by Win Blevins
All night he kept the fire going, ate, dozed, and ate. Coy did the same.
At dawn he cached in some bushes a quarter mile from the doe. It would be a draw for the crows, but he didn’t care. If it drew Indians too, that would tell him something. Since he was slept out, he watched.
He also considered. Still too close to the village, he thought, to risk taking a couple of days to dry this meat. He had to make time, which meant leaving a lot of the deer. After some thought, he figured a way to carry a hind quarter over his shoulder on the rawhide rope. Best he could do.
Watching all day, he saw no Indians. None on the deer, none on the prairies to the north or south.
During that afternoon he did something about his moccasins. The bottoms were holey. If he had an awl and some sinew, he could sew a new sole on. But he had neither, nor rawhide for soles.
He cut off the belly of his deerskin shirt, hand-span wide and about two feet long. Using the moccasins for size, he cut soles out of the skin and stuffed them loose into the bottom of the mocs. All he could do.
At dark he moved back to the carcass. He could see where the crows had pecked. It took him only an instant to say to hell with that.
He built another small fire, roasted meat again, and consumed all he could hold. He napped a little. He went through the process twice. At about midnight, according to the Big Dipper, he gathered up The Celt and a hind quarter and said to Coy, “Let’s go.” He teased himself, I am now a man of possessions.
After traveling the rest of the night, he cached again, fed himself and Coy from the hindquarter, and slept. At midday, though, he decided he was far enough along to start traveling during the day. He could make better time, and he was for more likely to see a buffalo.
Three lead balls left. For how many weeks ahead?
The rest of the afternoon he alternated trotting and walking. Seemed like a good way to make miles. He didn’t let himself think how many miles. How many weeks, that he did wonder. Things were different now. At first he’d wandered, rudderless, across vast plains that stretched infinitely in every direction. Now he wanted to go somewhere. He smelled a life for himself somewhere ahead.
That night Sam held up the hindquarter, looked at it thoroughly, and in a way said good-bye to it. One more good meal on it, tonight’s. He chawed. Coy made pathetic eyes at him. He cut some off for the pup. The little beast—and I am a beast, too, Sam told himself—gobbled it and made eyes for more.
Sam thought about keeping it all for himself, but that would never do. True, Coy could get his own food with tooth and claw. Sam couldn’t. But Sam also couldn’t eat while Coy watched, belly rumbling. Somehow their connection said no to that.
He started to cut Coy another good chunk and thought better of it. He was sharing with crows, why not his brother? Put your mouth where a crow’s beak has pecked, and where your brother-friend has gnawed.
He put the whole quarter down in front of Coy. The pup flattened his belly to the ground like he was going to sneak up on it. He looked at the quarter, looked at Sam, back at the quarter. He wormed forward and began to chew. Sam smiled.
After a couple of minutes Sam reached out and took it.
Coy jumped to his front paws, bottom on the ground, feet stiffly forward.
Sam gave him a look and a grin. Then he chomped down right on the place Coy had been chewing.
Coy’s expression got quizzical. Then he lay his head down on his paws and watched Sam, a look that was sidelong but persistent. Like a raven waiting for the wolves to get off the carcass, Sam thought.
When he’d had his share, he gave the quarter to Coy and went to sleep.
The next day he loped as much as he could. Make miles, make miles.
He cached and slept hungry.
The next day, once more, he loped every minute he could. And he could almost all the time. His legs were devouring the distance now, pushing it from in front of him to behind him. Nothing else was on his mind. He watched the next rise, looked long ahead from the top without stopping, and kicked more miles behind him. Go, go, go.
Coy kept alongside comfortably. Seemed to Sam he liked traveling that way.
Life seemed charmed again that afternoon. He came on a rivulet draining toward the river, and the banks were crowded with blackberry bushes. He ran toward them, Coy nipping at his heels.
Just then the griz roared.
Sam skidded to a stop and fell on his butt.
Griz was up on his hind legs, glaring.
