pretty pinto mare, trotted behind, unleashed but never straying. The wagon wheels were seven feet tall and nine inches wide, which made for easier rolling in the prairie’s loose sand. Its bed and treads were made of iron, like those of the trailer it towed behind. Both were painted blue, as were the oxbows and yokes of the huge steers that pulled it. Tom Shields had decorated the sides of the bed, Indian-fashion, with the tails of many dead buffalo, and painted the horns of the oxen red. Fully loaded, wagon and trailer could carry up to five hundred sun-cured “flint” hides—six tons of them.
Captain McKay had the third wagon, another light one similar to Jenny’s, which Otto said could carry an additional thirty or forty hides. Each of the smaller wagons could carry a ton of dried hides apiece. Jenny did the arithmetic in her head as they rumbled slowly along. Let’s make it 580 hides at an average of $2.50 per hide. . . . That’s $1,450 a load—a small fortune.
She looked back at the hide wagon, which followed about fifty yards behind. Tom Shields was a Halbblut , Otto had told her—a half-breed. He was older than Jenny, but not much—maybe twenty or twenty-two. Tom told her he didn’t know when he’d been born. His mother, a white captive, had died when he was not yet a year old. His father was a Cheyenne named Oh-kóhm, which meant either Coyote or Little Wolf, Tom wasn’t sure which, but anyway, they were the same animal. He, too, was now dead, Tom added, avoiding her eyes. Having been raised and then orphaned among the Sa-sis-e-tas, as the Cheyennes called themselves, he had now cast his lot with his mother’s people.
Tom was a strong, wiry, rather handsome fellow, Jenny thought. His raven-black hair was cut short in the white man’s style. He had the long, slightly bowed legs of an Indian who has spent most of his life on horseback. He wore white man’s clothes—a tan, wide-brimmed hat, a hip-length drover’s coat of rough brown wool, and faded denim trousers. Only his feet, shod in calf-high moccasins, remained Indian. He tucked his trouser legs into the moccasins as if to show off their elaborate beadwork. Yet his eyes were a white man’s eyes, startling green, and he spoke good English, but grudgingly, as if from a reluctance to waste words unless spoken to.
So far, the country they passed through was as bleak as Otto said it would be, no trees save a few dusty, discouraged cottonwoods, post oaks, and box elders along the rare watercourses, but the rest of it just grass, grass, and more grass, running off to the horizon in undulating waves. You could see the wind working its way from southwest to northeast, over the grassland, like wind over water. The wind never let up. She could feel her skin turning to leather under its constant push. It was a warm, dry wind right now, smelling of dust and distance. When it worked to the northwest, Otto said, it would smell of rock and snow from the faraway mountains.
The sky overhead was huge, far broader than in hilly Wisconsin. Its size made Jenny feel like a mouse being watched by an invisible hawk. Tall, shape-shifting clouds sailed across it, swift as the freight schooners she’d seen plying Lake Michigan from Green Bay to Milwaukee to Chicago. Once, she looked up to spot a buzzard circling high on tilted wings, far to the west. When she searched for it again, a minute or two later, it was almost directly overhead—blown downwind that fast without a flap of its pinions.
The prairie seemed empty of life. Only buffalo skeletons dwelt here, as yet uncollected by the bone pickers from Dodge. Once she saw a small flock of prairie chickens skitter across the trail ahead of them, and later, in the distance, so faint and far that at first she took it for a mirage, a band of pale-tan deerlike animals that must be antelope. But they turned immediately at the sight of the wagons and fled, their white rumps flashing as bright as heliographs. After them loped
Captain McKay had the third wagon, another light one similar to Jenny’s, which Otto said could carry an additional thirty or forty hides. Each of the smaller wagons could carry a ton of dried hides apiece. Jenny did the arithmetic in her head as they rumbled slowly along. Let’s make it 580 hides at an average of $2.50 per hide. . . . That’s $1,450 a load—a small fortune.
She looked back at the hide wagon, which followed about fifty yards behind. Tom Shields was a Halbblut , Otto had told her—a half-breed. He was older than Jenny, but not much—maybe twenty or twenty-two. Tom told her he didn’t know when he’d been born. His mother, a white captive, had died when he was not yet a year old. His father was a Cheyenne named Oh-kóhm, which meant either Coyote or Little Wolf, Tom wasn’t sure which, but anyway, they were the same animal. He, too, was now dead, Tom added, avoiding her eyes. Having been raised and then orphaned among the Sa-sis-e-tas, as the Cheyennes called themselves, he had now cast his lot with his mother’s people.
Tom was a strong, wiry, rather handsome fellow, Jenny thought. His raven-black hair was cut short in the white man’s style. He had the long, slightly bowed legs of an Indian who has spent most of his life on horseback. He wore white man’s clothes—a tan, wide-brimmed hat, a hip-length drover’s coat of rough brown wool, and faded denim trousers. Only his feet, shod in calf-high moccasins, remained Indian. He tucked his trouser legs into the moccasins as if to show off their elaborate beadwork. Yet his eyes were a white man’s eyes, startling green, and he spoke good English, but grudgingly, as if from a reluctance to waste words unless spoken to.
So far, the country they passed through was as bleak as Otto said it would be, no trees save a few dusty, discouraged cottonwoods, post oaks, and box elders along the rare watercourses, but the rest of it just grass, grass, and more grass, running off to the horizon in undulating waves. You could see the wind working its way from southwest to northeast, over the grassland, like wind over water. The wind never let up. She could feel her skin turning to leather under its constant push. It was a warm, dry wind right now, smelling of dust and distance. When it worked to the northwest, Otto said, it would smell of rock and snow from the faraway mountains.
The sky overhead was huge, far broader than in hilly Wisconsin. Its size made Jenny feel like a mouse being watched by an invisible hawk. Tall, shape-shifting clouds sailed across it, swift as the freight schooners she’d seen plying Lake Michigan from Green Bay to Milwaukee to Chicago. Once, she looked up to spot a buzzard circling high on tilted wings, far to the west. When she searched for it again, a minute or two later, it was almost directly overhead—blown downwind that fast without a flap of its pinions.
The prairie seemed empty of life. Only buffalo skeletons dwelt here, as yet uncollected by the bone pickers from Dodge. Once she saw a small flock of prairie chickens skitter across the trail ahead of them, and later, in the distance, so faint and far that at first she took it for a mirage, a band of pale-tan deerlike animals that must be antelope. But they turned immediately at the sight of the wagons and fled, their white rumps flashing as bright as heliographs. After them loped
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