CASPION & THE WHITE BUFFALO
By Melvin Litton
A Dimension W Production
Dimension W is an imprint of Crossroad Press
Digital Edition published by Crossroad Press
Smashwords edition published at Smashwords by Crossroad Press
Digital Edition Copyright © 2018 Melvin Litton
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Meet the Author
Besides CASPION, Melvin Litton has two previous novels from Crossroad Press: I, JOAQUIN and GEMINGA. His stories and poems have appeared in Chiron Review, Mobius, Foliate Oak, Floyd County Moonshine, Pif, First Intensity, Broadkill Review, The Literary Hatchet, Bards and Sages, among others. He has two poetry chapbooks, “From the Bone” (Spartan Press) and “Idylls of Being” (Stubborn Mule Press). He is a retired carpenter and lives in Lawrence, KS with his wife Debra and their shepherd Jack. He also writes and performs songs solo and with the Border Band: www.borderband.com
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[There are three things which are too wonderful for me, yea four which I know not: The way of an eagle in the air; the way of a serpent upon a rock; the way of a ship in the midst of the sea; and the way of a man with a maid…] Proverbs 30, 18-19
Table of Contents
PART ONE
I. The Hunt
II. The Chase
III. The Kill
IV. Counting Coup
V. Alice
VI. Broken Wing Bird
VII. On The Range
VIII. Of Luck & Love
PART TWO
IX. Butcher Joe
X. Owl In The Night
XI. Promise Of Spring
XII. Drummed Away
XIII. Along The Trail
XIV. The Great Bull
XV. Sing Your Heart Song
XVI. “Captain Jack” Muldarrin
XVII. Soldier Brothers
XVIII. Foolish Water
XIX. Oh Brutal Day
XX. Moneva
XXI. The Aftermath
PART THREE
XXII. Time Face
XXIII. Wed In Blood
XXIV. Unbidden Love
XXV. Moneva’s Lodge
XXVI. The Hunt Renews
XXVII. Luther And Martha
XXVIII. A Great and Gentle Beast
XXIX. The Housewarming
XXX. Locusts
PART FOUR
XXXI. Hickok Returns
XXXII. The “Living Water”
XXXIII. Nae’van
XXXIV. Cold Trail
XXXV. As The Heart Bids
XXXVI. War
XXXVII. Fate Of The Robe
XXXVIII. The Great Cave
Epilogue
Afterword
PART ONE
I. The Hunt
The land awoke with the sun, threw off its dark blanket and stepped into the day. Caspion’s eyes watered in the cool dry wind, reflecting the blue vision of the vast western sky. The autumn grasses on the broad treeless plain sheened with frost, rippling from the foreground through the horizon. His deepest memory felt the surge of ancient dun and russet-tinged seas crossed through a timeless journey down to that moment.
“Sam…time to roll out,” he said softly, looking back at the yawning lump of his partner still lying in his camp bed.
Kicking off the tarp, Sam rolled to his side and gazed a moment on that hard piece of ground, then reluctantly set up and pulled on his boots as if some part of him knew he would not live out the day. Still drugged by sleep, doubtful of why and where he’d awakened, he watched as Caspion set about breaking camp with the crisp alacrity of a soldier long drilled in the routine arts of harsh campaigns. Each task performed with a skilled economy best suited to a portrait in pen and ink: the slashing play of light and shadow along his lean, angular frame; India-black thick hair that swept in feathering waves over his ears and down his neck; the ridge of his once straight nose bent in sharp fusion, while the broad arabesque of his mustache added to the strange sensuality of lips set in a near-perpetual smile above the subtle cleft of his well-drawn chin; and though only twenty-six, grains of character were etched deep in the lines of his face—flesh that bore the stamp of endurance, scarred and leathery. But finally, and most importantly, a dash of blue for the eyes, a blue intensity so uncommon it seemed unnatural.
Like the sun hisself—thought Sam, blinking away from the dual splendor of that blue-eyed presence and the brilliant sunrise—welcome their gaze but damned if I look ’em dead on. Eyes dominant not through glint of threat but through sheer vitality; a flesh too intimate with its spirit. Tillman, on the other hand, was a rather frail man with tiny dull-gray eyes and tufts of reddish-brown hair matting his narrow head; a waning spirit but a true and loyal friend. Whatever Sam lacked in physical prowess he more than made up for by his tenacity. A deft and tireless skinner, a task he took to quite naturally for he had once sheared sheep for a living back in his native Iowa.
“Jim? We been near a week outa Hays and only seen sign. Whar ya s’pose them buff are? Eh?”
Caspion stood from tying his bedroll and briefly scanned the horizon. “Out there, Sam. Waiting. Found fresh sign this morning. Found it with my boot. Likely just pickets and stragglers. But Ol’ Shaggies out there…saving his pelage for our pelf.”
“Maybe today, eh Jim?
“Possible…possible and most likely.”
