Caspion & the White Buffalo

by Melvin Litton

  About a quarter mile ahead, below the sharp vertebrae of hills, the stream horse-shoed north; there, along the opposite bank, the ground lay open, devoid of cover, ideal for ambush. Although he couldn’t be certain, this hunch governed his action. Northwest, across the intervening diagonal, rose a sandy knoll unevenly forested by cedars. Caspion pointed Ho’ne to the trees, then caught hold of Stump’s halter and trotted him around in a screening maneuver. Sensing the contingency, Moneva had already dismounted; they ran between horse and mule, soon entering a thick stand of cedar.

  “We are hunted,” he explained; “An enemy is near.” She nodded, understanding. “Hold Two-Jacks and Stump…keep them quiet,” he urged. “And stay hidden, Moneva. Do not move from here.” Then he told her that if all went well he would make the song of the bobwhite three times. But if this signal never came—“Go, Moneva. Ride like the wind.” As he turned to leave, she touched his arm and placed her hand to his heart.

  “Good hun-ting, Nameho,” she said, her eyes bright with excitement. And he felt a rush of joy, a thirst for battle, like a song anxious to be sung.

  “Remember,” he said, “no three bobwhite…ride far away…fast.”

  But she only smiled and repeated: “Good hun-ting, Nameho.”

  He left her armed with a pistol and took his bow and rifle. With Ho’ne stalking alongside, Caspion advanced quietly from shadow to shadow through the trees.

  In descending the ridge the four horsemen lost sight of their prey. And once positioned, they were mildly perplexed by the empty vista that stretched before them. The quarry had vanished. Maybe the hunter and his squaw were hidden by a cut bank, watering their animals. As Camp Dog went to investigate, the others watched, crouched behind the rocks, anxious of eroding prospects. The Indian crossed the stream and disappeared into the trees.

  Through the dense cedar Caspion observed his angling descent, and scanning the upslope, spotted a rifle barrel projecting from the crenulated rocks. How many more lay hidden? Possibly four or five—a larger party would have simply ridden down to overwhelm them. Whatever their number, their intent was clear. Caspion knelt and fixed an arrow to the bow; he held ready, waiting, listening for the moccasins’ tread over sand and nettles. Ho’ne detected the approaching footsteps and bristled; a calming hand bade him lay. Caspion drew the bow taut…in an easy, slow breath…aiming as the enemy moved within range. A clear shot at twenty paces. At the twang of release the other’s eyes met Caspion’s and the arrow struck. Camp Dog clutched his chest in mute surprise, lurched forward and fell face down—the bloody shaft driven through his back, his red tongue tasting the dirt.

  A raven announced the kill; a meaning Moneva understood with fearful clarity; not the song she’d hoped to hear. She unlashed the white robe, draped it from her shoulders and mounted Two-Jacks. Stump drew back wary as she further cloaked her head.

  Caspion had edged to the perimeter of the cedars. He examined the craggy slope, heart racing like the water trickling nearby. He detected no sign among the rocks. Had they withdrawn, preparing to circle round…or were they simply laying low? Fifty feet of open ground, then the stream—a fool’s assault. He could only wait or send Ho’ne to draw their fire.

  Ravens fluttered. A mule’s bray broke the silence. Caspion glanced around as Two-Jacks strode into view, bearing a white-robed apparition. Moneva! Rifle fire erupted from the rocks—two, three puffs of smoke, followed instantly by cracking reports; bullets expertly bracketing the rider. Man and wolf-dog charged from cover, desperate to divert their aim. Ho’ne bounded over the stream while Caspion knelt and fired, blinding one with a ricochet. The victim clasped his eyes and screamed, and the next bullet silenced him forever.

  Gabel—his face flecked by Jesse’s brains—swung his rifle on the dual threat sprung from below. Chilled by the wolf-dog’s swift advance, he ignored man and drew a panicked bead on the black form racing forth. He fired and missed, then rose for a better vantage. Caspion’s third shot torn into his chest: heart, life, and vision shattered in slow-motion, swallowed into darkness with his last breath.

  Itchy had dropped back terrified after the first salvo and now shrank into a ball before the rude death witnessed as Gabel collapsed in spasms of hot blood and feces, further clinching his eyes to the black beast leaping the battlement, bearing towards his pulsing life, fangs set to strike, blood-hungered by man’s quickening fear, circling his quarry, searching the jugular.

