Waltzing With Tumbleweeds by Dusty Richards

Author:Dusty Richards
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: AWOC.COM Publishing
Published: 2010-08-17T14:00:00+00:00

Appeared in Creative Reading April ‘92

Centennial Hell-abration

Hotter than blazes and calendar wise, I figured it must be six days shy of the Fourth of July and the U. S. of A’s centennial celebration. My plans were to be in Fort Laramie for all the hurrah and fire works, but I still had two hundred miles of Sioux Indian country to cross.

For two days, I’d been ducking dozens of Indian bands on the move. They acted like they were headed to all the points on a compass. That bothered me because they usually hunted buffalo in the Powder River country at this time of the year for their winter food supply. This vast region wedged between the Black Hills and the Rockies had the best hunting left.

Nothing like the surplus of game that there had been twenty years before when the Crows still claimed it. In that period, they hardly ever had to move camp, the game was so plentiful. But the past few days, I’d only seen small remnant groups of buffalo. But the Indians, I had observed from hiding, seemed more interested in moving away than in gathering food.

To avoid still another war party’s approach, I set my grey horse down a steep sided ravine, the two packhorses on his heels. When I heard the first cry for help, I reined up the grey and cocked my Sharps.

A pregnant Sioux squaw lay on the side of the hill, I saw her motioning for me. Her warhorse lay dead, crumbled in a pile a few yards away. He showed several fresh wounds. Still hitched between travois poles, I decided, the animal must have fallen down the bank when he expired.

The hair bristled on the back of my neck. The country crawled with hostiles. My fingers tightened on the stock of my .50 caliber Sharps. Suspicious of a trap, I searched around for signs of an enemy. She looked too much like a decoy to lure me off guard.

The woman acted desperate for help. She kept shaking her head as if my concerns were unneeded and urgently waved for me to come help her. The two bloody stubs of her recent amputated fingers were obvious. They meant she was a widow. In her sorrow she’d cut them off and then drifted away from her band.

When I dismounted I saw her face was bathed in an oily sweat. She indicated her bloated bare belly.

The notion of what she expected of me, took me back for a moment. I’d gutted a million buffalo, wild game, once even ate a Pawnee buck’s liver, but when it came to birthing a baby, I felt awful anxious. That was what her jabbering in Sioux was all about.

“Help me have my baby.”

Filled with dread, I set aside the long gun. Then hoping I didn’t get sick and puke, I forced down the knot behind my tongue. Meekly I examined between her brown legs. She looked about to have the thing; the sight of a circle of black skull relieved me.

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