Buffalo Trail

by Jeff Guinn

  Quanah’s moody reverie was interrupted by Spotted Feather, his Cheyenne trading acquaintance. “I’ve just been on watch,” Spotted Feather said. “I saw nothing stirring, but many are worried about the white soldiers.”

  “Before Isatai and I came to your village, we sent out scouts from our own camp, who went very far in all directions,” Quanah said. “There are no white soldiers anywhere near. Bad Hand is still down toward Mexico.”

  “I’m glad to hear it.” Spotted Feather squatted by the fire and offered a hand-rolled cigarette to Quanah. “I’d also be glad to hear what kind of surprise you have for us at the big Comanche camp.”

  Quanah sucked the sweet smoke deep into his lungs. “You know that I can’t tell you.”

  “Some think it will be a great thing, others that this is a trick so we’ll join you and do most of the fighting against the whites while the Comanche watch.”

  “Surely you know better. The People are always fierce fighters. We take pride in it.”

  “I didn’t say this was what I thought. I said that others did.”

  Quanah exhaled a cloud of smoke. “Well, you and everyone else will see. Three days’ ride, maybe four. Then the Cheyenne will have a great surprise.”

  “Ah. That will be good.”

  They smoked awhile in silence. Then Quanah said, “I want to talk about Mochi. My words are not to be repeated, of course.”

  “If you think you might take her away from Medicine Water and make her your wife, don’t even try. It will never happen.”

  Quanah said testily, “I’m a man of some importance among the People. I have killed more whites and Mexicans than anyone else, and I own many more horses than are in the entire herd of your camp.”

  “That would impress other women, but it won’t matter to Mochi. Only one thing is important to her. She loves killing white people with her own hands.”

  “Why? How did she become such a great fighter?”

  Spotted Feather tossed the butt of his cigarette into the fire, then reached inside a pouch to get the fixings to roll another. “You remember many seasons ago, what happened to Cheyenne chief Black Kettle and his people?”

  “A little. The white men killed them in the place called Sand Creek.”

  “It’s a terrible story. Black Kettle had made peace with the whites. He trusted them; he even liked them so much that he took their country’s flag with the stripes and the stars and put it up on a pole above his tipi. The whites never had a truer Cheyenne friend than Black Kettle. He stopped fighting them and took his people—there were many of them—into winter camp by Sandy Creek in a place the whites named Colorado. They were ordered there by the whites and Black Kettle didn’t argue. It was a happy camp, even though there was very little game and the men had to go very far away to hunt. They kept to themselves, as they’d agreed when they made peace. But some of the white men wanted to kill them anyway, and one cold morning soldiers rode into Black Kettle’s camp when the warriors were gone hunting, and they attacked. Besides killing the few men who were there, they went after the families. The whites were on horseback and they chased these women and children, who screamed as they ran, and when they came up beside them they leaned down and swung long knives to cut off their heads.”

  “The whites are devils.”

  “Mochi was there. She was a little girl. She saw her father shot and her mother and two brothers cut apart by the soldiers. She ran up a hill and a soldier chased her. He cut her with his long knife. Today you can still see the scar on her neck. They must have thought she was dead, because they left her there. Later some Cheyenne from another camp came by and they found her. Ever since, she has wanted nothing more than to kill all the white people that she can. She would rather do that than breathe. Mochi trained alongside boys to learn a warrior’s skills, and eventually surpassed them. She’ll never go with you, Quanah. Comanche men don’t let their women join them in battle, and Mochi couldn’t stand that. No matter what else you might promise her, she’ll stay with Medicine Water and the Cheyenne.”

  “We might let her fight,” Quanah said, imagining the disgusted response of other warriors among the People if he asked.

  “Well, if you want any chance with Mochi, you would have to,” Spotted Feather replied.

  • • •

  THEY RODE SOUTH AND EAST for three more days, swinging wide to avoid the big new camp of the white hunters. Word of it had already spread among the Cheyenne. Quanah broke away from the group for a little while to take a look. Everything seemed the same, except for one more building. A lot of the whites seemed to be milling aimlessly around. They clearly didn’t have much to do, since the buffalo hadn’t yet come. The presence of the camp annoyed Quanah greatly. It was an affront to the People and ought to be obliterated. Perhaps this was a possible target for the great attack. The more he thought about it, the more sense it made.

  • • •

  FINALLY THEY APPROACHED the wide red river. As they drew near, Quanah asked the Cheyenne to wait while he rode ahead. “I want to make sure that everything is ready,” He said. “Call back Medicine Water and the dog soldiers. All of you should see it first at the same time.”

  Once all the Cheyenne scouts had returned, Quanah rode forward. He took Isatai with him. The fat man hadn’t said anything foolish for days, and Quanah wanted to keep it that way.

  “Everything has to be right,” Quanah said as they pushed their mounts into a trot. “If it isn’t—”

  “It will be,” Isatai promised. “The spirit says so.”

  Then they topped a rise and Quanah looked down and there everything was, even better than he’d hoped. “Wait here,” he told Isatai. Then he turned his pony and raced back to where the Cheyenne were waiting.

