In the cold air of the late October dawn he wore only a breechclout, moccasins, his skinning knife, and his quiver and bow case. He rode barebacked, unwilling to burden Night with even the weight of a surcingle. He shivered a little as he made one last check of his equipment. He took the coiled sinew bowstring from under his armpit, where he kept it to protect it from the morning dampness, and strung it onto his bow. If the sinew became too wet, it stretched, and it shrank and snapped when it was too dry. He had two spare strings tucked into a small pocket on the quiver, in case this one broke.
He slipped the bow under his thigh to hold it and shifted the quiver so that it was at his left side, where he could reach it more quickly than by groping over his shoulder. The wind chilled his back where it had been warmed by the thick fur of the quiver. He shook the quiver so all the arrows were lying in the bottom, the wider part of its tear-drop shape. With the bow gone its case drooped at the ends, out of the way of the quiver that was attached parallel to it. Both cylinders were made from the entire dense winter pelt of a huge white wolf, with the tail turned into a case for the bow. The four paws hung down at both ends of the quiver and were decorated with beadwork and tassels. White wolves were very rare among the red wolves of the plains, and their medicine was powerful.
Wanderer pulled out seven arrows, all of them banded with the three stripes of red paint near the base of the turkey fletching. He put two of the shafts in his teeth and held five in his bow hand. All together, the quiver with its twenty hunting arrows weighed less than two pounds.
The great semicircle of fifty men advanced slowly toward the buffalo herd grazing out of sight on the other side of the long, low ridge. The hunters had no metal, no horseshoes, no saddles, nothing to creak or jingle, and the wind was blowing toward them. In the gray light of the overcast dawn they drifted silently through the ground fog that eddied around their ponies’ hooves. They seemed like phantom hunters, their heads and shoulders wreathed in writhing swirls of steam from their own breath and that of their ponies.
Out of the corner of his eye Wanderer watched Pahayuca sitting like a statue on his big red bay. The People had no need of police societies for hunts, like those of other tribes. Each man was his own master, yet he cooperated fully with the others on a hunt. It wouldn’t have occurred to them to do otherwise. The tension vibrated among the men as they waited for Pahayuca’s signal. They were flesh and blood springs wound tightly and held by a hair trigger. Wanderer forced himself to relax, but he still shivered slightly. Night flicked his ears once.
As he waited, Wanderer thought of a hunt three years before and of his cousin’s crushed and mutilated body. Wanderer had stared down at it after the wounded bull had finally died and been dragged off with lines tied to several horses. A buffalo hunt could be deadlier than a raid against men. It was harder to predict what buffalo would do.
Wanderer remembered his first hunt and the huge bull he had only wounded. He had been thirteen years old and frightened for the first time in his life. Since then he had felt that expanding bubble of fear in his bowels many times, but the first time had been the worst. He would never forget the smell of the beast’s breath, and the hissing noise of blood and steam venting from his mouth and nostrils. He could still see the huge bulk of the animal looming from the cloud of dust. He could see the veins in the encrusted, bloodshot eyes that seemed about to pop from the animal’s head.
His broad back, matted with burs and caked with dust, seemed yards across, and his shaggy, tangled mane brushed the ground as he bellowed and pawed. His shoulder muscles bunched and tautened and his head went down, the wicked, curving horns thrust forward. He was preparing to charge. He stood seven feet tall at the shoulder and weighed over two thousand pounds. Of course Wanderer had picked the biggest bull he could find for his first kill. Now it was debatable who was going to be killed. Wanderer knew that even if the bull died, his momentum and will to live and nervous system would keep him going several yards.
The bull charged, and Wanderer froze on his pony. He watched, fascinated, as death thundered toward him. Luckily, his horse had better sense. Wanderer’s father, Pohebits Kwasu, Iron Shirt, had loaned him his prize buffalo pony, and the horse was brilliant. He dodged and circled the plunging animal while the buffalo pivoted on his front feet. Hitting the ground with his rear legs and using them to push off in a new direction, he could turn his two thousand pounds as if on a swivel.
