Caspion & the White Buffalo

by Melvin Litton

  “Good a reason as any to kill a man,” he allowed. “But it won’t wash against that kind. They’ll buy judge and jury, Alice. Those hunting you are money-hounds. Hungry for the fat reward. They’ll not rest. They’ll nail your poster to every storefront and bank. They’ll be in every city, every depot…watching. Don’t even think of Denver…I promise you they’re waiting. You might light out for the Territories,” he offered dryly; “Catch up with Dixon, Rath, and the boys. That’ll be the ruse I feed ’em…that you fled with your old lover Caspion,” he winked to Hans, “and headed for the Dead Line. That should give ’em pause.” Then he added: “Bet every warrior on the South Plains would love to have that red hair hanging from his trophy pole.” But his attempt at humor was not infectious; he sobered with his final words. “Get her out of Dodge, Hans. And whatever you do, make it quick. They’re due in on the Eight-o-five.” Then he set his hat at a jaunty angle and touched the brim. “Vamoose and good luck.”

  With Hickok gone, Alice leaned to Hans, trembling like prey run to ground, in need of his strength, assurance, and comfort. A tenderness he gladly gave.

  “Do not vorry, Alice,” he said; “I be vith you. Zey vill not find.”

  But that was their lone moment of delay. They soon packed several bags and a large trunk for travel—enough for themselves and Hesta. While Hans went to ready the team and wagon and bring it around back, Alice stood before the mirror, scissors in hand, and ruthlessly began shearing her glorious mane. Finished, she burned its length in the parlor stove, watching the flames take root as the luxuriant curls twisted, shrinking in a tortuous mass till gone. She then colored her hair a mute auburn; combed it in an upsweep and rolled it in a bun. Her face washed free of paint and powder, she gazed upon her image, so starkly pale, almost plain in contrast. Penitent, like one veiled in mourning, for it was a death of sorts—widowed of herself. She wished it thus; dressed in black, without a single ornament, though her eyes shone like emeralds, more remarkably green, lustrous. An austere beauty. She smiled in greeting, sensing a new self emerge; she rather admired the transition, and yes…chose a new name. Georgiana.

  Once Hans had carried down the trunk and returned to grab the luggage, she gathered up Hesta and followed. By the time the 8:05 made its rude stop in Dodge City, the fugitives were miles north, rolling through that endless sweep of silent anonymity, the night folding like a great wave over the shimmering sunset, the last rays fading like the sinking strands of a drowning beauty. Hesta slept in the baby-board, kept pacified by sugar tied in a nipple of cloth. With the stars their only witness, they traveled on through the night, gazing over the dark and empty plain.

  XXXVI. War

  By June of ’74 the Buffalo War was set to play; hostilities commenced with the Battle of Adobe Walls. It is said that nearly a thousand warriors rode with Isa-tai, united behind his magic shield. A Quahadi medicine man, Isa-tai had impressed many with his timely predictions of comets, droughts, and blizzards. And his fiery rhetoric answered to their abiding hatred of the Veho hunters, fueling their anger and resentment much as Dog That Smiles had wished to do. Sweet Medicine was there, and Wears The Wind; Falling Shadow accompanied her husband along with many of the Cheyenne, the Arapaho, the Kiowa, and of course the Comanche—the four tribes gathered to drive the Veho hunters from the South Plains. Isa-tai mixed a magic paint that he swore would stop the Veho bullets. He promised an easy victory: “Take the Veho by surprise, hit them while they sleep”—his honeyed words ladled out with generous portions of whiskey.

  At dawn following the next full moon, with the power of the Maiyun at its height, they attacked. But only two Veho hunters were caught napping, the rest had been warned and were waiting. Hot lead hit the magic paint like fool tongues lapping whiskey, the aim inerrant, long-practiced, and deadly. Of the glories counted, of coups and bravery shown, few claimed honor, whereas death claimed many. For the two scalps taken, the attackers lost upwards of three score and ten—a count equal to a man’s allotted years. Their medicine was weak; the Veho’s, strong and fearsome.

  Many confronted Isa-tai, clamoring for his scalp; their violence barely held in check. He offered the lame excuse that someone had killed a skunk and so fouled his medicine. While the dispute raged, safely—they thought—beyond enemy range, Isa-tai’s own pony covered in magic paint was struck dead by a stay shot from a “Big 50.” There lay the damning proof for all to see.

  As one warrior hotly spat: “Bah! Isa-tai got polecat medicine! No good!”

