extended the meat toward Andrews.

  “Want a chew?” he asked, and laughed.

  Andrews felt the bitterness rise in his throat; his stomach contracted in a sudden spasm, and the muscles of his throat pulled together, choking him. He turned and ran a few paces from the men, leaned against a tree, doubled over, and retched. After a few moments, he turned to them.

  “You finish it up,” he called to them. “I’ve had enough.”