by Mike Blakely
Touching the barrel of his .50-caliber Sharps, Caleb found it cool enough to take another round. He slipped a cartridge from his belt and slid it into the breech. He eased the barrel onto the forked prop stick he had driven into the ground two hours before and scooted an inch to his left to get a line on the most agitated of the blood-sniffing cows. In a moment she lifted her nose to the air and set out on a walk to the east. Another cow followed her, and another.
He already had the distance figured at three hundred twenty yards. The wind was quartering from the north-east but wasn’t stiff enough to affect the flight of the bullet. The downhill slope made some difference, but he had it figured, too, from the previous kills. He took a wisp of air into his lungs, inflating his slumped body to the proper height, changing the angle of the barrel on the rifle rest just enough to cover the base of the bison’s neck with the sights. He started a slow, deliberate squeeze on Elam’s hair trigger until the block fell and set off the eruption.
The cow’s legs buckled, and she hit the ground dead. Caleb recovered from the jolt of the rifle butt in time to see her legs flail loosely as she rolled over. Her followers stopped stupidly in their tracks as the black cloud lifted. The hunter opened the breech and tossed another smoking shell onto his pile of brass.
His ears were ringing despite the tufts of cotton stuck in them. He woke up some mornings with his ears ringing. There were nights when he could barely hear himself change chords on the guitar. As a hunter he worried more about losing his hearing than he had worried about losing his dexterity as a skinner. But the veteran hunters told him the ringing would pass a few days after the season, so he continued to kill.
He had seen a day-old stand one morning at dawn. The skinners had harvested the hides and scavengers had ripped out the entrails. As he looked eastward, the morning sunlight had shone into the gutted cavities of two dozen carcasses, their red rib cages glowing like curved sheets of stained glass. He could not calculate the tons of meat he caused to go wasted.
Another shot rumbled from Badger’s stand.
The tune to “Buffalo Gals” ran through his head. He longed to get ahold of a fiddle somewhere, string it left-handed, and start learning all over again. He was approaching his old proficiency on the guitar, but only a fiddle could do justice to a tune like “Buffalo Gals.”
Oh, she danced all night with a hole in her stockin’
And her knees kept a-knockin’
And her heels kept a-rockin.
She danced all night with a hole in her stockin’,
Oh, she danced by the light of the moon.
He wondered how Mort would dance to fiddle music. Almost every night the camp rustler staked a hide down by the fire and challenged all comers to outjig him. None was animated enough to succeed. He imagined Mort could well-nigh clog holes in a flint hide to fiddle music.
Badger fired again, splitting the quiet with pulses of echoing gunfire.
* * *
When he had killed twenty-two head of bison, Caleb heard a sound behind him and looked back to see Badger crawling on his belly, over the ridge, and down toward the bushes.
“How’s your stand holdin’ up?” he whispered, sliding in next to Caleb.
“Good. They’re tame as a bunch of old milk cows today.”
“They’re charmed. It happens to ’em sometime. I killed sixty-three on my stand. Today’s my day to make a hundred.” He spread a tripod of steel rods in front of him.
“I’m about done,” Caleb said. “I don’t think the skinners can finish much more than I’ve killed already.”
Badger snorted disdainfully. “It shows that you ain’t been huntin’ long. If you’d been at it long as I have, you’d know to shoot all you can when you can. Tomorrow these thousands of shaggies might hightail it for God knows where. Then the damn skinners would cuss you and me both for not shootin’ more when we had the chance.”
They argued until Badger agreed to stop at a hundred kills. Caleb soaked a rag with water and ran it through the gun barrels with a ramrod so Badger could reach his tally faster, allowing the skinners to start sooner.
Badger used a Sharps Big Fifty and a Springfield Army Model Forty-five. His hands held either rifle with the steady quality of earth, and his eyes rivaled the eagle’s. To Badger Burton, picking off buffalo inside of four hundred yards was like spearing pickles from a jar with a pocketknife.
In less than two hours Badger had made his hundredth kill for the day. The ground below the ridge was lumped with black masses of fur. Fewer than forty were left standing, stupefied by the rumble of guns.
