Shortgrass Song (75 page)

He was looking forward to the end of the trip. The constant rumble of the rails beneath him numbed his senses. He didn't like traveling in a box. He could hardly wait to get a horse under him on the Arapaho Trail.

The town of Holcomb approached. He felt the train slowing down. He recognized the country, but it had changed. It had once belonged to the Arapaho and the Cheyenne, who took good care of it, for it took good care of them. Now it was in the hands of a thousand greedy white men. He had signed it away to save his tribe. It saddened him to return after all these winters and suddenly see the changes, as if they had come overnight.

He turned his eyes from the window and stared straight ahead. He brought to mind the images of the plains and mountains before the white man. They came to him with more clarity than the memories of the canvas house he had left behind only two days ago. He longed for something old and familiar.

A murmur came from the rear of the passenger car. Someone spoke loudly. Someone laughed. Shoes scuffled across the aisle. Excited voices tittered and shrieked with surprise. Long Fingers came slowly out of his daze. He felt too weak to look around. The giggling came up behind him. Benches creaked under squirming thighs. Through the streaked windowpane he glimpsed a surge of whiteness. It seemed a cloud had come down to race the train into town. He turned his head slowly. His old eyes focused.

On the mast of the wind wagon, the billowing sail stood level with his car window. He saw Buster at the wheel, Caleb with his hand on the rope. They were bouncing on the spring seat, searching the passing windows as they gained gradually on the train. Long Fingers jerked a bandanna from his pocket and used it to polish the glass. Caleb saw him and pointed. Buster looked, grinned, waved. The black man's hat flew from his head in the wind. Above the rumble of the train Long Fingers heard Caleb hollering with the voice of a wild wolf.

The dirt road veered from the tracks to miss a shed and two houses. Long Fingers pressed his palms against the glass and watched the cloud flash between the buildings. Then Buster steered it hard against the tracks again. Long Fingers was laughing as the other passengers gathered around him to watch the strange vehicle run. The train slowed, and the wind wagon sped onward, out of sight, careening precariously on two wheels as it disappeared.

The Indian agent at Darlington had telegraphed ahead, and a crowd had gathered at the Holcomb Station to greet Chief Long Fingers. Colonel Holcomb came, as did Amelia and Gloria, each with a baby wrapped in her arms. Horace Gribble had made the trip from Plum Creek with his wife and children. Tess Wiley stood with Piggin' String McCoy. Dan Brooks sat on the highest board of the loading chute. Captain Dubois brought a brass band from Colorado Springs to announce the visitor's arrival with a fanfare. Photographers from Denver set up their cumbersome boxes.

The wind wagon beat the train to the depot, and its crew leapt out onto the loading platform. When the train stopped, the band launched a march, and the crowd anxiously watched the passenger cars for some sign of the chief. Long Fingers came down the landing from a car near the caboose, carrying his leather satchel and regarding the young town with wonder.

“There he is!” Buster cried, pointing. He and Caleb went to escort the chief to the waiting crowd. But first Long Fingers had to play his harmonica along with the brass band.

“This is my wife and baby,” Buster said after the fanfare ended.

Gloria drew her child close to her, afraid the old savage might scalp him before her very eyes. The chief smiled at her.

Horace Gribble was next in line.

“I am happy to see you again, Gribble,” Long Fingers said. “Man-on-a-Cloud has told me that you refused to kill the Indians at Sand Creek. That was all you could do for us. I have remembered you well.”

Horace swallowed hard and almost wept.

Long Fingers came to Ab. “Holcomb. You still grow the flowers for your wife's place in the ground?”

Ab nodded. “Yes.”

“Good. I liked your wife. She gave us beef.”

Before they left for the ranch, they posed for photographs, Long Fingers holding his hat over his heart as if singing the national anthem. As the crowd dispersed toward the coaches, he followed Buster and Caleb to the wind wagon.

“I am going to ride in this wagon with you,” he said. “I want to feel the wind push me like a cloud.”

They hoisted the sail and shot down the street. Most of the carriage horses wore blinders and didn't see the wind wagon until it had passed. But Dan Brooks's horse saw it coming just as Dan put his foot in the stirrup. The cow pony vaulted forward, kicking as he ran, leaving Dan in the dirt, stunned. Long Fingers laughed loudly.

