Papa didn’t answer me, but no more than I knew at that age, I could tell that he was working something around in his mind. Folks back in Alabama said Papa had a nose like a hound for sniffing out a profit.
“If they ain’t marked, does that mean they belong to anybody that can catch them?” Gunn asked.
“What would you want with them?” I asked.
Papa looked at me and I had the feeling he was exasperated with me again, like he seemed to be most of the time.
Late in the afternoon Old Ben took the tarp off that Kiowa pony and let him up. The poor thing shook itself and snorted twice but stood quietly when Old Ben put a hand on him.
“You might get along better with him now,” Old Ben said.
Gunn had borrowed a saddle from one of Papa’s Mexican hands and he picked it up.
“Hold on there,” Papa said. “I still think that horse is too much for you. Let one of the Mexicans gentle him.”
Gunn looked heartbroken.
“All right, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
The Kiowa pony stood surprisingly still for Old Ben to saddle him, and only humped his back a little and puffed his belly up when the cinch was tightened. All of the Mexican men gathered around to watch Gunn climb on the horse.
I saw Gunn swallow a big knot in his throat when Old Ben nodded at him, as if to say that Gunn had it to do.
“Go ahead, boy,” Old Ben said.
Gunn squirmed himself up in the saddle while Old Ben rubbed his hands over the pony’s near eye and whispered something to it to calm it. Gunn looked down at his leg and started to say something about the stirrups being way too long for him when the roan broke in two and started bucking like no horse I’ve ever seen. It farted and bawled and bucked, even after it threw Gunn ass over teakettle and planted his face in the dirt with a resounding thump. It pitched and fought and kicked at the cinch around its belly until it was so tired that its lungs were wheezing and its nostrils flared and pumped like bellows.
Gunn got up, dusting himself off and staring at his Kiowa pony standing there spraddle-legged and thinking about exploding again. I could tell Gunn was hurt and doing everything he could not to cry.
The Mexicans caught the horse after some trouble, considering that it broke into more halfhearted crow hops when it tried to dodge them. They led the roan back to Gunn, and he gave Old Ben another look, like climbing back in the middle of that storm was the last thing he wanted.
“You can’t quit him now,” Old Ben said.
“Finish what you start,” Papa said.
Gunn tried again, but the roan threw him in two jumps. To make matters worse, it kicked him in the hip as it bucked past him.
I could tell Papa was going to make Gunn try a third time, but Mama showed up and gathered Gunn in her arms, checking him over for injuries. She gave Papa a hard look as she started back to the dugout with her arm around Gunn.
“Look at that,” Old Ben said.
We all turned to see what he was looking at and found Joseph standing in front of that Kiowa bronc with his hand held out to its muzzle.
“Come away from there, Joseph,” Papa said.
The roan was heaving and soaked in sweat, but I expected him to wheel away or start bucking again the moment Joseph got too close. There was a good chance it was going to jump right in the middle of that boy when it did.
“Joseph.” Papa eased forward, wanting to get Joseph to safety but afraid if he moved too fast he would frighten the roan into another fit.
Joseph didn’t even seem to recognize that Papa was talking to him. He took a short step forward and stretched his hand closer to the roan’s black muzzle. I was still holding my breath when the roan stretched its neck and made contact with Joseph’s hand. It flinched back, but soon reached its nose out again. Joseph smiled—the first time I saw him do that—and before long, he was working his way down the side of the horse and stroking its neck.
“You get back over here, boy,” Papa said.
Joseph apparently heard Papa then, for he took up the hair hackamore rein and started our way. The roan followed along docilely behind him.
“Well, I’ll be. The damned thing seems to like him,” Papa said.
Old Ben was grinning from ear to ear. “Some folks have that way about them. Animals just can’t keep away from them. Had a cousin like that. Old milk cow we had to tend to each morning wouldn’t let none of the rest of us catch her without a hard time, but she would see that cousin of mine standing by the fence and come over for him to scratch her face. Followed him around like a dog when she could.”
