Panhandle

by Brett Cogburn

  “The coyotes are going to be trailing us before long.” H.B. laughed to himself as he rode off.

  If you ran with cowboys in those days, you drank. And if you think we drank too much, you’re right. It was whiskey that led us to most of our troubles, but if it hadn’t been for the whiskey there wouldn’t have been near as many fascinating stories to tell. Whiskey, or cards, or a combination of both led to more killings and general felonious behavior than anything else. I’m ashamed of the fondness I have had for both.

  The ranchers of the Panhandle weren’t teetotalers themselves, but most of them realized the problems that go along with drinking and gambling. As a result, both were banned from most of the ranches in that country. Any man caught doing either on the ranch was fired on the spot, and many of the big ranchers had agreed not to hire anyone who had been fired elsewhere for such violations.

  Clarendon’s citizens had signed agreements prohibiting liquor, and a bunch of Quakers down south of them practiced the same. For miles everything south of the Canadian River was dry. The whole country would have been sober if it weren’t for Mobeetie, Tascosa, and the itinerant whiskey peddlers selling from the back of their wagons.

  That year Goodnight funded a school in Clarendon, and at least five white women were living outside of Mobeetie or Tascosa. You knew things were starting to get civilized when women arrived. Along with them came churches, schools, courts, and outhouses. The list of unacceptable offenses would grow to such a state that your average man couldn’t have any fun.

  The Panhandle Stock Association was determined to rid the country of rustlers, and to put a judge and jury just around every bend. I didn’t hold with rustling, but with the Comanche gone, it was one of the few things holding up progress. Before long nothing of any consequence was going to happen in that country if they didn’t slow down with the civilizing.

  No liquor, no cursing, no spitting in public was about the sum of things to come. We might as well have all sold our saddles and joined the ladies’ bridge club. I don’t know why they wanted to tamper with a perfectly good layout, but I guess progress has its costs.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  We were fired before we even got back; we just didn’t know it yet. We met Wiren and some hands driving the Lazy F herd, the one we were supposed to be with, long before we reached the Sweetwater. There was nothing to be said in our defense. If we had been in his boots we would have done the same.

  Wiren was mad, and he ranted and raved a little. Even a fellow in the wrong can only listen to so much. We all got a little on the prod, but nobody’s mother was brought into question, or honor severely impugned. To a man, we prided ourselves on our independence and willingness to get stubborn at the drop of a hat. We figured we could ride off from that outfit just as easy as we rode in there. H.B., Andy, Dale Martin, and I jumped down and jerked our saddles off the company horses we were riding while Billy and a couple of the hands rode over and roped Dunny and our other personal mounts out of the remuda they were driving.

  Wiren was a pretty good sort, and we were just in the wrong. Before we could ride off he asked us if we were broke, and then gave us seventy dollars to tide us over on the way. He told us not to take the firing too hard, because the JA was buying the Lazy F, and Goodnight’s tolerance for fun and leisure was far less than his own.

  The following spring, Goodnight and Wiren had a pretty big fuss over the counting of the Lazy F cattle. I don’t care what Charlie Goodnight had to say about him, Wiren will always be all right with me. He understood that a man has to be let loose every now and again. If it hadn’t have been for us cowboys, every head of cattle in the state would have drifted off to Mexico and those big shots would have starved out for want of foolish labor.

  It wasn’t winter, but it was still a tough time of the year to land a job. The roundups had all moved far to the north and the outfits around had settled down to the work around their home ranges until time to ship cattle in the fall. However, we had some hope due to the number of new outfits moving into the country.

  Billy wanted to try his hand at running War Bonnet a few more times. My financial situation made me less bold than he. We both hated to part, but we separated at Mobeetie, and he and Andy headed south to try their luck on the horse tracks at San Antonio.

  Dale Martin shocked us all and took a job teaching school in Clarendon. Goodnight had offered him the job, and that shocked us even more, because the rumor was that Martin was suspected by the stock association of rustling—a lot of rustling. He was a smart devil though, but I still didn’t like him.

