By the height of the quarter moon it must have been three or four in the morning. There was no light in the east, and though his father was finally sleeping, Eli couldn’t keep his eyes closed. As quietly as possible, he unwound himself from his blankets, slipped his pants and boots and coat on, and crept over to the horses, which were cropping the rimy grass in a willow-rimmed swale. He pulled the picket pin, bridled the mare, and led her away, his escape all but silent, his father’s gelding snorting just once.
He waited until out of earshot before swinging up on the mare’s back and easing her into a fast walk. Beneath a clear sky, the way back wasn’t difficult to find, the moon casting faint shadows behind the greasewood trees and skunkbrush, behind the occasional stunted pine or outcropping of rock. Although Eli had been frightened yesterday—terrified, certain he was going to be killed—he wasn’t frightened now. Nor did he examine, as he would in later years, the reasons compelling him to leave. It seemed like a simple thing. He’d left home to help his father, and now there was no other way to do it. This had to be finished. The moment seemed inevitable, his decision less a choice than a reflexive act, and he was calm, almost joyful, as he covered the miles, glancing time and again over his shoulder for the first sign of morning. He kept thinking, Don’t let him wake up yet. And, Don’t let them break camp too early.
He arrived with nearly an hour to spare.
All was still as he sat the buckskin mare at the edge of the creek below their camp. No wind down here in this shallow valley, and no sound except for water flowing over pebbles. At the first sign of movement on the table rock and the flaring up of the fire in the lean-to, Eli picketed the mare and walked up the bank, no one speaking as he came on, none of the three pausing in their morning routines, Magpie stitching a broken seam in his moccasin, Bull Bear carving at the meat pile, Leather Top feeding the fire. Magpie nodded at the cedar stump next to him, and soon they were all four chewing on strips of the roasted meat, which tasted even better this morning, and drinking from the pot of bittersweet tea.
“I didn’t expect he would send you back,” Magpie said.
“He didn’t send me back,” Eli told him.
Bull Bear handed Eli another piece of meat and spoke a few words to Magpie. Leather Top leaned his head back and laughed, his face squeezing into a furrowed map.
“My brother wants to know if you brought your war paint. He says he was your age when he took his first scalp.”
Eli said nothing.
“He likes making jokes,” Magpie said, then he nodded toward the Spencer carbine resting on Eli’s knees. “Did your father teach you how to use it?”
“Not this one, no. It’s from the fort.”
“That one isn’t much better than the rifle they used in Custer’s troop. Those shot a single bullet then had to be reloaded. And once the barrel heated up, the cartridges stuck in the chamber. Not that some of those boys knew how to use them anyway. Farm boys. And poor men working for money. Toward the end there were those who threw down their guns and lay on the ground, waiting for death, staring up at the sky. Others shot themselves or shot each other. I almost felt sorry for them.”
“You could have let them live,” Eli said.
“Can I see it?” Magpie asked, gesturing toward the Spencer.
Eli handed it to him, and Magpie got up and walked over to the jut of rock against which the lean-to was built. He gripped the end of the rifle’s barrel, spun himself around and struck the weapon against the rock, splintering the wooden stock and separating barrel from breech. He tossed it away.
“Piece of shit,” he said. “Here”—he signaled to Leather Top, who came over with his own rifle, which Magpie offered in turn to Eli, a Winchester lever-action, similar to one of the guns Two Blood had in his shop. He motioned for Eli to follow him down to the creek. There he tossed cedar sticks for Eli to fire at as the current floated them away, urging him to shoot as fast as he could, levering in round after round, the sticks exploding and leaping in the water, until the magazine was empty and the hammer made a hollow click against the firing pin. The weapon was warm in his hand, the stink of gunpowder sharp in the air. Eli liked how the Winchester felt in his hands, he liked the smooth quickness of the action.
“That big soldier horse you’re riding,” Magpie said. “Is she a battle horse or a plow puller?”
He told Eli to mount up and ride hard along the creek, full gallop, and fire a shot down into the water. Eli had never ridden no-hands. He held the reins tightly in his left, the rifle in his right, kicked his mare into a gallop and then at the last instant looped the reins around his wrist, raised the rifle to his shoulder, and got off a quick shot without aiming. The mare veered right at the sound, away from the blast, and Eli pitched left and landed at the creek’s edge, managing at least to keep hold of the rifle. The men laughed and hooted, pointing, then watched him as he got up and chased down the mare, remounted and came trotting back.
“Try one of our ponies,” Magpie said.
Eli swung off the mare and Magpie walked over, looking him up and down. He ran a hand over the arm and shoulder Eli had landed on, his fingers squeezing to the bone, and then brushed the dirt from Eli’s coat. “Nothing broken,” he said.