If Sam and Coy were lucky, this griz was a he, and there were no cubs around.
Probably aren’t, he told himself. A she-griz would have already charged them.
Griz roared again.
Sam thought. The Celt was loaded. But one shot wouldn’t do the job. Was it worth it?
Sam roared back.
Griz flapped his paws in the air and roared again.
Then he dropped to all fours and loped away.
Sam Morgan, you are a fool, and a lucky fool.
He waded in. He picked with both hands and ate as fast as he could. Berry juice ran down his face and neck and onto his shirt. It ran up his arms and smeared onto the insides of his sleeves.
He ate like a wild man for, well, just a few minutes. Then he hightailed it for the river.
Odd thing was, when it came time to camp, he was hungry again.
Coy damn well wouldn’t go to bed hungry. Each evening, when they cached, he left and came back with a ground squirrel, chipmunk, or prairie dog.
At the end of this third day of running and hardly eating, just berries, Sam felt weak. He would have to hunt tomorrow. He hated to. It violated his desire to go, go, go forever. But it was necessary. And at sunset he had seen buffalo in the distance. Too far for this evening, good for the morning.
The moon was full. He lay on his back and looked the old grandma in her face. His own grandmother, she’d had lots of stories about the moon. The full moon makes you crazy. It makes your plans come true. The full moon is the time to cut your hair. He just looked, and didn’t come up with any words for what he saw. He knew that he was content. Like Coy, like a bluebird, like a tree, even like grass, he was well content to inhabit this spot on the earth.
When he fell asleep, he dreamed.
He walked up to a buffalo cow. She was lying on her side, like the one where he and Coy had cached themselves against the prairie fire. Somehow, though, he did not think this one was dead. She was … waiting. His eyes kept coming back to her belly, naked and vulnerable.
He hesitated, uncertain. Then, as though he knew when he didn’t, he went up to her on the belly side, set down The Celt, and stripped all his clothes off. He stood before her, wholly naked, with his arms out and palms up, as for inspection, or in supplication.
She made no movement or gesture. He could not even see by her eyes if she was living or not.
He got down on all fours, crawled to her, and scooched up against her, back to belly, the way Coy lay with him that dawn of the great fire.
As he knew he would, though he didn’t actually know, he melted into her. He, Sam Morgan, human being, backed into the being of the buffalo, his flesh uniting with her flesh, his hair hers. Inside, willingly, he stretched out into her. He reached into her front legs with his arms, into her rear legs with his own. Rump squirmed into rump. Head merged into head. He wiggled his fingers and toes, writhed his whole body, and as he did, the fibers of her muscles entered his, and vice versa. Last, he felt his heart unite with hers, unite absolutely, until they beat the same beat and pumped the same blood.
He felt the buffalo blood mingle with his and flow into lung, gut, brain, loin, and limb. He would have known that she felt his blood in the same way, except that there was no longer any she to feel such a thing. Nor was there a he. There was one being, truly one. He was something new.
He drew breath into his lungs, and the breath was buffalo breath.
He got to her feet, grand and shaggy, and looked out across the prairie and t
he world, poised for something great.
He woke up.
Sam looked around at the infinite night. He saw some stars between the canopies of the big cottonwoods overhead, and felt like he could see the rest, a panorama of leafy astronomy, the sky revealed utterly and simply to him, opened entirely, and it was beautiful beyond beautiful.
After a while Coy squirmed next to him and whimpered, dreaming a coyote dream, which was probably a human dream. “I am a buffalo,” Sam whispered. He put his hand around the pup’s belly, scooted it against his chest, and murmured, “I am Sam-alo.”
He slept. No new dream came. He basked in the beauty of the old one.
When he woke at first light the next morning, he got up and got to traveling in the direction of yesterday’s buffalo. They were gone. After an hour or two of looking, he moved on. It was all right. From now on the buffalo would come to him. But he did not spend what was left of his strength running. He walked and walked.
His mind stayed in his dream, but he didn’t know what to do about it.
