The big Sharps roared again and another beast went down in the same sequence: a shake of the head, the forelegs folding, blood spurting, the hind legs collapsing, the animal finally rolling onto its side, kicking a little before lying still.
The others looked a little apprehensive, staring around, seeing the rising cloud of gunsmoke but not relating it to their companions falling.
Five more times the Sharps bellowed before a big shaggy-shouldered bull lifted his head and trumpeted a warning signal to the remainder of the herd. The Sharps roared again, and the beasts started to run. Once more the heavy rifle shattered the air over the plain and one final buffalo went down, cartwheeling because he had been running. The remainder of the herd were at stampede speed now and took off across the plains, kicking up clods of earth and grass, raising dust, the rumble of their passing fading as the distance lengthened between the herd and the hillside.
The last animal that had been shot was still alive and bawling, struggling to get up, but its hind legs didn’t seem to work. Blood showed on the curly hair at the hips.
Two horsemen rode down from the hillside and the lead rider leaned from the saddle, placing the muzzle of his pistol against the wounded animal’s ear and dropping hammer. The buffalo convulsed and fell onto its side.
Erik Larsen reined down his mount, holding the big Sharps across his saddle. He looked around at the downed buffalo with satisfaction.
“Not too bad, eh, Smoky?”
Fargo was wiping some blood from the barrel of his heavy six-gun and rammed the weapon back into his belt before answering.
“Not bad for a first effort. You’re shapin’-up pretty good, Viking. Thing is to keep your eye out for the buff that seems the most restless after you’ve downed a couple. You knock him over next, then you look for another that’s actin’-up and let him have it. You put the potential trouble-makers down and chances are you can pile ’em up all over the plains before the rest start to run. Makes it easier all round if you can drop as many as possible in the one place.”
“How many have you killed without the herd stampeding, Smoky?” Erik asked, his face still flushed with excitement.
Fargo looked thoughtful, screwing up his face.
“Well, it was a long time back, when the Sharps and the Remington Rolling-block used paper cartridges and lead balls. Big .68 caliber they were, but the powder at that time didn’t make so much noise, though it put up a regular smoke screen, and it didn’t punch the lead ball so hard, either. Somethin’ to do with the size and shape of the powder grains. Anyway, we’d set up in a blind with the barrel propped up in a forked stick and our paper-twist cartridges and balls all lined up on a flat rock and we’d start shootin’. Stupid beasts would just stand there and look at their pards as they dropped, just as they do now. In all them years they don’t seem to have learned anythin’. I’ve put down as many as a hundred and ten in one stand.”
Erik stared incredulously.
“Gospel,” Fargo assured him. “The herd just kept on grazin’ across the plains and I moved a little, just to get the sun out of my eyes, and I had a line of carcasses strung out for half a mile. Too many for the skinners to handle. Twenty, twenty-five hides a day a man is about the limit, and we were short of skinners in those days. When the big metal cartridges came in we figured we was made. No more paper twists or calico tubes of powder. The back of the block in the old Sharps used to rise like a knife and cut off the end of the powder tube, leavin’ it open for the percussion cap. But those big long brass sonuvers of cartridges ... Hell! We went mad at first. Shootin’ wild and for so long the barrels got too hot to hold and the breeches expanded and we couldn’t even ram the cartridge cases in. Many a man’s lost half his face or a bunch of fingers, tryin’ to force a cartridge in for one extra shot. After a while we learned to piddle down the barrels. That cooled ’em off—and saved our drinkin’ water, too.”
Erik lifted the fourteen pound rifle, looked at all the scratches and marks on the butt, the patches of blue on the metal that were all that remained of the original finish, and wondered just how many buffalo over the years the weapon had accounted for.
“We only used to hunt in the winter once,” Smoky Fargo told him. “Hides were better, thicker, curlier and brought top dollar, which was around two bucks a skin. Went down as low as sixty cents but that was for really poor hides. Mostly the buyers were honest enough.” He smiled crookedly. “A couple weren’t early in the piece, but after the boys got through with ’em the others soon got the idea it didn’t pay to mess with buffalo hunters, I can tell you. But the beasts are goin’. Bein’ shot out, Viking. A man won’t be able to make a decent livin’ soon. Only a few of us left. Reckon there ain’t more than a dozen hunters’ camps on the Red River Plains now. Not so long ago, a man had to fight for enough room to pitch his tent and park his wagons.”