  “Ho’ne…down”—growls quieting to man’s calming tone—“Down, Ho’ne.”

  As wolf-dog relented, Itchy dared open his eyes. Caspion kicked the cowed one to his feet and saw a boy, weaponless, frightened, no older than himself when he’d gone to war. Caspion pressed the rifle barrel to his chest, backing the boy against the rocks.

  “Ya…ya gon’ k-kill me, Mister?” The voice faint, childlike.

  “Possible,” Caspion allowed; “And if you don’t speak up right quick and truthful, most likely.” Itchy gulped down a sob. “First off, who do you ride with?”

  Encouraged by the reprieve of a question, he answered right up: “Joe Krippit, Sir.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Will…Willy Bremin, Sir.”

  Caspion nodded thoughtfully. “And where’s your home, Willy?”

  “I be from Arkinsaw, Sir. Ol’ Krippit, he come through thar some weeks back. Tol’ Paw he were a horse trader. Paw hired me on…” Words stopped abruptly; eyes hopeful, pleading. Caspion had seen many as young killed in the war; some by his own hand. But unarmed, at bay, he would be no man’s executioner, certainly not a boy’s. And his story sounded plausible, if a tad too innocent. Caspion held the other’s gaze a moment more then pointed his rifle towards the ridge.

  “Choose whichever sorry mount you ride, Willy, and hightail it home to Arkansas. Don’t look back, don’t you dare. Dream that the Devil is one step behind…his hot breath ever waitin’ to suck you down. Remember”—his blue eyes hardened, piercing as the rifle barrel grazed the boy’s chin—“Our paths ever cross again, I’ll let my wolf rip the hide from your flesh and gnaw your bones. Now git!” And Itchy Bremin lit out, nimble as a rabbit, grabbed the reins of his stout hog-eyed bay, mounted up and fled.

  Watching the rider disappear over the ridge, Caspion felt himself watched; he turned. Moneva stood before him, Ho’ne at her side, waiting expectantly.

  “Enemy hair!” she held up her bloody trophy—the scalp of the dying one found moaning in the cedars. She hissed something in the Cheyenne tongue, meaning roughly: “The laughing dog bites himself”—then spat in fierce defiance. Caspion caught the word hotan, and vaguely understood; but had he guessed her full meaning and known the precise mutilations visited on the man’s groin and mouth, he may not have successfully masked his shock. As it was, when she gestured to the dead before them and urged: “Enemy hair! You take!”—he knit his brow in feigned confusion, hoping to deter the notion. But she boldly pulled her knife and knelt to make her meaning clear—now a Nutukea, a female warrior. His hand closed quickly on her wrist; she yielded the knife and stood back, pleased, watching as he grabbed the hair and made a tentative cut. Urged on by her insistent gaze, he continued—and felt an emotional weightlessness, a haunting vacuity, as the head fell away and he lifted the scalp.

  “Ah Haih!” her war cry filled his soul; their hearts fused in the act. A moment of primal transition that wedded the pair; each turned irrevocably from their origin and past to one another—their union awaiting only a more blessed consummation.

  Moneva choose the dead Cheyenne’s hardy buckskin for its strong legs, lean head, and bright eyes. Caspion freed the others, and they journeyed on. Overhead the clouds lowered and color left the land as the sky grayed and darkened. By mid-afternoon snow began to fall, large flakes floating down in salient purity to the recent violence and blood. In the near distance, through the thickening veil, a Blue Heron arched his wings and ascended from his sentinel limb to drift beyond view.

  There, beneath the s
heltering trees and nearby stream, they camped, the world muted by the warmth and peace of the evening’s deepening envelopment. Even Ho’ne seemed contentedly resigned to his exile, curled at the entrance of the lean-to as a fire bloomed within, its amber haze softly filtered, drawing fragrance from the night. Man and woman shared their food in silence, governed by an ardor too heightened for words; coffee sweet with anticipation, sipped hungrily; thirst quickened by incipient passion. Eyes dilated—captive to an inner flame.

