by Lou Bradshaw
We needed more firewood if I was going to keep him warm through the night, so I went looking for it again. My good source was away off in the dark, so I gave up being so picky and took the best I could from what I could see.
Poking around under a washed up pile of brush, I got a jolt to the nerves when I heard a horse snort not more than a few yards off in the dark. I dropped to a low crouch with a fist full of sixgun…. I waited…I heard movement in the deep shadows. It was coming closer. I pulled the hammer back and held my breath. There was another snort and blow, and my big gray horse walked into the firelight trailing his reins. He was sure a sight for tired and somewhat nervous eyes.
I carried an armload of wood back to the fire and led the gelding, then I stripped the saddle and bridle off him and picketed him on some grass and shrub. He seemed to like it better by the fire than out there in the dark.
Cutting up some jerky, I made a broth for Sam. He’d lost what looked like a lot of blood, and he looked gray and puny. I made several more trips to that brush pile. I felt a little guilty eating the bacon and drinking the coffee Sam had fixed, but he was gonna get broth for a while to replace the fluids he had lost, when he woke up… if he woke up.
I dragged up some close by branches and anything I could drag to make a windbreak to keep the wind off Sam as best I could. There weren’t any evergreens around or else I could have woven them through the limbs and branches. So I just piled everything I could on him and kept the fire going.
Somewhere past midnight I’d dozed off, but I woke up with a start at the sound of my name… “Ben… Ben.” It came into my unconsciousness. Blinking my eyes open, and taking stock of where I was, I looked over and saw that Sam was awake. “I’m sorry, Ben… there was jes too many…”
“Don’t try to talk, Sam, save your strength.”
“Gotta tell you, boy…. Gotta tell it.”
“Just for a minute, Sam. Then you gotta take some broth”
“Gettin’ ready to unsaddle horses when they come on me…was five of ‘em… ridin’ three horses…. Two men jumped off… one jump on my bay.” He quit for a minute and closed his eyes, resting.
Then he went on “the other one tried to git on your gray…he broke loose and run off… one said they was takin’ the horses…I said ‘the hell you are’ an pulled my gun… don’t know nuthin’ else.”
“You did just fine, Sam.” I said while trying to get some broth in him. “It don’t look like they hit anything vital…. You should be alright if I can keep the bleeding down and you don’t get infected.” He dozed off then and I pushed the broth back on the edge of the fire. He just looked poorly, gray and shrunken. Sam wasn’t very big to begin with… maybe five foot eight at best, and he probably didn’t weigh one forty soaking wet. Sam was cowboy built… small and wiry. That’s the kind of rider a cow pony loves.
Remembering that Rubio had put pine sap on a bullet wound to stanch the blood, I went around and blazed a few trees in hopes to have some sap by morning. There weren’t any pines anywhere near at hand, but maybe other kinds worked as well.
The sun came creeping over the prairie and through the trees, some of which were starting to leaf out, but mostly they were still looking like winter trees. I built up the fire and added a little water to the broth, which was looking more like molasses than broth. I let Sam sleep and went to gather more firewood, since I could see what I was doing once again.
Checking Sam’s bandages I could tell that he was still seeping some blood. I cleaned his wound again with the whiskey and he winced with pain. I hated to do it, but infection was my biggest fear at that point.
I kept the fire going all day, even though the wind had dropped and the air had warmed quite a bit. Keeping him warm and pouring broth in him was about all the medicine I knew. Oh, I could suck out a snake bite, or I could put in a stitch if need be, but that wasn’t real medicine, it was just fixin’ a body up. Bullet holes and infections were medicine. I found that one of my tree blazes produced a wad of sap. It was a cottonwood sapling. I just hoped that cottonwoods didn’t have any poison in them.
Sam woke up when I was redressing his wound after I’d put a good glob of sap in the hole. He took some more broth and made a face. I figured that broth wasn’t one of those things I did real well, but after thinking it over, I decided that nobody did broth real well. So I added some salt, figuring that salt wouldn’t hurt him and would make him feel more like taking it.