“It doesn’t seem very—sporting, Smoky, shooting the buffalo this way.”
Fargo snorted.
“Sportin”? Judas! We ain’t in it for sport or thrills. We’re here to make dollars and you don’t do that by givin’ the buffs any more chance than you have to. But it’s still better, I reckon, than a whole trainload of folk with rifles just blazing away from the windows of passenger cars at herds of buffs that used to graze right beside the tracks. Better because they’d shoot ’em, down ’em, leave more than half wounded and dyin’, and then the train would roll on, without anyone ever leavin’ their seats. Now that’s what they call ‘sport’ in some parts, Viking. How do you like that?”
Erik shook his head.
“No wonder there are not so many beasts now. But you told me once you used to ride in among the stampeding herds, shooting them with a pistol from horseback. That must’ve been a very thrilling experience.”
“Thrillin’? Hell I died every time I had to do it. You never knew when one of them big, thunderin’ beasts would suddenly take it into his head to turn and ram a horn into your leg or, worse, into your horse. If the horse went down, generally it was the finish for the rider. Usually got tossed under the stampede. But—some foreign royalty, someone from Russia, I think, heard about it, figured it was a good ‘sport’ and came out to try his hand at it. Fools gave him a double-action Smith and Wesson .44 pistol. He did no more than give the buffs a headache and was damn lucky to survive. We used to use the old Dragoons, by Colt. Four and a half-pounds they weighed, unloaded, and they drove a ball clear through a buff’s brainbox. Some idiot figured it’d be too heavy for the prince to hold so they gave him the lightweight one and nearly got him killed.” He stopped speaking and gestured suddenly. “Here come the skinners.”
A wagon rolled out from behind a butte and rumbled onto the plains. There were two people on the seat and Erik shaded his eyes smiling a little as he recognized one as the slim Paiute Indian girl called Blue Dove. He had seemed to hit it off with her right from the moment he and Fargo had arrived at the camp more than a week previously.
She was a shy young girl, here with her fat and powerful mother called Woman Bear. An apt name.
They were part of the skinner’s group, peeling the hides off the downed buffalo, loading them into the wagons and carrying them back into camp for scraping and salting before they were folded and put in the hide press, later to be shipped out to the buyers in Bowie, one of the last ‘buffalo’ towns where the hunters met at end-of-season and cut loose for a spell, usually leaving Bowie in shambles by the time they moved on.
“Guess you’d like to stay a spell and watch the ladies at work, huh?” Smoky Fargo asked shrewdly, having seen the way Blue Dove and Erik looked at each other.
“I am interested in watching the skinning operation,” the young Viking admitted. “But should we not move on to kill more beasts?”
“You don’t have to,” Fargo told him. “I’ll go look for another herd. You watch how they do the skinnin’ for a spell. It’s something else for you to learn, but it’s a dirty job.”
Erik looked down at his filt
hy clothes, stained with mud and dung and dried blood and he grinned at the old hunter.
“I am growing used to dirt.”
Fargo smiled and waved to the Indian women, then, balancing his own Sharps across his knees, turned his horse and began riding off to the southwest. He called back over his shoulder. “See you in camp tonight.”
Erik waved and rode to meet the creaking wagon. The big, heavy-jowled Indian woman watched him with impassive face and glittering black eyes. She did not acknowledge his greeting. But Blue Dove, her eyes showing a distinct warmness, smiled shyly at the Viking as he turned his horse and rode alongside the wagon, holding his Sharps in one hand.
Her hair was braided, held with beaded bands and strips of rawhide. She wore a beaded headband that held an intricate tribal pattern on it, and her skin was a deep gold, as yet unlined, still supple and glowing, while her mother’s was leathery and dark—something that would happen to Blue Dove’s skin, too, in years to come if she continued to live out of doors in the harsh Texas sun.
