Buffalo Summer

by Nadia Nichols

  And they were all waiting for him.

  “Good morning! We decided to give your setup an early test,” he said to the foreman of the job, trying not to move like an arthritic old man as he approached the corral fence. He was very much aware of the curious stares as the group of young, vigorous workmen studied his battered face. “I know the corrals aren’t quite finished, but I’m hoping they’ll be up to the task.”

  The foreman nodded. “They will be. The only thing that isn’t ready is the hydraulic crush. The corrals, the alleyway and the chute are good to go. All you got to do is get the buffalo into them. That oughta be quite a show.” He glanced around with a cynical leer. “No horses, huh? How’re you planning to do this? On foot?”

  Caleb hesitated, but before he could respond, Pony spoke. “Yes,” she said. “I’m going to move them down the alleyway and into the chute in groups of five. Badger and the boys will work the sliding doors to separate the animals, Guthrie and Jessie will remove the ear tags from them once they’re in the chute. Then we’ll open the gate in the far holding corral and send them on their way.”

  Caleb stared at her along with the rest of the men. She sounded so sure of herself, this slender woman with the long black braid and the calm dark eyes. Surely she couldn’t be serious. She wasn’t actually going to go into that corral with those huge grunting, snorting beasts and herd them on foot? The idea was not only dangerous, it was absurd.

  Yet even as he tried to think of a more logical way to proceed, Pony was climbing the fence. He stepped forward and grabbed her ankle. “Wait!” he said.

  She turned her head to look down at him. “It will be okay, Mr. McCutcheon. I’ve done this before.”

  He released her ankle reluctantly, and she continued up and over the rails, climbing smoothly down the opposite side. “All right,” she said, and Caleb realized that Roon had positioned himself on top of the fence by the entrance to the smaller pen. At Pony’s words he unlatched the heavy steel gate and swung it open.

  The buffalo were grouped closely together on the opposite side of the corral from Pony, watching her. She moved slowly and quietly. Every movement she made had an effect on the buffalo. A shift of her weight, and they moved in one direction. A pause, and they stopped. She moved to the right, they moved to the left; she moved left, they moved right, always keeping the same distance between themselves. It was a beautiful, primitive and sophisticated dance between predator and prey, and Caleb watched in awe, completely overwhelmed by the sight of the one-hundred-pound woman herding over twenty thousand pounds of buffalo with the subtlest of nonthreatening movements.

  They began to go through the open gate. First a cow and her calf. Then a young bull. Two cows. Then the rest of them, trotting now, passing through the opening until the last one had entered the small pen. It seemed at first as if Pony had done the impossible, but as she moved to close the gate behind them, the buffalo, sensing the trap, began to charge back toward the opening. The ground shook. Thunder and dust filled the air and the massive creatures stormed toward her, heads lowered. She stood in the face of the onslaught, swinging the gate closed. Caleb lost sight of her in the cloud of dust but he heard the loud crash of steel and a triumphant shout from Roon. When the ruckus died down, there were five buffalo in the smaller pen and fifteen loping around the big corral and Pony was sitting on the top rail of the fence beside Roon.

  A moment later she lowered herself into the pen with the five buffalo, and in the same calm, slow, easy way, she herded them into the alleyway, where the boys were working the sliding gates to create individual cubicles for them as they moved toward the chute. Caleb climbed up beside Guthrie and Jessie, leaning over as the first of the cows was trapped directly below. He had never been this close to a buffalo before. He could smell the sweet-grass exhalations of the cow’s gusting breaths, and even as Jessie reached to clip the tag from the animal’s ear, Caleb sank his fingers into the thick, curly woolliness of her fur, ran his fingers over the smooth curve of her black horn and felt a humbling thrill unlike any he had ever experienced.

  Then the sliding door opened and the cow moved out of the chute and into the holding corral at the end. Another buffalo was pushed into the chute. Another ear tag was removed. And so on, smoothly, quickly, until the first five were done. Ten minutes later, the second batch of five was pushed down the alleyway. In two hours the task was completed, and the tagless buffalo were in the far holding pen. Pony walked up beside Caleb and pulled off her leather gloves. “Open the gate, Mr. McCutcheon,” she said with a slow smile. “It’s time for them to remember what it feels like to be free.”

