Tie My Bones to Her Back (26 page)

“Is my bow strong enough?”

“More than enough,” Strongheart said, “if you place your arrows in the short ribs, halfway along the buffalo’s body. The muscles are thin and widespread down there, and your arrow will hit the lungs. When you see blood begin to blow out the buffalo’s nostrils and mouth, then you’ve killed her. Waste no more arrows, but ride on to the next one. Your pony will know. She’s wise in the death of the buffalo.”

Strongheart handed over Jenny’s bow in its case, and a dozen strangely marked arrows. “The Wolf captured these arrows from a creature who came over the mountains, a thing dressed all in bark and rat skins, with tangled hair hanging to its waist. See how strange it is, the way the feathers are put on—merely tied at the front of the fletching by weed threads, so the vanes fly all floppy. But these arrows hit the mark. My husband was struck by one that swerved in its slow flight, following him wherever his horse ran. You’ll see the scar it left on his shoulder when he comes home soon. See the heads of these arrows? All made of stone, as our grandfathers made their arrowheads. But a strange black stone, isn’t it, shiny like the mirrors of the spiders? No stone like this in Cheyenne country. You could see your face in it, but this black mirror might steal your spirit.”

Not mine, Jenny thought. She took the arrows from Strongheart and brandished one defiantly, then looked closely at its wide, glossy head.

The face that frowned back. . . . It frightened her. Even taking into account the warped, concave surface of the obsidian, the distortions it would provoke, this face was cruel. Her eyes glared dark as death, with only the faintest tinge of green, and that a corpselike shade. Her nose was too long, too strong. Harsh lines furrowed her cheeks, bone-white spokes radiated from the corners of her eyes—spiderwebs, she thought. Her mouth was a scabbed, tight gash, and when she bared her teeth in contempt of her image, they flashed back at her like palings of white-hot steel.

Herr Gott,
how can Tom love me?

“There they are,” he said, beside her suddenly and pointing to the west. “The buffalo. Now all we must do is kill them.”

W
OLF
C
HIEF LAY
hidden behind a skull-shaped boulder on the lip of a grassy hollow, high above the slope where the buffalo grazed. His wolf’s hide cloak shaded him from the dazzling sun. He saw the long line of hunters approach, slowly and calmly so as not to alarm the herd. The people trailing behind with their scrapers and hatchets and butcher knives stopped and hid themselves in the grass. He saw the hunters rein in when they reached a convenient swale. It would hide them from the herd. They dismounted from their riding horses, stripped off their shirts and leggings for the chase, readied their weapons, and sprang up on their buffalo ponies. The ponies knew the hunt was at hand. They danced and threw their heads, the bright ribbons braided into their manes tossed eagerly.

Jenny did not disrobe but took off her spider hat and let her blond braids swing full-length, nearly to her waist. She strung her bow, drew half a dozen arrows from the quiver, then swung up on Wind’s bare back. The Appaloosa curvetted briefly at the unfamiliar weight and balance of a new rider. Tom rode over to reassure his pony.

“If Wind steps in a prairie-dog hole and you happen to be thrown,” he said, “stay with the pony. If you run, the buffalo will trample you. Pull Wind down and lie behind her; she won’t try to escape and her body will shield you.”

The hunters spread out in a wide arc, like the horns of a bull hooking toward the knot of feeding buffalo. No noise, no quick movement, but an ominous aura of calm that pervaded the killing ground. Already, as if they’d been hatched from thin air, vultures circled on tilting wings high overhead.

The hunters walked their ponies slowly toward the herd, slouching low behind their manes to withhold for as long as possible the sight of their own erect and deadly man-posture from the doomed buffalo. Jenny dropped the jaw rein and placed an arrow firmly on the bowstring. She was riding with her knees now, her balance sure and easy. She had tucked the tips of her toes into the rawhide girth that cinched Wind’s belly.

As they neared the herd, the buffalo grew restless. An old cow, barren and wise, threw back her head and began to moan low in her chest. She flipped her tail and trotted back and forth, then faced the approaching horsemen. A bull standing near her lifted his heavy head and glared ominously downslope.

