Brothers of the Buffalo

by Joseph Bruchac

  The chief, however, was told to stay and was given that wheelbarrow to push. Not an hour passed before a delegation of old men from the tribe arrived at the gate of the fort.

  “Our chief no work that way. Not right.” they said.

  Lieutenant Pratt nodded. “Your chief,” he said, not raising his voice but speaking in a tone that brooked no disagreement, “chose to do that work. I told him that if I found him drunk, he would push that wheelbarrow and pick up trash for seven days. Since he was drunk, that told me he wished to do that sort of work. So neither you nor he can complain. The commanding officer says that your whiskey drinking must end.”

  The little delegation went back down the hill mumbling. Presently, a crowd of old Tonkawa women came up the hill. They stood outside the fort wailing and carrying on so loud they could be heard all around the post. Lieutenant Pratt again came out and gave them the same talk. Then he surveyed their ranks.

  “A woman,” he said, a grim smile playing over his mouth, “may push a wheelbarrow just as well as a man.”

  The women went away.

  Next to show up was Johnson, the chief’s son and head sergeant of the scouts. He held thirty dollars in his hand, all the pay the scouts had earned for the past month.

  “Lieutenant, sir,” he said, “I give you this money, you let my father go?”

  But Lieutenant Pratt was solid as the rock Moses stood on.

  “Your father’s release will come when his sentence is served.”

  And that was just what happened. At sunset on the seventh day, Lieutenant Pratt had the chief brought to him.

  “You are chief over these people,” Lieutenant Pratt said. “I have been put in charge to help you any way I can. I cannot help you unless you Indians help yourselves. The bootleggers who sell you whiskey get your money and keep you poor and degrade you. They take away your health and your manhood. When those bootleggers come into your camp late at night, you come quietly to me and tell me they are there. I will arrest them and ask the government to punish them as the law provides.”

  This time the old chief did not just nod. He put one hand over his heart and held the other one up, palm forward. “You are right, Lieutenant,” the old chief said. “I will do as you say.”

  Sure enough, a few days later the Tonkawa chief came to the fort late at night while Wash was standing picket and asked to be taken to Lieutenant Pratt.

  “Bootleggers in our camp,” he said.

  A detail was sent down to the Tonkawa camp straightaway. There they found two white men selling whiskey. The soldiers broke the bottles on the rocks, arrested the men, and threw them in the guardhouse.

  Since then there had been no more trouble with whiskey in the Tonkawa camp. The old chief had become as tight to the lieutenant as a second skin, and Johnson showed more respect to Pratt than to any other white man.

  The sun had moved only the width of two hands across the sky by the time the men of Company D reached the settlers’ cabin where the massacre took place. It was a sad sight to see. The door to the small sod house was on the ground, torn off the hinges. A little wooden table that looked to have been nailed together from a packing crate had been tossed out onto the hard red earth and broken into pieces. Next to it was a rag doll with its head torn off. The rickety corral out back where the horses and cattle had been kept was empty.

  Two men of Company D were waiting for them. They were with the four-man scouting party that had come upon the scene four hours ago. Private Henry Imes and Private Rufus Slade, both Virginia men like Wash. They’d stayed behind to give decent burial to that little family while the others galloped back to Fort Griffin. Wash could see that they’d been working hard. The only sign of the family that had lived here, aside from the blood darkening the ground near the soddy, were four mounds of dirt with rocks piled atop. Henry Imes, big and burly as a bear and nearly as strong, was hammering a rough cross into the ground at the head of the largest grave.

  Imes looked up at them and shook his head.

  “Black folks, just like us,” he said. His voice was steady but as angry as the look on his face. He wiped his forehead with his kerchief, set his wide-brimmed hat back on his head, and took a slow breath. “You wouldn’t want to have seen what the savages done to these poor folks. Every one of them scalped, even the two chillen.”

  Rufus Slade, an equally big, wide man with a deep voice, stood up from the last and smallest grave where he’d been kneeling. “Killing is too damn good for the bunch of renegade snakes done this,” he rumbled.