  He unlatched the heavy steel gate and swung it wide, standing against the corral fence as the biggest and shaggiest of the cows, calf at her flank, approached the opening. She paused for a moment, staring out with dark, haughty eyes at the tall mountains looming in the distance, and then lifted her tail and jumped into that odd, stiff-gaited lope. The rest of the herd immediately followed her. Dust rose, the earth trembled underfoot, and twenty buffalo reached a speed of thirty miles an hour in a mere hundred feet as they raced across the meadow, throwing up grassy clods of Montana turf. They got to the first ridge and turned almost as one animal—never losing any speed—and raced back down the ridge again. They ran up it, ran back down. Broke into groups and chased each other back and forth.

  Caleb and the others stood as a group and silently watched this spectacle, unaware that each of them was grinning. A little bit at first and then ear to ear, watching the buffalo run and play. They looked at each other and laughed, feeling giddy and wonderful inside. “That’s something, isn’t it?” Caleb said, his lip cracked open and bleeding. “Look at them!”

  “You’d never see a bunch of beef cows doin’ that,” Badger said. “Nossir.”

  Guthrie was holding twenty red ear tags in his hand. “What do you want me to do with these things?”

  “Burn them,” Caleb said. “Every single one of those buffalo looks different. We’ll give them each a name just like Absa and Goliath, and learn to tell them apart.”

  The foreman of the contracting crew was the last to turn away from the corrals after the last buffalo had disappeared over the ridge. The big burly man looked at Caleb and shook his head. “I’ve never seen anything like that,” he said, his eyes dazed. “That girl, those buffalo. Never. That was beautiful.”

  CALEB DECLARED the rest of the day an official holiday. “Buffalo Day,” he told the boys. The truth was, Caleb didn’t feel capable of doing anything remotely physical, and he felt the boys deserved some free time, too. Guthrie and Jessie drove them all to his place to show them the pups. Blue was accommodatingly patient with all the attention and the eager, grasping hands. She let Caleb pick up one of the little females. The pup’s eyes were still closed, she was fat, her nose was all crinkled, and she had puppy breath. She was perfect. Caleb blew a gentle breath back at her and said, “Hello, Tess.”

  “You can’t know that’s the one you’re keeping,” Jimmy said.

  “Yes, I can. This is the one. This is Tess.” Caleb gently replaced the pup next to her mother, and she immediately burrowed down into the squirming pile, vigorously seeking one of her mother’s nipples.

  “She looks just like all the rest,” Martin said.

  “No, she doesn’t. She’s prettier,” Caleb said.

  “I think they’re all pretty cute. I wish I could have one,” Jimmy said.

  It took a lot of prying to get the boys back into the Suburban, but the noon meal was a strong draw and eventually they were heading back to the ranch. After another delicious lunch, Caleb took Pony, Jessie and Guthrie aside. “I’ve been looking over the books,” he said. “I think we need to sit down and talk. The figures are pretty grim.”

  “Where and when?” Guthrie said. “I have to take Jess to the airport soon.”

  “My porch. Right now.”

  Ten minutes later Caleb was holding the three-ring binder with the bookkeeping printouts, pacing th
e length of the cabin porch and scanning the numbers. “According to what I’m reading here, this place will be bankrupt in just under two years. Actually, that’s incorrect. It’s bankrupt now. We won’t even make the property tax payments. So what are we doing wrong? Are my figures off?”

  Pony was half sitting on the top porch rail, leaning against a post. “No. If anything, they’re optimistic, especially in what you think you can get for a buffalo calf.”

  “You don’t think I’d get at least two thousand for a female calf?”

  “If the market was strong, but right now it isn’t. The prices are lower for calves. And the perimeter fence is going to cost one dollar per foot. There are sixteen miles of fence, six strand. The figures are all there. Selling ten weaned buffalo calves every fall isn’t going to make a dent in the bank loan.”

  “But there is no bank loan.”