I’
D KILL HER
first, Wolf Chief thought as he watched from a mile away, then the bull. If I had my Sharps and two loaded cartridges. . . . But I don’t have it and I couldn’t shoot it if I did. But I’ll kill them anyway, or at least the big bull. If he tramples me, so be it. I will kill him anyway.

You will come to me, Old Bull. Come to me—
now!

Suddenly the old cow spun on her heels and galloped away, uphill toward where Wolf Chief lay. The bull followed. The rest of the herd whirled without looking and charged after them.

N
OW THE DISTANT
horsemen slacked their reins, kicked in their heels—their ponies finally free to chase, streaking out on the instant from a walk to a pelting gallop. The grasslands rumbled under clear blue skies.

Jenny rode just behind Two Shields, near the tip of the right horn of horsemen. Crazy led the charge, hawk feathers fluttering in the mane of his pony. Walks like Badger pounded at Jenny’s side, grinning wide, braids flapping. She could hear Cut Ear’s pony two jumps behind her. Clods of wet dirt and buffalo grass spun back from the hooves of the charging herd, exploding black and green off Wind’s shoulders, stinging Jenny’s hands and face. She tucked in tight behind Wind’s neck for protection. Cold spray flew in her face, the buffalo running full tilt now through pooled rainwater, then the sharp stinging scent of sage crushed under their hooves, spangles of sunlight glancing from the white boulders that studded the slope, and they were up among the trailing buffalo, the hot heavy black-maned bulls grunting as they bucketed along, bringing up the rear, running more slowly and deliberately than the lighter, faster cows, swinging their horned heads from side to side as they ran.

Crazy did not raise his bow at the bulls, nor did Tom, so Jenny rode on through.

She saw a bull glance over at her—fire-red eyes glaring through a mop of wet black wire, silver whips of sputum trailing from his nostrils, from the gaping black-rimmed mouth—swing and aim the blunt, frayed, wicked tips of his horns toward her. Wind Blows veered before the bull could hook.

Then they were into the cows. Crazy’s bow bent and twanged simultaneously with Tom’s, their arrows disappearing past the fletching into heaving rib cages. Jenny heard Tom whoop and saw bright blood spurt from the nostrils of his first cow. Crazy whooped, too, and thumping along beside her, Walks like Badger was nocking another arrow, swinging his bow up to full draw, loosing a second shaft into the short ribs of the cow to his left. The cow stumbled and coughed blood. The Badger Walker whooped, and Cut Ear whooped almost in echo, close behind Jenny—he, too, had shot; another kill.

Now Wind came up fast behind a plump cow, veering out slightly to the right of her at the last moment, slowing her gallop just enough to take station on the cow’s right flank, not a bow length from her racing, pounding, sweat-lathered sides. Fat bulged beneath hair at the root of her tail. Jenny swung upright on Wind’s wiry back, drew her bow full-length, the cool obsidian broadhead kissing her knuckles, and loosed the arrow. But it merely wobbled off the string, thwacked weakly into the cow’s hump—no good! Jenny fumbled another arrow free from under her bow hand. She tried to nock it, her hands and the bowstring dancing madly against each other, failed the first time. She gripped Wind’s barrel more tightly with her shuddering legs, and the mare seemed to sense her difficulty, for she slowed just a bit. Jenny took a deep breath. She nocked the arrow solidly, dug in her heels, and Wind sprinted ahead, back to where she’d been on the racing cow’s flank. The pony seemed to be running more smoothly now—almost consciously so, to give her an easier shot—and she drew and shot smoothly this time, a prayer to the pony. The arrow sank into the cow’s ribs, feather-deep.

Ten jumps farther on, the cow belched blood. She stumbled and folded at the hocks, skidded around in a half circle, tongue lolling, eyes rolled skyward.

Jenny whooped for joy of the kill!

T
HE BLACK HULKS
of dead or dying buffalo, most of them cows, lay scattered randomly down the gentle hillside. Already the women, children, and old men were out and at work on them, blades flashing in the sunlight, the puckering rip of hides tearing loose from hot flesh reaching upward to where Wolf Chief lay in ambush. The old cow who’d stampeded the herd lay dead among half a hundred others. But the bull he’d marked for his own was still alive and at bay. Having finished with the serious slaughter, the hunters were now torturing the old bull. They had him surrounded and bristling with arrows; blood from the slashes of their lances ran down his shoulders and flanks. The bull held his head low and ready, and whenever a horse darted toward him, he lurched forward, trying to hook it. But the circle of torturers merely backed off, then regrouped to continue their game.

