Read Online Snowbound and Eclipse by Richard S. Wheeler - Free Book Online

mean and there was nothing here to slow it. There was hardly a tree between here and the British possessions.
    I heard some shots, and pretty soon Godey came back to us. He had been ahead, hunting, and shot some buffalo bulls. I didn’t look forward to the meat. Bulls are tough and sometimes stringy and not good for much except some stewing if you’ve got the time to boil the meat senseless. But at least we were getting into buffalo country, and we’d have us a cow or two now. Still, it would be entertaining to see how the greenhorns dealt with some bull meat, so I decided to join their mess.
    That was morning, and it was up to each mess to hack meat for supper, so I kept one eye on the greenhorns. It was a sight, alright. Chopping meat out of an old bull was about like sawing the trunk off an elephant. Ned Kern knew enough, but his brothers didn’t, and the rest had never seen one and hardly knew where to begin. But Ned began slicinginto the hump, and it took a deal of work even to open up a hole. Not even the surgeon was doing much good. Of course the rest of the messes had gone for the tongues; not much else worth putting into a cook pot. By the time the greenhorns got enough meat for supper, they had put hatchets and an axe to the task and were plumb worn out. I could hardly wait for supper, when they would get another lesson.
    That eve we camped in the shelter of a clay cliff beside Smoky Hill, and a few of Frémont’s veterans lent a hand to the greenhorns, getting a big fire going and getting that sawed-up meat on green sticks to broil on the lee side of the flames. I think the doctor, Ben Kern, figured it out long before they began to chomp on those slabs of shoe leather they were about to down for dinner. When the moment came, he tackled one or two bites of the brown ruin on his tin plate, sighed, and gave up.
    He never complained; I’ll give him credit, but McGehee was whining.
    â€œFat cow’s what we want,” I said to the doctor.
    â€œThe other messes have tongue. I think I’ll remember that.”
    â€œSay, whiles I’m here, do you have powders for anyone bound up?”
    â€œSalts, yes, purgatives. I have ample.”
    â€œThat’s good. I get bound up on buffalo. Sometimes we go a week without seeing a green, and then it’s misery.”
    â€œSee me, Mister King.”
    â€œI guess a doctor’s worth something after all,” I said.
    A faint smile spread across his face. “I have my instruments. If you break a leg, I can amputate. A saw cuts right through bone, and I imagine your leg would be a good bit more tender than this old bull.” He was smiling blandly, obviously enjoying himself.
    â€œI’m a young bull, alright.”
    â€œWatch your tongue,” he retorted.
    I had to admire the doc; he had some wit.
    It was getting colder than I wanted. The wind smelled like December. It had a whiff of the Arctic in it. But the chill was nothing compared with the sheer pleasure in being hundreds of miles from the nearest shelter. That was the plains for you. A norther could blow out of the north and there was nothing to slow it down, and sometimes it plowed clear into Mexico.
    We set off the next day in cold weather, a mean wind adding to our misery. I thought that pretty soon we’d hear some whining, but the greenhorns didn’t emit a peep, and we made our grim way west through an increasingly arid country, broken now by gullies and slopes but utterly treeless. Ere long we’d be using buffalo chips for fuel.
    The colonel seemed oblivious to the lancing wind and everything else and simply led us along a route that he did not share with us, content to let nature supply us. And it did. Godey shot a cow, and we feasted on good hump meat, plenty fat, and this time the greenhorns got a taste of prime buffalo meat. It made an impression on them, for sure. The whole trip, Frémont had scarcely given a command, and the slightest