“That’s a hundred,” Caleb said. “Congratulations. Now let’s go get the skinners.”
“Not yet,” Badger answered, aiming the Springfield at the herd. He fired a round and a young bull went down bellowing, then scrambled onto three legs, limping.
“What the hell are you doing?”
“Crippling for tomorrow. A busted leg will keep ’em from wanderin’ too far. Give me my Sharps.”
“Like hell I will,” Caleb said. He rested Badger’s Sharps in the crotch of his forked stick, found the wounded bull’s neck in the sights, and fired.
“Damn you, what do you mean?” Badger yanked his rifle away.
Caleb sprang to his feet, fired his own Sharps rifle into the air, and started hollering like a cowboy trying to turn a stampede. He kicked gravel and raked the bushes with his rifle barrel. The animals flinched in unison and bolted in three different directions.
Suddenly Caleb felt Badger on his back and saw the bushes coming up to meet him. They rolled down the hill, snapping branches in the brush, throwing elbows, fists, and knees at each other. Above the rumble of hooves Caleb heard Badger growling his entire vocabulary of epithets.
They rolled to a stop at the bottom of the slope, and Caleb sprang to his feet first. Badger tried to butt him back to the ground, but Caleb turned the attack with a knee on Badger’s chin. The rumble of the herd, which should have grown faint by now, was getting louder, and Caleb realized some of the animals were stampeding toward him.
Badger missed with a wild swing of his right fist, and Caleb planted a quick left on-his ear. They leaned into each other, trading uppercuts and rib shots as the thunder of bison came nearer. Badger turned Caleb’s head with a hard blow to his jaw, and Caleb caught a glimpse of shining horns and frothing mouths. He snapped Badger’s head back as the stampede ripped into the bushes on both sides of them. Dust enveloped them. They could neither see nor hear, but they felt each other’s fists.
A hand grasped Caleb’s collar and he was rolling again, breathing acres of dust. Badger was on top of him for a moment, but he writhed violently and pulled his opponent down into the dirt with him. The thunder of hooves grew distant. They rolled, exhausted, choking in dust, throwing feeble roundhouse blows at each other.
A shot fired from the ridge, and they looked through the settling dust, their hands clutching each other’s shirts. Washita Jack and Tighe Frost rode down through the bushes as the combatants pushed each other away.
Washita started laughing. “We thought we heard three shots for help.”
“I wonder which one of them it was,” Frost said, grinning.
“Hard to tell. They both look like they’ve had the worst of it. Badger, what’s this all about?”
Badger coughed and spit blood. “He ruined my stand.”
“That true?” Washita asked.
“It was my stand first,” Caleb said. “We agreed he’d stop shootin’ when he got a hundred, but then he started cripplin’, so I stampeded ’em.”
Washita shook his head. “You two fellers shouldn’t ought to hunt together. Your methods are too … What’s the word, Tighe?”
“Contradictory.”
Washita chuckled. “Your methods are too contradictory.”
“Suits me,” Badger said, looking for his hat in the bushes.
“We’ll have to go catch your horse for you, Badger. He boogered when the buffalo came ov
er that ridge.” He turned to Caleb. “Yours is still there. He wouldn’t pull the stake pin out. That’s a damn sensible horse.”
Caleb picked up his rifle and started walking up the hill with Tighe Frost and Washita Jack.
“You’d better keep your distance from Badger from now on,” Washita said.
“What for?”
“Badger don’t like anybody gettin’ between him and buffalo blood. You’re lucky he didn’t just shoot you. Just keep your distance from now on.”
* * *
Badger couldn’t find a single civil word for Caleb after the day they made the mistake of hunting together. One day Caleb was riding back to camp to direct the skinners to his morning’s kill when a slug sang past him and thumped against the hill behind his head. The guns of the other hunters had been firing all around him, so he hadn’t taken much notice of where the blast had come from. He looked for black smoke, but it was a breezy day and he found none. He knew Badger could have killed him if he had wanted to.
