Buffalo Summer

by Nadia Nichols

  “I know nothing about buffalo.”

  Pony’s words were clipped and brusque.

  “You know all you need to know,” Pete told her. “You worked a whole summer with the tribal buffalo herd.”

  Pony snatched up the stack of papers she’d been marking. Her heart was hammering and her mouth was dry.

  Pete continued. “I told Caleb McCutcheon I’d ask around for someone who could help him. You’ll live right there on the ranch. McCutcheon’s a good man and the Bow and Arrow is beautiful….”

  “I appreciate your coming, Pete,” she said. “But I’m not interested.”

  “Take the job, Pony. It pays more than you make here as a teacher or what you’d make over the summer working for some farmer.” Pete turned and walked out without another word.

  Pony returned to her desk. She wanted to ignore what Pete had said, but he was right. She needed the money.

  But Caleb McCutcheon would look her up and down and try not to laugh. He would probably make an effort to be polite—Pete had said he was a good, kind man. But he’d think that a woman applying for the job of managing a herd of buffalo was ridiculous.

  And he would be right!

  Dear Reader,

  Even in this age of routine space travel, the American West has the power to evoke images of a time when buffalo roamed in herds beyond number, a time when the wind blew across plains so vast and over mountains so tall that all of eternity could not measure the boundaries of it. No animal was more closely associated with the West, or was more powerful, both physically and spiritually, than the buffalo.

  For the most part, the West we romanticize is gone, paved over and plowed under by the relentless tide of humanity seeking to settle and civilize everything that is wild. The great herds of buffalo are also gone, hunted to near extinction in the nineteenth century, and the sound of their thundering hoofbeats is only a memory…or is it?

  Buffalo Summer explores the possibility of returning the buffalo to their native range and restoring these venerable denizens of the wild to the American West. It also explores the conflicts and courageous hearts of two people from two vastly different cultures struggling to find common ground in the midst of a sometimes very hostile and chaotic world. Caleb McCutcheon and his herd manager, Pony Young Bear, take up the story where Montana Dreaming leaves off, and together they bring the history of the legendary Bow and Arrow full circle.

  Enjoy the journey.

  Nadia Nichols

  Buffalo Summer

  Nadia Nichols

  Thank you, Grandmother, for teaching me the old ways.

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER ONE

  Oh give me a home where the buffalo roam…

  —Brewster Higley, 1873

  PONY YOUNG BEAR’S TRUCK was old. It had belonged to her older brother, Steven, who had gotten it from one of the elders, who had gotten it from some government program that found used trucks for needy people on the reservation. It was an ’83 Ford, standard shift, four-wheel drive. At one time it had been red. Now it was rust-colored, but it could still squeak out an inspection sticker if taken to the right place, and Pony always made sure she took it to the right place. It was cheap and reasonably reliable transportation, but this morning she wished that it didn’t look so battered, that the paint wasn’t peeling away to reveal big brown boils, that it didn’t rattle so loudly, that the tires weren’t bald.

  Above all, she wished that she didn’t have to be driving to a ranch called the Bow and Arrow outside of someplace called Katy Junction, Montana, to beg for a job she wasn’t qualified for. But she needed the money to buy school supplies for the children. Without them the kids would be at a disadvantage, and that was just one more disadvantage they didn’t need.

  Pete Two Shirts had understood this. Which was why he had come to the school yesterday afternoon to tell her about this job. She’d been sitting at her desk in the sudden quiet that always descended on the heels of the departing third-grade students when a man’s voice spoke her name from the doorway.

  She glanced up, startled, and laid down a stack of papers, giving no reply to his greeting. Pete walked into the room in his lean, catlike way, long hair tied back with a red strip of cloth, dressed in his typical cowboy attire of blue jeans, boots, denim jacket and red plaid shirt. He kept his thumbs hooked in the broad leather belt at his waist sporting the big fancy silver rodeo buckle and stopped just short of her desk, gazing at her beneath his black, flat-crowned hat brim. “I came by to tell you about a good-paying summer job.”

  She dropped her eyes, picking up the stack of papers and tapping them on the desk to straighten them. Anything at all to avoid looking at him. Pete reminded her of a time in her life that she would much rather forget. “So tell me,” she said, suddenly short of breath.

  “I got a call this morning from Guthrie Sloane, the foreman of a rancher who’s looking for someone to help with their buffalo herd. It’s the ranch I worked at this past fall, when Sloane got crippled in a horse wreck and they needed temporary help. Over near Katy Junction.”

  “I know the place.” She laid the papers down again and smoothed them with her hands, avoiding his eyes. “The Bow and Arrow. Steven told me about it.” Her heart beat painfully, and her body tensed with shame and guilt even after all these years. One summer, one night, and her life had never been the same. Would never, ever be the same…

  “I thought of you,” Pete said.

  “I know nothing of buffalo.” Her words were clipped and brusque.

  “You worked for me one whole summer with the tribal buffalo herd. You know all you need to know. You can ride a horse pretty good, too. You need that money to buy school things for the kids.”