  I was left with H.B. and he wanted to ride down to Clarendon to talk to a man he knew about jobs for us. I didn’t put up much of an argument, and I didn’t tell Billy where we were going before he left. It seemed like my competition for a certain girl was thinning out for a while.

  I convinced H.B. to take a little swing to the northeast to the Cheyenne Reservation. I wanted to talk with Blue Knife some. A little yellow Cheyenne horse had caught my eye during the race day, and I knew just the girl that needed it. I explained my reasons and he agreed to the detour with only a little grumbling. It tells you the situation I was in to want to visit with a savage who I still wasn’t convinced didn’t want to gut me. Love will do that to a man.

  Blue Knife’s band was camped on a creek off the Canadian many miles above where we had left them. When we had neared to within about a mile and a half from camp we came across a squaw. She was wailing and cutting herself with a knife. After cutting herself she would rub sand in the wounds and wail some more. At times her cries sounded like a song.

  We rode over close thinking she needed help, but she didn’t even recognize our presence. I thought she might have been crazy and in need of our help. Before we could come too close two Cheyenne warriors rode up and motioned us off. We tried to sign with them some about the woman, but they just shook their heads and motioned us away. When we didn’t scat along quick enough they both rode up and took our horses by the bridles. I put my hand to the butt of my pistol, but H.B. motioned to me to sit tight.

  “They don’t mean us any harm, but you can get us killed just the same.”

  H.B. kept talking to them about Blue Knife. I didn’t think they understood a word he said, but at least they led us off from the squaw in the direction of the camp. In sight of the tepees we came across another squaw doing the same crazy things. If anything, she was going at it even worse. She had hacked off her hair, and she was bloody from the neck down.

  Several more bucks rode up and surrounded us, most of them placing themselves between us and the squaw. We repeated that we were looking for Blue Knife. One of the men nodded his head and motioned toward the camp. I rode along looking back over my shoulder at the last squaw we had passed.

  There were at least thirty lodges in the camp and at least twice that many dogs. Our escorts dismounted and motioned us to do the same. We hobbled our horses, loosened cinches, and slipped our bridles off right there. Our original two escorts led us to the far side of the encampment, where Blue Knife sat under a brush arbor out in front of what must have been his lodge. He was watching a passel of his women cutting up beef. Blowflies were everywhere and the carcass stank to the high heavens.

  “I believe they let that one age too long,” I said to H.B.

  “It was probably dead when they found it. They’ve been about to starve for a long time.”

  “If this camp is all that’s left of them I’d say they’ve been more than ‘about to starve,’ ” I observed.

  “There are several camps of the Southern Cheyenne scattered about under different chiefs, and there ain’t any of them any better off. The government is supposed to feed them beef and educate them,” H.B. scoffed. “I don’t know which part of the system ain’t working.”

  One of the braves left us to wait while he went over to Blue Knife and talked a while. Blue Knife rose to his feet and greeted us in surprisingly good English.

  “Come and sit down, wh
ite men.” He waved expansively toward his buffalo robe under the arbor.

  He seated himself only after we had taken a spot. I waited for H.B. to start the conversation, but he just looked at me with a blank face. I sat facing Blue Knife across the space of the robe, and I was a little skittish. Looking into those dark eyes set deep into the leathery folds of his face made me damned glad I’d never run into his like out on the plains in the old days.

  “I don’t have any whiskey,” Blue Knife stated. No white man can look at an Indian’s face and tell what he is thinking. I thought he was begging for liquor.

  “We don’t have any either.”

  Blue Knife stared at me and I stared back.

  “Good,” he finally said. “Whiskey is bad for all Cheyenne. I like whiskey, but it makes me do bad things. It makes me want to kill cowboys.”

  I started to say I was glad that we hadn’t any whiskey. Instead, I motioned off along the creek where I could see some horses grazing. “I’ve come to trade horses with the great chief Blue Knife.”