“My first buffalo stand,” Eric told her, not without pride, as he indicated the downed beasts. “The herd stampeded after I dropped these. If I may, I would like to keep the first hide and the horns. Could you do that for me?”
The girl smiled and nodded. Neither her mother nor Blue Dove spoke English, though they understood it well enough. Erik suspected that the old Indian woman spoke it, too, but she just refused to do so. As for Blue Dove—he hadn’t heard her speak in anything other than her own Paiute language.
Woman Bear growled something as she stopped the wagon and Blue Dove flushed a little as she jumped down beside the first buffalo, whipping out her special skinning knife. The old lady puffed and wheezed as she started to climb down.
Erik, dismounting swiftly, hurried to help her. She stared at him impassively as he held her arm and steadied her. Then she nodded very slightly, pushed him aside, joining her daughter at the buffalo. Erik leaned on his rifle, the butt on the ground, watching.
The hides were cut from just behind the head, down the belly to mid-way on the legs. The knives had to be razor sharp and it was obvious from the effort the two women were putting into it that it was far from easy work. Now that the hide had been split, the mother waddled to the wagon, brought out an iron spike and a heavy hammer. She hammered the spike through the buffalo’s neck securing it to the ground.
Erik watched, fascinated as they unhitched the mules from the wagon hooked the tongue to the pieces of the hide they had split and then whipped up the mule team and urged them away. The massive hide peeled away from the carcass. The flies and the stench were terrible and buzzards were already wheeling high in the sky. Erik held a kerchief against his mouth and nostrils.
While Blue Dove unhooked the hide the old lady expertly hacked off the curving horns and handed the bloody trophies to Erik without a word. He took them and placed them in his saddlebags, nodding his thanks.
He watched while they skinned two or three other animals in a similar way. By then the Indian women were spattered with blood and bits of flesh and fat. No wonder they scrubbed for so long in the river pool behind the camp each evening, he thought.
“Thank you for the demonstration, ladies,” he told them, mounting again. “I had better go find Smoky and see if I can lend a hand.”
He waved and smiled at Blue Dove. She smiled back but the other woman’s face didn’t change expression as he rode off into the sun. Blue Dove watched him go her eyes warm; she jumped when her mother snapped something at her in Paiute and the smile dropped from her face as she hurried to hitch the mules to another hide.
Erik didn’t get back to camp till after sundown. He rode his mount in across the one-acre square with the drying hides and headed for the campfire. He could smell frying buffalo steaks and there was the pungent odor of burning droppings, which the hunters used for fuel, there being few trees out on the plains.
He set his Sharps against a rock, unsaddled and turned his mount over to the Indian wrangler. Erik greeted the other hunters who were squatting down, eating, tearing at the thick, fatty steaks with dripping hands and yellowed teeth. Most grunted in reply, a couple called him by name, one or two didn’t acknowledge the greeting.
In general, he had been accepted by the camp as a whole and he had taken the crude jokes they had played on him good-naturedly, even the time they had yanked him out of his blankets in the middle of the night and told him there was an Indian attack, sending him leaping, buck-naked for his rifle. He had nearly died when he had grabbed the Sharps—given to him by Fargo—and found that somebody had tethered a live rattlesnake to it. He had just missed being bitten. After he had recovered from his fright he had chuckled with the others, and, later still, he had got his own back on the perpetrators.
He hunkered down beside Fargo and reached for a steak on the battered platter with his hunting knife. As he started to eat other hunters in the group stood up, wiping greasy hands on their buckskin jackets, using their sleeves to get some of the excess grease from their beards. They were a couple of hardcases named Connor and Bodine who kept pretty much to themselves. They were good hunters and notched up big tallies each day.
“You find any more buff?” Fargo asked Erik as the Viking started to chew on his steak.
The Viking nodded and swallowed, before answering.
“Beyond that ridge with the broken rock on it that you pointed out. A herd of—oh, maybe seventy, perhaps a few less.”