  Quanah took the chiefs ahead with him, Gray Beard and Stone Calf and Medicine Water and Whirlwind. When they looked down, they gasped, because the sight was unprecedented in the history of the Comanche.

  Spreading out along the banks of the wide red river were Comanche tipis in almost countless number, and beyond them were tipis of the Kiowa, distinctive for daubs of bright paint. A few hundred yards away on a low bluff was a mock white fort built from cottonwood logs, and also a wide lodge of wood with buffalo skulls spread across the brush roof and a high pole extending up beyond the roof, with the largest buffalo skull of all adorning it on top.

  “What is this?” Gray Beard asked.

  Quanah grinned. “Why, it’s something new for the People. In honor of our friends the Cheyenne and Kiowa, to prove we respect all of your customs and beliefs as we do our own, we invite you now to join us in our first sun dance.”

  TWENTY

  In the last week of May, Billy Dixon called everyone at Adobe Walls together and tried to rally them. “The buffs are coming, we all know that,” he said. “It’s just that winter was especially hard and spring came late. We need to quit bitching and scrapping among ourselves while we wait. Let’s have some more games or something.”

  “I’m tired of shooting at paper targets,” Brick Bond growled. “I came here to shoot buffalo. Or, failing that, any fools who annoy me.”

  “Well, then, goddamn go back to Dodge City,” Billy said. “We got some wagons heading there this very morning. But afterward you won’t have any better luck hunting. Nobody’s seen any buffs around Dodge, either. If we’d stayed up there, we’d still be waiting on a herd just the same.”

  “Billy’s right,” Fred Leonard said. “A bit more patience is what is required.”

  “It’s all right for you to be patient, Fred,” Jim McKinley snapped. Premature baldness had left him the only hide man without long hair. “Every day, you take more of our markers for your food and notions. Same with Hanrahan for his beer and bitters, and with Jimmy Langton and his pricey goods at the Rath store. If the herd never shows, what’s it, really, to you? You’re still making money every day that
we wait.”

  “Nobody makes you buy cans of soup or peaches or tomatoes for your meals. Go out and shoot a deer, get your own dinner instead of paying me for classier sustenance. If you’ve run up bills at my store, it’s your fault and none of my own.”

  “I’ll not tolerate this situation much longer, and neither will a lot of the other boys,” McKinley said. “Billy Dixon, we all think you’re a fine man. But we’re approaching our limits here. You can’t blame us for that.”

  Billy’s head bobbed in a rueful shake. “I know, Jim, I know. Tell you what—if there’s no buffalo sign today, I’ll take a few of my crew and ride east and south tomorrow. I won’t stop this time until I find the herd, and then I’ll ride back here pronto to report. That’ll give everyone time to be set up just right as they finally arrive, so the shooting can commence at once and the hide sales immediately after.”

  • • •

  LATER THAT DAY, McLendon found Bat slouched in the shade by the bank of the north creek, scribbling in his notebook.

  “Are you going to ask Billy to ride along with him tomorrow?” he asked. “You could maybe work off some of your restlessness that way.”

  Bat shrugged. “I’d like to, but my pride won’t allow me to be told for a second time that I’m too inexperienced for such responsibility.”

  “Go on and ask. Billy’s sure to take you along.”

  “Maybe so. Now I need to go off a minute and piss. It’s sad when taking a piss is the highlight of a man’s day.”

  Bat wandered off into the brush. He left his notebook on the creek bank, and McLendon couldn’t resist. He opened it to a random page. Bat’s handwriting was surprisingly neat.

  “At night the sky turns first from bright blue to pink and then deep violet. The colors so much resemble flowers that a floral fragrance seems to perfume the air. Against this colorful backdrop stand the hide men, all of them with long flowing hair and steely, determined gaze. There is about them a sense of resolution. These are men of considerable grit and experience who never tremble in the face of danger. Foremost among them is—”

  “What the hell are you doing, McLendon?” Masterson screamed. Still fumbling at his trouser buttons, he dashed out of the brush and snatched the notebook from McLendon’s hands. “What I write is private, goddammit. You know I don’t want you reading it.”

  “Why, it’s really good, Bat. Jesus, you ought to be writing books or for a newspaper or something. I believe that you demonstrate evidence of real talent.”

  Bat’s attitude instantly shifted from aggrieved to bashful. He ducked his head and mumbled, “You think so?”

  “I do, and I’m a man who likes to read a lot. When the hunting season’s over and you’re back in Dodge or wherever, you should send some of this off to one of those magazines that have stories about the West. Bet you anything they’d buy what you’ve written, get it into print as fast as they could.”

  “Really?” Bat said. “Well, then.”

  “Will you let me read some more?”

  “Another time, maybe. Meanwhile, don’t tell any of the others about this, all right? They’d consider writing stories to be girlish.”

  “What do they know? This is such a surprise. What you really want to be is a writer?”

  “Who knows? For now, all I really want is to see the buffalo coming this way. I guess I will ask Billy to ride along.”

