Lord Grizzly, Second Edition (16 page)

“Jim? Fitz? Where be ye? Ye didn't desert me, did ee?”

He woke with a start. His head buzzed with a sudden terrific headache.

It was the dream. It seemed to have burnt flesh in his head. It had exhausted him. He lay resting.

He tried to think what it was he'd dreamt about. He wormed around through his head trying to find it. He had a feeling it was important. He pinched his old eyes tight trying to find it. But somehow the dream was always just out of reach.

He rested in the driving wind until dawn broke rusty over the eastern rim. He had just enough strength left to slide down the base of the bluff to the water's edge.

He drank a swallow at a time. He rested and panted. He drank a swallow.

He couldn't find it in him to hunt for food, neither for grass tips nor for bullberries.

He dragged himself into a chokecherry thicket out of the wind. He stretched out on dry ground and snuggled under the bearskin. He gave a last look around. Dust rode high in the sky above him. It was a hazy brown world. A bad day for butterflies. And a poor day's run for him. At most but a mile.

He fell asleep too tired to brood on what might have happened to the lads.

A sound as of faint distant continuous thunder awoke him. He opened his eyes, cracking apart stuck lids. He listened intently, heart bounding up wildly in his chest. There were no clouds overhead and the sun was halfway down the sky in the west. Thunder in a clear sky? He couldn't cipher it, unless. . . .

He turned his head a little and put his ear flat on the ground. There was a faint drumming in the earth all right. Buffalo? War party? Antelope? Mountain men?

He rolled over on his side. Near the root of a chokecherry he spotted a gopher hole. Ah. That would tell him. He hunkered over and put his ear into the round dusty opening. And heard it. The clear steady drumming of hundreds even thousands of pounding hooves. Buffalo herd on the move. Coming his way too. Maybe red devils herding them into a surround to make meat. Wild thoughts sparked through his head. So that was to be his fate—scalped and left for wolf meat, or tromped to death.

With a wrench and a groan, and a curse at his sad fate, he got to his elbows and one good knee, drew the grizzly hide over his head, quickly skedaddled into the thickest part of the chokecherry brush. “It's kill or cure now.”

They were on him before he had time to think of the redgray monsters in his back and rump and leg. They came up over the bald tan bluff from the northeast and roared down toward him and the river, mostly cows and calves at first, the cows tan in color and the calves red, lowing and bellowing, eyes strained and bloodshot, panting hot and hard, short tails whipping about like toy wood windmills, by tens by hundreds by thousands. They crashed through the chokecherry thicket to either side of him. They poured into the gully and poured out. Dust and sand stived up; hid the sun. Grass, tree leaves, twig bits, branches, pebbles spretted all around him. A few of the cows and calves bounded down into the South Fork and splashed across to the other side.

Hugh hunched up. As best he could he got his splinted leg under him and tried to protect it with his body. He waited for the inevitable. There was nothing to do but wait. Gray head bowed, gray bearskin-covered back bowed, he waited it out.

Then the young bulls came through the gully in waves, huge hairy, blowing, snorting young bulls, eyes wild, black head and black horns lowered, black shaggy humps and foreparts bouldering along, small tan afterparts skipping, each young bull for all the world looking like an overgrown black bull up front and a nervous tail-whipping silly tan heifer in back, one after another, by tens by hundreds by thousands, solid black walls of them, bellowing, blowing, roaring, wilder even than the cows and calves.

Hugh hunched over, waiting for eternity to come calling.

And at the last, the bulls once more, the old ones who always formed the rear guard of any large herd. They pounded through the gully as old men might, with heavier grunts, with more rasping breaths, with strange knocking or popping sounds in their joints, all of them dark black both up front and in back, brulling more than bellowing, old legs stilting more than bounding, a solid wall of them three deep, packed hide to hide, with behind them an occasional half-fleeing half-chasing whitegray wolf and dungray coyote following after—and at last they too were gone.

Hugh hunched over, waiting, waiting, waiting for the pound of horse hooves to come along next, and Indian yells, for the sleet and strike of arrows, for the pop and drill of the ball.

Nothing happened. Dust slowly drifted off. Dust slowly settled. Dust cleared away.

