Buffalo Palace

by Terry C. Johnston

  With just a matter of another two steps to the top of the rise, he prepared to catch his breath and blow, the same way horses blew after an exhausting climb. He blinked into the falling sun—missing his hat even more already. And waited those few seconds for the mare to come up behind him. With the sun’s bright glare he blinked some more as the ground in the middistance seemed to undulate, quiver—just the way of Tink’s skin would ripple when you gave her a particularly good scratching.

  For a moment more he stared, not sure … not taking a breath. Not even daring to.

  The great flocks of tiny black birds swept from right to left, then south back to north—all but directly overhead now. He became suddenly aware of their incessant racket, those tiny throats and flapping wings, whereas it had seemed so deathly silent for so, so long. Then heard the snorting and bellowing, the lowing of huge animals.

  Slowly, Titus Bass became aware of the great hump-backed beasts that blackened the endless miles of what rolling prairie lay before him.

  5

  Titus hadn’t moved for the longest time the rest of that afternoon—watching the knotted herd of buffalo below him as the packmare contentedly cropped at the grassy hillside nearby.

  For what must have been hours he did nothing more than sit and watch how the great beasts moseyed this way, then that, before ambling off in a different direction just as slow as you’d please, flowing together like coagulate, then gradually splitting apart as individuals and small bunches went their own way in grazing the hillsides and prairie floor. He was content to do nothing more than watch the great, hump-backed creatures … all the while trying to control the hammering of his heart, trying desperately to remember to breathe in his excitement.

  As the sun began to fall into the western hills, Bass got to his feet and gathered up the long lead rope, taking the packmare from the crest of the knoll where he had remained mesmerized for so long. Angling to the south, he kept to the far fringes of the herd until he found a suitable ravine deep enough for him to make camp for the night. By the time he had pulled the mare into the upper reaches of the ravine, the sky had begun to dim and shadows had grown as long as they would ever be.

  After freeing the two smaller packs and dropping them into the tall grass one at a time, Bass slapped the mare on the rump and sent her off to have herself a roll. Next came the task of spreading the still-damp blankets over the nearby brush to finish drying while he gathered up what dead limbs he could find. Making tufts of some dead grass after he had scraped out a small hole at the bottom of the ravine, Titus struck his evening fire, then took up the bail to his coffeepot and headed over to the nearby creek. At the top of the ravine, which put him level with the rest of the prairie, he turned round to gaze back at the campsite—anxious that no wandering eye should spot the smoke from that small fire.

  After a trip that led him back toward the Platte, Titus found a clear-running stream, where he dipped both the blackened pot and his wooden canteen. Quickly yanking off his clothes, Bass swabbed as much of the mud as he could wash off—then, shivering, jumped back into the wool shirt and britches. After tying his moccasins, he sat there at the creek a few minutes, drinking his fill once more, realizing just how this arid country dried him out, made him more thirsty than he thought possible. How good the water tasted to his parched tongue.

  As he neared the landmark brow of the hill he used to locate his ravine, Bass overheard muted snorts that grew in volume the closer he neared his camp. Instantly concerned for the mare, Titus set off at an ungainly trot with the canteen swinging at the end of one arm, the pot sloshing from the other. Reaching the top of the ravine, he skidded to a halt, staring down to find the mare grazing contentedly at the mouth of the ravine … no more than fifteen yards away from where one of the dark-skinned beasts rooted about in a circle, slowly hobbling round and round, clearly in some sort of distress.

  From time to time the animal jerked its head around toward its hindquarters, tongue flicking out in vain as if to lap at the source of its discomfort. From his vantage point Bass glanced at the other buffalo grazing nearby, none of which paid any attention to the commotion—instead, some went on grazing, while at this time of the day most had already found themselves a suitable patch of ground, where they collapsed to their bellies and began to chew their cud with great self-satisfaction.

  “Just like Pap’s damned cows,” he muttered, then remembered how he never got all that good at coaxing milk from an udder. “N-never was my cows anyhow,” he said as he settled to the grass to watch the scene at the mouth of the ravine.

