Brothers of the Buffalo

by Joseph Bruchac

  and not be barked at by the dogs was amazing.”

  “Powerful,” Skinny Legs said.

  “Such a deed will make a man’s name remembered,” Cougher said.

  Eats Fat said nothing. But when Skinny Legs poked him in the side, he nodded his head.

  So the five of them had been ready to set out. But not before two more tried to join them.

  Those two were twin brothers, alike in looks and dress. Too Tall and Too Short. No one could really tell them apart. Thus their nicknames were a good joke. Too Short and Too Tall were not fond of their nicknames. But there was nothing they could do about it until they earned or were given better ones. Everyone thought that might not be soon. The joke was that the brothers had only half a brain between the two of them.

  “Take us with you,” one of the brothers said. Probably Too Tall. He usually spoke first.

  The others in the raiding party looked to Wolf for a decision. He did not hesitate.

  “No,” he said. “Not two, only one.”

  “Why?” both asked at the same time.

  Wolf made a circle with his hand. “Count how many of us are here.”

  The brothers counted, using their fingers to do so. It was a slow process.

  “Six,” the one who was probably Too Tall finally said.

  “Six,” his brother agreed.

  Wolf sighed. “Each of you, count yourself as well.”

  “Oh,” both brothers said. “Seven.”

  Wolf nodded and for emphasis made the hand sign for yes. Seven. As all Cheyennes knew, that was a very unlucky number for raiding or going off to war. Seven people could spoil their luck.

  In the end, neither of the brothers went along. They were not talented at thinking, but they were loyal to each other.

  At first all went well. The five raiders had blackened their faces so that they would not be seen in the night. They had crept on their bellies, only a finger’s width at a time, closer and closer to their objective. No one had seemed to take any notice of them. Wolf had almost laughed at how easy it was. Because he was the leader, he was the first to try to take his prize.

  But as soon as he reached for the one he had chosen, strong fingers closed on his wrist.

  “Ah!”

  He could hear his companions running away back behind the lodges.

  “Short Legs,” his mother had said, “leave that meat on the drying rack.”

  Wolf smiled at the memory of how he and his faithless companions had failed. None of them had gotten in trouble, though. What they had done was expected of them. It was one way a group of six-winters-old boys could practice the skills of stealth. One day they would need such skills when the horses they tried to take were real ones and not pieces of dried buffalo meat.

  “Here,” Wolf’s mother said. Her voice brought him back to the present.

  “Hahoo.”

  He looked at the fine piece of meat she had thrust out toward him on a sharpened stick. The lines of fat in the venison sizzled. It smelled wonderful.

  “I do not need that much.”

  His mother shook her head. “No, you must eat and stay strong.”

  Wolf nodded. She is right, he thought. I feel weak and tired. Food in my belly will help me stay awake. Dirty Face has the job tonight of guarding our horse herd. I have promised to help him.

  Old Master prided himself on being the smartest man around. He had been off to school and knew for a fact that he had been the smartest man there.

  He reckoned there was no man alive who could ask him

  a question about reading or writing or arithmetic that he could not answer.

  So Old Master said to his slaves, “If any one of

  you can stump me, ask me a question that I cannot

  answer, then I will set that man free.”

  That was when John spoke up.

  “Master,” he said, “you give your word about that?”

  “I am a man of my word,” Old Master said.

  “If I ask you a question that you cannot answer right, will you set me and my whole family free?”

  Old Master thought about that some.

  John had a big family, nigh onto a dozen.

  And John was known to be clever.

  But there was surely no slave who knew more than he did.

  “Yes,” Old Master said. “As long as it is a question about reading or writing or arithmetic, I will set you and your whole family free if I cannot answer it right. And just to prove that I am a man of my word, I will bring the judge along with me when you ask me that question.”

  So, the next day, Old Master brought the judge out to the plantation. He called all the slaves together, glad to have a chance to show them just how smart he was. That way he figured they would not try to get out of doing work or play any tricks once they saw how he beat John by answering his questions right.

