One night, sleepless with the desire to hunt, to provide meat for himself and his woman, it came to him.
A javelin.
He awakened Yellow Eyes and set her to work at once, fashioning a short throwing spear with a shaft of tough ash. For a spearhead of the proper weight she found a double-edged spon-toon, an eighteenth-century infantry weapon similar to a pike. The Elk Soldiers had captured it sometime in the dim past, Yellow Eyes said, in a battle with spider soldiers near the great lake where the Sa-sis-e-tas had lived before venturing onto the plains in pursuit of buffalo. Probably Frenchmen, Otto thought, and sure enough found a faint, time-worn fleur-de-lis, the armorial emblem of the Kings of France, engraved on the spearhead. She honed its edges to razor sharpness and bound it to the spear shaft with strands of sinew. A thong of rawhide tied just below the spearhead and then to Otto’s left hand allowed him to drag it with him as he stalked. He could untie the thong with his teeth when he was ready to throw. Into the pad of his throwing hand Yellow Eyes sewed a small shallow socket which would accept the butt of the spear. Balancing the shaft with his stump while throwing with his left hand, he found with much practice that he could hit a stationary target hard and accurately up to fifty feet away.
They began hunting at night, for small game at first. Yellow Eyes accompanied him, crawling beside him as he made his careful stalks on grazing deer and antelope, then running down the game he hit and finishing it off with a stone-headed war club Crazy had given her. She gutted and skinned their kills, but he insisted on carrying the meat back to camp by himself, lashed over his back. One night a pack of white wolves spotted him stalking a deer and came over to investigate this alien-smelling look-alike. Black Hat faced off against their leader, growling ominously under his visor of dried wolf face. The wolf chief circled cautiously, his heavy neck bowed, his thick gray mane and bushy tail bristling. Slowly, Black Hat got down on his knees and let the wolf approach.
Yellow Eyes noticed that he had not untied the spear, which still lay in the grass behind him.
Man and wolf stood neck to neck, shoulder to shoulder, of a height, and she saw from her own safe distance how the wolf curled his lip, bared long white fangs. Then Black Hat stood and showed his own teeth, rumbling caution deep in his chest. The pack leader, confused by this odd wolf’s dangerous posture and smell, finally turned and stalked stiffly away, pretending that Black Hat wasn’t there. The other wolves, too, stared off into the distance as if nothing had happened. Then they trotted into the dark.
He is a maiyun, Yellow Eyes thought suddenly, one of Maheo’s helpers here below. She shook with excitement. From that time on, once she had told the story to the camp, he was no longer Black Hat. Now he was called Ho-nehe Ve-ho—Wolf Chief.
SCOUTS HAD LOCATED a small herd of buffalo—bulls, cows, and yearlings, all still shedding their winter coats—moving slowly up the river toward the greening meadows on the flanks of the Big Horns. They had herded them with care toward a familiar killing ground not ten miles from the camp, then settled the herd peacefully on a piece of good grazing ground.
On the morning of the hunt, shamans prayed and smoked their long pipes over painted buffalo skulls and fires of white sage. The women sang buffalo songs, the Kit Fox soldiers in charge of hunt discipline smeared their faces with black ash to indicate their authority, while the hunters themselves—only about a dozen of them, Jenny guessed, surprised at how few they were—caught up their prized and pampered buffalo ponies and readied their weapons. Unlike her fellow townsmen at pre-hunt festivities she’d witnessed in Wisconsin, the Cheyennes went about the whole affair quite solemnly. In Heldendorf the eve of a big town-wide deer drive was marked with loud roistering and joyous fiddle music; beer flowed freely along with an abundance of brag. A kind of Fourth of July in the fall. But the Indians, unlike the whites, counted on this meat for their very survival. They would take no chance of offending the All-God with their hubris.
Tom came up from the river leading Wind Blows and a second buffalo pony, a tall bay gelding. Jenny noticed a brand on its hip. A U.S. Army horse, and by the look of him a cavalry mount. “We call him Vé’ho Mo’éhe-no’ha,” Tom said. “Spider Horse. My father took him in a fight with the cavalry. He’s a good buffalo pony—he loves to bite their tails as they run. He rides rough, but he’s afraid of nothing.”