Hugh looked up. Gone. But not as if they'd never been.

Every bush, every chokecherry, every tuft of grass, every wild plum, every bullberry had been tromped into the sand, shredded to bits, blasted to tits. Everything. Even the ground had been relandscaped. What had once been a sharp-banked gully was now but a slow dip in the land.

Everything . . . except the small cluster of chokecherries where he sat hunched under. Somehow the three waves of rolling thunderous tons of buffalo flesh had parted to either side of him.

Hugh couldn't understand it until he threw back his grizzly skin for a better look around. The touch of the silvertip fur told him. The first buffaloes had mistaken him for a grizzly and in parting around him had set a pattern for the rest of the herd to follow.

It made Hugh smile a little. The old she-rip was turning out to be of some use to him after all. He was making the old she-rip pay him back in more ways than one: first as food, then as elbow and knee guards, then as a robe, and then as a disguise.

The excitement of the stampede died away and Hugh gradually came back to himself and his troubles. All that cow meat flying by, and buffalo cow at that, made him hungrier than ever. One look at his hands and arms told him he was getting thin a little too fast. “Got to have some meat soon or I'm bound for the boneyard sartain.”

He crawled to the water's edge. The few buffalo who'd splashed through the stream had muddied it up. He waited until the water changed from brown to tan before he took a drink and washed his hands and beard.

The drink of water gave him a momentary feeling of well-being.

He decided to crawl on a ways. Farther along the buffaloes might have veered away from the South Fork and left him something to browse on. The sun was still high, and he had plenty of time before dark to find some grass and bushes.

He worried a little about what might have stampeded the buffalo. But look around as he might, he couldn't find sign of it. Probably just a whirlwind.

The stampeding buffalo had churned up the ground into fine floury yellow dust. He padded across it. He left an odd trail in the yellow dust: two long tracks, a round dent, and a pair of trailing wriggling marks. Hugh smiled a little when he thought of it. Let some trailhawk try to cipher that one! Ae. Either a three-legged two-tailed whangdoodle or a monster varmint from another world.

He was glad the wind was down and the late afternoon sun warm.

He crawled along steadily, staying well away from the meandering South Fork, cutting across from one lazy looping turn to the next, keeping to level ground above the first drop-off and beneath the line of bluffs to his left.

His arms and one good leg seemed to be taking it better. They were probably getting used to the odd navigation. The hip of the bad leg felt better too. The hip socket didn't ache as bad as before, and occasionally he found he could let a little of his weight rest on the willow slape. Probing a hand around behind him told him his rump was healing very well. The only spot that was still questionable was just out of his reach. It was above the loose flap of flesh on his back. The edges of it were greasy and Hugh's hand always came away from it stinking.

A mile farther along he saw where the buffalo had all veered across the river. They'd leveled its banks, rearranged the bed of the stream, destroyed a stone-cropped ford. It was amazing to see how in a few thunderous minutes a herd of buffalo could change the face of a country.

Ahead too were chokecherry and plum and bullberry bushes again. Ah. Grub at last. He hurried forward.

But he found another herd had been there before him. They'd cleaned off all the leaves and berries within reach. They'd grazed off what little fresh grass there'd been. They'd even chewed off some of the tender twigs.

From his crouch Hugh looked up at the ripe black dripping berries out of reach overhead. “Doggone my skin, if that don't beat all.” He shook his grizzled head. “Now how am I gonna get them berries?”

On hands and knee Hugh groused around until he found a long stick with a hook at the end. “Ah, now I've got ye. Come to Old Hugh.” Hugh reached up the long hook and pulled down the springy tops of the cherry and bullberry bushes and helped himself. “Should a thought of this before. The best and ripest are always out of reach at the top.”

He also dug up some tender roots: wild onion, bunch grass, wild lily, and wild turnip. In digging out the roots he came across a dozen or so white grubs. To his surprise the grubs tasted somewhat sweet, a little like stale white-sugar candy. And last he uncovered a nest of mice, a mother and two wee ones. He caught them each with a pounce, skinned and gutted them, ate them raw. “Meat's meat,” he growled with an inner smile to himself.