  “This is a real-life projection, Mr. McCutcheon. We want our books to show that the ranch is holding its own, not that you are propping it up. We want the buffalo to support the place. Isn’t that what we agreed?”

  Both Guthrie and Caleb nodded.

  “You need to get at least one hundred head of buffalo on the land as soon as possible. Ten bulls, ninety cows. You need to raise at least fifty calves a year. You need to harvest at least thirty-two year-old bulls every fall, and you need to develop a strong marketing base to sell the meat and the hides and the skulls.”

  Caleb stopped pacing and stared at her. “You mean, kill them?”

  Pony nodded. “Yes. And then you need to sell the meat directly to the consumer without paying a middleman. To do that you need two things. A good marketing pitch and a good meat-packing and shipping outfit.”

  Caleb shook his head. “But I don’t want to go that route. I want to run a cow-calf operation.’”

  “Two days ago we saw an outfit like that. The mayor of Jeffords kept his buffalo that way. He kept his cows and his bulls and sold the calves each year, and he did it for a hobby. He didn’t make his living doing it. He probably spent money doing it. But, like you, he could afford to. So you can run the Bow and Arrow as a gentleman’s ranch, or you can operate a real working ranch. But you have to choose your path.”

  Caleb paced to the edge of the porch and gazed out at the mountains, the peaks slate gray and craggy in the afternoon sunlight. “Lord,” he said. “Why does it all have to be so complicated?” He looked over his shoulder at Guthrie. “A hundred buffalo.”

  “You have good grass here,” Guthrie said. “The land used to support a whole lot more cattle than that, but we employed a rotation system. We pushed the animals from pasture to pasture so they wouldn’t overgraze it.”

  “The buffalo will regulate themselves that way,” Pony said. “They roam. They don’t stay in one place and graze an area down to the dirt the way cattle do.”

  “But shipping them to the slaughterhouse…” Caleb paced the length of the porch again and stopped at the opposite end, looking up the creek. “Herding them into a trailer and hauling them off that way. Fattening them up in crowded feedlot like a bunch of domestic cattle…” He closed the binder with a thump. “I don’t know. It just seems wrong.”

  “We’re at least two years away from that,” Pony said.

  “But we need more buffalo. At least five more bulls and seventy more cows,” Jessie said. “A big chunk of change.”

  “November. That’s when some of the auctions are,” Pony said.

  Caleb caught her eye. It was on the tip of his tongue to ask her where she planned to be in November, but instead he said, “Okay, so we do all these things that you suggest and now it’s three years later. What do you see in your crystal ball for the Bow and Arrow?”

  She gave him that warm, beautiful smile of hers. “I see the beginning of something good.”

  HE WAS READING on the porch two hours later, contemplating the sweet notion of a nap, when he heard quick, light footsteps and glanced up from the page to see Pony round the corner of the cabin. “Come and see,” she exclaimed, fairly bursting with excitement. She beckoned impatiently. “Quickly!”

  “What is it?” He dropped the book as he stood, walking swiftly to join her.

  “Hurry. Follow me, and keep quiet.”

  She led him swiftly down the path that bordered the creek and ended at the swimming hole. When they neared the pool, she slowed and reached for his hand to stop him. She advanced in a crouch and then, behind the very bushes where he had stripped naked the night before, she knelt and pulled him down beside her. He looked through the branches, totally baffled by her behavior, then his eyes focused on two horses standing chest deep in the cool dark water. One of the horses was Sparky, the old gelding Roon had used to pony the mustang down to the swimming hole, and the other was the mustang with the injured leg. Nothing so unusual about that, but…

  “Good Lord,” Caleb breathed. “Roon’s sitting on Twister.”

  “Yes,” she whispered. “I was coming down to pick some watercress for a salad when I spotted them. Roon didn’t see me.”

  “But that horse… He’s wild. He hates people. How…?”

  “Shh. The horses will hear you. Just watch.”