“He’s beautiful,” Joseph said when he handed the reins to Papa.
The Mexicans were holding a conversation in Spanish, and anything but English annoyed Papa to no end.
“What are you saying?” Papa asked, scowling.
José, Juanita’s husband and a man who wore big spurs and professed to be a vaquero, answered him. “This boy, the Güero huérfano, I think someday he will be un jinete. Un caballero. A horseman.”
Joseph smiled again while Papa’s eyes measured him from the top of his tangled head to his bare feet.
“Can I have a horse like this someday?” Joseph asked.
“I hope when you’re older you’ll have sense enough not to want a horse like that,” Papa said.
I happened to look toward the dugout, and Gunn was dragging along at the end of Mama’s arm and looking back our way. I could tell he had heard everyone bragging on Joseph from the look on his face.
Chapter Seven
Mama read to us beside the campfire that night, the copy of Homer’s Iliad propped open on her knees. Even Gunn’s mood brightened. Tales of Achilles, the mighty Greek warrior, and his Myrmidons were one of the few of any kind of books he would sit still for.
The Mexicans nodded occasionally, whispering amongst themselves and enjoying the way Mama could read a story. At first, I enjoyed the evening as much as any of them, seeing visions of the great battlefield spread out before the walls of Troy and hearing the battle horns and the clash of weapons. But eventually my eyelids grew heavy and Mama noticed that. She closed the book and suggested it was well past time to go to bed.
“Turn in now. We’ve got a big day ahead of us,” Papa said. The firelight flickering across his face and the arm that held his pipe propped on one knee made me think of how King Priam the Trojan must have looked down from his walls with all the worries of his kingdom upon him. “Tomorrow, we’re going on a buffalo hunt.”
It was too hot to suit us inside the dugout, and Gunn and I spread our blankets under a brush arbor Papa had built nearby. I squirmed myself into a comfortable position facing Gunn and the last thing I remembered before falling asleep was that he had taken his carbine to bed with him and was cuddled up with it like it was a puppy. Regular Achilles, that brother of mine.
Papa woke us well before daylight, the stars still twinkling in the sky when we crawled out of our blankets, rubbing our eyes and squinting against the campfire light. We barely had time to wolf down some leftover corn bread and chase it down with a swallow of water from Juanita’s big clay jug hanging off a tree limb—an olla they call it down Texas way. The coolest, best water I ever drank came from one of those Mexican jugs hanging in the shade. I can still taste it now, cutting the dust and trickling down your throat like sweet nectar.
José was already up on his horse and he had two of the wagon mules bridled with blankets cinched over their backs for Gunn and me. Old Speck was rigged up in a single-yoke to José’s little cart to haul back any meat we might take. Papa carried his Sharps laid across his saddle in front of him, but made us pack our rifles in the cart. Gunn didn’t like that any, but Papa was already riding off into the darkness and we had to scamper up on those mules in a hurry for fear that he would change his mind and leave us behind. Old Ben stood by the fire in front of the dugout and waved us off, for Papa was leaving him behind to look out for Mama.
“You boys shoot straight and
bring Old Ben back some buffler meat,” he said. “I like the sound of saying I et some before I die.”
“Why, you’ll live to be a hundred. I’d guess you could eat every buffalo in Texas by then,” I called to him as I kicked my mule after Papa.
I don’t know how Papa navigated through the dark, or if he just pointed us to the west and kept to a straight line, intending to take account of the country when the sun came up, wherever we happened to be by then. There weren’t any roads west of us, or even a trail made by anything but wild game and Indians. We were better than seventy miles beyond the line of settlements that marked the frontier, and well into that country Texans called Comancheria. And at the time, I guess that there wasn’t a better name for it. The Comanche and their Kiowa allies had kept that country to themselves for a long time. As we were learning, some settlers had tried before the war, but none of them could make a go of it out in the big empty.
Gunn and I rode to either side of Old Speck, intent on keeping him headed right, but that wasn’t even needed. That old steer seemed perfectly content to follow Papa like a hound, and we did the same.