For two of the longest minutes in Wanderer’s life the pony ducked and dodged, jockeying for the right position on the bull’s left side. He had to get Wanderer a bow’s length away for the shot to be most effective. The second arrow entered behind the rib, drove all the way through the heart and into the ground on the other side. The buffalo crashed to his knees and paused there, as though paying homage to his slayer, before rolling over dead.
Wanderer had been too elated to retrieve his first, misfired arrow. He had burned with shame when his sister and her friends presented it to him, taunting him in front of the whole band at the celebration afterward. He had learned two things that day. He vowed never to leave a misfired arrow in his prey, no matter what risks he had to take to get it back. And he knew he would always have the best horse possible under him.
His daydreaming was interrupted by a movement at the edge of his vision, and he tensed, the movement translating into a signal to Night.
Pahayuca’s hand rose and fell with a quick chopping motion. Every man leaned forward, and the ponies leaped ahead. The line of naked riders swept over the ridge and circled on the other side, trapping the herd in the magic surround. As the ring of riders tightened, cinching the buffalo ever more closely, the cows and calves milled bawling in the center. The bulls raced around them, using their bodies as a barrier. They ran with their tongues out and their heads down, the air puffing in and out of their mouths.
Wanderer didn’t even have to use his knees to guide Night as they rode in among the stampeding bulls. Running full speed through the thick cloud of dust, Night dodged old prairie dog holes that would have snapped his leg like a twig and thrown his rider and friend under the driving hooves around them. He knew to swerve as soon as an animal was shot, to avoid being gored if it turned on them. And he had the speed to run their quarry down quickly. The meat of an overheated buffalo spoiled fast.
Wanderer and Night were like one animal, like the centaur the Indians had believed the mounted Spaniards to be hundreds of years before. But Wanderer rode better than any Spaniard. He and Night raced through the melee, dodging horns and hoofs and the arrows of other hunters. There was no time for fear or thought or plans. They acted reflexively, unconsciously, weaving in and out in the dust and the stench and the noise.
The herd scattered as individuals found openings and headed across the hills. They seemed clumsy and bumbling at first, until they found their stride. Then they raced off with astonishing speed, veering first to the right, then to the left. They made a zigzag trail to keep their heads turned to one side or the other, one eye looking forward and the other back. Pahayuca said a buffalo herd could eat breakfast in Texas, dinner in the country of the Ute, and supper with the Wichita.
The ground was littered with fallen buffalo, arrows sticking from their sides as uniformly as if they had been measured with calipers. Finally only the yellow and red calves were left, deserted or orphaned. They bleated and lunged in all directions. While the boys, yelling and whooping, rode in to finish them off, Pahayuca signaled to the waiting women and girls, who ran down the slope, racing to count coup on the bodies.
Star Name straddled the calf as it lay on its back, its legs in the air. With a deft stroke, she opened the belly. She made another cut and dug around inside the calf’s first stomach. She scooped out a handful of curdled milk that looked like farmer’s cheese, picked out a few chunks, popped them into her mouth, and offered the rest to Naduah. Naduah shook her head feebly and almost lost what little breakfast she had eaten.
It was the first hunt of this siz
e she had been on, and the dining arrangements were difficult to adjust to. It wasn’t the butchering that bothered her. She had seen plenty of that, although she didn’t like it. It was that the People ate everything. And with relish. With the plains for a table and a warm hide as a platter, they feasted.
Some of the animals were still kicking, their nerves still sending impulses to their brains after their hearts had stopped beating. One cow lay panting with life and moaning while the hide was flayed off her. Blood still flowed, and the dust hadn’t even settled from the crashing fall of the last bull. The raw livers, sprinkled with green bile from the broken gall bladders, were delicacies reserved for the hunters. Sunrise shared a small piece of his with Naduah, and she was surprised at how good it was. She began to help herself to the entrails. They were all she was going to get, after all, and she found she was craving them. She was unaware of the trace elements and minerals the organs provided. She only knew they appealed to her.
