Buffalo Palace (14 page)

With agonizing slowness he went to the mare and found only his shirt had survived the tug and pull of the river. No leather britches nor his boots. In exasperation he yanked loose the ropes and let the last heavy pack drop to the ground, where he fell upon it—tearing it apart until he found his old pair of wool britches and three pair of Isaac Washburn’s moccasins.

Then he remembered—the dust. The Pawnee close at hand. Scrambling through the packs, he found the tin of powder kept dry in the river crossing. In another pouch he found Washburn’s pair of old pistols. Tearing rags from his patching material, Bass hurriedly began pulling the loads in his heavy weapons: dragging out the heavy lead balls with sheer muscle and a rifleman’s screw he set in the end of his ramrod, replacing powder, too, after carefully drying the pans and reoiling the barrels.

He was surprised to find that little effort sapped a lot of what he had left for strength. So he sat there a long time with the rifle and pistols at hand, listening for sounds of approaching enemy, staring at the muddy river that had stolen so much from him—yet in the end that river had spat out both him and the packmare. Was he to be angry … or grateful?

Remembering those memories of drowning. Sensing the same tug of warring feelings for the man who had fathered him, pulled him from the Ohio. Resentful of both Thaddeus and the Platte. Yet finding himself so grateful that in the end both had spat him free to carry on as he alone chose to carry on.

It was sometime later as the sun slipped out of midsky when he became aware of the swooping, noisy flock of birds once more. Perhaps they had always been there at the corner of his vision and he just did not pay heed and notice them. Was it their distant squawking cries, or the great ripples they made upon the aching blue overhead, or even the shadows they made of themselves winging back and forth across the land beyond those first hills?

Whatever it was, he watched now—aware that time had slipped past him as he sat regarding the river like time itself: there, then suddenly here at hand right before him, but gone immediately.

“C’mere, girl,” he called out as he wearily rose to his feet.

Dragging up the saddle blanket, he wrung it out best he could, kneeling to knead what water he could from it before flinging it atop the mare’s packsaddle. With a lot of effort he redistributed what he had left into two small packs and lashed them to the horse’s back. Finally Bass nestled the old saddle down into the vee between the packs and untied the long lead rope from the willow.

“Let’s go.”

Through the tall grass he led the mare, their hooves and moccasins dragging against the thick, sturdy stalks. Heading upstream once more. This time on the north bank, angling a bit into the first line of hills—from time to time adjusting his course as he kept himself between the Platte and a line where he would intersect those flocks of tiny black birds.

The sun had nearly dried his clothes, and no longer did they chafe him that late afternoon as he trudged through the low hills, beginning to think on making camp in some ravine out of sight of any wandering Pawnee … beginning to dwell too much on his empty belly and curling up for the night in what must still be damp blankets lashed back there on the packmare. The slope was long as he ascended the sandy hillside, casting a long shadow behind him, hoping from the top he would spot some likely campsite, perhaps in the brush beside a narrow creek that fed the mighty Platte. There he could hide, and sleep.

With just a matter of another two steps to the top of the rise, he prepared to catch his breath and blow, the
same way horses blew after an exhausting climb. He blinked into the falling sun—missing his hat even more already. And waited those few seconds for the mare to come up behind him. With the sun’s bright glare he blinked some more as the ground in the middistance seemed to undulate, quiver—just the way of Tink’s skin would ripple when you gave her a particularly good scratching.

For a moment more he stared, not sure … not taking a breath. Not even daring to.

The great flocks of tiny black birds swept from right to left, then south back to north—all but directly overhead now. He became suddenly aware of their incessant racket, those tiny throats and flapping wings, whereas it had seemed so deathly silent for so, so long. Then heard the snorting and bellowing, the lowing of huge animals.

Slowly, Titus Bass became aware of the great hump-backed beasts that blackened the endless miles of what rolling prairie lay before him.

Titus hadn’t moved for the longest time the rest of that afternoon—watching the knotted herd of buffalo below him as the packmare contentedly cropped at the grassy hillside nearby.

For what must have been hours he did nothing more than sit and watch how the great beasts moseyed this way, then that, before ambling off in a different direction just as slow as you’d please, flowing together like coagulate, then gradually splitting apart as individuals and small bunches went their own way in grazing the hillsides and prairie floor. He was content to do nothing more than watch the great, hump-backed creatures … all the while trying to control the hammering of his heart, trying desperately to remember to breathe in his excitement.

As the sun began to fall into the western hills, Bass got to his feet and gathered up the long lead rope, taking the packmare from the crest of the knoll where he had remained mesmerized for so long. Angling to the south, he kept to the far fringes of the herd until he found a suitable ravine deep enough for him to make camp for the night. By the time he had pulled the mare into the upper reaches of the ravine, the sky had begun to dim and shadows had grown as long as they would ever be.

After freeing the two smaller packs and dropping
them into the tall grass one at a time, Bass slapped the mare on the rump and sent her off to have herself a roll. Next came the task of spreading the still-damp blankets over the nearby brush to finish drying while he gathered up what dead limbs he could find. Making tufts of some dead grass after he had scraped out a small hole at the bottom of the ravine, Titus struck his evening fire, then took up the bail to his coffeepot and headed over to the nearby creek. At the top of the ravine, which put him level with the rest of the prairie, he turned round to gaze back at the campsite—anxious that no wandering eye should spot the smoke from that small fire.

After a trip that led him back toward the Platte, Titus found a clear-running stream, where he dipped both the blackened pot and his wooden canteen. Quickly yanking off his clothes, Bass swabbed as much of the mud as he could wash off—then, shivering, jumped back into the wool shirt and britches. After tying his moccasins, he sat there at the creek a few minutes, drinking his fill once more, realizing just how this arid country dried him out, made him more thirsty than he thought possible. How good the water tasted to his parched tongue.