  So he held very still and watched as the boy sat on the bay mustang, bare feet dangling in the water, his hands rubbing the colt’s withers. Roon stroked with a soothing motion lower onto the mustang’s shoulders, then back up, his movements smooth and slow. Then he reached one hand and closed it on Sparky’s neck, and very gently slid from the mustang and onto the gelding’s broad back. There was no rope attached to Twister’s halter. Hell, there wasn’t even a halter on the killer mustang.

  Roon nudged Sparky with his bare heels and the solid old horse waded out of the swimming hole, splashing up onto the sandy bank with the mustang’s nose at his hip. Without so much as a backward glance, Roon guided Sparky toward the ranch house and the pole barn. The mustang was putting some weight on the injured leg, and the swelling was almost gone. Absa, who had been lying on the bank like a little golden dog, trotted at Twister’s heels. When they were out of earshot Caleb gave an incredulous laugh.

  “I wouldn’t have believed that unless I saw it,” he said, grinning at Pony.

  “I know. That’s why I came to get you.”

  “How long has that been going on?”

  “I have no idea.”

  Caleb shook his head. “And he’s not going to say anything about it?”

  She shrugged. “He will tell us when he wants us to know.”

  He stood and pulled her to her feet. “That boy has a rare talent. He could be very valuable here at the ranch. It’d be a real shame for him to leave in another short month.”

  “Mr. McCutcheon, your ideas about a school are like your ideas about raising buffalo. They aren’t real.”

  Caleb’s spirits sank. “You’ll always think of me as a wealthy buffoon, won’t you?”

  She shook her head. “I will never think of you that way. You are a good man with a good heart. But a school for delinquent Indian children? A ranch where no animals ever die?”

  “I didn’t use the word delinquent.”

  “No. That’s my brother’s word. That’s what Steven calls them.”

  “And I realize that animals die.”

  “Everything dies. It’s how we live that is important.”

  “I think how we die matters, too,” Caleb said. “I don’t want Bow and Arrow buffalo being shipped to feedlots and slaughterhouses. Is that so wrong?”

  Her expression softened. “No.”

  “There has to be a better way.”

  “There might be,” Pony said. “I have heard of a place in South Dakota that harvests their buffalo right on the land. A meat inspector attends, and then the buffalo are brought immediately to the butcher. The meat is packaged, frozen, taken to a shipping company and mailed out to customers. The buffalo never know the pain and fear and indignity you’re worried about.”

  Caleb looked at her, brightening. “Coul
d we do that?”

  “If there’s a meat-packing plant close enough,” she said.

  “Good. I’ll look into it.” He paused, his eyes narrowing. “Pony, is it so wrong to want to offer something more than one summer to a bunch of kids I’ve come to like a great deal?”

  “They’re Crow. The only place they will ever truly belong is on the reservation.”

  “That’s not so.” Caleb reached for her hands. “This land we’re standing on right now was Crow territory not that long ago. The Mountain Crow lived in these valleys and hunted in these mountains. Those boys belong here as much as they belong anywhere, and is this such a bad place for them to be?”

  She hesitated.

  “Is it a bad place for you to be?” he said.

  She shook her head. “I cannot stay.”

  “Why? Is it because of how you feel about having children?”

  Pony recoiled at his words and jerked her hands from his. “Who told you about that?” she said, so instantly and vehemently angry that he took an involuntary step back. “Did Pete tell you? Did Jessie?”

  He shook his head, bewildered. “No. You did, up on the mountain. You told me about your people dying off because of all the mixed-blood marriages. You told me.”

  Her eyes became suddenly blank and he felt as if a door had been slammed in his face. “I have to go,” she said, turning on her heel and walking swiftly away, following Roon and the horses.

  “Pony!” he called after her, but she didn’t turn around.

  GUTHRIE STARED glumly out the huge plate-glass window at the small silver jet parked in Gate C, the late-afternoon sun glinting off its wing. “That’ll be your plane, I guess,” he said.

  Jessie nodded. “Time to say goodbye, cowboy.”

  He pulled her close and kissed her like there was no tomorrow. He didn’t care who was watching. “I hate saying goodbye to you.”

  “It’s only for a few more weeks,” she breathed. “You take care of yourself. Don’t overdo it. Mr. McCutcheon was right. You’re pushing yourself too hard.”