Takes Down bit into a hunk of the soft, yellowish tallow from the bull’s loins, letting it melt in her mouth. Her eyes were half closed and she chewed with the same blissful expression Rabbit Ears had when eating a particularly tender thistle.
The dogs were racing to and fro in packs, snapping and barking and howling in a frenzy. Now and then they leaped together, trying to catch a choice piece of offal tossed over someone’s shoulder. Tail between his legs, the winner of the toss streaked across the plain, the losers baying at his heels.
The hearts were cut out and set aside, to honor the buffalo and to encourage them to multiply. And as soon as the soft entrails and other organs had been eaten, the men, women, and children set quickly to work, finishing the butchering. Meat that wasn’t cut into strips and hung on the drying racks by the following morning would spoil, even in the cool weather. And there was a lot of meat. It took four or five women, working along with their men, to process the animals killed by each hunter.
Takes Down and Black Bird butchered the cows Sunrise had killed for his family. Laying the animal on its side. Takes Down ripped it down the belly and took off the top half of the hide, cutting away the meat from the bones. Then she and Black Bird tied ropes to the feet and turned the carcass over with their ponies to repeat the process on the other side.
Naduah and Star Name and Owl loaded packhorses and rode back and forth together all day between the kill site and the drying racks at the hunt camp. By afternoon Naduah’s arms and legs ached with the strain of carrying heavy loads of meat and standing on tiptoe to hang the strips. She was covered with grease and blood that was drying and itching.
While the women worked, Sunrise and Wanderer heaved the heavier bulls onto their bellies with their legs spread. They slashed the hide across the chest and neck, then folded it back so they could cut out the forequarters. They sliced down the center of the back, being careful to leave the sinews intact along the spine. The hindquarters were disjointed, leaving the rump with the back. Next the flank was cut up toward the stomach and removed in one piece with the brisket. The thin slab was rolled, put into a piece of hide, and loaded onto a packhorse.
Sunrise cut up through the stomach to remove the guts, separating the ribs and the sternum. Slicing between the middle ribs, he took their free ends in both hands and pulled sharply upward and outward, breaking rib steaks from the spine. When he had finished, all that was left was the bare spine with the head left on. He cracked the skull and scooped the brains out into a stomach liner. The brains would be saved for tanning.
While Black Bird carefully removed the sinews from the spinal column. Takes Down prepared them before they had a chance to dry and stiffen with their own natural glue. She cleaned the moist tendons by scraping them with a piece of bone, then softened them more until fibers could be stripped off. The process looked easy. It wasn’t. The longest sinew was the three-foot tendon along the backbone. The one lying under the shoulder blade of a buffalo cow was only a foot long, but especially thick. Many of them twisted together made a tough bowstring.
As the carcasses shrank, vanishing under the hands of the People, Naduah realized how much their lives depended on the buffalo. Each part had a function. The bladders were saved for medicine pouches. The bones would turn up as shovels, splints, saddle trees, scrapers, ornaments, awls, and even dice for the gambling games. The scrotums were cut off to be turned into rattles for dancing. The stomach paunch liners would replace worn-out water containers, and the hooves and feet were saved for glue and more rattles. The horns would make cups and spoons and ladles, and fireproof, waterproof holders for powder and coals when the camp was moved.
The hair would be used to stuff pillows and saddle pads and shields. It would be twisted into ropes and halters and used for headdresses. The tails were handy fly swatters and quirts and decorations. Even the stomach contents were emptied and sorted for future use. The small pellets of partially digested grass were saved for Medicine Woman to use in treating frostbite and skin diseases. Star Name held up a big hairball, very valuable medicine that Medicine Woman would be pleased to have.
The hides were saved, but they weren’t prime yet. Later, toward the end of November or the beginning of December, there would be another hunt to get them when they were thickest. The hides of the four-year-old cows were at their best for lodge covers then. Robe hunters looked for small buffalo with trim, compact bodies. Their hair was as silky as fur, and it made the best bedding.