  She snatched the stack of papers yet again and rose from her chair, walking to the window and staring out. Her heart was hammering and her mouth was dry.

  “I told him I’d ask around for someone who could help out,” Pete continued. “It would be an easy job. You’d live right there, on the ranch. Room and board included. Caleb McCutcheon’s a good man and the buffalo herd is tiny, nothing like the size of ours.”

  “I appreciate your coming,” she said. “But I am not interested.”

  “Take the job, Pony. It pays more than what you make here as a teacher, or what you’d make hoeing weeds in some farmer’s field.” Pete Two Shirts turned and walked out without another word. She stayed where she was until the sound of his boot heels and the faint ring of his spurs faded from her burning ears.

  One summer. One buffalo summer…

  When she finally returned to her desk, the children’s papers she held in her trembling hands were hopelessly crumpled, and no amount of smoothing could flatten them. She wanted to ignore what Pete had said, but he was right. She needed the money. And if the job paid well, did she have the right to deny her students such a windfall?

  Unlike many of the children she taught, Pony had been handed the best of everything, the best that any Indian born on the rez could ever hope to have. Her brother Steven had pushed her hard, pushed her to do well in school, pushed her to apply for colleges, and when the pushing had opened doors for her, he had made sure those doors stayed open by footing the bill for her education with the money he earned as an environmental lawyer. She’d graduated from one of the best schools in the country, had
gone on to get her master’s degree in early childhood education.

  Steven had sacrificed so much for her since the death of their parents, and she loved him fiercely. She’d loved him ever since she’d been a little girl and he’d tolerated her pesky company, defended her against his taunting friends, lifted her onto his broad shoulder and carried her when her legs grew tired. Later, as she grew older, he’d driven off unwanted suitors. He’d never asked for anything in return for being the best brother a girl could ever have. That was Steven’s way. Yet when he changed his name to a white man’s name and chose to live in the white man’s world, she couldn’t understand that his needs might not be the same as hers.

  Her resentment toward the lifestyle he had chosen had limited her visits to his pretty little house in Gallatin Gateway with the name Brown stenciled in big block letters on his mailbox. It had taken her a long time to realize that her brother had the right to walk his own path.

  Last night when she had had gone to see him to ask him about Caleb McCutcheon and the job at the Bow and Arrow, the neatly stenciled letters on his mailbox had read Young Bear. Unbeknownst to her, he had taken back his own name. His hair had grown long again and was drawn back the way he used to wear it. He had looked so good, so handsome, standing there in the doorway of his cozy little house, that she had been momentarily unable to speak, overwhelmed by a sudden and poignant surge of remorse that brought her to the verge of tears.

  “Pony,” he said. “It’s good to see you. It’s been a while. Christmas, wasn’t it?”

  She blinked the sting from her eyes. “It’s good to see you, too.”

  He nodded. “Come in. It’s not a teepee but it’s comfortable.” He stood to one side for several moments, and when she didn’t move he reached out and drew her firmly inside, closing the door behind her. “I’m cooking supper. You can watch me and tell me all the things I’m doing wrong.” He turned and walked back into the kitchen, picked up the spatula he’d left on the counter and added strips of cooked chicken into the stir-fry mix that was sizzling in the wok. He shook in a generous splash of soy sauce, added a little more water and a small mound of freshly grated gingerroot. He stirred for a few minutes before turning off the gas burners beneath both the wok and a pot of steamed brown rice. “There’s plenty here for both of us,” he said, taking two plates from the cupboard.

  “I’m not hungry,” Pony said, standing uneasily on the other side of the counter. Steven paused for a moment to look at her and then divided the rice between the two plates and spooned the stir-fry over the mounds. He carried the plates and silverware to the table, returning to the kitchen to strip two paper towels off the roll, grab two glasses from the counter and a quart of milk from the refrigerator. “Unless you’d rather have wine or a beer?” he said, pausing at the refrigerator.

  “Milk’s fine.”

  “Sit then, and eat. You’re too thin.” He dropped into a chair and Pony did the same.

  “I came here to ask you about Caleb McCutcheon.”

  “I know,” Steven said, pouring the milk. “Pete called me. He told me that he’d gone to see you at the school to tell you about the job.”

  Pony wasn’t surprised that Steven already knew. Pete Two Shirts was his boyhood friend, and they still kept in close touch. “I know nothing about buffalo. The job would be a farce.”

  Steven ate for a while then picked up his glass of milk and drank half of it. Finally he lowered the glass and studied her across the table. “You know enough,” he said. “McCutcheon would be lucky to get you. Now eat. This stuff is good for you. It’s not sage hen or buffalo tongue, but it’s healthy.”

  She picked up her fork and stabbed it fiercely into a piece of broccoli. “Why do we always argue?”

  “You’re mad because I don’t live on the rez like you do, because I don’t champion the Indian’s fights the way you do.”

  “The way you should,” she said vehemently.

  “The way you think I should,” he amended.