Both horses were wet. Tom had thoroughly doused them with cold river water to get their blood up, and now they blew and tossed their heads, dancing fretfully as he held them, eager for the hunt.
“They want to run,” Tom said. “Get your horse Trooper and let’s go.”
“I’m going with you?”
“Yes. Don’t you want to make some meat?”
“You expect me to hunt?”
“Of course,” Tom said. “It’s fun.”
“I can’t ride as well as you or these others, and I’ve never shot anything from horseback.”
“It’s easy,” Tom said. “Use your Yellow Boy. When you come up on a fat cow, aim for her kidneys—the small of her back. The horse will bring you so close that you can nearly touch her with the muzzle.”
“Trooper can’t run with the buffalo,” she said. “He’s too old. Ready for the glue factory.”
“You’ll only be riding Trooper until we get ready to run the buffalo. Then I’ll give you Wind Blows. She’s the best buffalo pony in the memory of the Cut-Arm People. She’ll put you right on top of the buffalo. She recognizes the fattest cows from the thickness of the roots of their tails and will take you through the herd, straight to them. If a bull hooks at you, she’ll dodge away. Come on now, get Trooper and your Yellow Boy and let’s make tracks. The buffalo wait to die.”
Jenny stared at him. She did not want to hunt buffalo on horseback, not out of any sentiment for the animals—the Cheyennes would make good use of them—or fear of embarrassing herself, but out of sheer funk. She did not want to die under their hooves or on their wicked horns. Tom had told her about friends of his who had met just such a fate. Yet at the same time she was pleased that Tom would allow her to ride Wind Blows. He loves that horse more than most men love a woman, she thought. But can I really ride with them? I’ve ridden mostly plowhorses so far, except for Vixen. These men—their women and children, too—ride as if they were born on horseback.
But if I beg off hunting, what will they think of me?
Strongheart had told her that when E-hyoph-sta first brought the buffalo to the Cheyenne, the Yellow-Haired Woman’s father, Coyote Man—who had generously allowed her to take them to the People from his great cave high on No-wah-wus—warned that if she ever expressed sympathy for the animals while the Indians were killing them, the buffalo would return whence they came. The Cut-Arm People would go hungry again. For eight years after she’d joined the tribe, Yellow-Haired Woman had heeded his warning. Then one day some boys dragged a buffalo calf they’d captured into the camp and started clubbing it to death outside her tepee. Without thinking she cried, “Oh, my poor buffalo!”
With that, the herds had vanished, and for many long years the Cheyenne lived on rabbits and skunks, until the heroes Sweet Medicine and Erect Horns once again brought the buffalo back to them.
They rode to the killing ground leading Wind Blows and Spider. Strongheart rode with them on one of Little Wolf’s ponies. Women and children followed the hunting party, carrying knives and hatchets to butcher the kill, trailing their packhorses to bring in the meat. Not one of them laughed or shouted, not even the babies. This was serious business.
“Don’t use the Yellow Boy,” Strongheart said in a quiet voice as they trotted toward the mountains. “I’ve brought your bow and some special arrows, ones that belong to my husband.”
“I’m not good enough with the bow,” Jenny said.
“At close range you are, and Wind will bring you close. It’s important you hunt in the traditional manner, a test of the gifts Maheo gave you. Two Shields didn’t want you to come on this hunt, he feels you have too much to
lose. But the other evening some of the People began questioning whether you were truly our Yellow-Haired Woman. ‘She’s just another spider,’ they said. These critics are the enemies of my husband. They’re ambitious. Two Shields told them that as Maheo’s daughter you would kill buffalo as you were instructed to do. A wicked old crone named Loon-Eye Woman laughed—the children call her Screech—and said you could not hunt buffalo. Birds and rabbits and antelope and elk, yes, they are easy to kill, even women kill them, but not the buffalo. She said you would feel sorry for the buffalo because of what the other spiders are doing to them. Else why did you leave the hide men? She said you would not kill them, or even if you did, you would only kill them from afar, where you didn’t have to see the buffalo’s big wet eyes weeping at its death; you would kill with the spider’s throat gun. So you must use the bow, my dear, in close.”
“Is my bow strong enough?”
