Waltzing With Tumbleweeds (4 page)

“Yeah, that’s a good rule.” Measles agreed.

The money was put up. They drank two rounds, but each one was too superstitious to discuss out loud the existence of one more buffalo. Mulky could feel the tension build among the men as his own stomach roiled at the prospect of a last hunt.

As he stepped outside the cantina, Mulky rubbed his sweaty palms on his britches. Inside his chest, his heart beat so fast, he could hear his blood gurgling. No woman had ever done that much to him.

“Where are you headed?” Measles shouted after him.

“To hire a skinner.”

“Yeah, you’re heading out,” the man accused.

“It’s a good two days ride to those mountains,” Mulky said, aggravated by the challenge of his sportsmanship. “I’ll be here at sunup. See that you’re here.”

“You better be,” Measles warned.

Mulky knew he must ride fast to find his helper. Blue was a cross-eyed Comanche that could track a tit mouse over bare rocks. He intended to hire the tracker as his skinner.

Two hours later, he disgustedly found the old man passed out on the ground thirty feet from the brush arbor where his wife Red Bird sat sewing. When he rode up, she never looked up from her stitchery.

“Is Blue drunk?” he asked.

“He’s always drunk,” she said noncommittal as Mulky dismounted.

“Well, I need him to track down a buffalo.”

Red Bird looked up. “You drunk too?”

“No, there’s one left. A cowboy saw her last week down near the Frances Mountains.”

“Was he drunk?”

“No,” Mulky said amused at her stubbornness. “I think one still lives.”

“What you want Blue for?”

“To track it down for me.”

“His brain is too whiskey soft. He never find it.”

“I brought plenty of coffee.” he said handing her the pouch. “There’s
a thousand bucks riding on who ever finds her.”

“You bet that much?” she asked.

“Two-fifty is all I bet. But I want to win it.”

Red Bird nodded in understanding. “We make him sober.”

But sobering Blue was a tougher job than Mulky imagined. It was past midnight before they returned to Rosarita’s. He did not want Red Bird to come along, but decided in the end she might help him keep Blue sober.

Mulky hurried around getting up his mules and loading panniers on their backs. He hated the gyp-tasting water from Rosarita’s well, but there was no time to go elsewhere to fill his kegs.

The short Comanche looked hung over in the campfire’s light when Mulky shook him to awareness. Quickly, Mulky turned away and averted his gaze. He could never stand to look straight at the cross-eyed buck.

“Why did you bring me here? What do you want?” Blue grumbled.

“I told you ten times last night. For you to track down the last one for me.”

“Track what?”

Mulky threw his hat down and nearly stomped on it. This whiskey-soaked devil had used up his last thread of patience.

“Blue,” he began tersely, “in a half an hour, we’re going to ride the winds for the Frances Mountains and you better find her for me.”

Blue shook his head. “No more buffalo.”

“One left and we’re going to find her,” Mulky vowed.

“Eat. Be light soon and time to go.” Red Bird interrupted their argument by shoving each of them a tin plate of hot cakes sweetened with sorghum.

At sunup, Mulky warily studied his field of opponents. Measles had hired a skinny boy mounted on a ewe-necked bay. Ike’s helper was a Mexican that lived nearby. The Latin rode an unspirited Indian pony. Big Dee sat on his bay with his legs bunched up because the stirrups were too short. The man’s Kiowa wife was mounted on a nervous colt. Mulky considered the giant’s chances of finding the buffalo as less than the others. But blind luck was not to be overlooked, even for the slow moving big man and Mulky knew such people had found greater fortunes without skill.

A stiff wind was whipping up dust when Ike fired off his pistol and the contest began. The “hee-yaws” and the thunder of hooves revealed a real horse race as they left out.

But in a half hour, Mulky pulled up his pony, satisfied he would shortly kill him. He settled for a jog. Besides Blue and Red Bird, who led the pack mules were a full mile behind. Wryly, he considered his outfit
scattered worse than a widow woman’s children.

Mulky had lost track of the others too. Nothing out there, but a vast alkali flat stretching for miles and miles. The tufts of stunted grass were chalk-coated with nary a tree anywhere.

“Dead Wolf Springs,” Blue announced when he rode up. “I had a vision.”

Somehow, Mulky did not trust the alcoholic Indian’s capacity for fortune telling. Blue’s brain had, for too long, been pickled in post rot gut. He did wonder though if the man’s daydream had even a hint of accuracy.

“How far away are these springs?” he finally asked.

“Long ways.”

“There’s no sense killing our horses,” Mulky said, worried the others had already found and shot her. If they hadn’t, he doubted pressing their horseflesh any harder would gain any advantage.

The third day, the little barren hills were close enough to touch. There was no sign of the others as he waited while Blue dismounted and checked a game trail leading into the range.

“See any tracks?” he asked, irritated at their lack of luck finding even a trace so far.

The Comanche nodded with a scowl of disbelief on his wrinkled burnt leather face.

“One has been here,” Blue announced.

“You mean a plain old Texas range cow.”

“No!” The man appeared shaken by his discovery. “This was made by a she buffalo.”

The words slapped Mulky. The cowboy had not lied. No one drunk or sober could out track that cock-eyed Blue. A ripple of excitement charged through Mulkey’s saddle weary body. He rubbed his sweaty palms on his dust coated britches. Even his dry mouth flooded with saliva.
There was a survivor
.

If they could only find it before the others.

Blue started off on foot toward the mouth of the canyon. Mulky caught the Injun’s horse to lead it for him. Then he checked on Red Bird and the pack train’s progress. She was a half mile behind. Satisfied she would follow them, he booted his horse after the tracker.

The barren rock walls rose above him; the canyon floor was flooded with a narrow dry wash. Without the wind, the chasm heated oven like, he urged his pony after Blue who disappeared around a bend.