It was a dark pony, a stallion with a white face and a white tornado shape along one side that started by the withers and ended at the hip. A small animal, compared to the buckskin mare Eli had been riding, only thirteen or fourteen hands, but big-boned, wide, with sturdy legs and a straight back, its eyes large and vigilant, as if watching to see whether Eli knew what he was doing. Magpie demonstrated how to grab its mane and leap onto its back—not a hard thing for Eli to do, as it turned out, and the pony didn’t seem to mind, only tossed its head and took a little jump-step to the side. The bridle was a single length of soft leather rope that ran through the mouth, tied beneath the jaw, the two ends coming back along the pony’s neck as reins. There was no saddle at all.
“Hold on with your knees and use them to turn him—he knows what to do. And this little boy, he likes the crack of your rifle. You’ll see.”
Magpie was right. The little stallion stayed on a line, running fast and smooth, without swerving at the boom of the rifle, while Eli held tight with his knees, getting off three shots into the creek. They broke camp and followed a dry ravine that led them out of the valley and up to the tableland above, where they rode west toward a line of buttes that looked like the silhouettes of three people, their heads and shoulders unmistakable against the sky, two parents on the outside, with a small child between them.
Pointing, Eli asked if they had a name.
“Walking with the sun,” Magpie said, and though Eli wondered if he meant sun or son, he didn’t ask.
They moved at a brisk trot through the cool day, their breath steaming in the air, Eli’s buckskin mare packing the meat pile and tied on a lead behind them. Midmorning they stopped to water their ponies at a fast-running stream. The three buttes were closer now, the middle one a distinctive coppery color, the larger, flanking ones gray-black. In the shade of a cottonwood the men chewed on cold meat. Upstream from the horses they filled their hide bladders. Then Leather Top rode to the top of the next ridge, jumped off his pony and stood there eyeing the country before remounting and riding back down to rejoin them. He gestured, talking fast.
“We’re close,” Magpie said. “Yesterday he tracked the herd your friends were chasing, and we should be on them soon.”
Within the hour they’d ridden to the top of a rise from which they could see below them a stream that widened into a green pool and next to it twenty or so animals grazing, among them a black-maned bull that every so often rose up and looked around. As they watched, he put his shaggy head down and plowed forward, twisting a horn into the soft earth near the water, then lifting up and swinging his head, throwing a torrent of mud. He finally went down to his knees, fell to his side, and rolled in the muddy wallow.
Magpie sketched out his plan, using a stick in the dirt and gesturing to Bull Bear and Leather Top. He pointed at himself and Eli, and then to the ridge on which they sat, which extended in a hogback toward the stream. The place where it fell in a hard decline toward the water marked the southern edge of the grazing animals. Magpie spoke briefly to the men, and then turned to Eli and explained. Bull Bear and Leather Top would go first and drive the herd south, squeezing it between the water and the hogback, down from which Magpie and Eli would ride to fire on them as they tried to escape along the water.
“This will happen fast,” Magpie said. “We’ll take cows for their meat and let the bulls run.”
Leather Top and Bull Bear jumped on their ponies and rode straight downhill at a full gallop, calling out in high, shrill yips. The buffaloes lifted their heads and poked up their tails and started to move, slowly at first, the whole mass of them together, but then with gathering speed. By then Eli and Magpie were running their ponies along the hogback, side by side. The surface of the ground was dotted with stones the size of hammerheads, but Eli’s pony ran without hindrance, as if racing on a dirt track, Eli hanging onto the reins, his knees gripping the animal’s wide back so hard that his groin burned with pain. Magpie glanced over, a smile widening his face, his teeth shining, one hand on his rifle, the other wrapped in the pony’s mane, the reins tied off and flapping. He might have been caught up in holy zeal, or a man returning from a far-off place and just now catching sight of home. He lifted his rifle in the air and pumped his arm.
They were on the downhill now and closing with the herd, at the front of which was the black-maned bull, running as if to kill itself—the ground thundering like a storm beneath them and the men singing, their bright voices high above the shuddering noise of the herd. Then Magpie’s pony surged ahead as if flung by a giant sling and moved up next to the bull. Magpie leaned over, way over, horizontal in the air, and he took a grip on the bull’s curly, mud-caked mane with his fist and gave it a shake, just as neat as that, before letting go and allowing the animal to pound away with the herd. He rode back alongside Eli and pointed out a big, hard-running cow and shouted, “Go and put her down,” his face glistening.
“For my son—now!”