  “All right,” he said to John, “you ask your question.”

  “Well, sir,” John said, “I guess my question is about

  that arithmetic. And my question is this. If there are twenty-six pigeons in a tree and you shoot one,

  how many pigeons will be left in that tree?”

  Old Master laughed. “That is the easiest question

  I have ever been asked. If you shoot one pigeon,

  there will be twenty-five left in that tree.”

  John grinned. “No sir,” he said. “That is not right.

  There would not be even one left. If you shoot one

  pigeon, then all those others are sure as glory going

  to fly, fly away.”

  And that was how John and his whole family was

  set free.

  HORSE THIEVES

  It had been a long ride from Camp Supply to the Darlington Agency. They’d traveled more than a hundred miles, farther than their patrol had planned to go. They’d been seventy miles from Camp Supply and about to circle back when the rider sent by the agent found them.

  “Mr. John Miles...needs you...at Darlington,” the rider gasped, wiping the dust from his face with a shaking hand. He was a young man, a Quaker like the agent and just come from the East. The miles he’d ridden had taken a toll on him. His lips quivered as he spoke, and he took a series of breaths before managing to deliver the rest of his message. “Horse thieves,” he said, “drove off and stole the whole Cheyenne herd last night.”

  As they rode into the Cheyenne camp, slowing from a trot to a walk, Wash looked first one direction and then the other. Tipis set up in a big circle. Cooking fires burning in front of them. Everything here you would expect from an Indian camp except for horses. Not a one to be seen.

  But plenty of Indians. All of them as silent as the grave.

  And not eager to get close to the men of the 10th. Indian children running away like they’d seen the boogeyman. Women covering their heads with their blankets. Old folks going into their tipis and closing the flaps behind them. Even the men looking away. All except one.

  The only one staring at them, at Wash in particular, was a tall young Indian man, wearing what looked exactly like a cavalry scarf around his neck. He was looking at Wash so hard it seemed as if he was trying to burn a hole with his eyes. Among the Plains people, Wash had learned by now, staring at someone that way is meant as a challenge. To be polite, you looked down at a man’s feet.

  Nossir, Wash thought. You will not buffalo me.

  He looked right straight back at the tall Cheyenne. To Wash’s surprise, the ghost of a smile came to the lanky Indian’s face—to his lips, at least. But not his eyes. His eyes still looked angry.

  Likely one of those who had his horse stolen, Wash thought. The young Indian followed them on foot as they proceeded out to where the herd had been grazing. Now nary a horse in sight.

  Lieutenant Pratt slid off his horse. He walked over and held out his open hands to an old Cheyenne fellow, who nodded back politely. The old Indian was not dressed in buckskin. Like a good many of the other Cheyenne men around th
em, he was wearing an old gray cloth shirt, likely cast off by some white family back East and given to missionaries to be passed on to the Indians. He also had on a gray felt hat.

  If not for his long hair and brown skin, Wash thought, you mightn’t know he was an Indian. Unless you looked below his waist, where he has got no pants on.

  Wash was unsurprised that none of the Cheyennes were painted up and wearing feathers like the noble savages on the covers of dime magazines. Back when he had first got to Camp Supply he had wondered if he was seeing any Indians at all. They’d appeared more like poor sun-tanned farmers.

  As usual, Josh had been the first to explain it to him.

  “Just as we puts ourselves in our best clothes when we goes to church, Indians get dressed up only for special occasions,” Josh had chuckled. “And their most special occasions is when they goes to war.”

  As they had ridden through the camp, Wash had not been able see into the Cheyenne tipis. But he had no doubt that in every warrior’s lodge was a box or a bag or whatever packed full of such apparel as would be needed to look fine for fighting. Eagle feather headdresses, buckskin shirts with designs of birds and arrows and such, and painted, beaded moccasins. Even war lances and quivers all decorated and made special to look their best when they rode into battle.