Fargo and the other hunters showed sharp interest. They did not usually see such concentrations of buffalo nowadays.
“I did not set up a stand,” Erik continued, “but I picked what I thought was the lead cow. She had a calf with her. I shot the calf. I thought she would stay with it and the herd would stay with her and that way we would not have to go hunting for them in the morning.”
Fargo nodded in approval.
“Good work, Viking. Shows you been listenin’ to what I been tellin’ you about buffaloes’ habits. Well, you ought to get that Indian gal, Blue Dove, to make you a winter jacket out of the hide of the calf; nice and soft but tough as the adult hides, and warm as a log fire under your britches. Have her make you a cap too, with flaps over the ears. She’ll do it; sew it all with animal sinew so’s it’ll never come apart. You won’t have to pay her much.” He winked then. “Maybe, the way she’s been lookin’ at you, she’ll do it for nothin’.”
Erik smiled as some of the others laughed and started making a few ribald remarks. Then they all froze as a high-pitched scream split the night. A scream of terror, followed swiftly by another, deeper cry of agony. They came from the brush behind the camp where it fringed the river pool that the Indian women used for bathing and which, by voluntary consent of the hunters, was strictly out-of-bounds for the men.
Erik leapt up, a little ahead of the others, snatching his Sharps rifle and pounding towards the brush. Fargo and the others grabbed weapons and ran after him. Erik used the heavy gun butt to smash the brush aside and then he stopped as he saw the fat Indian woman, Woman Bear, staggering towards him, holding her flabby belly with both hands. She seemed to be holding her stomach in. Blood flowed copiously. Her eyes were filled with pain as she sobbed but she recognized Erik.
“Blue Dove,” she gasped in English, confirming his earlier suspicions. “She—is in—danger.”
The big woman collapsed and Erik looked around, wildly, saw Fargo and the others coming up, and then ran on, smashing the bushes aside and coming out onto the grassy bank beside the pool. Blue Dove was naked and being held down by Bodine while Connor knelt across her legs.
The girl screamed and struggled and Bodine punched her in the face. With a wild yell, Erik leapt forward and Bodine snapped his head up and made an effort to stand, right hand dropping towards his gun.
Erik swung the butt of the Sharps and the iron-bound wood smashed the man in the face, just above the eyes. Bodine flew backwards and Erik whirled. Connor had thrust to his feet and he had his Colt o
ut of his belt and was thumbing back the hammer.
The Viking dropped to one knee, brought up the Sharps’ big round barrel, the butt braced into the earth. He dropped hammer and the big gun bucked as it thundered with an ear-shattering roar. Connor was lifted clear off the ground, blown back six or seven feet, cartwheeling through the air, his chest smashed in, his back a mess of blood and shattered bone and protruding gristle where the massive .57 caliber slug had exited. His body splashed into the river.
Erik dropped the rifle and turned to the shuddering, sobbing girl. She clung to him and Fargo walked forward, holding out her wet buckskin dress which she had been washing when she had been attacked. The Viking draped it over her, his face grim.
“He is dead?” he asked Fargo, indicating Connor.
“Hell, yeah. Busted him in two. Deserved it. But I dunno about Bodine.” He started to turn towards the man and suddenly Erik saw him stiffen and his hand reach for his hunting knife.
The Viking whirled away from the girl. Bodine was staggering to his feet, a big gash laid open on his forehead, face streaked with blood. He was fumbling at his belt to get his gun free. Erik signed to Fargo and the others not to interfere and he lunged at Bodine, grabbed his gun hand and twisted it savagely. The hunter cried out in pain as his wrist almost snapped and the gun fell from his grasp. Erik heaved his arm up his back and when the man was on his toes, eyes wide with pain, bearded lips pulled back in a grimace, the Viking snapped a knee up into his groin. Bodine screamed and tried to jack-knife. Erik kneed him again and then let him fall. As he lay there, knees drawn up to his chest, writhing and sobbing, the Viking drove a boot into his face and knocked him unconscious. He stood over the man, his face ugly with rage. He looked up sharply as he felt Fargo’s hand on his arm.
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