An hour after sunup all four of us were bellied down in the grass on top of a little hill, staring at a small herd of buffalo less than a hundred yards below. Our livestock was tied a ways off behind us.
“One of those old bulls is bound to be tough eating,” Papa said to me. “Pick that yearling there closest to us.”
“How come Hamish gets to shoot first?” Gunn whispered.
“Because he’s the oldest,” Papa hissed back at him.
“Don’t worry,” José said. “They won’t run if your brother shoots straight.”
For all the trouble Papa and José had made keeping us upwind of the herd, I still found it hard to believe that a gunshot wouldn’t make the animals run off. José claimed to have hunted buffalo before, and Papa seemed willing to listen to him.
“Shoot low right behind the front leg,” José said.
I tried to get my Richmond gun as steady as I could on the crossed set of sticks bound together with rawhide that José had made for me. Either the wind waving the grass was making my aim shaky, or it was me feeling Papa staring at me.
“Cock your hammer,” Papa said.
My ears burned with shame. I was so nervous and intent on aiming that I didn’t even have my gun ready to shoot.
“Take your time and make it count,” Papa added.
Gunn was already propping his carbine up on his own shooting sticks beside me. “Hurry up, Hamish.”
The Richmond musket Papa had given me was horribly inaccurate, and I knew that I needed to be dead-on with my aim to have a chance. The last thing I wanted was for Papa and Gunn to see me miss. I strained to keep my front sight on target until my right eye started to water.
“I’m going to shoot that bull with the big horns and head,” Gunn said, regardless of Papa’s instructions not to shoot the old bulls.
I could feel Papa willing me to shoot, and I squeezed the trigger. The recoil of the musket and the belch of smoke caused me to lose sight of my target for an instant, and the next I saw of the yearling it was lumbering into the midst of the herd stampeding away from our position.
“I think you shot too high,” José said.
I knew that my aim had been poor the moment I shot and was about to agree with José when Gunn’s Maynard cracked. He leapt to his feet as soon as he fired and shook his carbine over his head.
“Got him!” he shouted. “Lookee, Papa!”
I looked down the hill, and true to Gunn’s word, a great bull, the biggest one I’d seen yet, slowly buckled its knees and crumpled to the ground.
“He never took a step,” Gunn said.
“A fine shot,” Papa said.
We went back to our stock and brought them over the hill to where Gunn’s kill lay. José honed his knife on a large whetstone and then began showing Gunn how to skin a buffalo. He and Papa ran their knives around the bull’s neck behind its skull and then split the animal open along its belly, tugging at the heavy hide and slicing it free and upward toward the backbone. They tied a rope from the back of the cart to the bull’s hind leg on the underneath side and used Old Speck’s power to slowly turn the huge beast onto his other side while they peeled away his hide. In that manner, they literally rolled the buffalo out of its skin until it lay there stark and white with bubbled and knife-nicked fat and connective tissue, the red flesh beneath already growing dull, from blood red to the color of burned clay.
The sun was already well up, and the flies buzzed around the carcass. Gunn made up for a lack of skill with enthusiasm and he was covered in blood and fat grease by the time they were halfway through.
Papa noticed me pouting when he finally took a break, and I feared that he also noticed I hadn’t been doing much to help skin Gunn’s kill. I tried to smile at him.
“I think you hit that yearling,” he said. “Your musket isn’t much, and I should have loaned you my Sharps.”
I knew that Papa was only saying that to try and make me feel better. I had seen the disappointment written on his face when the yearling ran off.
“Let’s go see if we can find him,” Papa said.
I climbed up on my mule and rode beside him and Shiloh across the prairie, wishing that he would let the matter drop. We all knew that I had missed.
“Well, look there,” Papa said after we had ridden about a quarter mile from the cart.
Before us, the yearling buffalo I had shot was struggling to get to its feet. Bloody slobber and froth hung in a string from its muzzle. It tried twice to get up, but fell back to the ground, facing us.
