Buffalo Trail

by Jeff Guinn

  Quanah still believed Isatai was making everything up, but that didn’t matter. At least the attention Isatai called to himself meant no one gave any further thought to Quanah’s failed embassies to the other tribes.

  That night Quanah woke with a start. Somehow, a plan had come to him in his sleep. Fat liar that he was, Isatai might be very useful.

  TWO

  The four grazing buffalo were a scraggly lot. Three were bulls so old that their thick winter fur only sprouted in irregular tufts. The fourth was a younger cow limping badly on a damaged back leg. They were the dregs of their species, decrepit enough to fall far behind as the main herd migrated south. Backs turned to the biting north wind, they cropped listlessly at yellow winter grass.

  Sixty yards away, partially obscured from the buffalo by scrub brush, Cash McLendon lay on his belly and tried to keep a heavy Sharps rifle trained on the cow. He’d pulled back the first of the double triggers to cock the gun and prepare the second hair trigger to fire. Because he was downwind of the animal, the frigid air blew directly into his face, and his eyes watered.

  Bat Masterson, squatting just behind McLendon, whispered, “Remember, shoot right behind the shoulder blade. You want to get her through the lungs. Imagine a target about the size of a hat.”

  “I know,” McLendon growled. “Quit talking. I’m trying to concentrate.” Telling Bat to stop talking was, he knew, a waste of time. The outgoing twenty-year-old never shut up.

  “I got my rifle ready too. If you take her down with a single shot, I can probably get one of the old bulls before they know what’s happening.”

  “Will you shut up and let me shoot?”

  “Well, shoot, then,” Masterson urged. “We got to keep moving if we’re going to be in Dodge by dark. Sure would be better to get back with hides to sell instead of another load of bones.”

  “I know. I’m just waiting for this cow to turn her side more toward me.”

  “Piss on a buffalo that won’t cooperate with its own demise,” Masterson muttered sarcastically. “Pull the damn trigger and get us a hide.”

  McLendon waited another moment, trying to steady his rifle. Oblivious to danger, the cow buffalo continued cropping grass, her thick body mostly turned away from McLendon so that her tail more than her side was toward him. Behind him, he heard rustling and then a brief click as Masterson impatiently raised and cocked his own Sharps. If McLendon hesitated any longer, Bat would shoot the buffalo himself, and then rag on about it for the whole six-mile trip back to town. So McLendon fired, the crisp crack making his ears ring. The butt of the Sharps recoiled hard against his shoulder; for a moment he stumbled back and wasn’t able to see the result of his shot. Behind him, Masterson fired too. The cow bellowed and stumbled awkwardly after the three old bulls as they began to trot away.

  “You plinked her goddamn ass, but I think I caught her solid,” Masterson shouted. “Quick, get on your feet! Shoot again!” McLendon scrambled up, and though his shoulder was still aching from the first shot, he slammed another cartridge into the breech of his rifle, raised the Sharps, and fired again, trying to aim between the lurching cow’s shoulder blades. She was eighty or ninety yards away now; even wounded as well as crippled, she presented a moving target, and McLendon had trouble hitting tin cans during target practice. He thought his second shot might have hit the cow somewhere, and then Masterson fired again. The side of the fleeing animal’s head exploded and she dropped to the ground.

  “That’s the way we do it,” Bat exulted. “Come on, C.M., let’s go get us a hide.” Lugging the heavy rifles, each weighing about ten pounds, the two men hurried to the fallen buffalo. Masterson drew his handgun to finish off the animal if necessary, but when they reached the cow she was obviously dead. McLendon massaged his aching shoulder while his companion squatted down to examine their kill. “Hellfire,” Masterson muttered.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Ah, we’ll never be able to sell this hide. Look—your first shot ripped a patch off its rear, and then it deflected and tore some more hide at the shoulder. The first one from me went in here, low on the neck; that’s another hole. Your second shot gashed up her side. My finish shot to the head didn’t mar anything, but it was already too late. That’s why we all keep telling you, you got to get one clean shot in behind the shoulder blade, a kill shot. There’s too many tears and perforations here. Charlie Rath back in Dodge wouldn’t pay us five cents for this one. It ain’t worth skinning her. Leave her where she lays, and let’s go pick up more bones so this trip ain’t entirely wasted.”

