by Mike Blakely
“I had a very strange dream about you last night,” he said.
“About me?”
“You were lost in a snowstorm. Everything was white, and you were in it. But you did not complain. You had no warm clothes, yet you did not even shiver. You were happy in that blizzard, brother.”
“What does it mean?”
“Only the spirits know.” He judged the far hills, coming into view now out of darkness. “It is time.”
“I agree.”
“I will ride ahead and make the sign.”
Kills Something loped his mount up to the top of the ridge. Behind him, the organized parties of ten waited to charge. Next, the Watchers of the Little Horses brotherhood spread in a line, each within sight of the next, policing the front. And behind them waited the younger hunters who would make the second charge.
Finally, with gray light bathing the landscape, Kills Something waved his bow at me. I pointed my rifle skyward and fired, the charge kicking hard at my outstretched arm. Immediately, I saw the white smoke from the next riflemen in line, then heard the reports from their weapons. The veteran hunters charged forward in their parties of ten. Some of them yelped a brief note of joy before they thundered over the ridge.
The Watchers and the rest of the young hunters moved forward to the top of the ridge to look beyond and witness the hunt from high ground. When I reached the brink of the divide, the buffalo were already stampeding in terror. The beasts were so taken by surprise that they fled in every direction, some coming straight toward us. From my vantage point, I could see three of the parties of ten at work. Kills Something’s band was in front of me, Shaved Head’s to the right, and Fears-the-Ground’s to the left. As Kills Something was closer, I watched him and his nine men with most interest.
As the buffalo dispersed, Kills Something took advantage of the distance between beasts. He charged right in among the terrorized bison, his riders following him, and began to cut off about eighty animals. Riding like a leaf in a windstorm, he passed lumbering beasts and began to make a circle around the herd he had cut off. A cow came near him, so he shot her through the ribs and charged on.
I glanced left and right. Fears-the-Ground’s party was on the verge of circling a small herd as well, but Shaved Head’s men seemed to have let their intended prey break back into the main herd, which was now rumbling the very earth under us so hard that we could feel it even through the legs of our mounts. The ponies became nervous and began to prance. A few crazed bison charged past the Watchers, and the nearest of the young hunters gave chase. The stray buffalos had charged into these youths, so I saw no harm in the boys pursuing them, but it only made the rest of the young men more anxious and the Watchers were shaking their lances at the youths, trying to hold them back. Soon, it would be like trying to hold back a blue norther, but I waited as many more moments as I dared, though I raised my rifle as a hopeful sign to the young hunters.
I watched Kills Something lead his hunters around the bunch of animals they had separated. The moment I saw him making the final curve that would encircle the small herd, I let my rifle speak. An excited battle cry sounded all along the line, and all the remaining hunters charged, including the Watchers. Some of the young men had trouble with their horses, for few ponies had ever ridden into such a melee of hooves, hides, and horns.
I, myself, sheathed my rifle and pulled my bow from my quiver. Quickly, I strung the bow, then reached over my shoulder for an arrow. By now every hunter had ridden into the herd, save a few who had fallen from bucking horses. But I was riding Castchorn—Buffalo Getter. Kills Something told me that the good bay pony had been caught wild running with some buffalo, and he held no fear of the herd. He bolted into the midst of the chaos, huffing great blasts of hot breath into the cold air.
The nearest beasts were scattering with unexpected speed, and I knew I would have to ride into the escaping main herd to find a decent number of animals to bag. My bay seemed to sense my plan, and ran straight ahead at a full gallop while the thunder of hooves shook the ground and the sky from every quarter. The dust began to thicken and sting my eyes, but I charged on until I had passed every other hunter, and began to catch up to the slower buffalo.
The air became almost as black as the herd with dust kicked up by ten thousand hooves. I soon realized that I was running to no avail, for I had not come within range of a target. I endeavored to pick a single animal out of that mass of meat and run that beast down. I found what looked like a two-year-old cow, with a fine hide and a fat-layered carcass. She would make good meat and bear a fine robe. I urged my bay onto her right flank, came within range, drew my bow, and let the arrow fly. It disappeared into her side, though she seemed unaware. As I drew another arrow over my shoulder, however, I saw her cough a breath of red froth into the dust, and stumble, finally tripping and rolling tail over horns. Castchorn dodged her as he raced on into the herd.