“More than enough,” Strongheart said, “if you place your arrows in the short ribs, halfway along the buffalo’s body. The muscles are thin and widespread down there, and your arrow will hit the lungs. When you see blood begin to blow out the buffalo’s nostrils and mouth, then you’ve killed her. Waste no more arrows, but ride on to the next one. Your pony will know. She’s wise in the death of the buffalo.”
Strongheart handed over Jenny’s bow in its case, and a dozen strangely marked arrows. “The Wolf captured these arrows from a creature who came over the mountains, a thing dressed all in bark and rat skins, with tangled hair hanging to its waist. See how strange it is, the way the feathers are put on—merely tied at the front of the fletching by weed threads, so the vanes fly all floppy. But these arrows hit the mark. My husband was struck by one that swerved in its slow flight, following him wherever his horse ran. You’ll see the scar it left on his shoulder when he comes home soon. See the heads of these arrows? All made of stone, as our grandfathers made their arrowheads. But a strange black stone, isn’t it, shiny like the mirrors of the spiders? No stone like this in Cheyenne country. You could see your face in it, but this black mirror might steal your spirit.”
Not mine, Jenny thought. She took the arrows from Strongheart and brandished one defiantly, then looked closely at its wide, glossy head.
The face that frowned back. . . . It frightened her. Even taking into account the warped, concave surface of the obsidian, the distortions it would provoke, this face was cruel. Her eyes glared dark as death, with only the faintest tinge of green, and that a corpselike shade. Her nose was too long, too strong. Harsh lines furrowed her cheeks, bone-white spokes radiated from the corners of her eyes—spiderwebs, she thought. Her mouth was a scabbed, tight gash, and when she bared her teeth in contempt of her image, they flashed back at her like palings of white-hot steel.
Herr Gott, how can Tom love me?
“There they are,” he said, beside her suddenly and pointing to the west. “The buffalo. Now all we must do is kill them.”
WOLF CHIEF LAY hidden behind a skull-shaped boulder on the lip of a grassy hollow, high above the slope where the buffalo grazed. His wolf’s hide cloak shaded him from the dazzling sun. He saw the long line of hunters approach, slowly and calmly so as not to alarm the herd. The people trailing behind with their scrapers and hatchets and butcher knives stopped and hid themselves in the grass. He saw the hunters rein in when they reached a convenient swale. It would hide them from the herd. They dismounted from their riding horses, stripped off their shirts and leggings for the chase, readied their weapons, and sprang up on their buffalo ponies. The ponies knew the hunt was at hand. They danced and threw their heads, the bright ribbons braided into their manes tossed eagerly.
Jenny did not disrobe but took off her spider hat and let her blond braids swing full-length, nearly to her waist. She strung her bow, drew half a dozen arrows from the quiver, then swung up on Wind’s bare back. The Appaloosa curvetted briefly at the unfamiliar weight and balance of a new rider. Tom rode over to reassure his pony.
“If Wind steps in a prairie-dog hole and you happen to be thrown,” he said, “stay with the pony. If you run, the buffalo will trample you. Pull Wind down and lie behind her; she won’t try to escape and her body will shield you.”
The hunters spread out in a wide arc, like the horns of a bull hooking toward the knot of feeding buffalo. No noise, no quick movement, but an ominous aura of calm that pervaded the killing ground. Already, as if they’d been hatched from thin air, vultures circled on tilting wings high overhead.
The hunters walked their ponies slowly toward the herd, slouching low behind their manes to withhold for as long as possible the sight of their own erect and deadly man-posture from the doomed buffalo. Jenny dropped the jaw rein and placed an arrow firmly on the bowstring. She was riding with her knees now, her balance sure and easy. She had tucked the tips of her toes into the rawhide girth that cinched Wind’s belly.
As they neared the herd, the buffalo grew restless. An old cow, barren and wise, threw back her head and began to moan low in her chest. She flipped her tail and trotted back and forth, then faced the approaching horsemen. A bull standing near her lifted his heavy head and glared ominously downslope.
I’D KILL HER first, Wolf Chief thought as he watched from a mile away, then the bull. If I had my Sharps and two loaded cartridges. . . . But I don’t have it and I couldn’t shoot it if I did. But I’ll kill them anyway, or at least the big bull. If he tramples me, so be it. I will kill him anyway.
You will come to me, Old Bull. Come to me—now!