  “But not beforehand,” Josh had said. “When our Indians be on the way to make a fight, they carry all their necessaries in a bundle—like some salesman with a carpetbag of goods. They get close enough to where their enemies live, they dismounts from their horses and spends a good long time getting ready, putting on their finery, painting designs on their faces, braiding their hair just right. Even painting up their horses and braiding their tails and their manes. My, my! They look as pretty as a picture. A picture ’at might put an arrow through your heart. Lemme tell you, Wash,” Josh added, “you see a pretty Indian comin’ your way, best get out of the way.”

  Lieutenant Pratt was now using an interpreter to talk to the old Indian in the gray shirt and hat.

  “Gray Head,” Josh whispered in Wash’s ear. “Big Cheyenne chief. And that interpreter is Mr. George Bent. Dressed like a white man, pants included. Father was a trader, but that dusky skin of his comes from his Cheyenne mother.”

  Wash watched as the lieutenant, the interpreter, and the chief spoke. Though he was too far away to hear more than a word or two, he watched the motions of the old man’s hands acting out the events of the night before.

  Last night, no moon. White men came, Gray Head signed.

  As the old chief pointed out some of the hoof marks in the soft earth, Wash understood. The horse they rode wore shoes. So they were not Indians because Indian ponies were unshod.

  Wash looked at the four Cheyenne youths now standing off to the side by the tall one wearing the bandanna. All five with arms folded, faces grim. Ready to light out after those white rustlers on foot. Track them down and come back not just with their horses but with seven scalps. That’d be a problem, seeing as how one of the jobs of the 10th was to prevent Indians from injuring white men, even horse thieves.

  As Gray Head finished speaking, the Indian agent arrived. More talking. Agent John D. Miles gesturing at the five young men, shaking his head. The interpreter translating. Then Gray Head sighing and nodding.

  A pleased look on his face, Lieutenant Pratt shook hands with the chief, the agent, and the interpreter and then walked over to Sergeant Brown, who had stood holding the reins of Pratt’s horse and his own, patiently watching, a few feet in front of Wash and the other mounted members of the company.

  “Chief Gray Head is in agreement,” Lieutenant Pratt said, taking the reins and vaulting up into the saddle. “We men of the 10th shall pursue the horse thieves, and the Indians will not interfere with us.”

  As they rode out onto the wide treeless plain south of the Canadian River, Wash chanted his great-grandfather’s riding song under his breath.

  Fodio-lay, Gunba

  Gaban-gari, Kanta.

  Finally, he thought, finally there’s going to be some action.

  Something more than riding across a dusty plain seeing little more than hills and sky and stunted brush and trees. Folks might think the lot of a cavalryman was all action and danger. But they would be wrong. Wash now knew there was more drudgery and boredom than anything else in a cavalryman’s life.

  True, things did get a little exciting when a man discovered one of those big browns in his bunk—nasty eight-legged spider the size of your hand! Or found a prairie rattlesnake crawling into the tent. Or when a rabid wolf came drifting into the camp and started chasing everyone around, trying to bite them. That happened just last week. Josh had to take shelter up on top of the cookhouse, calling out for someone to shoot the damn critter. Which Wash did do, right between the eyes from forty yards away. And even though most everyone said it had been needful, Wash had then found himself trying to justify to Sergeant Brown the use of a perfectly good bullet. Though it had been Private Landrieu Jefferson who had ended up being ordered by the sergeant to carry the punishment log for one hour for daring to laugh at Wash’s plight as he was being dressed down, and for an additional two hours for swearing when he was given his sentence.

  Private Landrieu Jefferson. That man was a bad egg, for sure. Since the episode with Bethany, Wash had been keeping an eye on the man and found himself wondering how he ended up in the 10th. Aside from his bugle playing, it was hard to see how he was of any use. Six foot tall, lantern-jawed, loud-mouthed, and the lightest-skin man in the company. Narrow shoulders, but with a belly that made up for it. Ate more sugar and drank more coffee than any other man in the company. Lazy, greedy, self-centered, and a bully. The definition of a coffee cooler, slang in the 10th for a lazy trooper. If there was ever a person not made for this sort of life, it was the big Creole. And he was proving it more every day.