  “Maybe we should take the hide anyway,” McLendon suggested, though he didn’t feel or sound enthusiastic. After nearly four months in Dodge, occasionally working as hired help to various hunters, he still hated the bloody, smelly business of skinning dead buffalo and staking their hides out to dry. “Whatever Charlie would give for it is more than we’ve got now.”

  “We need to put together something closer to five hundred dollars than five cents if we want to partner up with Billy Dixon on his hunts next spring. We need our own guns, ammunition, camp supplies, the works—though I believe Billy won’t spurn us if we’re not completely outfitted. When he likes you, he’s a true friend, and he likes us a lot, or at least me. I’m accurate enough with my shots not to ruin the hairy merchandise. You, Billy may not want to tolerate. He’s a businessman, after all.”

  “I’m aware of my shortcomings as a marksman,” McLendon said. The whistling wind stung his ears and made him feel depressed. He was a slender man of average height, and the cold cut through him. His thin, dark beard afforded no protection to his face. That was the problem with the West Kansas plains in the winter. There were no high trees, let alone mountains or even many hills, to block the freezing air blasting in from the north. “Bat, quit wasting your time working with me. Go out with somebody better and build up your stake. I’m just holding you back.”

  “Oh, don’t talk like that,” Masterson said. “Like I been saying, C.M., it just takes time to learn how to shoot. When Daddy moved our family down here from Canada a few years back, neither me nor my brothers knew the barrel of a rifle from the stock. You’re getting better. Hell, at least you hit the damn buffalo with your first shot, and you didn’t miss completely with the second. We’ll keep at it, and by summer you’ll be rivaling Billy as the best shot among the hide men of Dodge City.”

  “I very much doubt it. Even the veteran hide men can’t compete with Billy, and him just a kid not much older than you. I’ll never be a good shot, or even a fair one. It’s just a fact.”

  Bat pulled his coat tighter around his body and grinned. It was a wonderful grin. When he smiled, his thick mustache crinkled and his eyes came close to disappearing in folds of glowing skin. Bat was a stocky youngster, several inches shorter than McLendon. He had a natural swagger in his walk and a generally jolly nature, though if provoked Bat was capable of striking hard and fast. He’d quickly become a favorite among Dodge’s grouchy buffalo hunters. They were mostly frontier veterans with limited senses of humor and dogged determination to kill and skin as many buffalo as they possibly could. After almost two prime years of hunting in the area when almost everybody made a fine living—as much as a hundred dollars a day for the best shots like Billy Dixon—late summer and fall of 1873 had brought ominous signs. North of the Arkansas River, it suddenly appeared possible that the buffalo were getting hunted out. It took many more miles of riding and days of shooting to bring down enough to make excursions even remotely profitable. Word was, the main herd was now to the south, into that hard, wild land known as Comancheria in recognition of the bloodthirsty tribe lurking there. By treaty, whites were forbidden to trespass, but the buffalo hunters were contemptuous of arbitrary boundaries. Even as McLendon and Masterson perforated the crippled buffalo cow, Billy Dixon and some of his veteran crew—a backup shooter, two skinners, and a cook—were scouting beyond the Oklahoma panhan
dle and down into Texas, looking for sign of the migrating herd and risking their lives with the Indians in the process. Anything below the Arkansas River was forbidden by treaty; nobody, white or Indian, honored it. A bit farther south, the Cimarron was the real line of demarcation. The land practically crawled with hostiles after that. Farther still was the mighty Canadian River, where it was strongly suspected in Dodge that the only remaining great buffalo herd would be found. There was some gossip about Billy planning to go down and hunt near the Canadian in the summer, the treaty and the Indians be damned. If he could buy enough rifles, ammunition, and other necessities, Masterson meant to go along if Dixon said that he could. McLendon was less certain: Billy would probably want only seasoned hunters along on such a dangerous expedition, and besides, McLendon was leery of the risk to his own life if he went along. He wasn’t a competent hunter or fighter, and he knew it. Bat wanted adventure and riches. McLendon just wanted to make enough money to get out of Dodge City, which he loathed, at minimal risk to himself.

