Caspion & the White Buffalo

by Melvin Litton

  The sight of the grim trophy raised high on the lance of the lead warrior shook Caspion from his daze. He ran to his horse and hit the saddle in a single bound. Two-Jacks skittished, jerking his head against the reins. Caspion eased his grip and said, “Whoa boy…whoa now,” in a steady voice while rubbing the muscled shoulder with firm assurance. The hunter now the hunted, searching for any avenue of escape. He reined right then left—the horse pivoting in quick response to the rider’s skillful commands. But in either direction the howling warriors would cut them off inside a minute. The land damnably free of cover. He lashed his horse to the crest of the ridge and drew rein.

  As Two-Jacks reared, pawing the air, Caspion glanced back to see the Cheyenne closing fast. He felt a great vacuity, like hopelessness, hovering about and within. He secured his hat, determined; there was nothing for it but to reach the herd and escape in the violent storm of the stampede. Though first there was the 300 foot rock-edged escarpment to survive. A broken neck, most likely. Lacking faith in all else but his horse’s nature, Caspion set his heels and gave Two-Jacks his head. The muscled will plunged, bounding down the treacherous slope, over and aside jagged gullies, crumbling gravel, and rattler holes. Caspion leaned back over the haunches, his trailing hand struck by the tail as the cantle jabbed his lower spine, his stirrups thrust forward to counter the descent, muscles fluid then taut, each nerve sensing for Two-Jacks’ shifting rhythm, all working towards the balanced unity of man and horse.

  Towards the base, in one bone-wrenching lurch, the horse stumbled and recovered, pitching its rider violently forward, upright in the saddle. Caspion spurred on in gratitude as Two-Jacks strode out over the plain, jumped a narrow wash, and dashed for the herd. Fire, thunder, a flash of lightning could ignite a stampede, or a shadow cast by the flight of a passing bird—Caspion rode into that vast sea with a Rebel Cry and his Henry blazing. Like a pebble tossed into the water’s edge, the rippling movement of a startled few begat a greater wave, then the deafening flood of riotous beasts swept forth and the raging storm commenced. As the dust closed round he saw the Cheyenne halt along the ridge. Loath to follow.

  Blood still dripped from the warm scalp clutched in Running Hawk’s hand; not so fine a trophy as might have been. Even so, he agreed with Black Hand’s council that they should be satisfied with their lone victory, for three had counted coup, and while two were wounded, their wounds would heal. All boded well for the coming hunt. And why risk horse or warrior when their brother, Hotoa, had taken the Veho captive?

  “Let him go. His blood will feed the grasses,” Black Hand vowed.

  Yet watching their enemy melt into the herd, he grunted his respect and made the rippling sign of a crawling snake, which meant the Trickster rides like a Comanche—affirmed by all to be the finest horsemen of the plains.

  II. The Chase

  Pungent dust stung his eyes and dried his throat; Caspion pulled his kerchief over his nose and mouth. A yellow haze filled the air, blocking out the sky. The eerie, dense monochrome closed him in, his senses submerged, directionless, somehow cut-off. The view now clothed in a running mass of buffalo; though some still carried the lighter dun of summer, most wore the dark full pelage of winter. Their silhouettes rolled and lunged like the surface of an umber sea, their great humps tossing like waves; tails pitched high, lashing; heads held low like the threat of doom, black tongues throbbing in rampant thirst for air, grass, and water. A leviathan memory ruled their eyes, recalling the subterranean, cavernous womb from which they mythically spewed forth across the land, ever longing for the warm sustenance, weightless night, the sweet silence and utter peace where Ho-e, the Great Mother, harbors all.

  Caught in the press of the stampede, Caspion felt once more the crush of battle as thousands of dew claws rattled above drumming hooves like soldiers’ equipage in an army on the move. The Rebel Cry was yet another mimicked call, one he’d learned well, for he’d heard it often enough on the receiving end, terrified as the screaming Gray Line charged through the morning mist. He’d worn the Blue, fought as ‘Billy Yank,’ joined in the summer of ’61 to escape his father’s wrath and the drudgery of the plow.

  And the cause arose from his own recklessness. The heedless youth had returned from a chance moment with a lovely girl, and pride of conquest had spurred him to run his father’s prize mare beyond endurance—not just winded, but lung-damaged, ruined. Which his father noted immediately upon their entering the barn, stabbing the hay-fork into the muck, cursing as he ran forth: “My God, boy, you’ve broke her wind. You damn fool of a son! You’ve ruined her…our Lady!” And when the boy offered weakly that the horse loved to run, his father answered that a horse only ran as pleased its master’s hand, and a cruel master, indeed, to ruin such a lovely beast.