“Finish him.” Papa was already off Shiloh and handed me his Sharps when I got down off the mule.
The poor yearling grunted loudly and made another try to run off. I cocked Papa’s gun and did my best to keep a sight picture on its forehead. It was only a twenty-yard shot, but I feared I might miss again.
A gust of air issued from the buffalo’s leathery lungs when the bullet busted through bone and into its brainpan. Its tongue hung lewdly out of the side of its mouth.
Papa took his gun and patted me between the shoulder blades when we walked up to the yearling. “You boys have done well. First hunt, and a buffalo for both of you.”
My first bullet had struck the buffalo too high on its side, like José had predicted, and also well too far back. At best, I had managed a lung or paunch shot. I stared at the yearling’s one eye I could see, the brown of it already fading to a milky film, and knew that I had made an extremely poor shot for such close range and the animal had suffered for it.
“We can tan both hides and you boys can use them for your beds,” Papa said. “Or maybe you can get José to show you how to make a powder horn. There will come a day when you’ll look back on such trophies and cherish them.”
I nodded, although I didn’t want any kind of trophy. I could understand Gunn being proud of his great bull, but not me with my yearling and his little horns and the two bullets it had taken me to kill him.
“How come it’s got such a large skull?” I asked. Even the small yearling’s head was so large as to be out of proportion with the rest of its body. To me, when standing, buffalo always looked as if they should tip over like a seesaw, with their nose hitting the ground and their back legs up in the air. Even the horns looked too small on such an overblown cranium, to the point where they appeared as an afterthought.
“Maybe it’s because they aren’t too smart,” Papa said after a moment’s thought. “God probably gave them that head to butt their way past anything that stumps them. Stubbornness can get you through sometimes when you can’t figure a way around things.”
“Kind of like Gunn, then?”
“Yes, you could put it that way. Gunn’s head isn’t that big but it might be as hard.” Papa put a hand on my shoulder. “I’m proud of you boys. I think this Texas will be a good place for you.”
“What about Mama and Baby Beth?�
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Papa smiled, something he hadn’t done much since the war, but a smile all the more special because of that. “For them, too. God knows what I would do without them.”
And in that sad, strange, terrible path that life can sometimes take, Papa got to find out. We all did. For once the meat and hides were loaded in the cart, and Old Speck was plodding back to camp, we hadn’t gone three miles before we heard the gunshots. And later, we saw it like a stain in the sky to the east. Smoke again, billowing up in the distance from where our new dugout should stand. That god-awful, black, hellish smoke, like that feeling when you’ve just woken up from a nightmare and your guts are all twisted and your heart is beating out of sync. It seemed like our lives were marked with smoke, until we all should have smelled like brimstone and our tears turned to ashes.
Chapter Eight
Papa beat us there by a good bit, as nothing was going to keep up with Shiloh, especially not an oxcart and two boys on mules. José hung back with me and Gunn and the cart and tried to keep us from rushing forward once we got close. But we weren’t having any of that. By the time we whipped our mules into camp Papa was already standing in the doorway of the dugout, his hands on each side of it, and his body shaking with misery and his head bowed as if he didn’t have the strength to hold it up.
It wasn’t the dugout that was burning. It was our last good wagon that smoldered with Old Ben’s body lying next to it. Mama’s new casa grande, the humble abode that was our squalid dugout, wasn’t in ruins at all, for dirt doesn’t burn, and Papa had built sturdily against such occasions. Other than the fact that one of the raiders had torn down the steer-hide door and Mama’s things were scattered all over the yard, the dugout looked no different—squat and solid. The roof had even held, despite the pony tracks up the side of the hill where I could see that some buck had ridden on top of the roof. That dugout would have stood against storm and prairie fire, but it didn’t do any good in the end. Instead of shelter, it was no more than a dirt box that held the worst of our fears and all of the loss we hoped against. I wondered if Papa knew that it was a tomb when he was building it.
Destiny, Texas Page 4