  “I’ll tolerate no more moping,” Masterson declared. “Let’s fetch the wagon and get back on bone detail. There’s enough daylight left to gather a few dollars’ worth before we have to return to town.” He and McLendon shouldered their rifles and trudged back to where they’d left a team of ground-hitched horses and a wagon. The weapons, as well as the wagon and horses, had been lent to them by Billy Dixon, since the two had insufficient funds to buy their own. During the winter many of the seasoned hide men drifted off to spend some months in balmier climes. Those who stayed around Dodge had enough money to tide themselves over. Penniless novices like McLendon and Masterson were reduced to gathering up the bones from buffalo carcasses and selling them for seven dollars a ton to town merchants, who in turn shipped the bones back by rail to Eastern companies that used them in the manufacture of china and fertilizer. It took about a hundred sets of buffalo bones to make up a ton. The bones were plentiful—dead buffalo were scattered all over around Dodge, since the hide men took the skins and left everything else to rot. No one in town wanted the meat. There was already too much buffalo in their diets, and they were sick of it.

  Gathering the bones was a tedious business. Some of the buffalo skeletons were pristine, picked clean by buzzards and easy to gather and toss in a wagon. But most were still in various stages of decay; remaining organ and muscle tissue had to be stripped from the bones with a knife or by hand, and even in winter the stink was fearsome. When Masterson and McLendon worked at it all day, they could collect three wagonloads, each totaling about half a ton. At best, that meant they had about ten dollars to split between them at the end of a working day, enough to live on with a few dollars to spare. Bat was saving for hunting gear and the chance to partner up with Billy Dixon. Despite Masterson’s certainty that he shared the same ambition, what McLendon really wanted was a few hundred dollars for train fare to California and a stake to live on for a while once he arrived there. Bone picking was a slow, hard way to make the money they needed. Since Charlie Rath and the other Dodge City hide dealers paid as much as three dollars apiece for prime, sparsely perforated skins, McLendon and Masterson jumped at any opportunity to shoot living buffalo. Since their odds of gaining a saleable hide were much better when Masterson did the shooting, McLendon realized how generous it was on Bat’s part to let him have an occasional turn. McLendon met Masterson in a saloon on Cash’s first night in Dodge, when the younger man came over and struck up a conversation. Soon afterward, Bat invited McLendon to “partner up” in the buffalo bone business, which provided income the Dodge newcomer badly needed. Masterson also introduced McLendon to his friends among the buffalo hunters, Billy Dixon especially, and tutored him in marksmanship, skinning, and other skills necessary to make more money in the buffalo trade. McLendon had previously found few real friends in life, which made him appreciate Bat all the more.

  “That was a nice shot of yours, the last one that took that buffalo cow in the head,” he told Masterson as their wagon rocked slowly along the flat ground. “If Billy does decide on that southern hunting expedition in the spring, he’s certain to ask you along. You’ll be an asset to his operation. I’ll bet you end up like J. W. Mooar, knocking down eighty or a hundred buffalo every day.”

  Bat belched. The onion sandwiches they’d eaten for lunch were repeating on him. “Josiah goddamn Mooar is one of those Yankee tale-tellers who’s lied so much that he don’t realize he’s doing it anymore. No man kills a hundred buffs in a day—your rifle barrel would melt. Billy says he occasionally gets fifty or sixty. I’d be happy with thirty. At two or three dollars a hide, even with paying my share for skinners and a camp cook, that would still provide a nice, fat living. And it’s easier than you realize, C.M., because you’ve never seen one of the great herds. They say that just a few years back, a herd of buffs three miles wide and ten miles long blocked the railroad track near here for ever so long a time while they wandered on across. You come on a bunch like that, hell, even you could set up, start shooting, and hit something every time. You wait—maybe they’re hunted out around here, but Billy’s gonna find that kind of herd down in Comanche country. Come late spring, you and me’ll be right down there with him, killing so many buffalo that we become rich men damn near overnight.”