Suddenly the old cow spun on her heels and galloped away, uphill toward where Wolf Chief lay. The bull followed. The rest of the herd whirled without looking and charged after them.
NOW THE DISTANT horsemen slacked their reins, kicked in their heels—their ponies finally free to chase, streaking out on the instant from a walk to a pelting gallop. The grasslands rumbled under clear blue skies.
Jenny rode just behind Two Shields, near the tip of the right horn of horsemen. Crazy led the charge, hawk feathers fluttering in the mane of his pony. Walks like Badger pounded at Jenny’s side, grinning wide, braids flapping. She could hear Cut Ear’s pony two jumps behind her. Clods of wet dirt and buffalo grass spun back from the hooves of the charging herd, exploding black and green off Wind’s shoulders, stinging Jenny’s hands and face. She tucked in tight behind Wind’s neck for protection. Cold spray flew in her face, the buffalo running full tilt now through pooled rainwater, then the sharp stinging scent of sage crushed under their hooves, spangles of sunlight glancing from the white boulders that studded the slope, and they were up among the trailing buffalo, the hot heavy black-maned bulls grunting as they bucketed along, bringing up the rear, running more slowly and deliberately than the lighter, faster cows, swinging their horned heads from side to side as they ran.
Crazy did not raise his bow at the bulls, nor did Tom, so Jenny rode on through.
She saw a bull glance over at her—fire-red eyes glaring through a mop of wet black wire, silver whips of sputum trailing from his nostrils, from the gaping black-rimmed mouth—swing and aim the blunt, frayed, wicked tips of his horns toward her. Wind Blows veered before the bull could hook.
Then they were into the cows. Crazy’s bow bent and twanged simultaneously with Tom’s, their arrows disappearing past the fletching into heaving rib cages. Jenny heard Tom whoop and saw bright blood spurt from the nostrils of his first cow. Crazy whooped, too, and thumping along beside her, Walks like Badger was nocking another arrow, swinging his bow up to full draw, loosing a second shaft into the short ribs of the cow to his left. The cow stumbled and coughed blood. The Badger Walker whooped, and Cut Ear whooped almost in echo, close behind Jenny—he, too, had shot; another kill.
Now Wind came up fast behind a plump cow, veering out slightly to the right of her at the last moment, slowing her gallop just enough to take station on the cow’s right flank, not a bow length from her racing, pounding, sweat-lathered sides. Fat bulged beneath hair at the root of her tail.
Jenny swung upright on Wind’s wiry back, drew her bow full-length, the cool obsidian broadhead kissing her knuckles, and loosed the arrow. But it merely wobbled off the string, thwacked weakly into the cow’s hump—no good! Jenny fumbled another arrow free from under her bow hand. She tried to nock it, her hands and the bowstring dancing madly against each other, failed the first time. She gripped Wind’s barrel more tightly with her shuddering legs, and the mare seemed to sense her difficulty, for she slowed just a bit. Jenny took a deep breath. She nocked the arrow solidly, dug in her heels, and Wind sprinted ahead, back to where she’d been on the racing cow’s flank. The pony seemed to be running more smoothly now—almost consciously so, to give her an easier shot—and she drew and shot smoothly this time, a prayer to the pony. The arrow sank into the cow’s ribs, feather-deep.
Ten jumps farther on, the cow belched blood. She stumbled and folded at the hocks, skidded around in a half circle, tongue lolling, eyes rolled skyward.
Jenny whooped for joy of the kill!
THE BLACK HULKS of dead or dying buffalo, most of them cows, lay scattered randomly down the gentle hillside. Already the women, children, and old men were out and at work on them, blades flashing in the sunlight, the puckering rip of hides tearing loose from hot flesh reaching upward to where Wolf Chief lay in ambush. The old cow who’d stampeded the herd lay dead among half a hundred others. But the bull he’d marked for his own was still alive and at bay. Having finished with the serious slaughter, the hunters were now torturing the old bull. They had him surrounded and bristling with arrows; blood from the slashes of their lances ran down his shoulders and flanks. The bull held his head low and ready, and whenever a horse darted toward him, he lurched forward, trying to hook it. But the circle of torturers merely backed off, then regrouped to continue their game.
They were backing slowly toward Wolf Chief’s boulder.
Tie My Bones to Her Back Page 19