The day was elemental. He drank from the river, washed his face, wet his hide shirt, put it back on, clammy and delicious against the day’s heat. He loped. He saw birds circling over something to the north, and wondered if it was meat, and if he and Coy should go there and share it with the crows and wolves. They kept loping. He watched clouds gather to the northwest and wondered if they would get a rain. It had hardly rained during his whole journey. They kept going. The next day was the same, and the next.
Three balls left. His mind turned that thought over and over. Running step, three balls left, running step, three balls left.
The buffalo will be there for me.
The next day he took a cow and fed. Coy fed as well. Sam felt like a predator.
Two balls left.
He used his hide shirt as a possible sack to carry meat, tied with the rawhide rope. He and Coy could eat on it, probably five days. He tried counting how many days the meat would last, how many he could travel hungry, how many days before starvation….
The counting was too much work.
Run. Go every step possible at a lope. Walk only when essential. Run again. Make forty miles a day. Hell, make fifty.
Get there.
Odd how important Fort Atkinson was to him. He needed powder and lead. Maybe he should learn to hunt with bow and arrow, free himself entirely from provisions. Live like the Indians do.
Enough. He might try that. And he might not. It was for later.
One day he had to swim a big river. He got his powder wet—now he was the same as unarmed. He started to dry it and then thought better. He would run and run and run and dry it tonight. Before he lay down that evening, he spread both kinds of powder out on a rock. The night air would not be as hot and dry as the daytime air, but maybe eight or ten hours would dry it.
After a few bites of dry meat in the morning he was off. With dry powder.
Soon he had hunting luck again. The dream had hinted that the buffalo were his kin, and they seemed to be—they came when he called.
One ball left.
On a morning like a million others he came to another big river. He swam it, awkwardly because of The Celt in one hand. On the far bank he felt weak and decided to spend a couple of hours drying out his powder. He debated with himself about how long he could go on without eating. Earlier, he could move strongly on the days he fasted. Now he felt weak, even on the first day.
You have no cause to feel weak, he told himself. You ate yesterday.
Nevertheless he worried. Instead of trotting the rest of the day, he walked.
The next morning he felt so weak he wondered if he should hunt buffalo that day, only his second without food. His last ball.
I will run until I die, he thought, run until I die.
He looked at Coy. You will be all right, he said in his mind to his friend. You will be all right. Such is your nature.
He saw no buffalo that day.
The next morning he saw no buffalo, no deer, no nothing. Feeling unsteady, he walked.
Right away he came to a big bend in the river. It ran off to the south here. Looking ahead, he saw a well-worn trail heading straight east. On an intuition he followed the trail. Maybe it cut across a big loop in the river.
By midday he was forcing himself brutally to keep going. By midafternoon he was faltering. Once when he stumbled, he stayed where he fell and napped, or lost consciousness somehow. He woke up with no idea how long he’d been out.
He walked eastward, walked eastward, walked eastward. He could hardly hold his head up to look ahead. His feet, these he saw. But with his head down he might have walked into the middle of a war party without noticing.
A rise faced him. He dreaded it. The rise was nothing in particular, he had run strongly up slants much steeper. But today he wondered if he could walk up this little hump.
One more time, he told himself. And he did.
At the top he sat on a boulder to rest, panting. He looked around. And saw to the east the council bluffs of the Missouri River. On the bluffs perched log buildings of Fort Atkinson. Beyond, the river.
His mind swirled, and he fell.
A while later he sat up. The fort was still there.
He got to his knees. It was too much. He sat back down. He stared at the fort, he ate it with his eyes.
Then he blubbered like a baby.
After a while he laid down and napped.
Twenty minutes later, an hour, two hours—who knows?—he woke to the touch of a hand on his shoulder.
And woke looking into the face of …
None other than Hannibal MacKye.
Part Four
THE RETURN
Chapter Nineteen
“It was nothing mystical,” said Hannibal. “The sentry picked you up in the glasses and I came out.”