  • • •

  BACK IN CAMP, McLendon considered his own situation, which wasn’t good. He’d spurned a job with good, steady pay in Dodge to gamble on making much more money working for Billy Dixon. The expedition had left Dodge almost nine weeks before. Thirty-five dollars a week at nine weeks—even with a dollar and a half a day for a boardinghouse room and, say, another four or five dollars a week for meals and other necessities, why, he’d still have more than two hundred saved up for his journey to Gabrielle in Arizona Territory, with several more months of savings to come. Plenty of money. The reverse was true at Adobe Walls. He had absolutely no income and, try as he might, he still had to spend some of his remaining, dwindling funds each day—two bits, at least, for cheese and crackers, and every now and then he had to vary that bland fare with a can of soup or some of Old Man Keeler’s stew. He liked and felt sorry for Hannah Olds, but her cooking didn’t compare to Keeler’s. Anyway, he was down to about eighty dollars, barely enough for his train and stage fare from Dodge to Mountain View, let alone a sufficient stake to stay awhile in that town and then get him and Gabrielle and maybe her sick father from there to California. Coming along with Billy Dixon instead of remaining and working in Dodge had been a mistake, just the latest in the long string that he’d made. It had all started back in St. Louis, when he’d abandoned Gabrielle for the chance to marry Ellen, the daughter of his rich boss Rupert Douglass. If only, back then, he’d done the decent thing, the right thing, how different his life now would be.

  McLendon’s plunge into recrimination and self-pity lasted into early afternoon. Bat bounced up and announced gleefully that Billy had given him permission to come along. He insisted on buying McLendon a beer in Hanrahan’s saloon to celebrate. McLendon didn’t particularly feel like drinking, but Bat badgered him and it was something to do. Oscar Shepherd, Hanrahan’s bartender, uncapped two beer bottles and shoved them across the counter. Bat gulped down his beer and called for another; McLendon sipped slowly.

  “You need to come with Billy, too, C.M,” Bat said. “Get out of camp for a while. It’d do you good.”

  “I think I’ll stay behind and wait for you to come back with good news. Anyway, the Scheidler brothers and some other teamsters are due in from Dodge anytime now. They might see sign of the herd on their way in. Then Billy won’t need to ride out tomorrow after all.”

  “I almost hope they don’t. I’m eager for some adventure, and it would be a thing to be the first who spots the herd.”

  “Well, then, I hope it’s you. But somebody better see something.”

  • • •

  A HALF-DOZEN WAGONS arrived late in the afternoon. They brought more supplies for the camp stores and saloon, and mail forwarded on by the Dodge City postmaster to those at Adobe Walls lucky enough to get some. McLendon was startled when Isaac Scheidler came looking for him with an envelope in his hand.

  “C.M.? Here’s something addressed to you.”

  McLendon tore the envelope open and his hands trembled as he unfolded the single page inside. Gabrielle wrote,

  April 12, 1874

  I am in receipt of your new letter, and am pleased with the thought that you are coming, though apparently not as soon as I would wish. The end of summer seems a long way away.

  You should not obsess so about money. It need not be an immediate consideration when you arrive here. Major Mulkins, who you will remember from Glorious, manages the hotel where I work. He is delighted that you are coming to Mountain View, and says that upon your arrival you may share his room at the hotel until you are able to otherwise situate yourself. Your meals may be taken free of charge with us at the hotel staff table, he adds. And, of course, it will cost you nothing but your time to share my company.

  I repeat that I am making no promises. But I am eager to see you.

  Fondly,

  Gabrielle

  McLendon’s immediate impulse was to ride along on the next wagon heading back to Dodge City. From there, he’d go as far by train and stage as his remaining stake would take him, and walk the last miles if necessary. It would mean quitting Billy Dixon when he’d promised Billy back in Dodge that he wouldn’t. But if Billy went out on the latest scout and didn’t find the big buffalo herd, the expedition would be called off anyway. That would free McLendon from his obligation to Billy without requiring him to break his word. In the past, McLendon had broken promises as easily as he’d drawn breath. He’d promised Gabrielle that he’d changed for the better—now he had to prove it to himself,
too, even if it meant delaying his rush to Gabrielle for another week or so.

  Still, if the herd wasn’t coming, McLendon wanted to be among the first to know it and get on his way. He found Billy in the Rath store and asked to come along on the final scout for the buffalo.

  “It’ll be a hard ride,” Billy said. “As I recall, you’re none too comfortable in the saddle.”

  “I don’t care. I want to go.”

  “All right. We leave at dawn.”

  • • •

  DAWN ARRIVED EARLY. The first muted paling of the eastern sky came about four-thirty in the morning, and by five it was light enough for Billy, McLendon, Bat, Frenchy, and Charley Armitage to ride out of camp. They brought with them enough provisions for a week—coffee, bacon, a few cans of tomatoes, and the ingredients for biscuits that Frenchy would bake in the Dutch oven strapped to his saddle. Billy said they’d vary their diet with game; there were plenty of deer and birds about. Billy and Charley had Sharps Big Fifties. Frenchy had an older, smaller-caliber Sharps. Bat had a shotgun. McLendon had only his Colt Peacemaker. The other four carried Peacemakers too. Because they needed to maintain a steady pace without distractions, Billy left his red setter closed up in a stall at camp. Fannie’s howls followed them as they left.