  “Off now, damn you!” His father jerked him from the saddle. “You’ll follow the plow for a season. And I grant you’ll not break the will of them mules before you feel your own back breaking.”

  So he went to plowing behind the mules; one day, two, three, well into the fourth, and still the interminable task seemed but lightly scratched. Each day he gazed from the edge of the field in late afternoon while the train passed slowly around the curve, its mournful whistle voicing his regret and shame. Inside the locomotive’s dark hull coal-fires blazed in angry heat, boiling steam to an explosive will capable of driving the Iron Beast through the distance and far away. And he felt the same raging fire and explosive will within, screaming to escape, not only his punishment, but escape the confines of his family, the farm, the entire valley. Though it had only been settled for a brief generation, the valley Caspion inhabited as a child was as custom-locked as a walled monastery, surrounded by wooded hills, each field and pasture hedged by trees and tangled brush with briers and creepers to trip you underfoot. And each guarded thought, the soul’s true utterance, slammed into irons if spoken freely.

  He rarely saw other people, save proximate neighbors, and then only in town for weekly trading. Total strangers he’d never encountered until the day a Gypsy wagon rolled by and he saw a swarthy-skinned youth snag a chicken with baited corn dangled from a birch-rod as the dust trailed behind the seemingly backward spinning spokes and wheels. Later, a circus came with elephants, clowns, and the high trapeze—a riotous spectacle beyond imagining, yet once tasted, savored forever. So this was why we lived, he thought, witnessing their aerial wonders…to leap through space and grasp a handhold, chance all and risk the flesh in motion. He loved these strange people and longed to know of them and all that lay beyond. What wonders waited?

  On the evening of the fourth day when he failed to return, his father and older brother went in search. They found the mules and plow tied to a tree beside the tracks. Months passed before he sent word.

  Caspion took the leap and gained a handhold, rode the train through a neighboring state and signed up, lying about his age, with a regiment then organizing out of Cairo, Illinois. Undersized, not much taller than the muzzle-loading Springfield issued early on, ill-favored by his baggy uniform, he joined the ranks of ‘small-fisted farmers and greasy mechanics, the mud-sills of society…’ as Southern planters were want to disparage Union recruits. But marching through four years of war, his clothes soon fit him, and he kept a level head, considering, and miraculously kept all four limbs, fighting in the west at Stones River, Shiloh, Vicksburg, and untold nameless skirmishes and daily harassment between enemy pickets, a task he much preferred to fatigue duty, opposing the worthy troops of Forrest, Bragg, Buckner, and Beauregard, marching down endless roads—a few macadamized, drought-hardened, but more often knee deep in mud or snow—as seasoned veterans quipped, “There ain’t a boot been made for that kinda marching,” so they slung them from their rifles and tied blankets to their feet moccasin-style.

  ‘Yea, them not fit for the march, not fit for the fight.’

  And they all “saw the Elephant” aplenty, as the experience of battle came to be known by combatants on both sides. While Sherman marched
to the sea, gutting the South’s underbelly, Caspion, through grim happenstance, followed Grant’s fortunes east, joining with the Army of the Potomac against the esteemed veterans of Virginia, fighting in twenty-four engagements from the Wilderness to the James River, battling troops led by Stuart, Hill, Longstreet, Pickett, and Early—there when 7,000 Union troops fell in twenty minutes before the withering hell-fire at Cold Harbor, right on up to the final siege of Richmond. Then the Southern flame sputtered and died with Lee’s weary surrender one rainy April day at Appomattox.

  Through all that dark chaotic blizzard, the smoke, mist, and fog of shifting battles, many named for a town, a river, a hill or field, names attached later and acclaimed in headlines and history—Manassas, Bull Run, Kennesaw Mountain, Antietam, Kill Creek, Cemetery Ridge—one echoed through his memory, stood forth in such vivid dimension that the experience seemed unending, for a part of him had never left, would never leave, the Bloody Angle at Spotsylvania. Its horrors he could never purge, nor outdistance. Trapped in the crush of battle like man and horse now pressed by the stampede, he fought from the trenches and breastworks, firing point-blank then using bayonet to slash and stab, leaving the blade stuck in the writhing flesh fallen before him; and not courage but the frenzied press of bodies pushed him into the breach, snatching up another loaded rifle to fire, slash, stab, and again…striking down each man rushing forth—some dull-eyed, mad, half-witted, others bright with youth, beauty, and terror, but all soon equally and strangely vacuous in death—killing with a hopeless, savage rage until a rifle-butt from hell-knows-where smashed into his face and in a flash of white pain he fell to the ground with a silence he hadn’t known since birth. Some stalwart hand saved his stunned flesh from being trampled underfoot and carried him from the carnage.