  While Caspion exited to check the animals once more, Moneva shed her dress and leggings, unbraided her hair and shook it free. When he pulled back the flap to reenter, she knelt upon the white robe; a red blanket draped her nakedness, granting a glimpse to the shadowed depths of her breasts and thighs. Out of practiced modesty she kept her eyes lowered to the fire. But as he undressed, her gaze turned full and direct. At his touch the blanket fell away; she raised her hands to his and pulled him down, their lips parted to quaffing breath. She had no need of gentleness, healed by time and blood. No longer an initiate, she needed, craved submersion, to feel the strength and heat of him, the exquisite violation of his flesh entering hers. And she opened to him, supplicant now, in sweet-breathed appeal for that murderous strength to meld mercifully with its victim; the heart’s predation feasting at the very womb of life—intense, hot-blooded, hunter and huntress, each clutching the other with clawed desire, flesh made fierce by the act of profound creation, a feverish joy longed for and welcomed, erasing for the moment all that’s gone before with the urgent flood and promise of what’s to be. Their bodies locked in rhythmic rush and ecstasy till all subsides, and the blood again pulses at a slower depth and lies quiet.

  Some moments passed before their senses returned; flesh too stunned to disengage. She whimpered sweetly—nudging him with her nose, nibbling at his mustache and chin, teasing his flesh with her waning spasms. When free of him, she rolled away and stood; her full beauty poised before the fire; semen dripping down her thigh. Caspion feasted his eyes on her sinuous bronze length.

  So much of woman’s beauty seemed a dubious ornament, though pleasing to the eye and touch, somehow superfluous, but Moneva’s was essential, vital in every aspect. Her breasts, hips, her slender contours contained the timeless rudiments of woman and no more; her flesh groomed like lioness fur, sleek and rippling, each movement drawing him forth—a beauty unadorned, honed, an absolute to embrace and breed, in which to gain, preserve, and extend life.

  He reached for her now, but she jumped away, suddenly the proud imperious Slim-Walking Woman. All modesty lapsed as she ran laughing into the night. Caspion rose and followed, watching as she leapt and danced, embracing the snowfall—racing with the innocence and abandon of a pure wild thing, enthralled by its own flesh and grace. And Ho’ne romped alongside, fur brushing flesh. Soon Caspion joined in the frolic, giving chase through the trees. When he caught her in his arms, he whirled her around and around, their heated bodies glistening with snow and laughter. Then he carried her back to the fire to lie upon the robe. Snow-bathed, lathered in passion, cleansed and warmed, they embraced once more; love gentled, restrained—sighs of pleasure and susurrant joy merged with the cold wind’s sibilant wail.

  In the enfolded hours of the night and day that the storm lasted, their love fest continued; an eternal present from which they desired no surcease. When the weather cleared on the second dawn, they broke camp. Moneva wore a tiny cross painted at the bridge of her nose, representing the Morning Star, Wohahiv, a rebirth.

  Two days later, riding into Fort Sill, they met with cold silence; the soldiers’ hard stares no doubt provoked by the scalps hanging from Caspion’s bridle—two of which had definitely come from white men. The post commander, Colonel Frederick Rylander, who’d once served under the legendary Indian fighter ‘Buck’ Van Dorn, displayed a cool reserve towards the enigmatic pair. While he granted them provisions and let them pass without incident, he expressed his displeasure in a weekly dispatch to Camp Supply.

  But Moneva, upon seeing the Buffalo Soldiers—a term of respect granted the Negro troopers by the South Plains Indians—was most baffled, struck by the extreme contrasts among the Vehos: they were either white or black, with no modulating color relative to the earth; all stark light and darkness, truly a trickster race. And why so few women for the many warriors? As they rode away, she leaned from her saddle to seek Caspion’s eyes, for the immediate reassurance of the Blue Sky Space reflected therein. Then she glanced back at Fort Sill, relieved to be gone.

  Over the weary months of winter, they traveled the arid twisting crags of the Wichita Mountains and pressed north along the Washita to scout the vicinity of Anadarko, always careful to skirt the occasional Kiowa or Comanche hunting party. Strangely enough, instead of blunting their senses, love sharpened their eyes, granted them greater focus; theirs, an opposite, insular world, a harmonious duality gripped in sharp distinction to all others. On the map and journal, Caspion faithfully noted the region’s various contentions. Whatever he missed, Moneva gleaned; their meanings, formerly guessed at or implied, now clearly expressed, for each spoke the other’s tongue, she with felicitous ease.

