Read Online Buffalo Medicine by Don Coldsmith - Free Book Online

black snake. It was easy to glance at the coils and wonder how many hapless prisoners had contributed the color of their blood to the greasy hue of the device. The butt of the whip, nearly as thick as one’s wrist, was held by a thong looped around the forearm of the overseer.
    There were several of these men, charged with management of the prisoners. One stood out above all others, however, for his sadism. It was he who had initiated Owl to the bite of el gato in the courtyard back in the village of the Mud Lodge people. At any pretext he sent the burning lash searching for tender skin with a vengeance. At times it seemed as though the man was actually disappointed if there were no infractions. The other overseers were content if the prisoners were quiet and cooperative, but this one wielder of the dreaded cat was constantly restless. It was thought that his pleasure in its application was so intense that he occasionally applied an unjustified blow just to pass the time.
    He was of scarcely more than medium height, but very broad and muscular in the shoulders. His muscles were overdeveloped from wielding the cat, it was said. Perhaps this was true, for his lower body and legs were disproportionately slender. It was as if the man had been assembled from parts of two differently shaped individuals. His neck was short and thick, allowing his head to rest, it appeared, directly on his heavy shoulders. A fringe of beard straggled around the periphery of his face, framing a perpetual look of evil ill-temper. The small, close-set eyes wandered constantly, looking for the slightest excuse to unleash the cat. In no time at all the prisoners had applied to the man himself the name of his favorite instrument. He was El Gato.
    He seemed to take special delight in watching for any infractions on the part of Owl. It became a one-sided game, with all the rules favoring the man with the whip. Owl was unsure why he had been singled out for special attention. He realized, however, it must have been because
of his outburst back in the village. How utterly stupid of him, he now reflected. He had actually expected the Hairfaces to welcome him into the hospitality of their tribe. Yes, it had been a serious mistake to draw attention to himself. Now, it was apparent that the primary objective of every prisoner should be not to catch the attention of the overseer. It was much better to become only one more of the faceless, dull entities, part of the sameness that was the mark of the captives.
    There were perhaps as many prisoners as there are days in a moon. Owl was still puzzled as to why the Hairfaces kept this group of captives huddled in subjugation. They eagerly looked forward to one bright spot in the day, the distribution of the poor-quality food. Occasionally the guards would come into the mud-walled enclosure and single out a handful of the captives for some menial task, such as carrying sacks of grain or logs of firewood.
    Downtrodden and low in spirit as he was, Owl still had one faculty over which he had very little control. His strict training under the medicine man had so deeply ingrained the habit of observation that he gathered information without consciously doing so. In this way he gained much knowledge of the Hairfaces on the infrequent occasions when he was among those chosen for the work party.
    There were several things about his captors which Owl found almost beyond belief. He had already noticed, on the punishing march from the mud-hut village, that they made extensive use of the shiny medicine material. His father had a small knife of this sort, in contrast to the flint blades and spear points made by old Stone Breaker of the People. His father’s elk-dog medicine, in fact, the jingling thing that enabled control of the horse, was formed of the shiny stuff. Now, he saw that the material was used by the Hairfaces for many things. All of their elk-dogs wore the medicine objects in their mouths. Several of the men had