There was an old man back home, who took bad sick and the doc said no salt in his food. So his wife followed the doc’s orders and wouldn’t give him any, no matter how he begged. He was too sick to get out of bed and mostly just slept, and when he was awake he wasn’t thinking right. He had no interest in eating that food without salt in it. The upshot was that old man starved himself to death. I’d always thought if his wife had given him salt, he’d have had a chance at living long enough to at least try to fight off whatever was ailing him.
Around the middle of the afternoon, Sam woke up and was hungry, so I fried up some smoked pork. Then I made some fryin’ pan bread, and mopped up pork grease with it. I told him that he could eat that, only if he promised to wash it down with some broth.
Like I’d said, Sam wasn’t very big, and he never did carry much meat on him, so I figured a little pork fat would do him good. True to his word, he drank down a cup of warm salty broth, and said it was the best he’d ever had. I’d have to make note of that.
He asked when we were going to be moving on, and I said, “When you feel up to it. You probably need to rest here a few more days, but you also need to get that bullet out and get some proper doctorin’.”
“Can that horse carry two of us?”
“I reckon he can alright, but I don’t know if he will, he’s still about half peculiar sometimes…. I don’t like the idea of you sittin’ up there and him cutting up. You get throwed off and it could finish you.”
“You gonna make me walk”?
“Well, that had crossed my mind, but you’d probably slow us up a mite.” I said with a grin. “What I been thinkin’ of doin’ is puttin’ you on a travois, like the Indians use. That’s what I used to bring Andy down from the mountains, and it worked pretty well.”
“You think that gray will stand for it?”
“If I lead him, and hold him by the cheek strap he will… I’ll rig one up and work with him pullin’ some rocks… I think that’s our best bet, Sam.?”
I spent the rest of the day working on a travois and then I hitched Smoke up to it. He wasn’t in the least bit happy about that arrangement and cut up a bit every time I started to lead him. Finally, he came to the conclusion that it wasn’t going to hurt him, and that he didn’t have much say so in the matter, so he settled down and cooperated. I started loading rocks on it one or two at a time until he was used to the weight.
Later on, I scouted out a crossing place a little downstream, where we could get on the other side without too much trouble.
The next morning, I packed our supplies and Sam onto the travois, and we headed cross country on our way to Nolo, Texas or New Mexico. I still wasn’t sure about that. I’d wrapped Sam up in everything I could tie on him. He was lashed onto the travois with a scarf pulled over his face to keep the wind off.
I led us off about an hour after sunup. The sky was clear and it looked like we might have a good day for traveling. I didn’t expect to make more than ten or twelve miles at the pace we’d have to travel. I didn’t trust myself to be able to find the town in the dark, so I didn’t expect to reach Nolo in one day. If the town wasn’t lit up we could miss it in the dark and wander around for days in this open country. I didn’t think Sam could last that long.
The morning sun felt good on my shoulders, and I’m sure Sam could use the warmth as well. It was, put one foot in front of the other and keep moving. I heard the same thing over and over like a never ending line of music. Clop, clop, clop… of Smoke’s hoof falls. I held him on a short lead tied to his
cheek strap, and he followed along without fuss. He still may be part wild, but he was a hell of a horse.
The morning moved along without incident. In fact it was just plain boring, but that was the way I wanted it and the way Sam needed it. By ten o’clock, it was downright warm. I shed my sheepskin for a poncho like the Mexicans were fond of. Those folks had some pretty good ideas, but most of the whites wouldn’t take to ‘em because they were Mexican ideas.
We stopped periodically, so I could check on Sam. I’d give him a little water and listen to him complain that I was treating him like a baby, which was mostly for show. He was holding up pretty well.