Eli kicked his pony but didn’t need to. The animal was already going flat out, galloping straight for the big cow, which huffed and blew, white foam spraying in clots and jets from its shovel-size nose. Eli let go of the reins, the pony knowing this sport and edging close enough for Eli to put the barrel of the Winchester almost smack up against the monster’s heaving ribs. Before he got off a shot, though, the big cow cut away and the pony followed in a hard pivot, leaving Eli to grab at the flying mane for balance, ashamed of his hesitation and clumsiness. But there was almost no break in rhythm, no slowing the chase at all—and there was no other place to be but here, fixed by the violent, bloodshot glare of the cow’s left eye. Eli heard himself yelling in a voice he didn’t know he had, high-pitched, ecstatic, and this time he got off a shot, missing wide. He jacked the lever of the Winchester and shot again, barrel jumping, and a small puff of hair leaped from the very top of the cow’s humped shoulder. The animal stumbled, recovered, and charged on. Eli’s third shot, though, was true, entering behind the shoulder and staggering the animal, which pulled hard to the left. Eli’s pony cut fast in a sort of rabbit hop to stay clear of it.
Magpie came up alongside him, and together he and Eli watched the big cow go round in a steep curve until it was coming back at them, seeming to gain strength as it came, head lowered and wagging its black horns. Abruptly it fell to its knees. Blood poured from its mouth into the brown grass. A quarter of a mile ahead another cow fell out of the herd, and Bull Bear reined up as the rest of the buffaloes rumbled away, dust hanging over them like a rain cloud.
A couple of hundred yards back, Eli saw two other cows down, close together, Leather Top already at work over one of them. His own, meanwhile, had tipped over dead. It lay on its side, lifeless eye staring dully at the sun, which stood just past noon. From head to tail the cow was eight feet long, and its girth at the shoulders brought it just past Eli’s waist. The curved, black horns, if straightened, would have equaled the length of a man’s forearm. Magpie pried open the mouth and deftly carved out the tongue, which he set aside. Then he made a deep cut all around the neck before slicing straight down to the vent and around the tail.
“If we want to get at the best parts, we open up the back,” Magpie said. “But we want to save the robe, so we do it like this.”
They removed the entrails and organs first—the grass-engorged stomach almost large enough to crawl inside of, the twisting mass of purple intestines, and then the flaccid liver and steaming red heart, both of which they put off to the side, along with the tongue. The smell was rank and lush, but Eli had gutted enough whitetail deer that he wasn’t bothered by it. Magpie sliced off a piece of the hot liver and handed it to Eli, then cut some off for himself and took a bite of it, the blood dripping from the corners of his mouth. Eli did so, too, the taste metallic and strong, something like the blood sausage his father used to buy from the butcher in Sloan’s Crossing—though this was spongier, tougher, harder to chew and swallow. “Now you’ll do some work,” Magpie said, and while he scraped and nipped with his skinning knife, separating hide from fascia, Eli pulled and yanked on the slippery skin to expose the top side of the fatty yellow carcass. Together they pulled away the entire half-skin and drew it back on the grass. With the help of Magpie’s pony, they turned the animal over, the stiffening legs swinging up in the air then whacking down on the other side, and before long, the entire bloody hide was free, the hulking carcass naked and white.
“The good eating,” Magpie said, and he cut away the marbled hump as big as a man’s head, then stripped off the heavy backstraps, two feet long, from both sides of the spine.
They skinned and butchered the four cows, a pack of skulking coyotes watching from the hills above, and by the time the sun was low they’d built a travois of cedar poles to carry the hide-wrapped meat piles. Leather Top rode ahead to scout the herd, while Magpie, Bull Bear, and Eli headed back toward Taylor Creek. On the way, they rode to the top of a high round bluff that offered a long view in all directions and above which hung a blue-tinged cloud. On the highest point of the bluff Magpie laid out the best of the four robes—the one taken from Eli’s cow—and spread it out on a table of limestone and set rocks all around its edge to hold it in place.
They left it there and rode on.
At the camp above the stream, they rubbed down their ponies and hobbled them by the water. They built up a good fire, then feasted on hump roast and tenderloin, on boss ribs and boiled tongue, as they watched the lavender sky darken and the stars emerge by ones and twos, threes and fours, and finally by the dozens. Magpie took out tobacco and filled the redstone bowl of his wooden-stemmed pipe. He lit it, and they passed the pipe among the three of them, Magpie and Bull Bear laughing each time Eli tried to fill his lungs but coughed.
“Don’t keep your lips closed that way,” Magpie told him. “When you draw in the smoke, open your mouth and take in some air along with it.” He nodded for Eli to try again. “Yes, like that, good,” he said.
They were silent as the night deepened. Finally, Magpie said, “I remember my first hunt. It was a small herd like the one today, and I was using a heavy, one-shot gun that burned the black powder and threw iron balls as big as this”—he held up a fist and wiggled the tip of his thumb. “It had a kick, too. It was my father’s. I rode my pony up next to this fat cow, running hard, and when I shot this way”—Magpie rotated to his left and pretended to fire a rifle—“I fell off my horse that way,” and he jerked a thumb over his right shoulder. “My father had to ride through that running herd and pick me up.”