Caleb trimmed the sail to reduce speed, and the wind wagon trundled smartly toward Amelia's mansion where a lavish dinner had been prepared in the chief's honor.

“Tonight we have to play some songs for the folks at the house,” Buster said. “But tomorrow we can do whatever you want.”

“I would like to ride one of the Nez Perce horses,” he said.

“You can have your pick of 'em,” Caleb promised. “Where are we goin'?”

“I would like to ride alone. Into the mountains. Stay there all day by myself. Maybe so camp there a night or two.”

Caleb looked to Buster for approval.

“Whatever the chief wants to do,” Buster said.

Caleb shrugged. “Chief, consider the mountains yours.”

“I do,” he said, nodding.

The guests at Amelia's mansion put up with the chief's discordant harmonica playing as long as they could, then found reason to depart. Long Fingers was worn out from traveling and asked if he could turn in, too. He was offered the guest suite but requested Buster's old cabin. The guest suite was upstairs, and he was afraid the mansion would catch on fire and trap him there.

“Chief,” Buster asked, setting the old warrior's bag down on the burlap carpet. “Somethin' I been wonderin' about for years. Whatever happened to the Snake Woman. Did she ever have that baby?”

The chief searched the black man's face. “Caleb Holcomb never told you about it?”

Buster shook his head, then listened to the story Long Fingers had put together over the years by talking to Indians who had witnessed the Pease River slaughter. He remembered the spring of '75 and how Caleb had avoided his eyes. He knew something terrible had happened to Caleb out there but never suspected anything like that. Long Fingers assured him that no one knew for sure who had killed Medicine Horse but that Caleb was at the battle and had even led the charge.

He lay awake in the Cincinnati house that night and wondered why Caleb had never told him. But then Caleb was not the man for that kind of confrontation. That was the sort of thing that made him drift. Caleb was always looking for a warm welcome and an eager audience. When problems arose, he saddled up and rode on.

He wished Caleb had told him years ago, so he could have told Caleb it was all right. There was probably no way he could have avoided being in that battle. Anyway, if Buster had seen Medicine Horse drawing a bead on Caleb in the Pease River valley, he would have killed the young warrior himself. He would rather have destroyed his own flesh and blood than see Caleb dead. It was his own fault for not resisting Snake Woman in the dugout years before. He had always regretted that mistake.

NINETY-ONE

Long Fingers rose before dawn and carried his satchel out into the morning moonlight. He stripped naked and opened the bag. Inside he found a breechcloth, a pair of leggings, a deerskin shirt, and a single eagle feather, somewhat ruffled and crimped along the spine. He put the clothes on and wove the feather into his moon-silvered hair. Finally, he removed a straw-stuffed Arapaho pad saddle from the satchel and went to the corral.

Caleb got up at sunrise and found Long Fingers looking over the spotted horses. “Mornin', chief. Why didn't you wear that Indian outfit yesterday? Those photographers would have got a kick out of you in that getup.”

“It is not for them to see. Only for you, and Man-on-a-Cloud, and the mountains.”

“Oh.” Caleb felt honored. “Do you want some breakfast?”

“No. I am not hungry. I am looking at the horses.”

“Well, you pick any one you want. I'll go hurry Buster up. He'll want to see you off. I can tell you want to get an early start.”

“Caleb Holcomb,” the chief said. “I want to tell you something.”

The musician stopped.

“You send my women the buffalo skins in the winter of the Red River war. You fight with my boys against Kicking Dog and the Comancheros. You have done many things for my people. Now I ask you for something more.”

Caleb swallowed hard, slapped his palms against his thighs. “What is it?”

“The boomers are going to make my people have little pieces of land. They must learn to farm, or they will lose everything. When you go south, you help Red Hawk. You know how to make a farm. I know you don't like it. I don't like it either. But you please teach Red Hawk how to make a good farm.”

Caleb's eyes became moist, and he heard the wind in the buffalo grass. He remembered the first time he rode to Indian Territory, a captive of the Snake Woman. “I will do that for you, Long Fingers.”