  But the nightmare hadn’t ended; it haunted Caspion, those unseeing eyes left that day and over the course of the war, the mute stupidity and rot of death. For after a time the killing became simply a matter of what color cloth the blood soaked red, the Blue or the Gray, and how the fabric tore—whether the Grim Tailor employed saber, bayonet, grape, buck or ball. Human beings were not among the dead on a battlefield; something odious, the leavings of. What was it the flesh then lost? Life, the soul, or simply the warmth of life which gave the illusion of a soul, a shimmering presence; something the utter stillness of a corpse could not impart. And yet to Caspion the land only grew in spirit as it lay dormant beneath a blanket of snow; the purity of winter, its orchestral silence, overwhelmed the glorious song and fragrant warmth of spring. The land dressed in a shroud of snow was an intimation of the sacred; but not so the flesh.

  These eyes about him now, however, from hungering hundreds of buffalo, were brimful of life—thunderous and terrible life ablaze in the furious flood and darkening dust of the stampede. He felt a wary concern, knowing all too well that terror oft-proved more deadly than rage, having seen men fight and die by the thousands amidst the fearful swarm that fuels battle as fear now fed horse and man, pricking their flanks with urgent speed. From these ancient eyes he sensed the threat of judgment. Hadn’t he come to ravage the beast? To flay its hide?

  A large bull pressed closely on the left; Caspion lowered the muzzle of his Henry and fired with powder flash and instant recoil as the life-blood oozed through the mud-caked fur and the beast swept beneath the onrushing wave.

  But at least this flesh held value in silver and gold, even in death—what the cynic might call a purifying transformation—unlike man who turns to rot, leaving only flies to profit from the spoilage. As with the recently massed armies of divided brothers who’d murdered one another with such savage abandon, serving an ill-defined purpose that if stated clearly would more resemble a curse. The slaughter of untold thousands to further the ideal of freedom and union had left a gaping wound in Caspion’s and the nation’s soul that would never heal, perhaps had never healed since the long plague of man. And he was further cursed by the thought of his partner fallen brief hours before. How long? For night was upon him. He felt cursed by the darkness; it hollowed and emptied him like the nothingness he perceived all around—like long ago when he’d lost his meager faith through futile prayer early in the war, like a rag wrung dry again and again till it turns to dust. But lashed to the million-bodied storm in the fathomless night, carried on and away, he feared death more than ever. At least in battle you were among men, a part inseparable, even as you butchered and were butchered. Yet here, in the alien sea of running beasts, he was utterly alone. With that thought took root a desperate need, a longing for attachment like a buried seed’s urge to grow; lost, yearning to taste the sweet granule of light; a path to follow and allay the darkness; if not certainty, at least a whispered hope. And hope somehow was white.

  In the gloom before him he glimpsed a faint glow that diffused then flashed again, eyes fixing on the ghost-like vision of the white buffalo he’d spied earlier at the edge of the herd. The barest hint of form provided by the white secured his senses and grounded his reason in that otherwise disorienting fall through space. The visual talisman would be his salvation, like a buoy in treacherous waters, for by sighting on the white he could gauge the shifting terrain, adjust to and guide his horse accordingly.

  Caspion stroked Two-Jacks’ neck with concern. Sired by a Kentucky Thoroughbred, foal of a Tennessee Walker, a tall deep-chested runner that could thread the needle on a ridge—but there were limits even to Two-Jacks’ great endurance. Only death was limitless. Escape was urgent.

