Buffalo Palace

long-tailed house cat trapped in a room filled with bent-wood rockers.

One evening after it had been raining solid for the better part of a night and the following day, they sat by their smoky fire, broiling pieces of meat the size of their fists on sharpened sticks called appolaz. To his utter surprise, Bass heard that first yip-yip-yipping cry of a nearby coyote.

“Didn’t think they come out in the rain,” Scratch said, sniffling as he dragged his wet wool coat under his red, raw nose.

“That’s medicine,” Hatcher explained matter-of-factly as he poked a finger in his half-raw meat, then returned it to the flames.

“What’s medicine?” Bass repeated.

“That song-dog,” Graham said.

Titus scoffed, “What’s the medicine in some lonely ol’ coyote singing to the sun as it falls outta the sky?”

Clearing his throat, Hatcher said, “Scratch, ye damn well know I’d rather spit face-on into a strong wind than tell ye a bald-faced lie.”

“You ain’t ever told me no bald-face what I know of,” Bass admitted.

“Then ye damn well pin ye ears back and give Mad Jack Hatcher a good listen here. Some winters back I heard tell a coyote what comes out to howl in the rain—why, that coyote really be a Injun.”

“You mean a Injun coming round to scout our camp?”

“No—a coyote” Hatcher repeated. “A coyote what used to be a Injun.”

Starting to grin, Bass was sure now he was getting his leg pulled, and good. “No matter you swore you’d tell me no bald-face … I can tell when a man’s poking fun at me—”

“You believe what ye-wanna believe, Titus Bass,” Hatcher interrupted. “And ye ain’t gotta believe what ye ain’t ready to believe.”

Solomon Fish declared, “He’s telling you the straight of it, Scratch.”

“You mean you ain’t rousting me?” Titus asked.

Wagging his head, Hatcher replied, “No. Just telling ye the truth of it, as I knows the truth to be.”

For a moment he listened to that coyote wailing off-key out there in the soggy hills. “You mean to tell me that there ain’t no coyote singing out there?”

“Oh, there’s a coyote all right,” Caleb Wood testified. “A buffler coyote.”

“What’s a buffler coyote?”

Hatcher said, “Scratch, surely ye see’d how coyotes toiler the herds.”

Bass nodded. “Yep, them and the wolves. So that’s what you call a buffler coyote, eh?”

“Yep.”

Still grinning, Bass said, “So—what is it? A buffler coyote … or a Injun?”

Wood wagged his head like a schoolmaster who had grown frustrated explaining some fine point to one of his thickheaded young charges. “Tell ’im, Jack.”

“One what sings in the rain be a coyote what was once’t a Injun,” Hatcher said patiently. “Kill’t by a enemy while’st his medicine was still strong.”

“You’re trying to tell me all that howling’s from a dead warrior?”

Wood nodded eagerly. “I do believe he’s getting it, Jack!”

“Wait a shake here,” Bass protested. “If’n his medicine’s so strong, how come he gets hisself kill’t?”

“’Cause the spirits want that warrior and his powers,” Hatcher replied.

“Why them spirits want the Injun for if he’s been killed by a enemy?”

“Them spirits change the Injun to a coyote critter,” Hatcher continued, “so’s it can take some revenge for some wrong done those spirits.”

Titus swallowed unconsciously, sensing a heaviness to the air about him as the coyote took up its cry once more. The rain continued to hammer the branches of the trees and the half-dozen nearby sections of canvas and Russian sheeting they had stretched over their bedding. Drops hissed into their fire pit that struggled to maintain its warmth.

“So maybe there’s buffler near-abouts,” Scratch finally broke the long silence. “If’n that’s a buffler coyote.”

“Don’t mean there’s buffler about at all,” Jack said. He pointed with the appolaz in the general direction of the coyote’s howl, then poked his finger at his browning meat. “All it means is that spirit critter got something the spirits want told to one of us niggers here.”

“Now for sure I don’t believe you.”

“It be the truth,” John Rowland testified.

Bass wagged his head. “That coyote wants to tell something to one of us?”

Jack tried biting into his meat, finding it still too raw, returning it to the flames. “Way I got it figgered—you was the only man here what didn’t know ’bout such spirit doin’s, Titus Bass.”

“So I’m the one that coyote wants to talk to, eh?”

Scratch waited a moment while the others fell silent, figuring that if he was patient enough, there was sure to come some gust of laughter that would prove to him the others were having their fun at his expense. But, instead, as he looked from face to face to face, the others stared into the fire, or regarded their supper, faces grave and intent.

Finally Scratch said, “All right, you all heard that spirit critter afore. And if … if I’m the only one what didn’t know nothing ’bout such a thing till now—what you figger such a spirit critter’s got to tell me?”

Hatcher shrugged slightly and said, “I ’spect we’re going to find out soon enough what all his song means.”

With the first days of spring they had abandoned that country and slogged north by west, following the Wind River itself, then slowly worked their way through those mountains* they followed north as the days lengthened and the land began to bloom. Across carpets of alpine wildflowers they slipped over the passes—feasting mostly on the elk fattening themselves up as the herds migrated to higher elevations, following the season’s new grasses ever higher. Overhead flew the undulating black vees of the white-breasted honking longnecks and their smaller canvas- backed, ring-necked, or green-crowned cousins, heading back to the north. Late each afternoon it seemed the sky would reverberate with the racket of beating wings as the flocks passed low, circled, then swooped in—beginning to congregate near every pocket of water, there to feed by the thousands and rest those hours until morning when again they would take to the sky in a deafening rush of wings.

As he watched the monstrous vees disappear to the north, slowly spearing their way across the springtime blue, the carrot-topped Caleb Wood always grumbled. “Headed to Blackfoot country—just over them peaks.”

Wood’s sourness always made Jack Hatcher laugh, which invariably caused the legs of that badger cap he wore to shake on either side of his face. “Damned birds make fools out of us, don’t they, Caleb? Travel free an’ easy while’st we watch the skyline, made to keep our eyes on our backtrail—scared for losing our hair! All while them goddamned birds go flying off to see what haps with them Britishers up north come ever’ spring … then on the wing back here to spy on us come the autumn!”

Running his dirty hand through hair so auburn it had a copper glow to it, Rufus Graham sighed. “Up there in that Three Forks land I hear tell beaver’s so thick, you just walk up and club ’em over the head, Jack.”

“I got close enough to know that’s the certain truth,” Bass replied with a nod. “Beaver big and glossy—more of ’em on every stream than I’d ever see’d.”

“A damned cursed country, that be!” Hatcher snapped. “A country I’ve vowed I’ll never set foot in for all the grief it’s caused my poor grievin’ ma.”

All winter Solomon Fisn had been working on cultivating a beard with blond ringlets in it to match his flowing mane that reached the middle of his back. Turning to Bass, he agreed with Jack. “There be a reason why that Three Forks country crawls with beaver.”

“An’ their name be Blackfoots!” Hatcher snarled.

Elbridge Gray was the first out of the saddle that afternoon at the edge of a meadow where they planned to camp. With the beginnings of a potbelly starting to slip over his belt, he was constantly tugging up his leather britches. “By God, I’m a man what values his hair more’n all the beaver what’s in Chouteau’s warehouse!”

Proud of his considerable mane, Solomon roared, “And my hair more’n all the beaver in the hull of St.