  The short-horned beast continued to paw at the ground, nostrils snorting in short bursts, then lolled its tongue in a pant, interspersed with rapid-fire bellows as it nosed round and round on all fours … then without any ceremony or warning the creature stopped dead in its tracks and let out a long, guttural cry as it shuddered the entire length of its body. And as Bass watched in dumbfounded amazement, the animal humped up its back just as a bluish membrane began to emerge from its rear quarters, the glistening mass expanding longer and thicker as the beast snorted, bellowing in pain.

  “Jumpin’ Jehoshaphat! That there’s a buffler cow,” he exclaimed, licking his lips in anticipation of watching the event. “And she’s ’bout to shed herself of a calf.”

  Pretty durn close to watching one of the family’s cows drop a calf, he thought.

  The newborn buffalo had dropped close to halfway out when the cow’s quivering hindquarters weakened and she collapsed, sprawling on the ground there at the mouth of Bass’s ravine, fully in the seizure of labor.

  It was characteristic of the buffalo cow to seek out a site all her own when she was due to give birth—forsaking all companionship with other cows, much less the bulls. The entire birth process usually took close to two hours after the onset of the first contraction.

  Here at this late stage Bass watched the cow squirming on her side, at times raising her uppermost hind leg in an attempt to ease the birth process as she jerked her neck backward in spasms of pain. From time to time she thrashed that hind leg as more of the grayish-blue sack continued to slither onto the grassy prairie.

  From the end of that fetal sack Titus watched a tiny hoof thrash, suddenly poking its way free, tearing the membrane near its own hindquarters. Then the leg lay completely still. Fearing that the calf was stillborn, Bass rocked up on his knees, expectant. After the cow huffed through those final moments of her exertion, she began to roll onto her legs, pulling herself away from the fetal sack that lay still upon the grass, slowly clambering to her feet before she turned about to sniff at what had just issued from her.

  After inspecting the sack from top to bottom, the cow began to chew at the several holes torn in the membrane, appearing to rip at the sack, enlarging the holes through which Bass caught glimpses of the shiny, dark hide of the newborn calf tucked inside. Slowly, mouthful by mouthful—and beginning not at the head but at that hind hoof that protruded from the glistening membrane—the cow went about steadily devouring that slimy sack crusted with grass and dirt at the mouth of the ravine.

  Cautiously the packmare began to advance, her nose on the wind as she picked up more of the birthing scent. But she did not approach all that close before the cow caught sight of the horse and whirled on the mare—snorting, bellowing her warning with a long-tongued bawl. It was evident the mare understood that most primitive of warnings, turning away with a whinny of her own. Likely she had given birth to colts her own self, Titus brooded. In her own primal way she would understand just how protective the cow would choose to be at just such a moment.

  Returning to her calf, the cow continued tearing at the membrane, devouring every shred of it from the newborn’s shiny, slick body, eventually eating the last of it plastered around the calf’s head. Barely breathing himself, Titus waited, anxious as the cow licked up and down the length of the calf’s muzzle, its nostrils—stimulating her baby. Finally the young animal squirmed at long last, moving on its own.
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  Strange behavior, this—especially for an animal not in the least considered a carnivore. Yet something innate and intrinsic compelled the cow to continue to lovingly lick at the newborn calf’s coat until she had expelled the afterbirth, then devoured it as well.

  The sun had fallen fully beyond the hills by the time some other cows moseyed over to the mouth of the ravine to give this newcomer a cursory sniff, perhaps to help the mother lick its coat—all of them tolerated by the cow with the exception of one yearling bull she swiped at with a horn and drove off with a warning bawl.

  As the cow stood protectively over it in the coming twilight, the calf now made its first attempt to stand—here something on the order of half an hour following birth. It caused Titus to remember how the family’s newborn calves and even colts attempted to pull themselves up on their spindly legs, wobbling ungainly before spilling to the ground once more. But here the buffalo calf was, tottering about on its quaking legs sooner than either of those domestic animals Bass had come to know. Again and again the calf heaved this way, then that, before it collapsed in a heap, but was quick to rise again.