  Although they spared his life, Isa-tai stood shamed. No doubt his medicine was bogus, but what proved decisive at the Battle of Adobe Walls was precisely the uncanny reach of the “Big 50”—demonstrated again the following morn by what became known as “Billy Dixon’s long shot.” A group of mounted warriors appeared on a distant hill that later measured eight-tenths of a mile away. Dixon arched his aim and fired. A puff of smoke, a lapsed silence, and before any warrior heard the report, one of their number dropped from his saddle. Dead. This incident gave rise to the notion that the Veho could shoot one day and hit you the next. “Big 50” was Big Medicine.

  Disheartened by their losses, the four tribes withdrew from Adobe Walls and scattered. Thereafter, over the course of the war, the various bands fought singly and with notable effect against the Veho. And as usual the issue was settled in large part by the hunters rather than the Army; for the Indians were not defeated so much as starved into submission. By late autumn of ’74, when most had surrendered at their respective agency, their leaders placed in chains and imprisoned, there was hardly a buffalo left on the Staked Plains. By and large the Army’s pursuit had proved dismally ineffectual; in the case of Colonel Miles and his ritual flag-raising, it was laughable. As Whirlwind, Chief of the Cheyenne, wryly noted: “At sundown, the Army fire big guns—BOOM!—tell every Indian for fifty miles where they camp. At sunup—BOOM!—tell every Indian for fifty miles they still there.” So he and his warriors made false trails that disappeared in midday mirages, leaving nothing but burnt grass and gyp water, then circled back to ambush the stragglers. Some soldiers were driven so mad by thirst they even tapped their own veins, while warriors led them on a bewildering chase, like pursuing ghosts through the wild canyons and shape-shifting horizons that mark the Llano.

  Though ultimately, escape proved just as futile and fleeting. Plagued by lack of food, exhaustion, and lashed by a merciless series of thunderstorms, their desperate flight came to an abject end when the Northers hit—this final, bitter, flesh-numbing campaign was termed by all players as “The Wrinkled Hand Chase.” However, not all came in to the agencies to be dealt rations, punishment, or exile. Many held out for a time, mostly the Quahadi Comanches led by Quannah Parker, Black Coyote, and Wild Horse; they continued to raid and harass through the mid-summer of ’75. And some never came in. Wears The Wind and Falling Shadow were ridden down that autumn by Texas Rangers, and fought to the death beside their fallen ponies. A few lived on. Among the last and most obstinate was Sweet Medicine; he led a band of renegade Cheyenne and Comanche, who ruled the far reaches of El Llano Estacado for many years to come. Till their bones bleached white in the arroyos.

  Through Adobe Walls and Miles’ retreat, through Mackenzie’s march and the ambush of Lyman’s train—while the Buffalo War ran its course right on through to the massacre at Sappa Creek, and hunters drove south from the Canadian and north from the Red; while the Indians starved and chafed, preyed on by the Bible, whiskey, and thieves, and the scourge of immigrants labored like locusts, tapping for sustenance and dreams; while the wolf, buffalo, and raven yielded to the coyote, cow, and crow, and the virgin prairie bit the plow and living waters roiled muddy with silt and foreign grasses headed out in bloom; while young boys dreamed of adventure and young girls of laying silk to a lance, and women labored and their beauty waned, and men slew their impoverished ardor with whiskey and banished their souls in endless talk and shameless chintzing; yea, while town-builders, hustlers, fly-by-night dealers,
gandy-dancers, and ruined doves, cowboys, farmers, and minstrel rogues met in congress in frontier saloons—while all this and more seethed and raged over the far plains, Caspion hunted Krippit, urged on by her parting words: “Good hunting, Nameho.”

  And there was good hunting that summer, fall, and winter over the Canadian, Palo Duro, and Red. Beyond the war that made headlines and history, the many events that formed the gist of later song and legend, another sort of war was being waged, deeply savage and personal as Caspion rode the territories hunting men. Though his grim tally was never noted in official records, or voiced in famous journals, it was witnessed. Most vividly by those he sought. For the Man Hunter purposefully left his mark visible at the scene. Revenge crafted to reveal the hand.