As he neared the landmark brow of the hill he used to locate his ravine, Bass overheard muted snorts that grew in volume the closer he neared his camp. Instantly concerned for the mare, Titus set off at an ungainly trot with the canteen swinging at the end of one arm, the pot sloshing from the other. Reaching the top of the ravine, he skidded to a halt, staring down to find the mare grazing contentedly at the mouth of the ravine … no more than fifteen yards away from where one of the dark-skinned beasts rooted about in a circle, slowly hobbling round and round, clearly in some sort of distress.

From time to time the animal jerked its head around toward its hindquarters, tongue flicking out in vain as if to lap at the source of its discomfort. From his vantage point Bass glanced at the other buffalo grazing nearby, none of which paid any attention to the commotion—instead, some went on grazing, while at this time of the day most had already found themselves a suitable patch of ground, where they collapsed to their bellies and began to chew their cud with great self-satisfaction.

“Just like Pap’s damned cows,” he muttered, then remembered how he never got all that good at coaxing milk from an udder. “N-never was my cows anyhow,” he said as he settled to the grass to watch the scene at the mouth of the ravine.

The short-horned beast continued to paw at the ground, nostrils snorting in short bursts, then lolled its tongue in a pant, interspersed with rapid-fire bellows as it nosed round and round on all fours … then without any ceremony or warning the creature stopped dead in its tracks and let out a long, guttural cry as it shuddered the entire length of its body. And as Bass watched in dumbfounded amazement, the animal humped up its back just as a bluish membrane began to emerge from its rear quarters, the glistening mass expanding longer and thicker as the beast snorted, bellowing in pain.

“Jumpin’ Jehoshaphat! That there’s a buffler cow,” he exclaimed, licking his lips in anticipation of watching the event. “And she’s ’bout to shed herself of a calf.”

Pretty durn close to watching one of the family’s cows drop a calf, he thought.

The newborn buffalo had dropped close to halfway out when the cow’s quivering hindquarters weakened and she collapsed, sprawling on the ground there at the mouth of Bass’s ravine, fully in the seizure of labor.

It was characteristic of the buffalo cow to seek out a site all her own when she was due to give birth—forsaking all companionship with other cows, much less the bulls. The entire birth process usually took close to two hours after the onset of the first contraction.

Here at this late stage Bass watched the cow squirming on her side, at times raising her uppermost hind leg in an attempt to ease the birth process as she jerked her neck backward in spasms of pain. From time to time she thrashed that hind leg as more of the grayish-blue sack continued to slither onto the grassy prairie.

From the end of that fetal sack Titus watched a tiny hoof thrash, suddenly poking its way free, tearing the membrane near its own hindquarters. Then the leg lay completely still. Fearing that the calf was stillborn, Bass rocked up on his knees, expectant. After the cow huffed through those final moments of her exertion, she began to
roll onto her legs, pulling herself away from the fetal sack that lay still upon the grass, slowly clambering to her feet before she turned about to sniff at what had just issued from her.

After inspecting the sack from top to bottom, the cow began to chew at the several holes torn in the membrane, appearing to rip at the sack, enlarging the holes through which Bass caught glimpses of the shiny, dark hide of the newborn calf tucked inside. Slowly, mouthful by mouthful—and beginning not at the head but at that hind hoof that protruded from the glistening membrane—the cow went about steadily devouring that slimy sack crusted with grass and dirt at the mouth of the ravine.

Cautiously the packmare began to advance, her nose on the wind as she picked up more of the birthing scent. But she did not approach all that close before the cow caught sight of the horse and whirled on the mare—snorting, bellowing her warning with a long-tongued bawl. It was evident the mare understood that most primitive of warnings, turning away with a whinny of her own. Likely she had given birth to colts her own self, Titus brooded. In her own primal way she would understand just how protective the cow would choose to be at just such a moment.

Returning to her calf, the cow continued tearing at the membrane, devouring every shred of it from the newborn’s shiny, slick body, eventually eating the last of it plastered around the calf’s head. Barely breathing himself, Titus waited, anxious as the cow licked up and down the length of the calf’s muzzle, its nostrils—stimulating her baby. Finally the young animal squirmed at long last, moving on its own.

Strange behavior, this—especially for an animal not in the least considered a carnivore. Yet something innate and intrinsic compelled the cow to continue to lovingly lick at the newborn calf’s coat until she had expelled the afterbirth, then devoured it as well.

The sun had fallen fully beyond the hills by the time some other cows moseyed over to the mouth of the ravine to give this newcomer a cursory sniff, perhaps to help the mother lick its coat—all of them tolerated by the cow with the exception of one yearling bull she swiped at with a horn and drove off with a warning bawl.

As the cow stood protectively over it in the coming twilight, the calf now made its first attempt to stand—here something on the order of half an hour following birth. It caused Titus to remember how the family’s newborn calves and even colts attempted to pull themselves up on their spindly legs, wobbling ungainly before spilling to the ground once more. But here the buffalo calf was, tottering about on its quaking legs sooner than either of those domestic animals Bass had come to know. Again and again the calf heaved this way, then that, before it collapsed in a heap, but was quick to rise again.

Each time the calf managed to stay up longer, long enough to careen about in a crazy circle and finally locate its mother nearby—tottering over to jab its wet nose beneath the cow’s front legs, where it probed with its pink tongue and very little luck. When the cow shifted herself, so did the calf, this time nuzzling along its mother’s belly until it found a teat and latched on. As the calf greedily pulled at the nipple, it was plain to see it had been rewarded with warm milk.