  The only reference I had for dealing with Indians came from having read Last of the Mohicans as a child. I didn’t know just how well Blue Knife spoke English, and I felt a little self-conscious making trade talk. I decided to try and talk to him just like I would anybody else.

  Before I could practice this radical theory of communication Blue Knife asked, “Did you see any rain to the west? We need rain.”

  I shook my head in the negative, and once more tried to breech the subject of horses. “I saw one of your squaws riding a good yellow horse the day of the races.”

  Blue Knife nodded his head some, but he didn’t mention the horse. He studied the clouds to the northwest and scratched at a sand flea gnawing his belly. I was rapidly learning that Indians, like Mexicans, have a whole different sense of time. Trading with them was a test of patience and nonchalant discourse.

  Despite all accounts of such meetings between white men and Indians, Blue Knife didn’t offer to pass the peace pipe around with us. Instead, he pulled out a cigar and promptly bit the suck end off of it. He produced a box of matches and lit the stogie. He cupped the flame of the match in his hand and leaned over close to me. Tobacco is a religion in itself among the Indians, and I started rolling a cigarette when he produced the cigar, lest I break some unspoken rule of etiquette. His black eyes seemed to twinkle a little bit as he lit my cigarette.

  “You have come before to trade for Cheyenne horses?” He remained close to me, leaning far forward at the waist.

  I scrambled to think of an answer, but he was too close to allow me proper thinking room. His eyes were as unblinking as a snake’s.

  “I came, but did not get to visit. It made me sad to have ridden so far and not have gotten to meet with your people.” I didn’t stutter a lick.

  Ever so slowly he leaned back against a willow backrest, eyeing me all the while. A slow, slight hint of a smile moved at the corners of his mouth, and the folds at the corners of his eyes wrinkled a bit. “I too am sorry that we did not meet the last time you came looking for horses.”

  H.B. wasn’t privy to the necessary information, but he still caught wind of something that wasn’t just right. He stared a question at me, and he was starting to look a little white around the gills like his pipe tobacco wasn’t setting well with him or something.

  I refused to ask about the horse again as I was determined and willing to wait for the chief to mention it in his own good time. We passed a good while just smoking and watching the squaws cut up the rancid beef. They were cutting the meat into about three-inch strips and hanging them over poles rigged up horizontal to the ground. They were handy with a knife, and some of the pieces were cut so thin you could see daylight through them. I’d always heard that it was the squaws you wanted to avoid if you were a captive.

  Watching the squaws made me think about the two we had passed coming there, and I broached the subject to Blue Knife. “What’s the matter with your women that we passed on the trail here? Are they crazy?”

  Blue Knife thought on the subject for a while before answering. “They are sad.”

  “I’ve seen a lot of sad people, but never any that cut themselves up. Can’t you stop them?”

  “Don’t you know anything, Tennessee? They’re in mourning and you’d best go easy,” H.B. warned.

  “Is that how you are called? Tennessee?”

  I started to give Blue Knife my Christian name, but it hadn’t taken hold anywhere else, so I just nodded my head.

  “I know Smokes the Man,” Blue Knife gestured to H.B. “I nearly had his scalp when I was a young man.”

  An exchange of glances between H.B. and me was enough to let me know that I wasn’t the only one holding out information.

  “Blue Knife, you have a long memory,” H.B. said.

  “Your friend likes horses too. He and the Dutch Man used to visit us from time to time,” Blue Knife said.

  “Dutch Henry?” I couldn’t hide my shock in spite of having known that H.B. had a shifty side.

  The old chief merely nodded his head in agreement. “They were in the big fight we had with Custer.”

  “Damn, H.B.! Why’d you offer to come along?”

  H.B. shrugged his shoulders and sucked hard on his pipe, while Blue Knife continued. “Some say Smokes the Man has a bad heart, but he and the Dutch Man always took more horses from the soldiers than they did from us. Anyway, that was a long time ago.”

  “That’s what I think. Let bygones be bygones,” H.B. muttered.

