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XXIII
On the north Texas plains — An old buffalo hunter — The mille
In the late winter of eighteen seventy-eight he was on the plains of north Texas. He crossed the Double Mountain Fork of the Brazos River on a morning when skim ice lay along the sandy shore and he rode through a dark dwarf forest of black and twisted mesquite trees. He made his camp that night on a piece of high ground where there was a windbreak formed of a tree felled by lightning. He'd no sooner got his fire to burn than he saw across the prairie in the darkness another fire. Like his it twisted in the wind, like his it warmed one man alone.
It was an old hunter in camp and the hunter shared tobacco with him and told him of the buffalo and the stands he'd made against them, laid up in a sag on some rise with the dead animals scattered over the grounds and the herd begi
I seen Studebaker wagons with six and eight ox teams headed out for the grounds not haulin a thing but lead. Just pure galena. Tons of it. On this ground alone between the Arkansas River and the Concho there was eight million carcasses for that's how many hides reached the railhead. Two year ago we pulled out from Griffin for a last hunt. We ransacked the country. Six weeks. Finally found a herd of eight animals and we killed them and come in. They're gone. Ever one of them that God ever made is gone as if they'd never been at all.
The ragged sparks blew down the wind. The prairie about them lay silent. Beyond the fire it was cold and the night was clear and the stars were falling. The old hunter pulled his blanket about him. I wonder if there's other worlds like this, he said. Or if this is the only one.
When he came upon the bonepickers he'd been riding three days in a country he'd never seen. The plains were sere and burntlook-ing and the small trees black and misshapen and haunted by ravens and everywhere the ragged packs of jackal wolves and the crazed and sunchalked bones of the vanished herds. He dismounted and led the horse. Here and there within the arc of ribs a few flat discs of darkened lead like old medallions of some order of the hunt. In the distance teams of oxen bore along slowly and the heavy wagons creaked dryly. Into these barrows the pickers tossed the bones, kicking down the calcined architecture, breaking apart the great frames with axes. The bones clattered in the wagons, they plowed on in a pale dust. He watched them pass, ragged, filthy, the oxen galled and mad-looking. None spoke to him. In the distance he could see a train of wagons moving off to the northeast with great tottering loads of bones and further to the north other teams of pickers at their work.
He mounted and rode on. The bones had been gathered into windrows ten feet high and hundreds long or into great conical hills topped with the signs or brands of their owners. He overtook one of the lumbering carts, a boy riding the near wheel ox and driving with a jerkline and a jockeystick. Two youths squatting atop a mound of skulls and pelvic bones leered down at him.
Their fires dotted the plain that night and he sat with his back to the wind and drank from an army canteen and ate a handful of parched corn for his supper. All across those reaches the yammer and yap of the starving wolves relayed and to the north the silent lightning rigged a broken lyre upon the world's dark rim. The air smelled of rain but no rain fell and the creaking bone-carts passed in the night like darkened ships and he could smell the oxen and hear their breath. The sour smell of the bones was everywhere. Toward midnight a party hailed him as he squatted at his coals.
Come up, he said.
They came up out of the dark, sullen wretches dressed in skins. They carried old military guns save for one who had a buffalo rifle and they had no coats and one of them wore green hide boots peeled whole from the hocks of some animal and the toes gathered shut with leader.
Evenin stranger, called out the eldest child among them.
He looked at them. They were four and a halfgrown boy and they halted at the edge of the light and arranged themselves there.
Come up, he said.
They shuffled forward. Three of them squatted and two stood.
Where's ye outfit? said one.
He aint out for bones.
You aint got nary chew of tobacca about your clothes have ye?
He shook his head.
Nary drink of whiskey neither I dont reckon.
He aint got no whiskey.
Where ye headed mister?
Are you headed twards Griffin?
He looked them over. I am, he said.
Coin for the whores I'll bet ye.
He aint goin for the whores.
It's full of whores, Griffin is.
Hell, he's probably been there more'n you.
You been to Griffin mister?
Not yet.
Full of whores. Full plumb up.
They say you can get clapped a day's ride out when the wind is right.
They set in a tree in front of this here place and you can look up and see their bloomers. I've counted high as eight in that tree early of a evenin. Set up there like coons and smoke cigarettes and holler down at ye.
It's set up to be the biggest town for sin in all Texas.
It's as lively a place for murders as you'd care to visit.
Scrapes with knives. About any kind of mea
He looked at them from one to the other. He reached and took up a stick and roused the fire with it and put the stick in the flames. You all like mea
We dont hold with it.
Like to drink whiskey?
He's just talkin. He aint no whiskey drinker.
Hell, you just now seen him drink it not a hour ago.
I seen him puke it back up too. What's them things around your neck there mister?
He pulled the aged scapular from his shirtfront and looked at it. It's ears, he said.
It's what?
Ears.
What kind of ears?
He tugged at the thong and looked down at them. They were perfectly black and hard and dry and of no shape at all.
Humans, he said. Human ears.
Aint done it, said the one with the rifle.
Dont call him a liar Elrod, he's liable to shoot ye. Let's see them things mister if you dont care.
He slipped the scapular over his head and handed it across to the boy who'd spoken. They pressed about and felt the strange dried pendants.
Niggers, aint it? they said.
Docked them niggers' ears so they'd know em when they run off.
How many is there mister?
I dont know. Used to be near a hundred.
They held the thing up and turned it in the firelight.
Nigger ears, by god.
They aint niggers.