In that mad gallop, I trusted my horse to find footing and concentrated on my arrow, trying repeatedly to notch it on the bow string as the bay lurched under me. I happened to have chosen one of my new sacred arrows from the quiver. Finally, I got the arrow in place and looked up for my next victim. I blinked the gumming dust away from my eyes and realized that I had become surrounded by stampeding buffalo. I looked left for a target, but something made me glance right. I could not even say what it had been—a flash of something. But it was gone now, in the dust. Just as I looked away, I glimpsed it again. Something pale in that cloud of dark dust. Again, it vanished, so I eased the bay to the right to get a closer look.
I had begun to question my eyesight, when I saw it again—this time for sure. A white animal ran with the buffalo. I remembered a hunter along the line to my right who rode a white horse. Had he fallen? Should I try to catch his horse for him? I angled quickly in front of a young bull to get a closer look, when the view came clear. The white beast was a buffalo. An albino bison.
My heart leapt. I had heard the stories. They were rare. They were sacred. The hides were more valuable than their weight in gold to collectors in the east and in Europe. To the Indians, the beast represented great medicine. The robe could lend power and protection. A single white robe was worth sixty normal ones, or fifteen horses loaded with guns, blankets, and food. A desire seized me to bag that beast for personal glory and big Comanche medicine for my adopted people.
I angled in for the kill, but several beasts ran between me and the albino. My bay mount, Buffalo Getter, was still game, but breathing hard from the run. I had to drop back a little to get behind a cow, then I urged the bay back up to speed. At this rate, I wasn’t sure I could close on the sacred bison before my pony gave out. I was gaining ground, but not fast enough. I knew my range with the bow and arrow. At this distance a rib could stop my razor-sharp iron tip. I thought briefly of my rifle, but a kill with a bullet would not rate like one with a sacred arrow, and my bow was ready to draw. Three beasts between me and the albino. Now two, but the bay was winded. I had one chance left. I sucked dust into my lungs and released a battle cry that rent the air like a bugle note.
When the bay heard me, he snorted, lowered his lunging head, and somehow summoned another morsel of speed. I passed one of the lumbering obstacles, then the next, seconds narrowing on my chance to make that rarest of kills. Now! Yes, I could do it. The shot would be to my right, which was not natural, but my Comanche riding and shooting drills had schooled me in every conceivable shot. I twisted to the right and drew my bow, holding it almost horizontal, with the butt of the arrow shaft at my belt—a shot from the hip. There was no aiming this missile. I had to feel the way home for that arrow. I had mere moments to shoot. I felt the rhythm of the horse and watched the same motion in the white buffalo.
Then the air fell silent. Everything vanished in that cloud but the albino. The gait of my pony and the tempo of the buffalo’s hooves meshed as if orchestrated. The arrow connected before I even let it fly.
The din of stampeding tons burst into my sk
ull again as the mass of white fur fell rolling behind me. I could not safely stop, but I pulled the bay back to a slower canter, then to a lope, letting the straggling buffalo thunder past us. The bay heaved for wind as he slowed to a trot, the bison now spreading out around me. Still, I had to trot another half-mile to safely emerge from the tail end of that monumental stampede.
I walked my mount back, letting him cool gradually as he caught his breath. I felt an unerring sense of direction leading me to that sacred kill, and I saw it a quarter-mile away through the settling dust. She lay there at rest; a mound of coarse, snowy fleece. She seemed out of place in the earthy world of soil and grit kicked into billowing clouds and hanging over her still like a death shroud.
