“This gonna be good for us, Shad,” he said, his heart filled with an exquisite happiness. “Not just you an’ me. Good for all of us.”
“Shell Woman—she and the young’uns—none of ’em ever knowed anything but this prerra country down here. They ain’t stomped all around the mountains like your family, Scratch. Gonna be good for ’em to lay eyes on some new sights.”
“You need help tomorry?”
Sweete shook his head. “The two of us get it done.”
With a huge smile, Titus asked, “Be set mornin’ after next, Shad? You’ll have it all packed for Green River country?”
Bull Hump sleepily rubbed his knuckles into his eyes. The tall man knelt beside his weary son and tousled the boy’s hair. “Damn if we won’t be ready to prance north, Titus Bass. Back to beaver country come first light!”
Wind like this could make a horse downright fractious. The way it blew the old snow along the ground in gusts that swirled almost as high as a horse’s nose—it frightened the poor, thick-headed animals.
“We best tie ’em off and leave ’em here,” Scratch finally suggested after the horses had been fighting their riders. “Never get up close enough on them cows to get a shot, these dumb brutes making all this noise with the wind.”
“We can slide off over there,” Shad Sweete suggested, pointing his longrifle at a faint line of green that hinted at a brush-choked coulee.
As they came out of the saddle minutes later, Titus assured, “Shell Woman an’ your pups, they’re gonna be fine, outta the wind where we left ’em with my family. Them dogs of mine, they’ll scare off most critters what try an’ sneak close.”
Sweete glanced up at the lowering sky. “We best make meat soon, afore this storm slams us but good.”
“Gonna take us time to ride back to that notch in the ridge,” he said as he poked his trigger finger out of the slot in his blanket mitten. Bass turned and looked over his shoulder, unable to see any of the distant landmarks for the roll and heave of the earth, not to mention the way the wind had kicked up, tormenting the old snow into what might soon become a ground blizzard.
Shad sighed, “Leastways, we got us a good chance to get back afore dark sets in.”
They started down the barren, twisting bottom of the coulee, headed for the flat where they could hear the lowing of the shaggy beasts. Titus shouldered into the gale and whispered, “Pray our medicine’s strong and the wind don’t shift on us.”
He swore he could smell those buff well before the two of them eased up to the end of the coulee and the first of the hump-shouldered creatures emerged out of the swirling snow. Strong, heady, an honest-to-goshen smell of the earth—a fragrance perhaps made all the stronger what with the sharp, metallic tang to the wind quickly quartering around to the north. It still made his senses tingle—after all these seasons, after all those years of waiting and wanting that had gone before he came west out of St. Louis … the nearness of these mystical beasts still made his blood run hot and throb in his temples like an Apsaluuke drum.
“You smell that?” Sweete asked, almost breathless.
“Buff.”
“No—ain’t buff what I smell.”
Scratch closed his eyes and held his breath, drawing the freezing air into his nose. Finally he opened them and said, “How long it been since you hunted buffalo?”
“It ain’t been that long,” Shad growled defensively. “An’ it ain’t buffalo I’m smelling! Something else—”
“There!” Titus whispered sharply, the breathsmoke ripped from his lips as he spoke.
At least two dozen of them slowly inched out of the layers of gauzy ground snow swirled into tiny cyclones by the fickle wind. The dark animals were there, then they were gone. There again, and gone. Slowly plodding past the edge of the hill, their hooves kicking up tiny cascades of white, their long beards dragging over the top of the icy crust, frost steaming from their black, glistening nostrils like smoke belching from the double-barreled stacks of a Mississippi paddle wheeler. That hot breath encapsulated the huge, shaggy heads in wreaths of fog, tiny molecules of moisture quickly freezing into masks of matted ice.
The huge beasts snorted and blew, trumpeting their cold discomfort or their fright at the wind to those around them, some of the buffalo tossing their horns menacingly at those who crowded too close as they plodded past the unseen hunters.
“See what I told you, Shad?” he whispered. “That’s buff you’re smelling.”
“Maybeso it was,” Sweete answered in an unsure way. “I’ll take a shot from here.”
“Wait’ll you see a cow.”
“Bull’s gonna be tough and rangy now,” Shad agreed. “I can almost taste the boss right now.”
“You miss, we’re gonna have to chase this bunch, or find us some more—”
“You hear that?”
“Yeah,” Titus responded as the bellowing grew louder.
“Bulls can’t be fighting for the rut,” Sweete said guardedly.
“Something’s got ’em worked up.”
“You figger I should shoot?”
“Way they’re all on the move—you better shoot now or we ain’t gonna have us ’nother chance.”
Sweete immediately took three steps forward and went to one knee. After flipping back the frizzen to check the priming powder in the pan, he drew the hammer back to half cock, brought the butt plate against his shoulder, then dragged the hammer back to full cock before slipping his bare index finger inside the trigger guard.
She was no more than forty yards away when the gun roared. Staggering to the side, all but disappearing in the swirl of snow, the cow tumbled to the side, where she kicked her legs twice and lay still.
“You dropped ’er!” Bass roared, his words muffled by the bellows from the nearby beasts.
As Sweete quickly reloaded, Titus watched several of the other buffalo pause momentarily near the cow, stopping to sniff at her body, snort at the blood on the snow—suddenly they all bolted as if they were one.
“Can’t stand the smell of blood.”
Shad gazed over at Titus while he got to his feet. “Ain’t blood what scared ’em off.” Sweete sniffed the air again, nose held high.
“What you smelling now?”
“Same as it was before,” the big man answered as the bellows grew louder.
They were both drawn to turn by the unmistakable, snarling growls.
“See what you gone and done?” Bass grumbled.
“Me?” Shad replied. “What’d I do?”
“You gone and give them damn wolves some fresh blood on the wind.”
As he and Titus started away from the mouth of the coulee, Sweete asked, “You think them critters comin’ for our cow?”
“Only a matter of time afore they do.”
“Let’s butcher off what we can do real quick, then ride on back to the women,” Sweete suggested.
“You start on the boss and some fleece,” Scratch said as they inched toward the dark carcass sprawled upon the icy snow. “I’ll get the tongue first off.”
After propping their rifles against the ice-crusted flank of the cow, both men went to work as the wind picked up and the snow billowed around them all the more.
“Can’t hardly see what I’m doing,” Sweete grumbled from between the cow’s legs.
“Just don’t cut your goddamned fingers off, Shadrach.”
By the time Titus had the savory tongue freed from the mouth, Sweete had carved off a yard square of the cow’s hide and had it laid on the blood-streaked snow at his feet. Now they both put their knives to work with a growing urgency—listening to the snorts and bellows of the buffalo all around them in the blinding storm, hearing the growling, snarling, snapping wolves work their way closer and closer through the nervous herd.
“That be about all we’ll need for now,” Scratch said as he plopped some of the bloody, greasy strips of fat on that piece of hide stretched across the snowy ground.
What the mountain men called “fleece,” this thin layer of fat lying just beneath the animal’s skin could satisfy any man who had just about had his fill of the extra-lean meat trimmed from a buffalo.