The next day Frost ordered the freight wagons loaded for another haul to Denison, and Caleb volunteered to go along. Everyone understood why, and no one tried to talk him out of it, though they would all miss his guitar music and singing. Caleb could not stay where he wasn’t wanted. He loved making people laugh and dance. When his welcome wore thin, however, he thought only of the next camp, the next town. Someone would welcome his stories and songs there. It was better than bearing Badger Burton’s hatred.
When he left the South Wichita that morning, he wondered if he would ever hunt buffalo again. He thought perhaps he had had enough of it for a lifetime. Every hillside he could see for miles around was covered with rotting carcasses and bleaching skeletons. He would never forget the village on the Pease River where Medicine Horse and Snake Woman had died. He would always know the bend in the South Wichita where Elam and George were buried. Few memories filled him with the glory and horror he felt looking back on his season spent slaughtering buffalo.
Where am I going? I am twenty years old and I have no job, no business. I don’t even have a steady line of work. Pete is talking of getting married, and I have never even had a sweetheart. I have wandered three years and have nothing to show for it. I have no home. Where am I going now?
Winter was coming. It was time to find Javier’s ranch in New Mexico. Maybe there was something there for him.
SIXTY-ONE
Caleb and Railroad Tighe Frost carved a slow trail eastward with their oxen. When the bull train reached Denison, Frost drove his hides to the depot and told Caleb he was going to negotiate with the hide buyers.
“Mr. Frost,” Caleb said, before his employer could get away.
“Yes? What?”
“I have an idea on how you might come out further ahead on these hides.”
“You have an idea?” Frost snickered. “Well, I’m always willing to listen to ideas. What is it?”
Caleb took his hat off and approached his employer. “I’ve been doin’ some figuring, and it seems to me you could make more profit on these flint hides if you cured ’em first, then sold ’em.”
“Do you have any idea how much it would cost to have them cured?” Frost said, turning for the hide buyer’s office.
“Three dollars a hide.”
Frost stopped in his tracks. “Three dollars? Where would you have hides cured for three dollars?”
“I know a chief on the Cheyenne-Arapaho Reservation in the Territory. He has his squaws cure the hides for traders. Name’s Long Fingers. You’ll find his village on the Canadian, west of Darlington.”
Frost rubbed his jaw and contemplated. “And they’ll do it for three dollars a hide?”
“Yes, sir. You’ll have to go through the Indian agent, but they’re always lookin’ for ways to employ the Indians, so you shouldn’t have any problems. I thought you at least might want to pull one of the wagons up there and give ’em a try, to see if it works out.”
Frost was not much of a buffalo hunter, but he knew a sound proposition when he heard one. Two hundred fifty hides on a trial basis made sense. Young Holcomb was right. If he could get hides cured for three dollars apiece, he could make more profit than he could selling the skins as flint hides. “What do you want out of it?” he asked.
Caleb shrugged. “The chief’s a friend of mine. His people need the work.”
“What are you, Holcomb? Indian fighter or Indian lover?”
“Depends on the Indian, I guess.”
After he sold two wagons of flint hides, Red Hot Frost paid Caleb for the buffalo he had killed and skinned. His earnings totaled five hundred twenty-five dollars. He had never before held such a wad. By the time he had enjoyed a couple of meals and a bath, lodged himself in a hotel, put Powder River in a livery stable, and patronized some of Denison’s less reputable establishments, he had spent more than a hundred dollars. He then proceeded to lose his reserves in a game of draw poker.
Six opponents took turns fleecing him of his hide earnings. There were two professional gamblers, a drummer, a cowboy, a crooked-nosed little fellow who looked like a common drudge, and a big black-bearded brute who seemed to have just stepped into the saloon from the vilest buffalo camp on the ranges. Caleb was down to his last pot when a lone jack and a stray eight became a sudden queen-high straight by virtue of a lucky draw. He won the pot and ordered drinks for the table.
“We might as well carry the young man for a few deals if he’s going to buy our drinks,” the drummer said.
“I’d just as soon take his money and buy my own,” replied a gambler with a gold tooth.