Their outfit was spare and efficient: two saddle horses, one freight mule, a two-wheeled Red River cart loaded with a pair of Sharps 50 caliber and essential powder, lead, shells, and patch paper, along with dog tent, tarps, blankets, whetstone, and an apt commissary of bacon, beans, flour, rice, dried apples, canned peaches, salt, sugar, coffee, tobacco, a keg of whiskey and one of drinking water. Plus horse liniment for cuts, bug bites, and other ailments. Adequate fare for a six to eight week hunt.
Dried buffalo chips—bois de vache—gathered earlier that morning by Caspion, made an ideal cooking fire: hot, nearly flameless, and put forth a tolerably sweet aroma. After frying up bacon and biscuits, they washed it down with thick black coffee laced with generous portions of molasses sugar. They knelt on their haunches, lingering a spell near the comfort of the fire,
letting the sun warm the chill air.
“Why here,” Sam said as he tossed the dregs near the fire, “we hain’t done bad. We’re on the range ’n ready, leastwise. Have a good season, man might make a stake. Two thousan’ud buy me a farm backup Io-way. Then blast ’em buff. Blast ’em sheep. I’m a’raisin’ corn.”
“So you’ve said five years running,” Caspion chuckled, “but that’s your lookout, Sam. Me, I’d rather raise hell than corn. ’Cause if I had the money from every hide that ever clothed the buff, if all the gold yet hidden in the Rockies were mine, I’d not spend one red cent farming.”
“But farmin’ suits the soul.”
“The soul? Now there’s a notion I’ll not wag my tongue raw on. When I die, if the good Lord won’t have me, and it’s Hell I deserve, then the Devil can set my soul to farming. That would be Hell I have no doubt. But as it suits your soul, Sam, we best make hay while the sun shines.” Caspion stood and kicked dirt on the fire. “Let’s mount up. It’s the hunt that suits me.”
What drew Caspion most to this land—its great attraction—was that no man, no sane one at least, could be tempted to farm it. Here he felt a man could never settle, but must roam, scenting the hunt, like the buffalo moving ever into the wind. A cleansing thought.
Since they could easily outride a day’s pull three times over and needed to widen the radius of their search, they chanced leaving the loaded cart with the mule hobbled there in the basin of the old wallow surrounded by bunchgrass and other bristly stems. The site posed no great risk of being discovered. They fully expected to find buffalo this day and could relocate their camp come evening.
After watering their horses, they set out at a leisurely gait towards the northwest. Caspion rode point on a tall black pie-bald stallion named Two-Jacks, and on occasion Jackson—because he’d stonewall, turn jack-ass the instant you reined him too firmly. Tillman’s amiable little chestnut mare, Dolly, cantered out to the left. Each man carried two canteens. Caspion’s scabbard held a Henry carbine, while Tillman, whose vision blurred beyond 30 paces, packed a revolver and his trusty fuke—a sawed-off double-barrel shotgun loaded with buck and ball.
The day was Thursday, October 12, 1871. The hide hunters, Jim Caspion and Sam Tillman, had left Hays City five days prior, traveling beyond the 100th Meridian to a point somewhat west of the last tributary of the Pawnee and about equal distance north and south of the Arkansas and Smoky Hill Rivers, well out on the buffalo range of western Kansas. A skiff of snow had accompanied their leaving Hays, but aside from the nightly frost Indian summer still warmed the land. And no real weather in sight, only a skein of mare’s tails drifting from the southwest.
Overhead, high above the abandoned camp, a red-tailed hawk observed with supreme indifference as the riders strayed a half-mile or so apart, moving in tandem ridge to ridge, each scanning for buffalo while keeping an eye out for his partner and the latent presence of hostiles. The hawk soared, circling west; from its great vantage it noted the prey that the men sought grazing twenty miles due south. Noted also other hunters approaching from the southeast, a sight familiar to a thousand generations of prairie raptors, a band of Cheyenne, perhaps fifty mounted warriors and as many squaws with travois trailing in the dust behind their ponies, out to make their last meat before winter. The previous day scouts had located the herd and now the rest of the band left their camp located on a tributary above the Arkansas, known to them as the Swift Fox River, to engage in the hunt. But with no thought of this to cloud its instinct, the hawk’s keen eye caught a movement in the grass a quarter-mile below. Its feather-honed flight shot like an arrow in silent descent, striking its prey with deadly talons; it gave one shriek in triumph and held firm as the rabbit kicked and gasped until utterly limp. The hawk’s stern visage reflected in its victim’s blank gaze.
By noon Caspion and Tillman, having covered the northern sector, were several miles directly west of their camp, with Tillman keeping left, a bit closer in. Sam had a powerful urge to beeline it back to camp but reluctantly passed on the thought; he longed for a quid of tobac left behind in Caspion’s haste to enter the day. Beyond reach but not forgotten, longed for with every pulse and breath.
Across the way Caspion signaled for a halt, dismounted to water his horse from his hat. He wore a shallow-crowned felt hat for this purpose, flat-brimmed, dark brown. Finished, he stuck his head through the leather tie-string to let the hat dangle from his neck till it dried. He took a few bites of pemmican then stowed the parfleche and swung back into the saddle. Again he signaled his intention to continue riding south; Tillman acknowledged with a none-too-eager wave.