  Charley, sitting on his horse to Wash’s left, pursed his lips and then swallowed back the tobacco he’d been about to spit onto the dry ground, realizing that it might seem like disrespect to the dead.

  “Ana!” someone called. “Look here!”

  It was the head Tonkawa scout, Johnson. Off his horse fifty yards out from the cabin, he’d been examining the ground and now was holding something in his hand. He brought it to Lieutenant Pratt, who nodded gravely, then put the small white object into his pocket.

  Johnson vaulted back onto his horse and galloped off, the three other scouts fanning out behind him. Fine trackers that they were, in pursuit they would not even slow their horses down. Just keep going at a gallop, extended out in a line so if one lost the trail, another would pick it up, even on such hard and rocky ground as stretched around them in all directions.

  The men of Company D, Imes and Slade included, mounted up and followed at a trot.

  An hour later, Johnson came back into sight, gesturing for the troop to follow. He led them to the base of a great rock.

  “Ana!” he said again, leaning down—without leaving the back of his horse or even slowing it up—to scoop something up. It was small and white like the first thing he had found back near the soddy. This time Wash was close enough to see what it was he handed to Lieutenant Pratt. The butt end of a paper cigarette.

  Seeing it sent a chill down Wash’s back.

  Damn, he thought. I do believe I know what that means.

  Wash kicked his horse to catch up to and ride next to Johnson.

  “Ta-in,” Wash said. He’d been talking with the chief scout, who had passable English, the day before and learned that Ta-in, which meant “friend” in Tonkawa, was a good way to start a conversation.

  “Ta-in,” Johnson replied with a nod.

  “The Indians around here,” Wash said, “they smoke tobacco only in a pipe?”

  “Is so,” Johnson replied. Then he kicked his heels into the side of his horse to catch up with the other scouts riding ahead.

  Another two hours passed. Time for Wash to think back on the talk he’d had the day before with the chief scout. He’d discovered the simple fact that although white men usually believed that Indians did not have much to say, that was mostly because white men seldom shut up and gave them time to talk. If a man was patient and showed he was ready to listen, it might reach the point where you could hardly get an Indian to shut up.

  The day before had been a Sunday. After morning services, when there was not much to do, Wash had been taking his leisure on a tree trunk just outside the fort, looking down on the little forest that edged the Tonkawa camp. When Johnson walked past, Wash had held up a hand and beckoned him to sit down.

  Just then, a big greenbottle fly buzzed up and landed on the back of Wash’s hand. Instead of slapping at it, Wash lifted his hand to look closely at it, studying how bright its eyes were and the way it cocked its head and rubbed its front feet together. Johnson said something Wash did not understand in Tonkawa. Then, leaning over, he gently blew the fly off Wash’s hand. The two of them smiled. Johnson sat down beside him.

  “I have been wondering about something,” Wash said. “Why are all of you Tonkawas here?”

  “How come we work for white man?” Johnson said.

  Wash nodded.

  Johnson looked at Wash. “How come you?” he asked, his voice deep as the beat of a drum.

  Neither said a word for a w
hile. Then the heavy-set Tonkawa man cleared his throat, and spoke.

  “Long ago, time of my great-grandfathers, all this our land.” He swung his hand in a wide circle. “Us Tickanwatic, Real People. Mayeye, Tohaha, Cantona, Emet, Sana, all of us together. Mexicanos come from south, push us. Comanches come from north, push us. We lose our land.” He put his hand palm down on the soil and was silent for a moment.

  “We ally with Apaches for a time. No good. We move down into Texas. Scout for Tejano Rangers, fight other Indians. Get paid. Then Tejanos say we must go to Indian Territory. It was when some white men put on gray suits and fight their brothers in the blue suits. We work as scouts for gray suits. Fight other Indians. Get paid. But blue soldiers attack agency, kill agent. We try go south, get caught. Not by white men but other Indians. Angry at us for helping white men all those years, fighting other Indians. Big war party attacks us. Half our people killed. Hard time then. Now we here, work for blue suits.”

  “Fight other Indians?”

  Johnson had smiled. “Get paid.”