Caleb grinned and opened with a high bet on five cards he hadn’t even looked at. He scorned the draw, raised every wager that came before him, and won the pot with three tens. The black beard and the cowboy were the big losers. The two gamblers, the crooked nose, and the drummer had folded.
The streak continued for Caleb. Though he lost an occasional hand to a gambler, he continued to bet high and buy drinks for the table. The cowboy went broke. Caleb staked him. He went broke again and left. The drummer turned in. Now the gamblers took turns with Caleb at beating the black beard and the crooked nose. Caleb won the biggest pots.
A saloon girl stood at his side, waiting for him to order more drinks, and a few spectators from the bar had gathered around to admire his carefree play. He couldn’t begin to calculate his winnings at the rate they had multiplied.
Another hand and the deal fell to the black beard, who sat across from Caleb. The big man’s stack of chips was low, but he assured his opponents he had the wherewithal to last another deal. He gave the deck to the crooked nose to cut.
The big dirty hands dealt the cards with familiarity. A silk-vested gambler opened, the gold tooth called, Caleb raised, the crooked nose folded, and the dealer doubled the bet.
The little man with the crooked nose cussed as he left the table, taking a small stack of chips with him. Caleb looked up and found the big man glaring at him. But the whiskey had made him reckless and he called the new wager.
With all bets in, the silk vest took a card from the dealer and sat poker-faced. The gold tooth asked for three. Caleb took a good look at his hand for the first time. Two queens, two tens, an eight. The way the betting was going, he didn’t think he had a winning hand, so he sacrificed the two pairs for an outside chance at a flush—one of the queens, one of the tens, and the eight were diamonds. Even Caleb knew how slim the odds were, but he had had some fun and didn’t mind losing most of what he had won.
When he tossed his two rejects onto the discard pile, he noticed that the black beard raked them together as if to neaten the table and deftly bent the corners of the cards up with his thumb.
“Hey,” Caleb said, “don’t monkey with the dead-wood.”
The dealer froze with his hand on the discard pile and squinted. “What did you say?”
Caleb pointed at the cards under the big dirty hand. “Don’t monkey with deadwood. Those cards, there.”
&nb
sp; “I know what deadwood means, you little shit. Are you accusin’ me of cheatin’?”
“No, sir. I reckon if you were cheatin’, you wouldn’t be so low on poker chips. But you still ain’t supposed to monkey with the deadwood.”
The spectators laughed and the jaws tightened under the black beard. “When I deal, I monkey with whatever I feel like,” he said through his teeth.
“Actually,” the silk vest said, “the young man’s right. It goes against gentlemen’s rules for you to flip the corners of those cards the way you’ve been doing.”
The black beard moved his hand to his glass, downed the whiskey in it, and studied his hand.
“You owe me two fresh cards,” Caleb said.
The big dealer belched and flipped two cards his way. When Caleb picked up his new cards, he found, to his utter astonishment, that his flush had panned out. Both of the new cards sported big red diamonds. When he placed them in rank with his three original cards, he almost fell over on the saloon girl beside him. The black beard had dealt him the jack and the nine of diamonds. He had parlayed two pairs into a queen-high straight flush.
The gold tooth read Caleb’s face and folded, leaving the table.
“Dealer stands pat,” the black beard said.
The silk vest started the last round of betting with an outrageous wager. Caleb cheerfully called it.
“That’s too high,” the black beard complained.
“There’s no limit in this game,” the silk vest replied.
“I don’t have that much.”
“You should have thought about that when you started the deal, my friend. I’m sorry, but you’ll have to match the bet or fold.”
“The hell I’ll have to fold,” he said, reaching into his coat.
Caleb heard a hammer catch and looked over his perfect fan of diamonds to see a derringer in the silk-vested gambler’s hand. He had no idea where it had come from.
“Whoa, mister,” the black beard said. “Put that little spittoon rattler back in your pocket.” He cautiously pulled his hand from his coat, clutching a folded sheet of paper. “I’m just tryin’ to call your bet.”