I began to get very excited. The kill filled me with pride such as I had never felt. I was one of a mere handful of hunters, Indian or white, who had even seen a white buffalo, let alone bagged one with a perfect arrow shot. In seasons to come, I would collect all the information I could on white buffalo, written and oral. By estimating the size of the great herds and figuring the frequency of sightings of white bison, I was able to calculate the odds of occurrence of the white phase among normal buffalo. Generally, I discovered, fewer than four white buffalo were even sighted per decade. Kills were even less frequent. One hide dealer in Westport, Kansas, after twenty years of buying and selling bison hides, told me that he had bought only five white ones. My calculations held that a white buffalo was one in seven and a half million.
But that day, as I rode up to the carcass that from a distance looked like a great cache of pearls and ivory, I could think only of the spiritual power inherent in that uncommonly creamy coat. This was the reason Burnt Belly had urged me to make sacred arrows. Had he known? Could he foresee my future? I could not think of it right now, because I was simply overwhelmed by accomplishment.
I rode up to the carcass, which lay tail toward me. Though the coat was discolored with brown dust, I could easily see its pure milky beauty awaiting its cleansing. I wanted to get down and touch that sacred beast but I knew I should ride around her to make sure she had indeed given up the ghost. So I circled to look at the eyes, and to make sure they were open in death. I gasped, as if encountering a freak of nature in a circus sideshow. The horns and nose of the beast were pink. And the eyes—indeed open in the death stare—were pink, as well. I might have expected this, but the discovery startled me nonetheless. This was a true albino, not just a light color phase sometimes seen—a cream or cinnamon variety. I didn’t have to be a thunderstruck shaman to sense the sanctity in this rare gift from the spirits.
For a moment I didn’t know what to do next. I longed to tell Kills Something, Burnt Belly, and especially Westerly, but I did not yet care to leave my prize unattended on the plains. Would wolves come and violate that perfect white hide? No, I would leave my hunting shirt on the carcass so the scent would frighten away the carnivores. Would someone else try to claim my kill? No, my sacred arrow with my own personal identifying markings was even now imbedded in the body cavity of the beast. I got down, crouched to touch the woolly white head, then stood to offer my thanks to the skies. I took off my deerskin shirt and draped it respectfully over the horns and eyes of the head. She was, I reckoned, a two- or three-year-old cow. Such a prize could not survive to grow much older with every hunter on the plains after her hide.
Finally, I mounted and rode back to the south where most of the other kills had been made. Before I crossed over the nearest hill, I turned and looked back at the white carcass on the ground, as if to make sure I had not dreamed the whole episode. Then, I urged Castchorn to an easy lope and rode in all my bare-chested glory back toward the rest of the hunters.
I passed a young hunter who was proudly removing a hunk of liver from his kill. He looked at me, his mouth bloody. “You have many arrows left in your quiver,” he said, taunting me in cocksure Comanche style.
I noticed his own quiver was empty, as if he thought this were a contest to see who could shoot the most arrows. “I shot only twice,” I admitted, “but both shots killed.”
“Ha! I killed three!”
“It is too bad that you have no wife to skin and butcher for you.”
He frowned and threw his chest forward. “It is too bad that you have no shirt!”
Whatever that was supposed to mean, I let it go. When I approached the place where my hunt had begun, I noticed some commotion going on to the east where Shaved Head’s party of ten had charged the herd. I saw Burnt Belly riding that way with Kills Something, so I urged my horse into a lope and caught up with them.
“What is the trouble?” I asked.
Kills Something’s face showed his worry. “A buffalo charged Shaved Head and knocked him from his horse. Some of the buffalo stampeded over him. They say his leg is broken.”
Burnt Belly said nothing, but I fell in with the two of them and went to see about Shaved Head. He lay on the ground, propped up on his elbows. His face showed no pain, but his right leg was clearly misshapen. Burnt Belly swooped gracefully down from his mount, and crouched over Shaved Head’s leg. He prodded and felt for a few moments.
“This is not bad. It will heal. The bone is not even sticking out. The buffalo who stepped on you must have known you were a chief.” Burnt Belly looked up toward me and Kills Something. “These young men will help me get him back to the camp. You two have bigger things to do than worry over a chief who cannot even walk.”
It was true that Kills Something, as hunt leader, and de facto chief in Shaved Head’s place, would have many problems to deal with now in the aftermath of the hunt. He turned his horse and looked out over the dead carcasses strewn across the hunting ground as we rode away at a trot. “The hunt has been good, but now there is much to be done.”