Presently, as Caspion urged Two-Jacks towards the gentle rise, a meadow lark flew with its bright-yellow song. He’d heard Indians claim that the song of the lark could quickly fatigue a horse or man. But Caspion felt instant elation, invigorated even, such sights and sounds a thousand-fold more exotic here amidst the limitless prairie. Man sky earth sun bird and song…smiling, he whistled after and was answered in kind, long a polished mimic of bird-song.
But the echoed song hadn’t come from a bird; the singer was a Cheyenne scout concealed in the tall grass west of the rise. He’d observed the rider’s approach, urged his pony to the ground, and gripping its nose had lain still as death till the enemy was safely past. Running Hawk cautiously rose. From the buckskin thong that tied his long black hair hung two eagle feathers, each signifying a coup; watching the hide hunter disappear, he dreamed of a third. Truly the Veho sang the lark’s song well, and looked the wolf, but lacked the wolf’s keen nose. Beneath the broad flat brow his almond eyes narrowed in anticipation of a fresh scalp hanging from his sacred shield; his nostrils flared, while his wide lips betrayed no emotion. Thirst for personal glory was overshadowed by greater concerns, for his heart sang the Dog Soldier’s song: In any fight I protect the People. Running Hawk, swift and farseeing as his brother of the sky, leapt on his pony and rode to warn the others. The fire-stick of the Veho—the trickster—carried death from a great distance. Even two posed a threat; moreover, an opportunity.
The warriors who greeted Running Hawk and heard his words with vengeful joy were a Dog Soldier band led by a chief named Black Hand. They had not been party to The Medicine Lodge Treaty of ’67 wherein the Arkansas was established as ‘The Dead Line’—all lands south designated Indian Territory, while all lands north were opened to White exploitation and settlement. And yet these very lands, so tidily usurped, were the traditional hunting grounds of the Cheyenne; their Fathers’ Fathers had hunted there since the coming of the horse. The fate of the Indian was linked like blood to the life of his brother Hotoa, the buffalo; to its migration his movements were wedded. And Black Hand’s solemn intent was that it remain thus as long as the sun should rise and the rivers flow; and no matter the flippancy of this sentiment voiced by White forked tongues, the People—Tsistsistas, as they called themselves—considered it a sacred vow, an oath…a promise. And whosoever intruded, so desecrated, and their bones would lie bleaching when the howling snows became running freshets and the eternal prairie once again bloomed green.
Mid-afternoon, the two hunters still riding south, the sun hung tentatively above the western rim, as if awaiting the twilight calm that often preceded its slumberous descent. And too, the broad tableland seemed to fall away as Caspion glimpsed the purple hills lying in the far distance beyond the near ridge. Sensing a propitious view, perhaps the long vista of a wide valley, he signaled to Tillman riding on the adjacent slope east then dismounted to reconnoiter afoot. Still hatless, for the day was warm, he approached the summit crouched low, then on hands and knees, and finally belly-crawled through the sweet earth and wind-scented grass till he lay on a limestone ledge that crested the rise. And there…he caught his breath, witnessing the grandest scene he could imagine. He’d had some fine hunts, often sighted buffalo by the hundreds and several times into the thousands, but before him stretched the Great Southern Herd through miles and miles of an endless valley
, gathering for its winter migration south onto the Staked Plains—El Llano Estacado of the Texas Pan-handle and eastern New Mexico. His eyes feasted on tens of thousands, nay, hundreds of…perhaps a million; a numbing, numberless sea of buffalo. But most astonishing of all was the singular milk-white image gleaming at the edge of the herd, a mile distant. He’d heard tales of the Sacred White, so rare that few had ever seen. And those disturbingly-blue eyes that perceived too deeply and so unclothed the soul of whatever they examined became fixed, entranced by the inkling of blessed fortune. But in a blink the spell gave way to the hunter, precisely cold as an iron sight, searching for a vantage, some flaw in the terrain by which he could approach and kill the mythic beast. Its pelage for his pelf.
Caspion edged back into the grass, anxious to motion for his partner and share the news. But turning from the ridge, there played forth a blood-chilling scene as the sharp yelps of fifty Cheyenne warriors in fierce pursuit of Tillman carried to his ears. Sam held out his fuke and kicked desperately at Dolly’s flanks, bouncing atop the little mare in their mad dash to outdistance certain death.
On they came, ‘Terrible as an army with banners.’ The lead warrior leaned aside his pony’s neck and shouldered his rifle; his deadly aim brought Dolly and Sam tumbling to the ground. With amazing agility Sam rolled to his feet, snatched-up his fuke and double-fired, emptying two saddles. But the report was answered by a dozen more as Tillman fell before the onrush of warriors, disappearing beneath the ghastly melee of dust and hooves and the rise and fall of spears and heinous screams and war-cries.
Running Hawk’s merciless blade slashed into the hunter’s skull; the flesh twitched in its final throes as Sam’s tongue instinctively gave suck…no longer seeking tobacco’s dark sap but the primal flow of mother’s milk in his last breath.
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