  Wash looked up ahead to where their head Osage tracker was conferring with Lieutenant Pratt, indicating the direction they should go. Old Landrieu Jefferson had just reined up close to them, holding his bugle in his hands. Trying to look important, hoping to be asked to sound that bugle. As if they would want to announce their approach to a band of horse thieves!

  The lieutenant shook his head, motioning for Landrieu to fall back and put his bugle away. Landrieu yanked angrily at his rein, a poisonous look on his face. But he wheeled his horse wide before he passed Wash, turning the bruised side of his face away.

  Wash still kept an eye on the man—the one person in Company D he did not want behind him if a shooting fight took place. Bullets were been known to go astray during a battle. Though Jefferson was avoiding him now, Wash had no doubt that what had happened between them two days before was far from forgotten.

  “You not going to eat that, eh, little man?” Landrieu had been looking at Wash over the top of his third cup of coffee loaded with sugar, his New Orleans drawl more sneer than question. He’d plainly expected Wash, being half his size, to hand over the food he had just started to eat. Instead, Wash stood up with his mess tray and walked away from the big Creole without a word or a backward glance.

  It hadn’t pleased Landrieu to be ignored. So the next evening, when he saw Wash and his friends Josh and Charley about to sit down together, Charley taking out a deck of cards, he had immediately ambled over.

  “I play a hand or two, eh?” Landrieu said, shoving himself down onto the nail keg upon which Wash had been about to sit.

  Charley raised an eyebrow, but Wash merely stepped back and nodded his head.

  “Well,” Charley said, scratching his forehead, “I allow that there’s room for you here. And seein’ as how this is jes’ a friendly game for nickels and dimes and whatnot, it won’t do no harm.”

  It took little longer than two shakes of a lamb’s tail for Landrieu to realize that Charley was not the hayseed he played himself up to be. Half an hour later, the New Orleans sharper had been cleaned out of every cent in his pocket.

  Wash had not been
able to hide the smile on his face as Landrieu stood up, kicked the nail keg over, and walked off without a word.

  “Watch out for him, Wash,” Charley whispered as Landrieu disappeared into his tent. “That Creole man is a mean one. I might have taken his money, but it’s you he has got it in for.”

  “I reckon so,” Wash replied.

  “You know that he is carrying a straight razor in his right back pocket?” Josh asked.

  “I do now,” Wash nodded.

  Early the next morning Wash had gone looking for something he remembered seeing. Turned out it was right where he had observed it, just outside the stable. He picked it up. It fit fine into his sleeve, and he carried it throughout the day, even though he knew that whatever trouble Landrieu had in mind for him would not likely occur till after taps.

  Wash sat down in front of the tent he shared with Josh and Charley. Soon, he thought. He could feel the moment coming.

  Sure enough. The torches had just been lit when Wash saw Private Landrieu Jefferson heading straight for him like a fox that had sighted a rabbit.

  “Little man,” he snarled. “No one laugh at me.”

  “Take it back of the barracks,” Wash said, standing up and walking quickly away from the big man. Camp Supply was built in a square, and the troopers billeted outside in tents. The doors and windows on the officers’ quarters inside all faced into the square. Once the officers retired for the night, they neither saw nor cared much about what went on among the enlisted men outside. Back of the barracks was where enlisted men went when they wanted to settle something between themselves.

  As soon as they reached that spot, where just enough light made it possible for the men to see each other, Wash turned around.

  “Now,” Jefferson said, “we fight fair. No weapons, eh?”

  But halfway through saying that, the lanky Creole swung the arm that he had been holding behind his back in a wide arc. The glint of light off the blade of the razor showed Wash that what was coming toward him was not just a punch. Landrieu meant to cut him badly. Wash stepped back, throwing his arm up so that the razor sliced into his sleeve. It could have been a fool move, the razor cutting right through the cloth and opening up an artery. But it did not.