  The terrain roughened, yet Two-Jacks surged, powering them on as the country began to rise, entering the distant hills that lay beyond the valley. They’d covered over 20 miles at a hard gallop, churning up the prairie—its rich loam bleeding through the torn sod like furrows left in the wake of a thousand plows. Presently the bulk of the herd veered with a tide’s visceral pull, avoiding a sharp promontory that loomed ahead like an earthen Moses dividing the sea. Free of the great mass, horse and rider were swept along with the stream of beasts flooding through a narrow defile between the hills. The air cleared; the quarter moon sliced through the dust; silhouettes of hills appeared above the dark roiling humps. Still, Caspion followed the white. Soon he could distinguish sounds separate from the ringing in his ears and the general roar of the stampede. He sang encouragement to his horse and faithfully followed the white.

  The trail took a rapid descent, leveled out and curved slightly left, running beneath an overhanging cliff and along the narrow shoulder of a deep ravine, the precipice cut by centuries of flash floods and ceaseless winds, leaving passage for four or five abreast with many on the outer edge forced into the chasm. Caspion cued on the white, saw it drop in bellow with others plunging to their deaths. Man and horse pressed hard left in a dangerous maneuver, hugging the hillside to avoid the fall. His lower leg scraped the bank and he braced for impact. But in another few strides they broke through, entering a small valley in a swift current that widened out like the smile of gratitude that graced his lips. Seizing his chance, he again cut left and spurred Two-Jacks for open ground. After some minor jostling they raced into the clear, at last free of the stampede. He reined behind a nearby boulder and dismounted while the buffalo continued thundering past.

  Caspion quickly unsaddled Two-Jacks. He removed the bit, leaving the bridle haltered to walk the horse around the near radius till its breathing steadied. He emptied the last of the water into his hat and the horse eagerly sipped it dry. From a saddlebag he fetched a currycomb and brush and began vigorously working the muscles along the back and flanks, down the neck, chest, and forelegs—all the while speaking in soothing tones as he rubbed the horse dry after its long exertion, determined to never ruin another horse, certainly not Two-Jacks. The animal snorted with pleasure as its coat quivered beneath the caress of brush and comb.

  Caspion’s estrangement from his father had been final. To the stern, prideful man the war was as foolish as his son’s service in it; he felt no honor reflected, thought victory could onl
y mean a tide of subhuman blacks swarming north to threaten white status, jobs, and women—a sentiment commonly held throughout much of the Union. Nor had he forgiven the boy for ruining his mare; and when he died in the winter of ’64, there went all chance of reconciliation. Caspion visited the grave the following spring, stood briefly, filled with anger and remorse, then turned away and placed flowers at the base of the weathered stone nearby—the grave of his mother. She’d died giving him birth, which was the real reason for the father’s unyielding manner towards the prodigal, deeming him the lancet that left her a whitened corpse. Whereas Luther, the first-born and favorite of the father, cherished his younger brother—saw in Caspion and his deep blue eyes the uncanny reflection of their mother’s fiery beauty.

  At war’s end, when Caspion returned, Luther welcomed him home with the gift of Two-Jacks, the horse named for the hand he’d held to win the prize—a dicey gamble that fortune favored with a smile. Poker was the lone vice the stalwart farmer allowed himself. But a keen eye for horseflesh was his genius and to one day own a great runner was his passion. So it was no idle gift Caspion received, nor was it idly taken. He’d had to look away when Luther handed him the reins. His brother spoke softly in token of the absolution that would never be granted.

  “You run this fella as far as you please. Don’t worry, he’s a runner. The saddle will rub you raw before he tires.” And a fine saddle it was, a polished black McClellan, cavalry issue. A delight for an infantryman after four years of marching.

  He stayed on through that summer and helped Luther with the harvest—noting with sad irony the new McCormick reaper winnowing the grain, matching the grim efficiency of the war machine that had lately winnowed so many men. But with the fields worked and the crops planted, with autumn’s flaming return to the surrounding hills and the crisp cider nip in the air, he grew restless. Mounted on Two-Jacks, well-seated in the McClellan saddle with the Henry tucked neatly in its scabbard—the lever-action carbine procured off a snoozing cavalryman late in the war, a breech-loading Spencer left stuck in the mud like a primitive spear in trade, marking his last use of the bayonet—Caspion caressed the butt-end of his weapon, checked the cinch once more, and prepared to leave. The brothers, promising to continue the correspondence they’d maintained throughout the war, bid a fond farewell with a firm handclasp and the silent nod of love and respect. Caspion headed west. Heard they were building railroads and needed meat; either way, hard labor or hunting, he figured it beat farming. One thing certain, after clearing the road of ‘Johnny Reb,’ he was a crack shot and a buffalo was a mite bigger target than a man.