About noon the wind began to freshen up, and we’d get some pretty good gusts blowing across the prairie. Clouds were building up in the northwest like we were heading for some rain. I didn’t much like the idea of slogging across this wide open prairie in a pouring rain. With Sam as bad off as he was, he’d be at risk of pneumonia. Pneumonia could do him in under good circumstances, let alone out here in the cold wet open.
The prairie was broken by streams, creeks, and rivers. The ones of any substance usually had some amount of wooded growth along the banks. That was what I was keeping an eye out for. They were usually the ones that had some water in them for much of the year. They’re also the ones you want to cross over to make camp, especially if it looks like rain. Otherwise it may take you a day or two before you can cross.
The wind kept getting stronger and there was no shelter in sight… nothing but flat open ground. The wind started changing direction, and the temperature was steadily dropping. I pulled on my sheepskin coat again. The wind was now blowing from the north northwest, whereas before it had been coming from due north. And it was getting cold.
I spotted some buffalo off to the east just standing there looking at the wind. Old Crazy Jim had told me that buffs would face right into the wind instead of tail to the wind like a horse. He said, the strong would make a shield for the young and weak. I guess that’s why they have their heavy wool in the front. Funny how that works out.
Well, we were pleased to be running ahead of the wind rather than going into it. They way that temperature was dropping, we’d be needing shelter pretty soon. It wasn’t like high country cold, which can get down to thirty or forty below, but the change from this morning was hard to get adjusted to. We plodded on and on at our slow and deliberate pace. My collar was pulled up and the drawstring was pulled to keep my hat from flying off across the plains. Checking on Sam, I found him asleep, so I just adjusted his scarf and pulled up his collar as best I could without waking him.
A few drops of rain hit my back and I said, “Damn!” right out loud to no one except maybe Smoke and he acted like he didn’t hear me. That was my worst fear, at that time, but an even worse fear loomed…. snow. As cool as it had become, it was still too warm to snow. If the temperature dropped a bit more then all bets were off.
Fifteen minutes later, I noticed that the rain was starting to freeze on the metal parts of the halter… double damn! There wasn’t anything we could do but keep going. And that’s what we did. We walked on and on, still looking for that tell tale line of trees and brush that would provide shelter and a chance of a fire.
Another mile and sleet began peppering my back and my hat. I went back to check on Sam, and do what I could to keep his face and head covered. He opened his eyes when I brushed the sleet from his face. He mumbled something, but I couldn’t make it out. It took a little doing, but I was able to get that scarf wrapped around his head where it kept his hat in place, and only left a small opening to breathe through. It wasn’t a pretty set up, but it should keep the ice pellets from stinging him.
A few flakes were starting to mix in with the sleet, and the steadily increased, until they outnumbered the ice pellets. All bets were off.
Soon we were engulfed in a driving blowing snowstorm. Then it let up a bit, only to come at us again with the full force of nature. With each let up, we began to expect worse to follow. During one of those letups, I spied an island of trees and quickly changed our direction a little to the right and moved to the right side of my horse. I wanted to get the feel of the wind on my cheek, so that when I couldn’t see where I was going I could feel it with the wind.
That little clump of woods was about a mile away, but under these conditions it was hard to judge. The wooded clump didn’t necessarily mean a stream, it was probably a water hole that held water most of the year or it was a spring. It could even be a buffalo wallow that retained water. Whatever it was, it was our chance and I didn’t want to miss it in this storm.
The snow and wind came again with force. The wind was ripping at my back and literally pushing me on. The snow hadn’t piled up much because of the wind, but it would be banking up fast wherever there was something to stop it and give it root…. like that little island out there. Stumbling once, I fell to the ground and was surprised that it wasn’t frozen. But it wasn’t that far below the freezing point. It just seemed colder in that wind.