  And however worthy the endeavor, carried on out of duty to an old friend, Caspion saw the end as futile. The greatest problem lay with the Agencies themselves, Anadarko and Darlington; the concentration of the tribes not only fostered an insidious dependency, but rendered them more vulnerable to the predation of horse thieves, whiskey dealers, and other opportunists, not the least of whom were the very missionaries and government officials charged with running the agencies and dispensing annuities. In further fact lay the Army: Camp Supply to the north, Fort Sill to the south, serving as a constant threat and reminder that if the Indian was not yet imprisoned, he was certainly corralled—his cherished freedom to roam the plains more curtailed each year. The whole play and pattern of the scene witnessed was too chaotic and violent; the clash of cultures and events would not be turned by the scattered acts of a well-meaning few. The only blessing the white man could ever grant the Indian would be to leave him in peace and withdraw. But that was not to be.

  During the Easter Blizzard of ’73, Caspion and Moneva sought precarious shelter for three days on the open plains. Breath clouds formed about horse and mule and snow caked their coats as they huddled shoulder to shoulder by the lean-to; inside, under tarp and robes, man and woman embraced for warmth and pleasure. And even in their nestled womb, the breath misted as she told him of the life that grew within. He pressed his face to the soft down of her belly and listened. From then on they made love with grave care and tenderness. Ho’ne too lay close by, watching over them, as if guarding the lair from the cruel winds that howled at the frail canvas walls.

  In the thaw immediately following, the buffalo returned to graze in great number over the plains. Caspion and Moneva rode quietly through their midst, tacking before one group then another stretching to the far horizon. The buffalo, hungrily chewing the tender grass, seemed unperturbed at their passing. Inspired by the broad vista of beasts at tranquil pasture, Caspion recited a verse from the Song of Solomon:

  “Lo, the winter is past, Moneva, the rain is over and gone. The flowers appear on the earth…the time of the singing of birds is come…and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land.”

  She was delighted by the words and asked:

  “Do Vehos truly listen to wisdom of the turtle?”

  He laughed softly to himself, considering the notion.

  “Once upon a time,” he ruefully allowed, “seems likely they did. But that was long ago, Moneva…long ago.”

  “The Underwater Man is long-lived and wise,” she stated; then playfully chided: “Patient even of fools who forget this is the time of the Fat Moon…when high waters come.”

  Caspion noted her quick jest and admired her subtlety. And no, he still hadn’t figured out the Cheyenne Moons; there seemed to be three or four names for each, and they changed without warning, depending on her mood
.

  But approaching the Canadian soon confirmed her point. The river was swollen, turbid and angry; a fortnight would pass before they could safely ford. And during their wait, Caspion killed a black bull from which Moneva fashioned a robe to compliment his white, removing all the longer hairs for a deep glossy shine. Thus they rode, once the Canadian shallowed down, their respective robes gracing their shoulders, heading north through the Antelope Hills on the final leg of the journey.

  On the last day of April they sighted the jagged profile of Camp Supply.

  XXIV. Unbidden Love

  Since the day Muldarrin received the letter from Colonel Rylander concerning Caspion, he’d awaited further word with gnawing unease—like an impending cancer, sensed yet unnamed. Alternately angry, cursing such impudence in raging soliloquy, attributing the most heinous motives to imagined acts; at other moments sober, pacing fretfully, fearful for his friend’s safety and well-being. And who was this woman?

  In the words of Colonel Rylander, she was a Cheyenne “of a beauty so extreme as to nearly countervail the evidence of fresh scalps affronting my eyes. For her I could forgive any man his desire. But Jack, the scalps I cannot and will not condone. And but for her peculiar beauty and in deference to the warrant he carried, I would have thrown your man in irons. For I ask: If we ourselves yield to barbaric practice, how can we ever civilize this harsh, forsaken land? I know full well that among our troops are some who make trophies of the savage—although they work on the sly and the hideous hides are not paraded for all to see. Damnable enough, I will admit. But what’s to become of us when men of Christian birth, of like society and moral nourishment, make gross trophies of one another? For these were surely white scalps: one of reddish brown, the other blonde. Pray Heaven, I dare not speak its name. Be advised, Jack, whatever his worth to you, tighten the leash on your man. For if I hear more of such, I will notify Regional Command, so help me. As ever, I am respectfully and truly yours…”