people, and it made Lieutenant Dunbar the same.
The arrival of the buffalo would have brightened the lagging Comanche spirits in any event, but the lieutenant knew as the column struck out across the prairie that his presence added a certain luster to the undertaking, and he rode a little taller at the thought of that.
Long before they reached Fort Sedgewick, scouts brought word that a big trail had been found where the lieutenant said it would be, and more men were immediately dispatched to locate the main herd’s grazing area.
Each scout took several fresh mounts in two. They would ride until they found the herd, then come back to the column to report its size and how many miles away it was. They would also report the presence of any enemies who might be lurking around the Comanche hunting grounds.
As the column passed by, Dunbar made a brief stop at the fort. He gathered a supply of tobacco, his revolver and rifle, a tunic, a grain ration for Cisco, and was back at the side of Kicking Bird and his assistants within a matter of minutes.
After they’d crossed the river, Kicking Bird motioned him forward and the two men rode beyond the head of the column. It was then that Dunbar got his first look at the buffalo trail: a gigantic swath of torn-up ground a half mile wide, sweeping over the prairie like some immense, dung-littered highway.
Kicking Bird was describing something in signs that the lieutenant couldn’t fully grasp when two puffs of dust appeared on the horizon. The dust swirls gradually became riders. A pair of returning scouts.
Leading spare mounts, they came in at a gallop and pulled up directly in front of Ten Bears’s entourage to make their report.
Kicking Bird rode over to confer, and Dunbar, not knowing what was being said, watched the medicine man closely, hoping to divine something from his expression.
What he saw didn’t help him much. If he’d known the language, he would have understood that the herd had stopped to graze in a great valley about ten miles south of the column’s present position, a place they could easily reach by nightfall.
The conversation suddenly became animated and the lieutenant leaned reflexively forward as if to hear. The scouts were making long, sweeping gestures, first to the south and then to the east. The faces of their listeners grew markedly more somber, and after questioning the scouts a few moments more, Ten Bears held a council on horseback with his closest advisers.
Shortly, two riders broke away from the meeting and galloped back down the line. while they were gone Kicking Bird glanced once at the lieutenant, and Dunbar knew his face well enough now to know that this expression meant not all was as it should be.
Hoofbeats sounded behind him, and the lieutenant turned to see a dozen warriors charging to the front of the line. The fierce one was leading them.
They stopped next to Ten Bears’s group, held a brief consultation, and, taking one of the scouts with them, flew off in an easterly direction.
The column began to move again, and as Kicking Bird came back to his place next to the white soldier, he could see that the lieutenant’s eyes were full of questions. It was not possible to explain this thing to him, this bad omen.
Enemies had been discovered in the neighborhood, mysterious enemies from another world. By their deeds they had proved themselves to be people without value and without soul, wanton slaughterers with no regard for Comanche rights. It was important to punish them.
So Kicking Bird avoided the lieutenant’s questioning eyes. Instead, he watched the dust of Wind In His Hair’s party trail off to the east and said a silent prayer for the success of their mission.
From the moment he saw the little rose-colored bumps rising in the distance, he knew he was coming on to something ugly. There were black specks on the rose-colored bumps, and as the column drew closer, he could see that they were moving. Even the air seemed suddenly closer and the lieutenant loosened another button on his tunic.
Kicking Bird had brought him to the front with a purpose. But his intention was not to punish. It was to educate, and the education could best be served by seeing rather than talking. The impact would be greater in front. It would be greater for both of them. Kicking Bird had never seen this sight, either.
Like mercury in a thermometer, a bilious mixture of revulsion and lament climbed steadily in Lieutenant Dunbar’s throat. He had to swallow constantly to keep it from coming out as he and Kicking Bird led the column through the center of the killing ground.
He counted twenty-seven buffalo. And though he couldn’t count them, he figured there were at least as many ravens swarming over each body. In some cases the heads of the buffalo were covered with the battling black birds, screaming and twisting and flopping as they fought for the eyeballs. Those whose eyes had already been swallowed played host to larger swarms, which pecked ravenously as they strolled back and forth on the carcasses, defecating every so often as if to accent the richness of their feast.
Wolves were appearing from all directions. They would be crouching at the shoulders and haunches and bellies as soon as the column passed.
But there would be more than enough for every wolf and bird within miles. The lieutenant calculated roughly and came up with a figure of fifteen thousand. Fifteen thousand pounds of dead flesh decaying in the hot afternoon sun.
All this left to rot, he thought, wondering if some archenemy of his Indian friends had left this as a macabre warning.
Twenty-seven hides had been stripped away from neck to buttocks, and as he passed within feet of a particularly large animal, he saw that its open mouth held no tongue. Others had been robbed of their tongues, too. But that was all. Everything else had been left.
Lieutenant Dunbar suddenly thought of the dead man in the alley. Like these buffalo, the man had been lying on his side. The bullet that had been fired into the base of his skull had taken the right side of the man’s jaw out when it exited.
He had been just John Dunbar then, a fourteen-year-old boy. In succeeding years he’d seen scores of dead men: with whole faces missing, men whose brains leaked onto the ground like spilled mush. But the first dead man was the one he remembered best. Mainly because of the fingers.
He’d been standing right behind the constable when it was discovered that two of the dead man’s fingers had been sliced off. The constable had looked around and said to no one in particular, “This fella got killed for his rings.”
And now these buffalo lying dead on the ground, their guts spread all over the prairie just because someone wanted their tongues and hides. It struck Dunbar as the same kind of crime.
When he saw an unborn calf, half hanging from its mother’s slit abdomen, the same word he’d first heard that evening in the alley jumped into his mind like a glowing sign.
Murder.
He glanced at Kicking Bird. The medicine man was staring at the wreckage of the unborn calf, his face a long, sober mask.
Lieutenant Dunbar turned away then and looked back along the column. The whole band was weaving its way through the carnage. Hungry as they were after weeks of scraps, no one had stopped to help himself or herself to the bounty spread out around them. The voices that had been so raucous all morning were now stilled, and he could see in their faces the melancholy that comes from knowing a good trail has suddenly turned bad.
The horses were casting giant shadows by the time they reached the hunting grounds. While the women and children set to work pitching camp in the lee of a long ridge, most of the men rode ahead to scout the herd before night fell.
Lieutenant Dunbar went with them.
