Evan Hunter - The Chisholms - A novel of the journey West

“Better get moving,” Hadley said.

They watched a moment longer. Then Hadley got up on the seat of the wagon, with Minerva beside him, and the girls and Bobbo in back. Minerva had a rifle across her lap, and Bobbo had the muzzle of one resting on the tailgate.

He was wishing Gideon and Will were there.

The buffalo were on one of the islands in the middle of the river. When she saw them, she thought at first they were just some bushes clumped out there on the island, brown and standing six feet tall. Then one of them moved, and she recognized them from drawings she’d seen, and said to Bonnie Sue, “Hey, there’s some buffalo.”

Bonnie Sue just looked at them and said nothing.

Annabel didn’t know what on earth was wrong with her. Maybe she missed home same as did all the others, or maybe just Sean Cassada, who used to kiss her in the cornfield fore the feud started. The buffalo weren’t scary at all. They just stood there, five of them in all, chewing grass. Looked like big hairy cows, was all. One glanced up across the river, probably smelled humans or heard them, but went right on back to eating. All five of them paid no mind to the wagon as it went rumbling by.

“Like to shoot me one of those for supper,” Bobbo said.

“How’d you get over to the island without spookin era?” his father asked.

“Don’t know,” Bobbo said. “Water’s shallow here, no more’n two or three feet deep.”

“I’ll bet any splashin’d set em runnin,” Hadley said.

“Yeah,” Bobbo said, and kept watching the buffalo.

They stopped later to look at the chart again. Ever since leaving Timothy and his wife, they looked at that chart like it was the Bible. They were getting close to the South Fork, Annabel guessed, which was where Pa said they’d have to cross over. Be there in a day or so, he said, meanwhile we just keep following this old river. The chart was marked with the word PAWNEE on either side the river, but Annabel hadn’t seen a one of them and didn’t want to either. Further west, where the river branched, there was CHEYENNE on the South fork, and ARAPAHO on the north fork, and to the northeast there was DAKOTA. However you looked at it, seemed like a big mess of Indians out there. Every time they came across some buffalo bones, Bobbo and her father studied them real close, trying to figure from whatever meat the wolves had left just how fresh the kill was. Where there were buffalo, there were Indians hunting them. But aside from those five grazing midriver, they didn’t see hide nor hair of either till the Fourth of July.

They all got near to drunk that Independence Day.

“You’re too young to be partaking of hard liquor,” her father said.

“She’s a woman now, Hadley,” Minerva said.

“Eh?”

“Give the child a sip.”

“Woman or child, which is it, eh?” Hadley asked, and handed Annabel the jug. She drank from it, and then passed it on to Bonnie Sue, who sat there looking... Annabel didn’t know what. Angry or something. Minerva began giggling.

“Way we’re swillin the stuff,” she said, “the Pawnees’ll descend on us for sure. Find a drunken band of no-goods.”

“We’ll ask them in to share a nip,” Hadley said, and winked.

“Ask them in where?” Minerva said.

“Why, here in the family circle,” Hadley said, and slapped Bobbo on the back suddenly and hugely, almost knocking him into the fire.

“Thought we were just stoppin to noon,” Minerva said, and again giggled. “Instead, here we are havin a party.”

“That’s right,” Hadley said. “This is Independence Day, the birthday of this great nation of ours...”

“Okay, Pa,” Bobbo said, grinning.

“Be ashamed to call myself American, we didn’t celebrate one way or another.”

“Right, Pa.”

“Where’s my rifle?”

“What you want with your rifle?”

“Need to shoot it off in the air, make some noise around here.”

“Hadley, don’t you go shootin—”

“You know what I hate about bein out here? It’s so damn quiet all the time.”

“You go shootin your gun, you’ll draw Indians,” Bobbo said.

“Hell with it then.”

“No reason to cuss, Had.”

“Let’s have another drink. Hell with it.”

The sun hung a fuzzy ball in the sky, the landscape seemed to shimmer. Annabel looked off into the distance. There was only dust at first. A moving cloud of dust. Rising. As though the earth itself were ascending heavenward. And then what seemed to be the timber moving. Her mouth fell open. Those were buffalo out there.

Thousands and thousands of them.

They stretched from horizon to horizon. Where her first glimpse less than a week ago had been somewhat akin to looking at a drawing in a book — five of them grazing motionless — this now, this population, struck her dumb with terror and disbelief. She had never before seen so many living things in one place or under one sky, neither humans collected in a circus tent in Bristol, nor horses or cows in pasture, nor even bees swarming or ants skittering when she poked at a hill with a stick, nor anything on God’s green earth as multitudinous as these buffalo now that darkened the plains.

They came galloping down from the hills and through the ravines toward the river, chattering among themselves to raise a din that sounded less than choirly, the thunder of their hoofs rolling like drumbeats to accompany their own disharmony. Brown they were, so brown as to be black, moving out of the shimmering haze so that it seemed their very motion caused the ground to quake and shift them out of focus, dust and haze and motion combining to create an ocean swell of furry humped flesh and flying hoofs. Minerva’s eyes popped wide open soon as she heard that distant murmur like a crowd of people mumbling stead of what were only shaggy beasts nudging and nattering as they rushed for the bank of the river. Even Bonnie Sue, who Annabel was of a mind to ask, “Excuse me, are you dead?” stirred enough to look off toward where the entire universe was in rolling motion.

Bobbo raised his rifle. Its crack sounded thin and sharp on the air. Smoke rose from the barrel in a wisp darker than the moody sky, rushing away on the wind. A beast toppled and skidded into the dirt, and Bobbo’s exultant cry carried away as swiftly as the dissipating smoke.

They ignored the parts Timothy had told them were relished by Indians, usually eaten while the beast was being butchered and the organs still fresh. Timothy had witnessed virtual orgies, he’d said, braves smashing in the skulls of slaughtered cows or bulls to get at the succulent brains inside, slashing open bellies to scoop out blood with their cupped hands. Kidneys, eyes, testicles, and snouts, hoofs of unborn calves, udders warm with milk, livers, tongues — all were delicacies. Said he’d once enjoyed a raw pudding of liver and brains, still steaming, offered to him by his father-in-law in a bowl made of ribs cut from the slain buffalo. Enough to have made Annabel want to throw up. Never told them how to skin one, though, so they just went about butchering it the same way they’d have butchered a deer back home.

Bobbo cut off the balls and then slit the jugular and let the blood drain out. He cut a ring all the way around each of the hind legs, and then sliced both legs up to the crotch and peeled off the hide and did the same with the front legs, where he made his cuts up to the massive chest. He was sweating long before he finished peeling all four legs, and was beginning to think there was an easier way of doing this. He’d have to ask somebody when they got to Fort Laramie, but meanwhile the carcass and the job were spread out there on the ground in front of him.