Quickened, refreshed, he set out once more. The sun was almost down. Red began to bleed across the entire western horizon. The bald hills across the South Fork rose up into the falling red sun like lifting thunderheads. The bald hills on his side of the river sank away like the huge round waves of a falling sea.

He was just about through the thicket when he spotted it. A red buffalo calf. Hugh's old gray head reared up like a suddenly alert grizzly's. Food. Real food. Tender calf meat wasn't quite as good as young cow meat, but it was a lot better than old bull. And a whole lot better than raw mice fries.

The red calf had its head buried under some brush, its rear end sticking up grotesquely. Something had scared it, probably the other stampeding herd, and not finding its mother immediately, it had gone into what it thought was hiding. It made Hugh laugh even as he plotted to catch it and kill it.

Elbow by elbow, slowly, just barely inching along, looking a little like a huge gray humping grubworm, Hugh crept toward it. A dozen yards. Then only eight. Then four. Carefully Hugh picked up all the sticks and loose stones in his path and laid them to one side. There couldn't be a sound or the calf might bolt. Calves sometimes stayed hiding, head down like an ostrich, until their ma sought them out or until they heard another sound. Hugh knew of cases where calves had almost starved to death waiting for the old lady to get them, so deep was it set in them to play possum.

Hugh was almost within reach; he had settled back on his good knee and partly on the slape, his huge hairy hands open, when the willow slape creaked. The creak was enough. The red calf jerked; looked up, red eyes wild and a rolling white; saw him a grizzly rampant and ready to pounce; and then was off, already betraying in its double-motion gallop that it would someday be a front-heavy buffalo bull.

Hugh cursed. He watched it vanish over the bluffs ahead. “By the bull barley! that dummed leg. All set to dip in when whutt! away he goes. Lickety-split.” Old Hugh shook his head sadly. “The luck of Old Hugh is enough to set the devil himself to weeping like an old woman.” He shook his old gray head. “Yessiree, there went supper, dinner, and breakfast all combined. Besides a nice red cap for my head. And maybe even a pair of soft moccasins for Reed the old lady.”

Night came up over him black and cold. There was no wind.

He crawled on, a lurch and a roll and a lurch. He kept well above the fork.

Chilly night air pressed down on him. It got colder by the hour.

Hugh shivered under his grizzly hide. His fingers numbed and he had trouble picking out a path through the prickly-pear cactus beds. He worried that he might fumble onto a nest of rattlers.

“Looks like we're in for some frost by mornin', sartain sure.” Hugh blew white breaths in the black night. “Just so it don't snow. That's the main worry now. That, and more grub.”

Eight hours later, when he came to the next zigzagging side gully, he stopped to check his bearings. He found the Big Dipper above him; then the North Star. In the faint starlight he traced out the meandering glittering surface of the river below. Just ahead it veered off sharply to the west. Ho-ah! The time had come for him to leave the stream and follow a gully south up through the bluffs and climb to the top of the first hogback watershed ridge. That meant no water and no berries ahead for probably some twenty miles. He'd have to fill up all he could right where he was, get himself a good rest, and hope to have enough reserve to make it over the top and down a gully on the other side until he hit the Moreau River or an angling branch of the Moreau.

Dawn broke red over the earth's east rim. Light spread over the tossing kneaded land very rapidly. Lightblue sky in the east pushed back darkblue sky in the west.

It was time to take on grub and hole up again for the day.

He sat puffing like an old gray ganted dog. His breath blew white in the pink dawn. He heard the first frost of the year moving up the side gully. He heard green leaves slowly crispening.

Shivering in the hoarfrost morning, Hugh supped on bullberries, and chokecherries, and tipsin roots, and white grubs, and a couple of slow armored beetles. The first frost had sweetened the buffalo berries, made them almost rotten ripe. Hugh had himself an extra-large helping.

He drank water from an ice-wrinkled South Fork. He washed up, crystal clear spears of ice catching in his matted beard.

Before he turned in, under some brush in a side hole in the side gully, he had a last look around. No sign of varmint, either two-legged or four-legged. Good. He'd had a good day's run, his belly, though blowy, was full, and he had a warm fur to sleep under.