  There was, to Wash’s eyes, no sign of any tracks on the hardpan soil. They were now winding their way past red alkali pools, over rocky ridges, and through stony valleys. But Johnson and the other scouts had been leading them on as if the trail was as easy to see as a wagon-rutted road.

  Then, as they entered a stretch of softer soil, Wash saw just that. Wagon tracks.

  Not many Indians hereabouts use wagons. None, in fact.

  Johnson was gesturing from the top of a small hill. Lieutenant Pratt led the troop up to join him. Johnson pointed with his chin off to the east, the opposite direction of the raiding party they’d been following.

  “More men come,” Johnson said, shading his eyes and staring where a little dust cloud was barely visible on the horizon. “I see badge. Sheriff, I think.”

  “Raise up and wave the company flag to make sure they see us.” Lieutenant Pratt said.

  Being flag bearer, that is what Wash did.

  It took half an hour for the men to reach them. Sure enough, as Johnson had said, it was the sheriff from a nearby county, accompanied by a posse of six dusty and well-armed men. Extremely well-armed. Rifles, shotguns, pistols. Every man also had on his belt an Arkansas toothpick, the big knives that Texans seemed to strap on as soon as they climbed into their britches every morning. They were a grim and determined-looking bunch.

  As they reined up, they pulled down their kerchiefs. Though red dust coated their faces, Wash noted that, somewhat to his surprise, two of them were black men.

  Maybe this sheriff is less prejudiced than some about folks of our color. Or it may be these negro cowboys are so handy with their guns that he is glad to have them along.

  Aside from the color of their skins under that red dust, all six looked alike as cousins. Every one of the seven, the sheriff included, was wearing sheepskin chaps, had a red bandanna around his neck, and was sporting a thick mustache. The sheriff was the tallest in the saddle of his crew. Long and lanky, he appeared to be more rawhide than muscle. The bones of his cheeks stuck out on either side of his black handlebar mustache and looked sharp enough to cut bread.

  “Sir,” the lawman said in a high, raspy voice to Lieutenant Pratt, “I am Sheriff Bob Long. This is my posse. I wish to execute my office against a party of depredating cattle thieves. They are villainous horse rustlers, a desperate and dastardly crew whom we have tracked thus far. From the sign ahead it appears they have joined up with another party. Might we beg the help and assistance of you and your men?”

  Lieutenant Pratt reached out and took the sheriff’s hand.

  “Sir,” Pratt said, “you may count upon me and my soldiers. We have the same objective as you. If these thieves are white men or Mexicans, I shall gladly hand them over into your custody to take them back for trial.”

  For some reason the lieutenant’s speech caused the sheriff some amusement. He actually started to laugh, then swallowed it back as he brought up his hand to stroke his mustache.

  “I do understand. I thank you, sir,” Sheriff Bob Long rasped.

  Pratt looked over to Johnson. The scout held out both hands and then brought them together and pressed them forward.

  Does that mean our two groups are now working together, or is he just saying that the two groups of raiders joined just ahead of us? Probably both.

  As usual, Johnson and the other scouts kicked their heels into their ponies’ sides and galloped ahead, disappearing into the folded hills. The men of Company D and the posse pushed on behind them at a slower pace.

  The sun was just two hands above the western horizon when Johnson came back.

  “Two corral. Many cattle, forty ponies. Two cabins on creek. Twelve men. They not know we come.”

  At Pratt’s command, they divided up into three parties, Company D taking the center and the right while the sheriff’s posse flanked left. As flag bearer, Wash stayed next to Lieutenant Pratt in the center. Soon they reached a vantage point where they could look down into the valley. Ten or so of the raiders were gathered around a fire, cooking their supper. Half seemed to be Indians, though the buckskin clothing and feathered headdresses looked bedraggled.

  All of a sudden, from the left flank a barrage of shots sufficient to rival the fourth of July was let loose. The large black pot hanging over the fire went flying, spraying hot mush in all directions. The befeathered man closest to the cooking pot fell face down into the fire.