Sam swigged deep on the flask. He held it out to Hannibal, but the educated Delaware held up a palm. Sam swigged again. In the flask was hot coffee with lots of sugar. “That will pick you up,” Hannibal said.
Sam looked at his friend and grinned. “I suppose if you’re found laying flat on the trail, you need it.”
Hannibal looked into Sam’s eyes curiously. “What the devil happened to your hair?”
“Lost my hair but saved my scalp.”
“Sounds like a good story.”
Coy crouched belly down in the dust half a dozen feet away. Seemed like he didn’t know whether to protect Sam or run like hell. He watched Hannibal with sharp eyes.
Sam drained the flask. “Sorry my pup’s standoffish.”
“Coyote, isn’t he?”
“Coyote and friend. I’m surprised he’s unfriendly.”
“They have their own reasons. He’ll come to me when he’s ready.”
Sam put a hand on Hannibal’s shoulder and levered himself to his feet.
Hannibal took his hand and gently drew him back down. “Take your time.” He scooted around backward on his bottom and said, “Look.”
Playfully, Sam rat-a-tat-tatted his heels around until he had also pivoted backward.
“Behold a great drama of a sunset,” said Hannibal in a fake-operatic speaking voice. “A glow of indescribable orange fierceness tears across the sky. Across that slashes a violence of wine-colored cloud. A band of pink, peculiarly gentle, mediates between the flaming orange and the serene sky, which is a perfect, robin’s egg blue.” Hannibal grinned at his own silliness.
Sam beheld and said, “Looks like the prairie fire that damn near got me.”
Hannibal raised his eyebrows at Sam. “Guess you’ve got some stories.”
They watched the sunset. When it turned violet, and then purple, Sam got to his feet.
“The sentry’s not going to be happy about a coyote in the fort,” said Hannibal. “Officer of the day won’t be either.”
Sam put the rawhide rope on Coy. In the last few days he had taught the pup to walk on a leash. Together the three ambled toward the fort.
Last mile, thought Sam. He could hardly believe it. Last mile of seven hundred.
“First thing, you better eat.”
Telling the stories seemed to come ahead of everything but eating. “We can get you some boots from the quartermaster tomorrow. Also some better clothes, cover those blistered spots.”
Sam hardly noticed anymore that his face and neck were always red and peeling. His belly and calves too, where he’d cut off his own deerhide covering.
In line for supper he suddenly blurted, “What month is it?”
“Moon when the leaves turn yellow.”
Sam glared at his friend.
Hannibal laughed. “September. Time of the change from summer to autumn.”
Sam thought back. “I left Fitzpatrick and the fellows on June 1, or maybe it was June 1.”
“Three months by yourself,” said Hannibal.
“The first two weeks, about that by the moon, I waited for them.” He wondered at it. “Two and a half months to walk those seven hundred miles.” He walked his mind back a little, across that vast distance. He chilled.
“The man who came to the end of journey,” asked Hannibal, “was he the same man who started out?”
“No,” said Sam. He was damn sure of that much.
A soldier was offering to ladle food onto his tin plate.
Lord, I’m hungry.
“I’m pleased for you to be in our mess,” said the soldier politely. “Don’t intend to feed no coyote.” Coy was tied well off to the side, but he’d attracted some notice, mostly incurious and unfriendly.
The mess was ship’s biscuits, meat, and beans. The texture of bread seemed impossibly exotic. Sam ate three plates full before Hannibal cautioned him. Sam remembered his buffalo feasts and went back again anyway. Then he drank cup after cup of coffee, which he hadn’t tasted since he left Fort Kiowa a year ago. “You’ve got maybe twenty pounds to put back on, looks like,” observed Hannibal.
When Sam got up to piss, he and Coy walked out to look at the scene in twilight. The fort stood atop what were known as the council bluffs, and had a fine prospect. There Sam gave Coy a full helping of meat, and the pup gobbled it. Sam was proud of the beast for not making an intolerable racket while tied within smell and sight of all the food.