  Each time the calf managed to stay up longer, long enough to careen about in a crazy circle and finally locate its mother nearby—tottering over to jab its wet nose beneath the cow’s front legs, where it probed with its pink tongue and very little luck. When the cow shifted herself, so did the calf, this time nuzzling along its mother’s belly until it found a teat and latched on. As the calf greedily pulled at the nipple, it was plain to see it had been rewarded with warm milk.

  “From now on, li’l one,” Titus said quietly from the side of the ravine, “you’ll know where to go first off, you wanna get fed.”

  His own stomach growled of a sudden, reminding him he hadn’t fed it either. Glancing into the west, he got to his feet, sweeping up the bail to the pot and the leather strap nailed to the canteen, saying, “Be dark soon, won’t it, Titus? Ain’t got your supper started. Hell, you ain’t even got yourself a fire to hunker over come full dark.”

  Of a sudden he remembered he would be bedding down tonight one horse shy of how he had taken his leave of St. Louis. It might be enough to take the starch out of any man—to cause lesser men to turn back. But Bass vowed he would press on.

  Reaching the end of the ravine, he squatted next to the burned-out remnants of his fire and dragged his pouch over, pulling flint and steel from it once more.

  “Leastwise that pack animal swum out like I done,” he muttered, trying hard to cheer himself as he blew on the red coal until he could set it beneath another knotted twist of dried grass. “Leastwise I got some of what fixin’s I come out with,” he convinced himself.

  But, damn, did he ever hate to walk. Never took too much to that in his life, Titus decided. Even when Kingsbury and the rest of the boatmen were faced with walking back north to Kentucky’s Ohio River country along the Natchez Trace, they had bartered themselves a ride on wagons from New Orleans to the river port of Natchez itself, then walked only until they reached the Muscle Shoals, where the slavers jumped them.

  For the rest of that journey north there had been the slavers’ horses for them to ride, keeping a constant and wary eye over their shoulders, ever watchful for that pair of white cutthroats who had escaped the fate of the other slavers there near the Tennessee River when those land pirates had come for Hezekiah Christmas.

  A tall, shiny-skinned, bald-headed beauty of a Negro. Not no more’n ten years older than Titus himself. A man Bass soon give his freedom to, set free to go west from Owensboro on his own—a freedman with the whole of a wide-open wilderness to explore.

  “Where you now, Hezekiah?” he asked quietly as the limbs caught hold of the flames and Titus finally set the coffeepot to boil.

  Tonight he would eat the last strips of his dried venison and go off to shoot his first buffalo come morning.

  “You et your first buffalo yet, Hezekiah?” he asked the hills about him. “How ’bout you, Eli Gamble? You find them beaver big as blankets in that upcountry you was yearning to see?”

  He shuddered with the coming darkness, feeling smaller as the night came down than he had ever felt before—come here to a monstrous land ruled by these huge beasts. Never had he felt so small. Nor so alone.

  Gazing at the stars just peeking into view overhead, Titus asked, “Are you alone, Eli? Like me?”

  Then Titus stared at the fire as the nightsounds of the nearby herd drifted in to him. “Naw, I don’t suppose a man like you would ever be alone, Eli Gamble. Not nowhere near as lonely as men like Hezekiah Christmas. Sure as hell not nowhere like Titus Bass his own self right now.”

  Plopped down here in the middle of everything he had ever wanted … but without another single living soul to share in the glory of it.

  Although he had been awake long before the sun rose, Titus wasn’t ready to go in search of a buffalo to kill until sometime after first light.

  For most of the night he had tossed in his blankets. From time to time he either went out to gather more kindling for his tiny fire, or he walked off toward the north bank of the Platte, where he sat for a long time, brooding at the murky river, its rolling surface a glimmering ribbon beneath the dim moonshine. He had remained there until at last he saw the sky had grayed enough to venture out—first to the west, then he walked a wide swing to the north across the night prairie. He had searched for Indian sign. A village of rings, fire pits, and meat racks as he had discovered before. Perhaps to find a herd of their ponies.

