Forty Guns West Read Online Free PDF Page B

time. It’s the vastness of it all. And the buffalo, boy, I can’t describe ’em. I’ve seen thousands and thousands of them on the move. Maybe they was millions of them. The Good Lord alone knows. The earth beneath your feet trembles when they pass. The buffalo is life itself to the Plains Injuns. The buffalo and the horse. The Injun is a fine horseman. They worship the horse. Call him Spirit Dog, Holy Dog, Medicine Dog. The Injuns make their tipis from buffalo skins, they wrap up to keep warm in buffalo robes, they eat the buffalo, they use the soft skin of a buffalo calf to wrap newborn babies in, and the hide of a bull or cow will be used as a buryin’ cloth. They use parts of the hide to make drums, moccasins, shirts, leggin’s, and dresses for squaws. They use buffalo hair to make rope. The horns of a buffalo is used for drinkin’ cups. The bones is used to make all sorts of Injun tools. The paunch of a buffalo is used as a cook pot. Without the buffalo, the Injun would prob’ly cease to be.”
    â€œYou like the Indians, don’t you, Preacher?”
    â€œMost of ’em, yeah. I’ve lived with ’em and I’ve fought ’em. I’ve had me a squaw now and then. I been captured and tortured by ’em, and I’ve laughed and joked and ate with ’em.” He reined up and swept a strong hand across the panorama that lay before himself and the boy. “Look at it, Eddie. The plains. Far as I know, they ain’t another sight like it in the whole wide world. And there never will be again. For when the white man comes, and he’s comin’, they’ll junk it all up and try to change it. They’ll plow lines in the earth and change the flow of rivers and kill off all the buffalo herds. They’ll kill off the wolves ’cause the settlers is ignorant of the ways of the wilderness. Each animal is dependent in some ways on other animals. The wolves kill off the old and the weak in a herd. Without them, the herds wouldn’t be healthy. But the white man don’t understand that. They could understand it, but they won’t. I tell you, boy, there ain’t nothin’ prettier in the world than layin’ in your blankets at night and listenin’ to wolves sing and talk to one another.”
    â€œWon’t they attack you?”
    â€œNaw. Them’s old wive’s tales from scary people. There ain’t never been no healthy, full growed wolf ever attacked no human person that I ever heard tell of. Hell, I’ve had ’em for pets. A body just has to understand the ways of the wolf and respect ’em, that’s all. But they’s do’s and don’t when it comes to wolves. Don’t never corner one. You do that, you got big trouble on your hands. Don’t never get between the he-wolf and his mate. They don’t like that. A wolf pack is a real complicated type of society, Eddie. They have leaders and co-leaders. They real protective of their young. The male and the female take turns carin’ for their pups.” He smiled at the boy and lifted his reins. “Now you see why some Injuns call me White Wolf. I’m a brother to the wolf. I had one big ol’ buffalo wolf stay with me for weeks one time. He must have weighed a hundred and fifty pounds. I’d toss him scraps of food and at night he’d sleep so close to me I could feel his breath. But I never touched him and he never touched me. But we was brothers. I knew it, and he knew it.”
    â€œWhat happened to him?”
    â€œI don’t know. One day he just veered off and was gone. He sat on a rise and watched me ride off. He threw back his head and talked to me until I couldn’t hear him no more.”
    â€œThat’s sad.”
    â€œYeah, it was. I ain’t never forgot it, neither.”
    â€œI think I would have liked to have been a mountain man,” Eddie said wistfully.
    â€œYou’d have made a