They were backing slowly toward Wolf Chief’s boulder.

Some of the hunters, to show the skill and deftness of their ponies, dashed in to plant arrows by hand in the bull’s hump. Other Indians knelt on their horse’s back as they lanced the brave bull. One young warrior tried to rush in mounted backward on his pony but fell at the last moment as the pony balked. The old bull stumbled forward and flashed his short thick horns forward with the full strength of a thick heavy neck. The fallen Cheyenne flew upward trailing a string of glistening intestines from a broad gash in his belly.

The circle of riders paused for a moment in confusion and the bull took advantage of it. He broke toward Wolf Chief’s boulder, nearly on top of him now, the arrows in his hump rattling, his breath harsh and hot, bloody spray blowing from his nostrils. Wolf Chief reared and slung his javelin. It took the bull as he passed, deep behind the shoulder, low down, through the heart. The bull turned to stare at this new adversary, and its huge black eyes locked on Wolf Chief’s. You too . . .

Wolf Chief heard Jenny’s high whoop; then all the hunters were grinning and shaking their weapons over their heads. From the slope below he heard the tremolo of the women, gazing upward to where he stood, all singing their strongheart songs. He checked his impulse to howl. Judged solely by Cheyenne joy, he was a man again.

When the hunting party came home that evening, laden with fresh meat and hides and the body of the horseman killed by the old bull, there was a muted sense of excitement in the camp to offset the formal lamentations over the dead man. Little Wolf and his war party had returned.

With them they brought scalps and horses aplenty, but also grave news.

18

H
E WAS A
short, scarred, wiry man with the blackest, most ominous eyes Jenny had ever seen. He stared at her as if she were no more than a rock. Yet she could see something of Tom in his father’s face, particularly the strong chin and wide cheekbones, the breadth of skull. But there was no sense of fun in Little Wolf’s eyes. He spoke in slow cadences, uninflected, in a deep no-nonsense voice. Everyone deferred to him.

Little Wolf’s party had ridden south, he told the Old Man Chiefs, with the rest of the band listening in the dark beyond the council fire, through the land of the Pawnee Wolf People, where they had stolen some horses and taken two scalps, but had lost a Crazy Dog soldier named Broken Face. Quiet groans arose from the audience—the mourning would begin later, when the story had ended. They had crossed the War Shield and the Salty Rivers, seeing no great herds of buffalo as in years past, only a few stragglers among the bleaching bones. They had crossed the two Iron Roads of the spiders and been chased by blue soldiers for a day, shot three soldiers and killed one of them, but left him his hair—it was far too short for a trophy.

They had skirted Fort Dodge and crept into the great spider village that had grown up around it: lodges of wood, each one as big as a hundred tepees, with the sound of singing metal coming out the windows and gunfire in the streets, women courting men brazenly in the doorways. From a corral on the edge of town they had taken twenty-four horses and ridden south for the Flint River. Buffalo hunters everywhere, coming and going, their great wagons creaking along the new, deeply rutted trails, piled high with freshly killed hides. They had encountered three spiders cutting wood along Crooked Creek and killed them, tied them to the wheels of their wagon and shot arrows into them until they resembled
heschkoveto
, hedgehogs. Then they had burned the wagon with the hides and the dead spiders still on it.

Some of the Old Man Chiefs muttered objections at this. They were Peace Chiefs.

“The spiders are killing the buffalo of our Cheyenne brothers, south of the Dead Line set by the Medicine Lodge Treaty,” Little Wolf answered them. “The buffalo of our allies the Arapaho, the Comanche, and the Kiowa. They’ve already killed all the buffalo in our own old hunting country, from the Flint to the Buffalo Bull River. According to the treaty, they had no right to do this. But the spider soldiers won’t stop them. Why don’t you try to tell them about it and see what they say? They’ll just laugh in your face, as they did mine. ‘Our orders are to stay here,’ they say, safe in their forts. ‘We can’t go chasing every lawbreaker in the Territory.’”