  The white robe called the hunter like the moon calls the wolf. Krippit heard the howling, sensed the hooves pounding at his back, the shadows moving at the periphery, something always lurking just beyond. Time and again he doubled back to scan the trail; nothing there. He traveled on. Two, three, four months passed. Sweltering mid-July; nightly hunted in his sleep. He’d wake with a thirst that choked his breath, attempt to swallow, and listened; nothing there. Sweat clothed his brow. He’d drag his lame leg to the fire and pace about the wind-whipped flames, gnawed by a presence that chilled his spine. Suddenly he’d pivot; fear focused on the far ridge. “Up thar!” he’d point and send a man to stand guard then return to the robe and haunted dreams.

  The sentinel stared through the darkness, searching the fitful shadows, anxious for the dawn to flare. Through his lonely vigil the wind played through the trees, his vision lulled by their swaying rhythm, with nothing distinct in form or depth to fix the eye, all dancing close then far away, blind to the shadow moving with grave intent and reach; so fatigued he thought for a startled instant that he was seized by his own hand. The knife slashed his throat so quickly he could not gasp, spilling warm blood down his neck. Too weak to even raise a hand against his slayer, he simply nodded to his death.

  In the graying dawn, awaiting first light, Krippit cast his eyes to the ridge and saw the sentinel’s head spiked to a limb, his bloodied shirt flapping ghost-like in the breeze. The hunter left no tracks—only the trail of blood from the body to the tree where the head perched eerily, directing its blank gaze down on the camp. The scalp intact; the left ear missing.

  Terror infected all; each grew watchful, edgy, dreading the glum interval between dusk and dawn. Nimrod stayed his hand a month then struck—an arrow from the dark. Then a week, then a night, till another three were dealt the same. From then on, no man dared stand watch alone. Desperate for sanctuary, they rode the territories without rest, but the “black flag” flew from every hill and the hidden hand gave no quarter.

  Once more Krippit shifted his base of operation far to the south, to a feeder stream above the Red—encamped like quarry run to ground, wild-eyed and panting, their backs protected by a cliff. Krippit positioned three beyond the stream to guard their front. But in the night two bound the third and fled, heading north like escaped slaves fleeing their cruel master and the stalking hunter.

  They rode hard that next day. By the following evening, safely distanced, they made camp in some high rocks, built a fire and hunkered down to roast a rabbit. This to be their last meal; they picked the bones clean as darkness fell then stretched to lay, alas to rest. Beyond the dying flames, at twenty paces, the hunter loomed in silhouette against the starlit sky, still as death, rifle aimed on his frozen prey. When the muzzle flashed it seemed as if a wolf leapt snarling from that shadowed form—their throats ripped by a knife-fanged hand. An ear severed from each. Heads left rolling in a skin sack of blood, water, and fire-baked stones. A technique acquired from the Osage but derived from the Assiniboine.

  Time Face gazed in mute appreciation when he found them thus next day—the muck had cooled to a thick pudding and the flesh peeled easily from the skull. Butcher Joe summoned the pack to view what happens to those who stray.

  “Ye take heed,” he warned; “Else hasten the Day a’ Judgment.”

  None were cautioned by the scene; they were panicked. Krippit himself drew cold comfort from their dwindling number. Over the long winter and early spring, others fled by two’s and three’s, melting away into the night to meet a similar fate.

  Yea, the Yank devil had an Injun soul.

  Through the many blizzards Krippit stood watch, eyes straining through the blinding snow to discern the shape of his nemesis. With the white robe drawn about his shoulders, his head appeared suspended, already disembodied, like an omen; and they who observed marked his doom. Abandoned by his men, forsaken by an unloving God, Krippit stood naked to Nimrod’s vengeance. Alone but for one, the Osage, ever stolid, faithful at his side; Time Face never flinched. Now reduced to his righteous essence and flanked by his shadowing twin, Krippit took heart—his dark sap flowed anew. In late spring of ’75 they rode north, called by rumors of gold in the Black Hills, hungry for a new haunt and fresh kills. As for Nimrod, they’d soon deal with the Mighty Hunter.

  For he trailed them yet—implacable, relentless, unwavering; man and horse, tireless as the wind. Caspion, ever hunting and each night haunted by the vision of Moneva’s flayed skin: her eyes vacant, her mouth agape, the ghastly hide held up by the hair, raised from his own flesh in horrid, clawed torment. Could he ever appease his soul and sleep? A year had passed since he’d returned her ear to the earth, and he’d taken near a score in vengeance—eighteen laced to a rawhide thong tied to his saddle.

