Nadia Nichols - Buffalo Summer

Pony’s words were clipped and brusque.

“You know all you need to know,” Pete told her. “You worked a whole summer with the tribal buffalo herd.”

Pony snatched up the stack of papers she’d been marking. Her heart was hammering and her mouth was dry.

Pete continued. “I told Caleb McCutcheon I’d ask around for someone who could help him. You’ll live right there on the ranch. McCutcheon’s a good man and the Bow and Arrow is beautiful….”

“I appreciate your coming, Pete,” she said. “But I’m not interested.”

“Take the job, Pony. It pays more than you make here as a teacher or what you’d make over the summer working for some farmer.” Pete turned and walked out without another word.

Pony returned to her desk. She wanted to ignore what Pete had said, but he was right. She needed the money.

But Caleb McCutcheon would look her up and down and try not to laugh. He would probably make an effort to be polite—Pete had said he was a good, kind man. But he’d think that a woman applying for the job of managing a herd of buffalo was ridiculous.

And he would be right!

Dear Reader,

Even in this age of routine space travel, the American West has the power to evoke images of a time when buffalo roamed in herds beyond number, a time when the wind blew across plains so vast and over mountains so tall that all of eternity could not measure the boundaries of it. No animal was more closely associated with the West, or was more powerful, both physically and spiritually, than the buffalo.

For the most part, the West we romanticize is gone, paved over and plowed under by the relentless tide of humanity seeking to settle and civilize everything that is wild. The great herds of buffalo are also gone, hunted to near extinction in the nineteenth century, and the sound of their thundering hoofbeats is only a memory…or is it?

Buffalo Summer explores the possibility of returning the buffalo to their native range and restoring these venerable denizens of the wild to the American West. It also explores the conflicts and courageous hearts of two people from two vastly different cultures struggling to find common ground in the midst of a sometimes very hostile and chaotic world. Caleb McCutcheon and his herd manager, Pony Young Bear, take up the story where Montana Dreaming leaves off, and together they bring the history of the legendary Bow and Arrow full circle.

Enjoy the journey.

Nadia Nichols

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Thank you, Grandmother, for teaching me the old ways.

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Oh give me a home where the buffalo roam…

—Brewster Higley, 1873

PONY YOUNG BEAR’S TRUCK was old. It had belonged to her older brother, Steven, who had gotten it from one of the elders, who had gotten it from some government program that found used trucks for needy people on the reservation. It was an ’83 Ford, standard shift, four-wheel drive. At one time it had been red. Now it was rust-colored, but it could still squeak out an inspection sticker if taken to the right place, and Pony always made sure she took it to the right place. It was cheap and reasonably reliable transportation, but this morning she wished that it didn’t look so battered, that the paint wasn’t peeling away to reveal big brown boils, that it didn’t rattle so loudly, that the tires weren’t bald.

Above all, she wished that she didn’t have to be driving to a ranch called the Bow and Arrow outside of someplace called Katy Junction, Montana, to beg for a job she wasn’t qualified for. But she needed the money to buy school supplies for the children. Without them the kids would be at a disadvantage, and that was just one more disadvantage they didn’t need.

Pete Two Shirts had understood this. Which was why he had come to the school yesterday afternoon to tell her about this job. She’d been sitting at her desk in the sudden quiet that always descended on the heels of the departing third-grade students when a man’s voice spoke her name from the doorway.

She glanced up, startled, and laid down a stack of papers, giving no reply to his greeting. Pete walked into the room in his lean, catlike way, long hair tied back with a red strip of cloth, dressed in his typical cowboy attire of blue jeans, boots, denim jacket and red plaid shirt. He kept his thumbs hooked in the broad leather belt at his waist sporting the big fancy silver rodeo buckle and stopped just short of her desk, gazing at her beneath his black, flat-crowned hat brim. “I came by to tell you about a good-paying summer job.”

She dropped her eyes, picking up the stack of papers and tapping them on the desk to straighten them. Anything at all to avoid looking at him. Pete reminded her of a time in her life that she would much rather forget. “So tell me,” she said, suddenly short of breath.

“I got a call this morning from Guthrie Sloane, the foreman of a rancher who’s looking for someone to help with their buffalo herd. It’s the ranch I worked at this past fall, when Sloane got crippled in a horse wreck and they needed temporary help. Over near Katy Junction.”

“I know the place.” She laid the papers down again and smoothed them with her hands, avoiding his eyes. “The Bow and Arrow. Steven told me about it.” Her heart beat painfully, and her body tensed with shame and guilt even after all these years. One summer, one night, and her life had never been the same. Would never, ever be the same…

“I thought of you,” Pete said.

“I know nothing of buffalo.” Her words were clipped and brusque.

“You worked for me one whole summer with the tribal buffalo herd. You know all you need to know. You can ride a horse pretty good, too. You need that money to buy school things for the kids.”

She snatched the stack of papers yet again and rose from her chair, walking to the window and staring out. Her heart was hammering and her mouth was dry.

“I told him I’d ask around for someone who could help out,” Pete continued. “It would be an easy job. You’d live right there, on the ranch. Room and board included. Caleb McCutcheon’s a good man and the buffalo herd is tiny, nothing like the size of ours.”

“I appreciate your coming,” she said. “But I am not interested.”

“Take the job, Pony. It pays more than what you make here as a teacher, or what you’d make hoeing weeds in some farmer’s field.” Pete Two Shirts turned and walked out without another word. She stayed where she was until the sound of his boot heels and the faint ring of his spurs faded from her burning ears.

One summer. One buffalo summer…

When she finally returned to her desk, the children’s papers she held in her trembling hands were hopelessly crumpled, and no amount of smoothing could flatten them. She wanted to ignore what Pete had said, but he was right. She needed the money. And if the job paid well, did she have the right to deny her students such a windfall?

Unlike many of the children she taught, Pony had been handed the best of everything, the best that any Indian born on the rez could ever hope to have. Her brother Steven had pushed her hard, pushed her to do well in school, pushed her to apply for colleges, and when the pushing had opened doors for her, he had made sure those doors stayed open by footing the bill for her education with the money he earned as an environmental lawyer. She’d graduated from one of the best schools in the country, had gone on to get her master’s degree in early childhood education.