“Yes, brother. Listen, I must tell you what happened to me.”
“You can tell your hunting stories later,” he said curtly.
“No, I must tell you now. You need to know what I have done.”
He read my tone of voice, and turned his attention away from his duties to me. “What has happened? Something bad?”
“No. Something good. Something better than good.”
“Tell me. I have no time for mysteries.”
“I killed two buffalo. The second one was special.”
His jaw muscles tensed with impatience, and his brow furrowed. “What is special about killing a buffalo?”
“This was no ordinary buffalo. This one was white.”
His eyes glanced all over me and my horse, as if trying to decide if I were playing a trick on him, or if I had simply gone mad. “White? What do you mean?” he demanded.
“The robe. White as the whitest blizzard. White as a lone cloud in the summer sky. White as the froth on a mountain river or the bloom of a yucca.”
He looked at me in disbelief for a moment or two, then I saw the realization spread across his face. He took in a deep breath and leaned toward me to put his hand on my shoulder. “Where is your shirt?”
“I left it on the white buffalo, to ward off wolves.”
He tried to remain the stoic leader, for we both knew he would become chief of the band with Shaved Head nursing a broken leg, but Kills Something could not hold back a slight smile. “Get your wife and go take care of that kill,” he ordered. “Be very careful with the hide. Say the proper prayers.”
“I will.”
“Have you told anyone else?”
“No. The white buffalo is beyond the rest of the kills. There will be no one in sight.”
“Good. Tell no one, and do not bring the hide into camp until sundown. Everyone must make meat now, but if they hear of your kill, they will all abandon their duties to go see it.”
I did as Kills Something ordered. I got Westerly, who was ready to go to work. I also got another shirt, for my skin looked like gooseflesh in the cold air. I did not tell Westerly about the white buffalo, as I wanted to surprise her. When she saw it, she almost wept. She was so moved that
she could not speak. Her people, the Cheyennes, venerated the white bison as highly as any nation on the plains. We offered prayers of thanks to the spirits in both Cheyenne and Comanche, then meticulously went about our task of separating the sacred hide from the rare beast.
By sundown, Kills Something had told Burnt Belly about my kill, and the old shaman had made medicine and consulted the spirits. When Westerly and I came into camp at dusk and unveiled the white robe, Burnt Belly was already prepared. Criers scurried through the camp and crowds gathered to see the holy pelt. When the gathering reached its zenith, Burnt Belly called for silence and told what must be done with the hide.
The wives of the warriors of the Big Horses Brotherhood would make a special lodge for the white robe, where it would forevermore reside. Westerly, as wife of the man who had killed the sacred beast, would choose three women to help her cure the hide. The three women would come from the three villages of Indians camped here together—two Kiowas and one Comanche. Organizing this project came as quite an honor for Westerly, for she was Cheyenne by blood, but she was my wife, and I was a full member of the tribe, especially now. She was quite pleased, as was almost everyone in the big camp-together. Feasting and dancing followed Burnt Belly’s announcement, and few went to sleep before dawn.
The days that followed brought all manner of problems to bear upon Kills Something. First, there were several disputes concerning who had killed which buffalo. Though the arrow markings should have prevented this, some buffalo survived a first arrow, only to be killed by a second arrow shot by a different hunter, and this almost always led to each hunter claiming the kill. Witnesses had to be called to testify, and Kills Something had to decide the conflicts as quickly and fairly as he could, calling upon the wisdom of elders to help in making his decisions.
One hunter had made four clean kills, then shot a fifth animal that had already been wounded by a younger warrior who had only managed to shoot the one beast. When Kills Something heard this case, he became furious at the more successful hunter, saying, “Would you let a brother go hungry while you already have four buffalos killed? You must not believe strongly in your medicine if you must hoard meat that way! The shot this young man made would have killed the buffalo, and you had no reason to add your arrow to his! If you have any faith in your spirit-powers, you will hold a great giveaway feast and prove it! Now, go!”