“Good,” the chief replied. “And now I want to give you something. I have thought about this a long time. Now you will have a new name, and it is White Wolf, because that is what you are like. I hear you make songs at night that way. Then you go.”

Caleb tried to say the name but couldn't. He nodded, smiled, looked at the ground. He had to turn away then, a tear running down his cheek as if his pounding heart had pumped it out like a windmill.

*   *   *

When Caleb brought Buster out after breakfast, the chief had an Indian bridle and his pad saddle on a gentle old mare and was walking her around outside the corral.

“You picked a good one,” Buster said.

“She is old and slow, like me,” the chief replied. “But plenty smart.”

Caleb looked at the Indian rig with some concern. “You can borrow one of our saddles if you want.”

“I like this saddle.” Long Fingers looked over the bald hill to the west. The sun had not yet risen beyond the Pinery but was bathing the high places in a fiery hue. “Man-on-a-Cloud,” he said, “why are there so many wildflowers growing on that hill? I do not remember it that way.”

“We plant 'em there every spring,” Buster said. “Pete's buried up there. We throw the seeds around his grave.”

“Do you have any seeds today?”

“I have all kinds of 'em.”

Long Fingers straightened the reins in his hands. “I told you a long time ago that they will grow all by theirself if you leave them alone. Do you remember?”

Buster nodded.

“I have changed my mind about it. It is not a bad idea to help them grow a little bit. And to grow them where you want them. Get some of the seeds now, and I will help you and White Wolf plant them on the hill.”

Buster raised his eyebrows at Caleb. “All right, chief. It's about time we planted 'em anyway, ain't it, White Wolf?”

“It's just the right time of year, Man-on-a-Cloud.”

“Bring your fiddles and we will play a song or two before I go into the mountains,” Long Fingers said.

They gathered their seeds and their musical instruments and climbed the hill. They cast the seeds first, pouring them into their hands from the old tobacco pouches and broadcasting them around Pete's gravestone. Then they sat on the ground and played “Old Dan Tucker” and “Camptown Races.”

As they played, the ranch came to life below them. Gloria left the Cincinnati house and headed for Amelia's mansion. Lee Fong charged into the vegetable garden with a hoe. Piggin' String and Dan rode down a lane and let themselves into the south pasture through a sagging wooden gate. Ab went to the wildflower garden and cut some pink shooting stars to place over Ella's grave and some wild indigos to go over Matthew's.

The harmonica seemed to take the breath out of Long Fingers. He slipped it into a pocket on his deerskin shirt and straightened himself slowly as he got to his feet. “I am going to take the old trail into the mountains now,” he said.

“You sure you don't want us to go along?” Caleb asked.

The chief led his horse up next to the grave marker and, using the stone to step on, climbed across the back of the docile Nez Perce mare. “You stay here and play some more songs together,” he said. “I will listen to you when I go away.” His feather wobbled in a sudden blast of wind. He raised his hand and turned the mare onto the trail.

“Let's play ‘Good-bye Ol' Paint,'” Buster suggested and bounced the bow on his fiddle strings to lead into the song. As Caleb sang, he saw a farm wagon, toylike with distance, creeping toward town on a dirt road. The railroad tracks shimmered, and the matchbox buildings of Holcomb, Colorado, wavered in the morning glare.

He finished singing, looked toward the mountains, saw Long Fingers pass over a hump in the trail, and sink out of sight. “What do you think he's gonna do up there?” he asked.

Buster said nothing.

The drifter looked down on the patchwork landscape and tried to remember his mother standing in the dream of dead grass. It was a vague and far-gone memory, dreamlike in itself. Suddenly his eyes were darting far across the ground below, and a hollow formed in his chest, like an old tree whose heartwood had died and rotted away. “Oh, my lord,” he said.

“What?”

Caleb let the guitar lie flat across his thighs. “I can see every damn corner post on the ranch from up here!”

“So?”

“Well, hell, Buster. You remember the day when we had land to graze ten thousand head. Now look at it!” He gestured irritably with his free hand.

“Is it land you want?”

“Damn right! And should have had it!”