  Instead, all he found was the bedding grounds of the far-ranging buffalo herd he had run across yesterday afternoon, stretching from horizon to horizon. Assured that the roar of his rifle would pose no danger, perhaps now he could take the chance of hunting his first buffalo. How his heart pounded against his ribs as he dwelt on that one thought all that walk back to his camp, where the packmare awaited him just before sunrise.

  The little red-skinned calves were up already by the time he walked along the side of the hills bordering the great, grassy plain near the Platte itself. While the youngest of them still hugged their mothers’ sides, the others, perhaps days and weeks old, scampered about. Some of the oldest calves even butted heads in mock battle.

  The sun had fully torn itself from the horizon when Bass sank to the ground, gone weak in the knees again just to stare at all of the countless thousands as the grassland slowly warmed that new day. With gold light the orb painted all the far surrounding hillsides in patches of sandy ocher where the tall green stems refused to grow. A breeze came up as the air warmed, carrying on it the muted sounds of the thousands as they arose from their bellies and ambled off in all directions to graze.

  For a long while he studied the biggest ones: monstrous shaggy heads from which protruded a pair of resplendent black horns; those dark chin whiskers that gave the bulls their unique mark; and finally that great hump rising from their shoulders nearly as huge as their massive heads.

  Easiest for him to pick out were the smaller cows—not near so large a head and horns, with nowhere near the great hump. Besides, most of the cows either were already mothers that late spring morning, or would be in a matter of hours or days, destined to drop more of the small, playful, impish red calves.

  So that left only the fourth group of buffalo he watched in growing excitement to drop one himself at long, long last. They, the yearling bulls. Perhaps nearly as big as some of the older cows, yet distinguished by shortened horns and that straggly beard, not to mention the growing hump. Maybeso a yearling bull or an older cow, he mused, deciding it should be one or the other he would shoot this morning.

  Not the calves nor their suckling cows—let the young ones frolic or their mothers breed for seasons to come. Nor should it be one of those old rangy bulls, he brooded. If nothing else, a bull would simply be too big. Far too much meat for him to take with him, he decided, realizing he would feel ashamed to leave so much behind for what predators were sure to feast on such a kill. His grandpap ha
d given Titus that much a legacy: even in times of plenty a man must not be wasteful, for there will surely come times of want.

  Was this ever a time of plenty!

  It would have been an easy thing for him to seethe in anger at the river once again—to grow saddened as well that Washburn’s Indian pony was gone, for she and the packmare could have carried far more of the buffalo meat he would butcher this morning than the mare could all on her own. But face the truth he did—realizing he sat here in the middle of this foreign land inhabited by strange peoples and stranger animals … knowing he had only the mare to carry everything he called his own, and what meat he would pack along taking his leave of this place.

  Then he figured a yearling it would be!

  His heart beat all the more fiercely, his mouth gone dry as sand, as he carefully ran his eyes over those buffalo grazing nearby. Praying he would not be disappointed with the meat of so big a creature, Titus swallowed hard, his tongue parched, as he chose the one. Yes—that one would be his first buffalo.

  Slowly he rose from his knees and stood, testing the breeze there on the long, lazy slope of the sandy hill. It was good, for the wind came from that portion of the herd dotting the endless valley all the way to the far horizon. He had the breeze in his face, out of the northwest here at sunrise.

  Growing all the more cautious when he was some one hundred yards out from the fringe of the herd where the yearling stood cropping the grass with other youngsters, Bass dragged the hammer back to half-cock and flipped the frizzen off the pan. His right hand shook nervously as he sprinkled a few more of the fine grains of black powder into the concave surface of the pan. With the priming horn once more suspended from his pouch strap, Titus gently tapped the lock of the rifle to assure that a portion of the pan’s grains slipped through the touchhole where they would ignite the coarser powder packed behind the .54-caliber lead ball.