“Did you kill the cow?” Eli asked.
Magpie nodded, handing the pipe back to Eli. He said, “But you didn’t fall off your pony.”
“And I wasn’t shooting a black-powder rifle,” Eli said.
They all lay back and looked up at the sky, the constellations beginning to show themselves. Eli thought of his own father and wondered where he was, whether he was back at the permanent camp with Hornaday or out here somewhere, searching—or even watching. As the outermost star of the Big Dipper’s handle twinkled into view, Eli couldn’t help but wish his father had been there today to see him take down the cow. But it didn’t matter, because he knew that Ulysses understood: to answer for a son, a son was required.
“Some say the buffalo have gone north across the medicine line,” Magpie said, “a herd of five thousand. That they’re finding others there and getting fat in those mountain meadows, increasing themselves for the day when they can return to this country. Others, from down in the territories, they talk about a hidden cave in the great grasslands of the Staked Plains. A cave where the herds first came from. And how the mouth of that cave has been stopped up so the buffalo can’t get out anymore. I talked to a man at the agency. He was a chief from the southern tribes, and he said he knows where this cave is. I would like to believe him. I would like to believe the story about the big herds north of the line. But I can’t. My son, if he had lived, would have spent the rest of his life eating the skinny longhorns and the spotted weaklings they want us to raise on the agency land. He would have had to raise vegetables in that dry soil. And wait for shipments of food that never came.”
They’d finished smoking now, and all three were lying next to the spit and plucking at the tenderloin with their fingers when Leather Top came riding into camp. Bull Bear got up and took his pony for him, and Leather Top sat down directly and set himself to the task of eating. It wasn’t until he was satisfied, belching and wiping his hands on his deerskin pants, that he gave his report, gesturing and pointing and nodding, his face in the firelight like an ancient pumpkin, all creases and shadows.
“He followed the herd until they found a place to graze,” Magpie explained. “They’re in a box canyon just beyond that little butte, the red one between the two big ones.”
“The butte you call the son?” Eli asked.
“Yes, that one.”
“What’s a box canyon?”
“A canyon with just one way out. Leather Top says there is good grazing inside, and a good pool of water, too. They’ll be staying a little while.”
Eli was exhausted, his head so full of the day it was blurry inside, and he couldn’t seem to focus his thoughts. His belly was distended, but he couldn’t stop feeding himself. Even after he’d laid out his bedroll and climbed inside of it, he got up for another try at the backstraps, charred now.
“Tell me,” Magpie said. “Is it only the memory of the buffalo that your friend from Washington believes he can save? Or does he think he can save its spirit too by stuffing its dead skin to make it look real?”
“I don’t know.” Eli shook his head. With the smell of blood in his nose, and with the grease that coated his lips and hands, and with the power of the running herd still moving inside his bones, he couldn’t be sure of anything.
“What do they use to fill up their dried skins?” Magpie asked.
“I’m not sure. Sawdust, maybe, as my father said. Cloth and wood. Something, anyway, to take the place of their muscles and bones and guts. Something to give them some shape, make them look like they might still be alive.”
Magpie was quiet, thinking. Then he said, “Once the buffaloes are all gone, I’m afraid we’ll be following after them. Will they skin us too and fill us up with sawdust and put us inside a building for people to come and look at?” He turned to his brother and spoke for a few moments in their own tongue.
Bull Bear uttered a quick retort. Then he lifted a finger, cocked an ear, and ripped a fart that echoed like a piece of canvas being torn in half.
“My brother,” Magpie said, “wants you to know that’s for the man who tries to stuff him after he’s dead.”
Eli rocked forward to a sitting position, then fell back on the robe again and closed his eyes. He was too tired to laugh and too old to cry. For weeks now he’d been living his father’s life, living inside his father’s dream. He knew he was close to reaching the end of his strength, close to waking into some other world entirely in which he was no longer the person he had been, his father’s son, mother’s son, his brother’s brother. A world in which he might no longer recognize himself. He felt like he’d died and come back again, the life ahead of him no longer his own—although he wasn’t sure whose it might be. Not his father’s, certainly, and not Magpie’s either. God’s, maybe. Whatever that could mean. He lifted a hand to push the hair out of his face, and his fingers encountered stiff snarls caked with blood and grime from the afternoon of skinning and butchering. He tasted the blood on his fingers, not an unwelcome flavor, earthy and sour. Not unwelcome at all. Then he moved onto his side and made himself comfortable, turning his face toward the heat of the fire.