  Krippit’s plan was simple enough, though long in coming; at last he divined the curse he wore and shrewdly guessed its meaning, its beckoning power; he’d use the white robe to lure the hunter and bait the trap. And when Nimrod reached to reclaim his sacred mantle, it would be his death shroud.

  The sun kept its covenant with the earth; dawn swept over the prairie with the easterly wind, coloring all in its wake. The grasses, left fallow, ungrazed for several years, flowed in lush billowing waves. Caspion drew rein before a broad valley, a day’s ride north of the Cimarron Cut-off, now entering the land where he’d taken the white robe four years prior. Except for an occasional tribe of wary pronghorn, the land laid empty, picked bone clean; settlements still miles to the east. A red-tailed hawk circled, tacking with the wind, hunting for prey; it hovered a moment then tucked its wings and dove in swift arc to hit the grassy sea. It furiously beat its wings and emerged with a large Shi-shin o’wuts struggling in its talons—then apparently thought better of the contest, dropped the rattler and made a lame retreat for a faint line of trees in the valley north. A bad day for the hunter.

  But something else had shooed the hawk. Two-Jacks jerked his head and snorted, sensing the same. An approaching storm; and the distant timber offered the only shelter in view. Man urged horse at a fast gallop—the full wrath of heaven about to descend in a wide bank of black clouds rolling rapidly from the east. Lightning bolts plunged like lances along the lowering front, the far rumbling soon audible, the drumming advance of god-sized warriors counting coup with each flashing thrust, riding to avenge the land and humble all in their path. The air suddenly cooled; the sky darkened; thunderous forms covered the sun. The wind blew steadily more ominous. The trail, followed easily since dawn, vanished as grasses bent flat, trembling below the scything wind cutting all in its sweep. And Caspion, wildly exhilarated like the last mortal pursued by Gods, forgot he hunted—leaned in the saddle and rode hard for refuge.

  But another two were waiting. Krippit had chosen his time and place, though he hadn’t counted on the storm…or Nimrod’s headlong approach. Beckoning, “Come mine enemy…come”—he drew bead, a bit anxious, holding steady in the wind, then gently squeezed the trigger.

  Caspion, closing fast at sixty yards as walnut-sized hailstones mixed with pelting rain, took a blow to his left shoulder, nearly pitching him from the saddle. An instant cold pain, then numb, he couldn’t move his arm. Thought it was a hailstone, the report swallowed in a crac
k of thunder; then he saw a drift of smoke at the tree line and two shadowed horsemen, one cloaked in white.

  He reined Two-Jacks away and broke for cover.

  The stand of timber rose like an island from the unending sea of grass, spanning over a half a mile in length and up to a quarter a mile in depth, unusually thick and well-formed on the high plains. A clear spring surfaced, slicing through its center, virginal, vulva-like between either loamy ridge. Man and horse entered the trees with the full force of the storm. Lightning fissured the sky, unleashing an avalanche of thunder; fist-sized hailstones pounded through the upper limbs, landing like spent shot in the din and racket. Two-Jacks reared, wild-eyed and skittish; Caspion rode him under a canopy of low-arching limbs and dismounted. He draped a blanket over his head to calm him and coaxed him to the ground. Then he forced his lame arm to grip in lashing a hind leg to the fore so the horse couldn’t stand; thus restrained from the storm and what lay ahead. Learned in the war that a horse was useless in a close fight.

  Caspion checked his shoulder: no blood, but plenty swollen and black as the sun-baked dead; hit by a deflected bullet most likely. Yet he’d regained some movement, with spiking pain in the joint. He grabbed his rifle and advanced, crouching low, eyes scanning to distinguish man among the myriad shifting forms and driving sheets of rain—the wind so violent at ground level he could hardly stand. Large boughs snapped crashing to the ground; terrain littered by a thousand limbs and ricocheting hail. A bolt of lightning split a nearby tree; Caspion, blinded momentarily in its wake, staggered on, the air charged with fumes, like an artillery barrage—furious, dark, deafening—minus only the ground bursts and screams of dying men.

  But these he conjured as his vision cleared and the wind and rain abated, saw their gray forms take shape in the rising vapors of melting ice—ghostly hundreds interspersed through the trees, with dreadful distortion of face and figure. The dying reached to their slayer for succor, each by turns distinctly drawn, painfully vivid, then frightfully diffuse, fading only to reappear—all playing before his eyes, haunting him, the gruesome dead from battles long ago. Caspion forgot who and why he hunted, remembered only that he must fight—”There’s enemy in the timber, boy…”