Read Online Tie My Bones to Her Back by Robert F. Jones - Free Book Online

.44-caliber rimfire bullets for the Henry. She began pushing the flat-tipped rounds through the loading gate on the forward right-hand side of the receiver, as Otto had showed her. They made a snicking sound going in. Tom Shields looked up from where he was feeding buffalo chips to the fire, saw the rifle, and smiled widely—the first genuinely joyous smile Jenny had seen on his face so far. A white man’s smile.
    “You got you a Yellow Boy,” he said.
    “Yellow Boy?”
    “Yah, that’s what we—ah, the Indians—call that make of rifle, for the brass frame, you know?”
    It gleamed like gold in the low sunlight.
    He got up and walked over to her, still smiling.
    “My father had one, not as good as this, though. You had to fill your cartridges from the top end of the tube, not by sliding them into the receiver there. You had to tilt the barrel up to drop the bullets in, and that wasn’t good in a fight. Someone might see your hand in the air and shoot it off. But it was a fine rifle anyhow, you could shoot it nearly all day before you had to reload. My father got it up by . . .”
    He stopped, suddenly shy again, and looked away. This was the longest speech Jenny had heard him utter since they’d met. He had a pleasant voice when he was happy about something, the harshness gone, and his eyes sparked pure green delight.
    “Where did he get it?” she asked, not wanting him to stop talking.
    “Well, up north there in the Big Horn country, near the Pineys and what we, uh, they call Crow Standing Creek.” He still couldn’t meet her eyes.
    “In the Fetterman Fight, you know?” he explained.
    She didn’t. She would ask Otto about it later. For the moment she just nodded and gave up trying to draw Tom Shields out further. He’d fallen back into his customary watchful silence.
    “I’m going to hunt down this gulch a ways,” she said to his back as he went over to the fire. “Maybe I’ll see something to shoot for the pot.”
    He turned to look at her. “Watch out for. . . stuff,” he said, his brow furrowing.
    “What, snakes?” She laughed.
    “Yah,” he said, his eyes popping wide, surprised but dead serious. “Snakes.” He made a sinuous move with his wrist at waist height, his hand extending slowly, fingers and thumb touched together to represent a snake’s head. She would later learn that this gesture was Plains Indian sign language for the Snake tribe, traditional enemies of the Cheyenne. Right now, though, it was just another indication of Tom’s odd behavior.
    S HE WALKED DOWN the coulee in the rapidly fading twilight, past the horses and mules grazing knee-deep in bluestem on their picket lines, past the oxen lying farther on, boxlike, chewing their cuds. The oxen were free to roam, but they wouldn’t wander far. The herd’s leader, a phlegmatic old bullock, would not let them, Otto had said. She stopped near the oxen to pull the forward hem of her ankle-length skirt up between her legs and tuck it into the back of her belt, converting her skirt into a baggy culotte for easier going.
    She began to hunt as Otto had taught her in the Wisconsin woods, walking a few quiet steps, then pausing for an equal length of time to scan the country around her. Carefully, slowly, watching for the least flicker of an ear or tail, the subtlest hint of an animal silhouette hidden in the maze of grass. Slowly, slowly . . .
    As she eased her way around the gentle slope of a rise, something sprang away from her, startlingly swift, right from under her feet.
    A jackrabbit.
    She had the rifle to her shoulder in a flash, following the bouncing hare along the gun barrel, and hit the trigger.
    Nothing happened.
    She’d forgotten to cock the hammer.
    She did so now, feeling her cheeks burn with shame. Then she reconsidered: if she tripped and fell, the rifle at full cock might go off, scaring away all the game in the country. She eased the hammer back down to half-cock, holding it with her thumb as her forefinger