  “Bugler,” Lieutenant Pratt shouted. The men of Company D went charging in to arrive at the outlaw’s campfire at the same time as Sheriff Bob and his men. Around the fire the remaining outlaws who’d not been mowed down by the hail of gunfire were cowering with their hands raised.

  “Cease fire,” Lieutenant Pratt yelled. To Wash’s surprise, Sheriff Bob and his boys did as he said.

  A smell like that of a singed chicken began to fill the air.

  “Haul that dead man out that fire,” Sergeant Brown growled.

  Two of the other men in Indian garb tried to push the dead man from the fire with their feet, not willing to lower their hands and risk being shot by the Texans, who were staring at them like hungry wolves eyeing a flock of goats.

  “Use your hands, you dang fools,” the sergeant snarled.

  The two lowered their hands to roll the dead man from the fire. They coughed so hard from the smoke as they did so that they both dislodged their headdresses, revealing dirty blonde hair. Wash was close enough now to see that their headgear had been roughly fashioned from chicken and turkey feathers rather than eagle plumes. Like the deceased outlaw at their feet, they were white men roughly dressed and poorly painted as Indians.

  The Tonkawa scouts came into camp then. Each pushed ahead of him an outlaw with his hands tied behind his back. As sentries they had done as poor a job of keeping watch as their comrades’ attempts to lay the blame for their deeds on renegade Indians.

  Sheriff Bob sniffed. “You see before you the game of this vile gang,” he said. “They disguise themselves as Indian. They go so far as to take scalps.” He pointed his rifle at the bloody hair attached to the belt of the dead man. “After, with a washed face and a change of clothing, they may come openly in to town. There they do bemoan and complain loudly about the renegades who are depredating.”

  Lieutenant Pratt took a careful look at each of the eleven outlaws once they were well tied up. Wash looked them over, too. None of them was either a weasel-faced man with a beard or a New Orleans high yellow with a bugle. Though he’d heard nothing about Tom Key since getting into Texas, rumors had reached Fort Griffin of a light-skinned negro deserter among the Comancheros, those mixed gangs of Mexicans and Indians that dealt in slaves and illegal arms.

  The lieutenant turned to the sheriff. “Can you bring them in to trial without our help?”

  Sheriff Bob looked up from chewing. He and the other men in his posse had dismounted and were busy eating beans and bacon from the fry pans undamaged by their fusillade, one
of the black cowboys sitting on the broad back of a dead outlaw.

  “Yessir,” the sheriff said, “I do believe that we can handle them on our own. Is that not so, men?”

  Six heads nodded as one.

  “Sure thing,” one of the white cowboys said.

  “Well and truly,” one of the black cowboys agreed through a mouthful of beans.

  Sheriff Bob eyed his men in a fond, fatherly way.

  “So,” he said, “you see. We have it under control. Thank you again, Lieutenant. You can head on back to the fort.”

  There was a fine full moon in the sky to light their way, and the men of Company D arrived back to the barracks shortly after midnight. The cooks had saved a cold supper for them, which they gratefully ate before falling into their cots.

  Late the next morning, Sheriff Bob and his posse arrived at the fort. Just the seven of them.

  Colonel Davidson came out to greet them, Lieutenant Pratt by his side.

  “Sir,” Sheriff Bob rasped, “I have just come by to thank and commend your good lieutenant. He and his men did one fine and professional job. They assisted in the apprehension of a desperate and dastardly crew.”

  “Thank you,” said the colonel. “Your commendation is noted.”

  “Sheriff,” Lieutenant Pratt asked, “where are the prisoners?”

  A serious look came over Sheriff Bob’s face, a look that might have been hard to hold due to the snickering from the men in his posse behind him.

  “Well, sir,” he rasped, “during the night they did foolishly try to get away. All were shot to death and killed, to a man.”

  To that neither the colonel nor Lieutenant Pratt had any reply.

  Whoever commits evil upon another,

  it shall come back upon him.

  So do the learned men sing,

  may Allah have mercy upon them.

  For truly, truly it is said

  that whoever sows evil,

  it comes up in his own garden.

  —Hausa proverb