  “It seems like everybody I’ve met out in the West expects to get rich quick,” McLendon said. “Strange how so few actually do.”

  “Well, we’re going to be among them.” Bat swung his head around, looking for carcasses. He was twisted almost completely around when he barked, “C.M., behind us—look!”

  McLendon turned on the wagon bench. About a quarter mile away, two figures crouched over the carcass of the buffalo they’d just killed and abandoned. He squinted against the wind. “Who are they? What are they doing?”

  Bat hauled his Sharps out of the wagon bed. “Indians, that’s who. Stalking us, for sure. Get your damn gun so we can set about defending ourselves.”

  McLendon’s heart lurched. Indians terrified him. He fumbled for his own rifle and had trouble grasping it. His hands were suddenly sweaty despite the cold. “How many?” he asked. His voice trembled.

  “I just see the two, so we may be in some luck. Stop this wagon, I need to take aim.”

  McLendon awkwardly yanked on the reins with one hand while trying not to drop the bulky Sharps with his other. The wagon jerked to a halt. Bat jumped down and raised the Sharps to his shoulder. “Damn if they’re not just staying out there, doing something with the buffalo,” he muttered, and pulled the trigger. The rifle thundered, and a high spray of dirt kicked up a few feet to the right of the buffalo. “Pulled the goddamn shot,” Bat said. “C.M., you shoot while I reload.”

  McLendon, still sitting on the wagon bench, contorted so he could fire. As he stared down the barrel he said, “Bat, they’re not trying to find cover. They’re—what?—I think they’re cutting at the buffalo or something.” He lowered the Sharps. “Hell, they’re not even adults; they look like boys.”

  “Indians of any vintage can kill you,” Bat said. He shoved a cartridge home and raised his rifle again. “Shoot ’em.” Bat fired again and the buffalo carcass jerked. The Indian boys finally bolted away. The land all around them was flat, but somehow they almost instantly disappeared from sight. “Come on,” Bat said. “Let’s go back and see what’s what. Be alert, now. They may be trying to gull us.”

  Cautiously, McLendon turned the wagon around. Bat, rifle at the ready, walked just ahead. When they reached the dead buffalo there was no sign of the Indians. While Masterson poked around nearby clumps of weed, McLendon got down and examined the animal’s body. “Look at this, Bat,” he said. “There are some chunks of meat cut right out of it. I’ll bet those kids were starving.”

  Bat examined the bloody fist-sized craters in the carcass. “Maybe so.”

  “Do you suppose they’re somewhere out of sight and eating that meat raw?”

  “I s
uspect that they are. They daren’t risk a fire. We ought to find ’em and cure their hunger for good.”

  McLendon was relieved not to be fighting for his life. “What the hell, Bat. They’re just boys. Hungry ones.”

  “I suppose,” Masterson said, sounding doubtful. “Well, keep a sharp eye out. Once their bellies are full, they might feel like a fight. And when we get back to Dodge, don’t you dare tell a soul that we spared them. You don’t kill Indians when you have the chance, many folks won’t forgive you.”

  “We probably wouldn’t have been able to catch them, anyway. They moved pretty fast.”

  “Speak for yourself—I’m personally quite swift of foot.”

  • • •

  FOR THE NEXT THREE HOURS Bat and McLendon picked up, cleaned, and loaded buffalo bones in the wagon, stopping every so often to rest and drink water from canteens. They remained remain alert for Indians. Though the two starving native boys apparently posed little threat, this far above the treaty line there were occasional attacks by raiding parties of adult hostiles, even in winter. Mostly McLendon and Masterson picked up bones, often groaning as they bent and then straightened up. Individually the bones weren’t too heavy, even the skulls and spines, but they found over forty skeletons, which meant lots of trips back and forth to the wagon. As the afternoon wore on, the wind turned even colder. Both men had mufflers wrapped around their necks, and their hats mostly kept their heads warm. But they had to use their bare hands to pick the bones clean, and their fingers grew very cold and sore. When the last bones were finally piled in the wagon, Masterson jumped up on the bench and jammed his hands in his pockets.