S. Stirling - The Scourge of God

He could feel his hair starting to bristle; the low rumble of their hooves was like a vibration that echoed in the tissues of his lungs and gut. And he could hear the sound of their feeding, nearly a hundred thousand pairs of strong jaws tearing at the Western wheatgrass, needle-and-thread and sagewort.

"Pretty, aren't they?" Red Leaf said, looking down at the mass of moving muscle and bone and horn and smiling with delight. "Never thought I'd see anything like it when I was your age, except in a movie. This is a cow-calf herd-cows, calves, yearling and two-year bulls. The big herd bulls mostly stay away until the rutting season, in another couple of months."

" Awesome was more the word I was thinking, not pretty," Rudi said. "And so many! Weren't they rare before the Change?"

"There were a couple of hundred thousand around, on ranches mainly," Red Leaf said. "And they can double every three years, if there's room, even if you harvest a third every year-you just take the bulls. They only need one for every twenty or so cows. There's another herd twice as big as this a few miles north; millions altogether."

Mathilda blinked. "Do they go away in the winter?"

"No, they just scatter a bit. Storms that'll kill half the cattle on a range don't even bother 'em-they don't freeze and they can get at grass through any ordinary snow."

"Why hunt a lot of them now, then? Why not a bit at a time when you need them?" she asked.

Red Leaf nodded. "We do take a few every so often, for fresh meat; and we have a winter hunt, for robes-that's when the hair's best. But this is the best time of year to make pemmican; you dry the meat, grind it up to powder and flakes, mix it with melted fat and pour it into rawhide parfleche bags. It'll keep for three, four years if you're careful. It makes great soup base, with a little dried onion."

Mathilda nodded gravely in her turn; she'd tasted the results. Rudi had the same thought: pemmican was convenient and nourishing, and that was about all you could say for it.

Red Leaf raised a brow and waved at the prairie. "I know what you're thinking. But this has been a good year; good rain, good grass-third good year in a row. Sure as fate, though, we get bad droughts every so often. Sometimes for years at a time. Then most of the herds will die, cattle and tatonka both, or we have to slaughter everything except some of the breeding stock to let the grazing recover faster. So we keep a couple of years' food on hand. That way after a dry-year dieback we can harvest less. Then they'll breed back faster."

Mathilda nodded thoughtfully. "Very sensible," she said.

"Pemmican isn't hump steak by a long shot, but it beats starving to death," the itancan said. "Which is what the wolves do when the rains fail."

He waved, and Rudi's group gathered close, their horses' noses in a circle; the young men and a few of the young women of the hocoka who'd be going on their first hunt closed in around them. His first words were to the outsiders.

"OK, now you're hunk-ate, you're entitled to take part in the hunt. That doesn't mean you have to do it. These aren't cattle; they're wild animals, and big ones. You come off your horse once they start moving, or your horse goes down, you'll have to be scraped up with a shovel. Even guys who've been doing this for years get killed sometimes. Understand?"

They all nodded; Rudi kept his face sober, but he felt a grin bubbling up beneath it, like the ones that were splitting Edain's face, and Fred's. Odard was looking politely interested; he might not have gone if the other men hadn't, but he was going to enjoy himself anyway. The only male of their party not here was Father Ignatius, who'd politely excused himself to continue hearing confessions and celebrating masses; and to consult with the hocoka 's physicians about replenishing their medicine chests; and to the brain-cracking labor of putting their reports in cipher.

And none of the girls was going to back down if the others didn't, either. They wouldn't have been here if they were the types who could back down from a dare, even an unspoken one.

Mathilda and Virginia don't seem to have hit it off. That's a pity; they're rather alike, in some ways.

Red Leaf nodded, then spoke a little louder to include the Sioux youngsters: "OK, here's how we do it, and don't you roll your eyes while I'm talking, Mato Kokipapi. The bears may be afraid of you, but tatonka ain't. You've helped your folks with their cattle since you could ride, right?

"Sure, itancan," the young man in question said.

"Well, there's a good goddamned reason you haven't been allowed on the buffalo hunt yet and how heavy a bow you could pull is only part of it. Tatonka aren't cattle. You can get 'em moving but you can't head them off. We love tatonka, but remember that the Buffalo People don't love us; we're just like the wolves or the damn lions to them. They don't care if you yell and wave a lariat in their faces. If you get between them and where they want to go they'll smash right into you and dance on you, and they'll hook you or your horse if they can. You keep behind them or alongside… but not too close."

He pointed, obviously taking the opportunity provided by the new-comers to force the Lakota youngsters to listen to what they'd already heard many times; that one more time that could save a life. Even with the mounting excitement Rudi recognized the manner. Sam Aylward and Sir Nigel had the same technique of patient repetition to drive essential lessons home in resistant young skulls.

"Now, everyone see those guys?"

A dozen mounted Sioux were easing their horses into the herd on the southern fringe, careful not to spook any of them. The animals moved away from them, but slowly; sometimes a ring would form, the bearded horned heads looking inward. A few of them blatted in surprise when the riders approached and lumbered off, or bellowed and pawed the earth, but most put their heads down and began grazing again almost immediately. The men were mostly older, in their thirties or even forties, and they were lofting balls of fleece at the odd buffalo here and there. When one struck a gout of pink dust went up, staining the beast's hump.

"Those are the Choosers. They've been marking the ones you don't shoot for a couple of days now."

Ah, Rudi thought. They're picking the young bulls that won't charge or make threat displays. Selecting the most even-tempered ones.

The itancan continued: "Don't go near the cows with calves, or the young females. When the herd starts to move, the mothers will drift to the inside anyway, so stay towards the rear and the outside. The other reason we have the big hunt now is that they start breeding in July, and Iktomi! they get mean! What we're after is the yearling and two-year bulls and the barren cows. Give them an arrow through the lungs or heart, and then sheer off. Finish them with the lance later when they're down. Start when you hear the call and stop when you hear the call for that."

Rudi nodded, and there was a murmur of agreement from the others. The Sioux dismounted and gathered in a murmuring circle around a small fire of sweetgrass; Red Leaf was waving it with an eagle-wing fan. Rudi made the Invoking sign, raised his bow above his head and murmured his own hunter's prayer:

"Forgive us, brothers, and speak well of us to the Guardians; thank you for your gift of life. It won't be wasted. Horned Lord, witness that we take from Your bounty in need, not wantonness. Guide the spirits of those we slay home to the fields of the Land of Summer, where no evil comes, until they are reborn through the Cauldron of Her who is mother to us all. This we ask, knowing that the Hour of the Hunter shall come for us too at the appointed time, for we borrow our bodies from Earth for only a little space, and Earth must be fed."