As the sun hovered over the horizon, it looked as though it too had been dipped in the blood that drenched Naduah and her family. The wind blew colder, and Naduah shivered in her sweat-soaked dress. In a long, tired line the hunters and their families followed the buffalo herd’s wide, sunken road back toward the river and the hunting camp. The scouts who had left a few days earlier to pick a spot had done well. The low hide lean-tos were set among an open stand of willows and cottonwoods near a clear stream. On the other side of the stream a bluff protected them from the north wind. The small shelters could hardly be seen behind the hundreds of scaffolds hung with meat. One had to pick one’s way through a maze of them.
“Naduah,” Star Name shouted between cupped hands, “we’re going to the river to bathe. Come with us.”
“You’re crazy. It’s too cold.”
“It’s not cold,” Owl assured her. Not to Owl, maybe. Melted snow probably wouldn’t be cold to Owl. She had skin like an old buffalo. But Naduah couldn’t resist the unspoken dare.
“I’m coming.”
She and Star Name stood at the edge of the stream and splashed water over themselves, shivering and chattering with the cold, a blue tinge under the goose bumps that covered them. Only Owl seemed oblivious to the weather. She had waded in and sat now with only her head showing.
“Cowards,” she called. “It’s not bad when you get used to it;”
“This’ll do, Owl.”
“Don’t complain to me when no one asks you to dance tonight because you smell like a buffalo,” Owl shouted. She stood up and walked toward them. They bundled up in their robes and headed toward camp, still talking.
“Pahayuca promised the buffalo tongue ceremony when we get back to the main village,” Star Name said.
“And the women are in an uproar about it,” added Owl. “I can’t wait to see who’s chosen to serve the meal.”
“I suppose they all want to be chosen,” said Naduah. Owl laughed with delight.
“Not exactly. Before she can serve the tongue any man who’s lain with her has to shout ‘No!’ She has to be a virgin, you see.”
“A very rare animal,” said Star Name wickedly.
“And of course the woman gets teased, no matter what.”
“Remember when Red Foot did it last year and Buffalo Piss said she slept with all the dogs in the village?”
“Yes. Then Sunrise said she’d slept with everything with a pizzle.”
“Sunrise said that?” Naduah couldn’t believe it.
“Yes, he did,” said Star Name. “I heard him.
”
“That’s the trouble. Everyone hears it. If no one speaks up, the women all applaud and go ‘li-li-li-li.’ ” Owl demonstrated, vibrating her tongue against the roof of her mouth.
“I can’t do that.”
“Yes, you can, Naduah. It goes like this.” Owl skipped around in front of Naduah and tilted her head so the girl would have a clear view of her tongue and palate. “Practice.”
And the three of them practiced loudly all the way back to their shelters.
CHAPTER 21
Biting her lip, Naduah watched the horses walk toward the line of bluffs to the north. Turning, she stuffed the reins of the painted pony Wanderer had just given her into Star Name’s hand.
“Take him. Now we each have one.” She choked on the last word, then whirled and ran off among the lodges. She darted through the boys’ wheel game. The wheel target and the small arrows flew in all directions, but she never slowed down. Ignoring the threats that followed her, she raced on toward her own lodge. She jumped over the threshold into the dim warmth and threw herself, sobbing, across her low bed.
Medicine Woman came in as quietly as a shadow and waited until the storm subsided. Then she sat next to Naduah, gathering her into her slender, fragile arms.
“He’ll be back, little one. Don’t cry.”
“Not for two or three years. Maybe more. He said so. That’s forever.” Naduah gulped and hiccupped and blew her nose on a leaf that Medicine Woman handed her. “Why did he have to leave? I thought he was my friend. He was helping me train Wind.”
“Do you know what Nocona means, Grandaughter?”
“Wanderer.”
“Names are very personal. Each should be different, like snowflakes, because each person is different. Your name tells others about you, like Keeps Warm With Us. It tells how you act, and what you’ve done in your life. Nocona is a wanderer. He’s special. He belongs to no one and he belongs to everyone. We have to share him.”
Robson, Lucia St. Clair Page 24