  “Steven, you paid my way through college,” she said, leaning toward him. “You made it possible for me to do the things I’m doing now. Working with the children, teaching school and lobbying the Bureau of Indian Affairs, trying to make things better. If you and I don’t do these things, who will? The changes have to come from us.”

  Steven finished his meal and glass of milk while she sat and watched him, the same piece of broccoli still speared on her fork. He wiped his mouth on the paper towel. “McCutcheon’s a good man. Go talk to him about the job.”

  “Is he one of those rich movie stars?”

  Steven laughed at her disapproving glare. “Caleb was a star, but not in the movies. He was a professional baseball player with the White Sox. He grew up as a poor kid in the slums of Chicago and pitched his way to the top of the world. People still sing his praises, and he hasn’t played for years. He had to retire when a baseball shattered his ankle during the World Series.

  “Is he married?”

  “Until recently. He was divorced last fall, shortly after he bought the Bow and Arrow. Seems his wife didn’t share his dream of living on a remote ranch.”

  “Any children?”

  “Nope.” Steven looked at his sister and grinned. “He definitely ranks up there as one of the most eligible bachelors in the State. If I were you, I’d hurry right over there.”

  “I’m not looking for a man. I’m applying for a job.”

  “Just filling you in on the particulars. No need to get testy.”

  “Even if I go to talk to him and he offers me the job, what will I do about the kids?”

  “How many are there now?”

  “Five. Nana’s watching them tonight,” she said, referring to her aunt.

  “Five.” Steven poured himself another glass of milk. He fixed her with a solemn gaze. “Pony, you can’t save the world.”

  “I know that, but I can help make their lives a little better.”

  “I’ll send you more money. I didn’t know there were that many kids. The last time we talked, you just had the two boys.”

  Pony set her fork down abruptly and raised the folded paper towel to her eyes, holding it there for a long moment, hiding from him until he reached out and squeezed her arm gently. She lowered her hand and blinked rapidly. “I can’t turn them away,” she said in a voice tight with pain.

  “I know.”

  Her eyes stung. “And I can’t walk away and leave them for the summer. Nana can’t take care of all of them. There’s no point in even thinking about taking that job, even if it were offered to me.”

  “I’m almost afraid to ask this, but these other three kids you’ve taken on…are they juvenile delinquents like the first two?”

  “They’re not delinquents, Steven. They’re school dropouts that I’m tutoring. They’re just confused. They’re living in a mixed-up world and they don’t know where they belong.”

  “Teenagers?”

  Pony nodded.

  “All boys?”

  She nodded again. “The girls tend to stay with their families. The boys rebel against everything, especially their parents.”

  Steven pushed his glass with one finger, back and forth. “Can any of them ride a horse?”

  “They’re teenage boys. They can do anything.”

  “Then go talk to McCutcheon,” Steven said. “Sell him a package deal. He gets you, and for the same price he gets five more hard workers who would be really good at pulling down miles and miles of rusty barbed-wire fence. Tell him the truth about the boys, about how you’ve taken them in. Talk to him, Pony. He’s a good man. Go tomorrow morning, first thing. Now clean your plate, or I’ll send you to bed right after supper with no dessert.”

  She had spent the night at Steven’s little house and had risen before dawn to drive to Caleb McCutcheon’s ranch. The sun was just shy of peeking over the Beartooth Mountains when Pony turned onto the five-mile gravel road that headed into the foothills and ended at the Bow and Arrow. She downshifted
and swerved to avoid a large pothole. She was nervous, and her driving reflected it. Caleb McCutcheon would look her up and down and try not to laugh. He would try to be polite, because Steven had said he was a good, kindhearted man. But he would think to himself, What’s this? A woman applying for a job managing a herd of buffalo? Ridiculous!

  And he would be right.

  CALEB MCCUTCHEON AWOKE in the early morning and lay in bed, hands laced behind his head, listening to the song of a white-crowned sparrow lifting sweetly over the rush of the creek. He thought about how much his life had changed. One year ago he hadn’t set eyes upon this place. He hadn’t yet met the full-blooded Crow Indian Steven Young Bear, the young conservation attorney who had introduced him to Jessie Weaver and had been instrumental in helping Caleb purchase her failing cattle ranch.

  One year ago he’d still been married to a woman who’d held his heart from the first time he’d set eyes on her, when he was full of fire and his career as a professional baseball player for the Chicago White Sox still sizzled. He had pledged his allegiance to this sophisticated woman who had shepherded his rise to fame and guided him along the complicated paths of stardom. She’d stood beside him when fate had dealt its untimely blow to his career, and he’d undergone multiple surgeries on his ankle, and then drifted off when his name faded into history to find a more interesting life for herself.

  Divorce was an ugly word, but he had never realized just how ugly until his wife had asked him for one. Their divorce this past November had been a staggering blow, although in retrospect he should have seen it coming. Rachael craved the bright lights and the big cities. Her life was lively and political and she traveled in the highest social circles, whereas he had followed his childhood dream into the backwater wilderness of Montana. It was here that they had parted company.