  It seemed that I had brought two horse thieves into the Cheyenne camp. I was getting edgy and felt the need to keep the conversation going. “What are those squaws we passed out yonder mourning about?”

  “Cowboys poisoned a dead cow with strychnine, and their children ate the meat and died.”

  I didn’t know what to say, but like a fool I kept talking. “What cowboys?”

  He didn’t answer except to point to the north. The Strip was filled with Texas herds grazing on a lease with the Cherokees. The Apple outfit was grazing cattle on a lease in the Cheyenne and Arapahoe reservation. As far as I had heard there had been no trouble between the Apple hands and the Cheyenne.

  The boys along the Cimarron River adjoining the northern boundary of the reservation were a whole other story. I’m sure they weren’t all bad, but there had been a lot of shots swapped around the river. The cowboys claimed the Cheyenne stole and begged around their camps, and the Cheyenne claimed that a lot of their ponies ended up in Kansas. The law didn’t bother too often about stolen Cheyenne horses. The feeling about Indians in that country at the time was pretty hard.

  “How come they cut themselves up that way? Why don’t you stop them?” I asked.

  “They are mourning. That way their children know they will miss them, and the world can hear that their hearts are very sad.”

  “White men don’t carry on so.”

  “It’s our way.”

  “How long will they go on?”

  “Until they are through. There is no set time.” Blue Knife looked at me like I was a little on the slow side.

  Nobody in the village seemed to notice the noise, but we could plainly hear the wailing squaws from where we sat, despite the distance. “It sometimes sounds like they’re singing.”

  “They are.” Blue Knife paused to adjust his cigar stub in the corner of his mouth before he added, “Sometimes they sing, sometimes they cry, sometimes both.”

  We listened to them for a while. They sang and cried and their voices drug out long and sad like the bawl of a good hound. I didn’t know what they were saying when they said anything at all, but their sorrow was alive in the air. Two braves had sat down at the foot of a lodge at the edge of the camp and set in to beating small skin drums. They sang something themselves in quiet voices that continually rose and fell in pitch and volume. The drums beat and those poor, wretched women wailed.

  “What do they sing about?”

  “Sad
ness.”

  I had a heap more questions, but I figured I’d already been rude enough and decided to let it go. I sat quiet and listened to the drums and screaming women until I was sad myself.

  “Once they are through mourning most of the sad will be gone. It will not eat them inside. It is a good way. We cry and sing to show how sad we are. Sometimes we just sing when we are happy. Mostly now we sing when we are sad.”

  He put the short butt of his cigar out against the dirt, and then ground the remaining tobacco between his fingers. The grindings were placed into a small pouch at his side. I held forward my tobacco sack, and he took it. He eyed my shirt pocket and I pitched him my papers. With deft, quick fingers he rolled himself a cigarette as neat as any saddle monkey in Texas.

  Bull Durham has eased a lot of negotiations in its time, and the chief smoked three more cigarettes while he talked.

  “I have had five sons and they are all dead. They have gotten sick and died, they have been shot by soldiers and died, and they have been scalped by the Comanche and the Kiowa and died. They are all dead, but I am alive. I too have fought, and been sick. Why am I still alive? The buffalo are gone and the white man says to eat the wohaw. He gives us money to graze his cows; they eat the grass all around us, but we go hungry.”

  “You should tell the government about your problems.”

  He ignored my remark like I had suggested he go to the moon to take a nap. “I sometimes think I should paint my face and go fight the Pawnee. The Pawnee don’t fight good, but I am too old to fight. Now I just sit and watch the women and children.”

  There was a gaudily decorated stick propped up atop his plunder at the front of his tepee. A whole string of scalps hung along its length, and I gestured to them.

  “Are those Pawnee scalps there?”

  A sly look came across his face. “I am too old to remember.”

  Two boys came running by and the chief said something to them in Cheyenne. They took off like a shot and the old man continued. “Nobody would care if I fought the Pawnee. Nobody likes them. They fight for the soldiers, but the soldiers don’t like them either. Now they have moved them close to us. It is close enough even for an old man to ride.”