Walking Wolf Read Online Free PDF Page B

Besides, my English was pretty bad—in fact, nonexistent. No, if I was going to introduce myself to White society, it was going to have to be through an intermediary of some kind.
    A week or more after I had voluntarily banished myself, I came upon a black man traveling alone across the prairie, driving a wagon pulled by oxen. When he saw my pony approaching, he reined his team to a halt and pulled out a rifle. He rested it across his knees, watching me cautiously. As I drew nearer, I recognized him as the man called Buffalo-Face, who traded on occasion with the Wasp Riders, swapping rifles, ammunition and liquor for ponies.
    â€œGood day, Buffalo-Face,” I said, speaking in the mixture of Spanish and Comanche dialect that was reserved for dealing with traders.
    He squinted at me and spat a stream of tobacco juice out of the side of his mouth. He was a big, powerfully built man with black skin that gleamed like polished stone. A mass of dark, nappy wool hung to his shoulders, which was the source of his name.
    â€œYou Comanche, ain’t ya?”
    â€œI am Walking Wolf of the Penateka.”
    Buffalo-Face’s shoulders relaxed. “Walking Wolf? You’re Eight Clouds’s boy, am I right? What you doin’ way the hell out here, son? You out scoutin’ buffalo?”
    â€œI’m looking for Whites.”
    â€œYou on the warpath?”
    â€œNo. I want to go into the White Man’s world and learn how it works.”
    Buffalo-Face spat another streamer of tobacco juice, narrowly missing the rump of his lead ox. “Why the hell would you want to do something like that?”
    â€œBecause I am White, too.”
    Buffalo-Face squinted harder, leaning forward a bit. “Damned if it ain’t so! You are White under all that dirt and paint! Imagine that.”
    â€œWill you take me to the Whites, Buffalo-Face?”
    Buffalo-Face frowned and rubbed his chin for a spell, occasionally giving me a look from under his knitted brow. After a minute he shrugged. “Son, you’re a fool to ask me, and I’m an even bigger fool for sayin’ yes. Hitch your pony to the back of the cart there and ride up front with me. I could stand the company. It gets pretty lonesome out here with no one but Goodness and Mercy here to talk to,” he said, gesturing to the yoked oxen.
    Although the idea of riding on anything besides a pony was alien to me, I did as he asked and joined him on the wagon seat. The oxen did not move nearly as quickly as horses, but they plodded along without protest or halting.
    During the course of our first day together, Buffalo-Face told me things about himself. I learned that he had been born a slave in some place called Alabama, that his mother had been raped at the age of twelve by the white overseer of the plantation she served on, and that he had killed a man—the same overseer who’d fathered him—in order to escape when he was sixteen. I also learned that he had left behind a wife and two, possibly three, children, in a place called Philadelphia.
    Buffalo-Face shook his head and spat a streamer of tobacco juice, drowning a bluebottle fly perched on Goodness’ left rump. “I’ll be damned if I can figger out why you want to get yourself turned White. Sure, they’re your own kind, but you’re as much a stranger to their ways as any full-blooded Injun. Hell, I spent the first sixteen years of my life doin’ my best to put distance ’tween me and White folk. I thought once I was free, things would be different for me.
    â€œWell, things may have been better up North, but they weren’t no different. I was still a nigger far as they was concerned. I could never get my wife to understand that bein’ free of the plantation weren’t enough for me. I didn’t escape Alabama so’s I could spend the rest of my life tryin’ to be like them.
    â€œSix years ago I come out West. I’m still a nigger to