I had no way of judging such things, but it felt like the temperature had dropped maybe twenty five or thirty degrees in an hour and a half or so. When my brother and I were in Texas, we heard tell of this kind of storm. They called them blue northers. It was said that cattle would stand so covered with ice and snow that they couldn’t move. And bed sheets on a wash line would freeze stiff and break when you tried to take them down. I don’t know how much of that was just Texas talk, but I was beginning to believe it.
Holding our course as well as I could with the wind on my cheek, I kept going… hoping that the clump of trees was closer than I’d thought. I was hoping against hope that the wind hadn’t changed, lest we wind up out there in the middle of nothing.
The wind and snow held now, there were no more letups. It was just steady walk and hope that Sam was still alive back there on the travois. Traveling across the plains can become mind numbing, but nothing like traveling in a completely white cocoon. I could see the movement of the snowflakes, but it was coming from the rear and going past me into a white gray hole. It gave a person the idea that he was walking backwards. I’m a good walker, and even under these conditions, I figured that I was walking at maybe two to three miles an hour. That snow was flying past me at a terrible pace. I didn’t even want to estimate the speed. It was mesmerizing.
All I could do was move on. The snow was starting to pile up on the ground, which made walking that much harder. My mind was beginning to wander here and there… I think I was trying to escape where I was in my mind and just let my body do what it had to do. I realized that I wasn’t moving. My big gray had stopped. Turning my head toward him, I saw that he was standing still with his head up looking straight ahead.
Following his gaze, I tried to see what he was looking at or for, but I could see nothing but windblown snow moving ever away from me. I let out a little rope and took a few steps forward and then a few more until I saw a dark form. I couldn’t tell much about it except it was big and dark. A little thrill ran through me figuring we’d reached the trees at last.
Taking up the slack on the lead, I pulled the gelding onward. He came at my tug. I pulled the coil of rope over my head and shoulder, and then I gripped the cheek strap with my hand so as to have better control leading him into the wooded area.
Moving on closer to the tree, it struck me that this was no tree at all, but a massive bull buffalo.
Chapter 8
He was facing into the wind and moving forward at a snail’s pace. His wool was matted with snow and ice and his hot breath was blowing out steam. If I didn’t move, he would simply walk right over me or through me. I figured with all the snow piled up around his head that he couldn’t even see me.
Smoke didn’t like having him that close, so I took a firm grip on the strap and leaned into him with a few strokes on his neck to calm him as much as possible. Pulling my sixgun, I waited until the bull was within three feet of my outstretched arm, and then I pulled the trigger
. Smoke jerked but he stayed. The big buffalo stood stock still for what seemed an eternity, but couldn’t have been more than a couple of slow seconds before he crumbled.
The forelegs gave way first then he went sideways and landed with a ground shaking thump. I didn’t waste time being neat. My knife was out and I gutted him immediately, throwing intestines and other innards helter skelter. I had the cavity empty and cleaned out in a matter of minutes. I had Sam stuffed in that hole within a few more minutes. Then I cut a big flap of wooly hide that covered from the hump almost to the opening. I was making a poor showing of skinning a buffalo, but it couldn’t be helped. When that flap was cut, pulled, and sliced free, I draped it over the opening.
Pulling Smoke to the ground on the lee side of that buffalo carcass, I threw that poncho over his neck and back… it would help. I crawled in between the horse and the buffalo, where I was able to take advantage of that hide flap. Now it would be up to God and brother buffalo.
We lay there for several hours, while that storm blew itself out leaving only cold and plenty of snow. Sam was still alive, but I was beginning to think he might be freezing to death. He felt cold to the touch and his breathing was strange. I had to get him warmer. Our hide flap weighed a ton or seemed like it. I crawled out and had a good look-see. Everything was white and decidedly colder.
The first thing I saw was that island of trees. It wasn’t more than hundred and fifty yards away. My heart almost jumped out, I was so happy to see it. I quickly got Smoke hitched up to the travois and got Sam on it along with our supplies. I just threw that hide flap over him. It was heavy enough to hold him down.