When Mulky came around the corner, he nearly swore. A box canyon enclosed them and there was no buffalo. Damn. Where had she gone?

“She went up there.” Blue pointed up the towering sheer face of the cliff.

“How? What’s she got wings?” he demanded as he squinted skeptically at the dazzling height.

“Small trail.” Blue indicated the shelf on the wall.

“You’re saying a buffalo cow went up that?” Mulky asked in disbelief as he dismounted.

Blue nodded. “Maybe ghost huh?”

“There ain’t any way,” Mulky said, feeling defeated as well as awed by the escape route. He noticed Blue had sat down between two dried dead scrub bushes.

“What’s wrong with you?” he demanded.

“Blue, no like ghosts.”

“There ain’t no such things.”

“Blue, no go over the mountain.”

“What would you like?” he asked, reaching for the butt of his Navy Colt. “To go over there or die here?”

“Better to die here than get mixed up with spirit.”

He could see the old man was dead set on balking. That was a problem with Indians that Mulky understood, they hated ghostly things.

“Just wait here then,” he said, going for the Sharps in the scabbard. “She ain’t no ghost.”

“How you know?”

“Trust me. I ain’t afraid,” Mulky said. Besides nothing would dissuade him. Only a living animal left tracks. This one was a buffalo, the last of its kind and worth a thousand dollars. Mulky Nelson the last buffalo hunter. Why this hunt would make headlines in the New York newspapers.

There was no telling, he might go on stage and tell city folks how he tracked down the lone survivor. People made money doing worse things than that. Besides it would beat sitting around Rosarita’s and her lamenting along with the other stinking buffalo hunters. He could almost hear the theater goers applause as he struck the trail.

The climb was steep. His heavy .50 caliber rifle did not make hugging the wall any easier. Soon the horses and Blue were mere specks below him. Atop the first ridge, he rested and studied the jumbled range. No sign of his prey. He pressed on along the mountain’s spine. Then he spotted the cloven track in a soft place where the wind had deposited fine dust. His heart began to pound. Heady with his discovery, he trod the narrow hogback with a thousand foot drop off either side.

He stopped at a sheer drop off. Had the cow gone over this edge and fallen to her death, depriving him of his treasure? This would be his lot. Full of dread, he leaned over the edge. Then something on the canyon floor caught his eye.

A skinny buffalo cow stood in the shade of a dwarfed cottonwood. Chewing her cud, she shook her shaggy head at gnats and flicked her short tail from time to time.

The very last one, her ribs showed through her thin hide as he lifted the stock of the Sharps to his shoulder. She was not with calf, probably too old to breed. The end of a race represented by an emaciated specimen.

He clicked up the rear sight and took aim, his finger on the trigger ready to squeeze off 400 grains of black powder. He hesitated. There was something in his eye. Was he going blind? What was blurring his vision?

A tear wet his cheek and another fell as he lowered the gun barrel. Let someone else shoot her. He turned and started to leave unable to swallow the knot behind his tongue.

The others would never bother to look up there, since he had come out empty handed. Maybe she would live a while longer. A few bottles of whiskey would silence Blue and some material for new dresses would hush Red Bird’s words about the matter.

As he picked his way down the mountain, he regretted one thing—the theater and his telling audiences how he shot the last southern herd buffalo. A smile crossed his lips. Maybe he could do that anyway. How in the hell would they know he hadn’t pulled the trigger?

The wind would erase the tears and the wails of the Sioux warrior’s widow who had lost her man in battle. The young brave had ridden with Chief Gall from the camp of the Sioux and the Cheyenne to meet the long Knives. She remembered his red and white pony chesting the water of the Big Horn River as he went to war. His lance high, bow slipped over his head, his war cries mixed with the others anxious to meet with the enemy.

The yellow haired, buckskin-clad leader called Custer came to make war on her people. Into the valley of the Bighorn, the Seventh Cavalry had charged to meet a far superior force. Crazy Horse had swept in from the west; her brave husband with Chief Gall’s forces had cut off their flank.

A hot June sun blazed on the hillside where over two hundred “blue pants” had died from arrow, bullets and lance. When the fiery sun set beyond the saw-toothed Bighorns, the woman shared no victory dance because her man had joined his brave ancestors who went before him.

The valley of the Bighorn was silent at the next dawn except for the drone of the flies and magpies. A thundershower would soon dampen the blood soaked ground and the grass, nourished by bones of dead bison, would hide all the scars. The blades of grass would wave in the brilliant sunshine and whisper nothing of the infant who had been held to a warm breast and not allowed to cry as his people died nearby.

It was time to go to another place. There were too many to feed, the chiefs said. Winter would blow cold; the people would need to dry much buffalo to sustain themselves through the harsh weather. The dead had to be deserted. But, the people left the bodies on high platforms for the gods to claim.

There was no time for rest now. The widow piled her goods on her man’s warhorse. The
travois tracks would soon be erased by the wind as her people moved towards the north.

From this day forth, the brave people’s lives would be as bitter as the green bile that ruined a buffalo’s liver. The white man had killed the people’s shaggy, kindred brother, then left the sustenance of the Sioux for the coyote and the fat magpie. No longer did millions of them thunder
across the plains as they had in the woman’s childhood.

The widow must face life without her man. She must secure a haven for her small son.

Head down, her breast full of sorrow, her moccasin steps would be heavy. She never looked back at the platform which bore her deceased husband. She would have more important things to concern her, the seed of her husband’s loin who sat on the burdened warhorse. Ignorant of the harsh truth, the child would have to wait years to learn the grim facts. Then his people would be on reservations, their pride mere dust at the white man’s feet. The man child would know the treachery of the Seventh at Wounded Knee and learn of the demise of Sitting Bull.