Buffalo Girls Read Online Free

his capacity to smell had become more and more refined, finally becoming so keen that it brought him renown throughout the west. He could smell buffalo and he could smell rain. He could sniff a woman’s belly and tell if shewere fertile, and he could smell babies in the womb within a few days of their conception.
    Above all, he could smell death. It was No Ears who walked into camp, a hundred miles from the Little Bighorn, and informed General Crook of the Custer massacre. Bodies rotted quickly in the hot June sun—the smell of hundreds of dead had reached him on the wind. General Crook believed him, too; few men doubted No Ears’s nose.
    Another thing that worried him about the cranes was that he couldn’t smell them—they stood in the water on their long, stemlike legs, as neutral as air.
    Also, it was No Ears’s belief that death resided in the north. The hole in the sky was supposed to be in the south, but in his view that was only a trick to divert the victim’s attention. The seven cranes had come from the north, a sure sign, to No Ears’s way of thinking, that they had come on a spirit mission.
    Carefully No Ears sniffed his hands. He had often wondered if he would be able to smell himself die, and the presence of the cranes made the question urgent. If his spirit had begun a quiet withdrawal, his flesh would soon begin to smell empty. He had often noticed an empty smell in the extremities of the dying, a sign that the blood was leaving with the spirit. No Ears sniffed his hands carefully and was relieved that they smelled fine. It indicated to him that his soul had no interest in leaving with the cranes.
    Then a sound slapped the air. The startled cranes lifted their wings and began their slow, awkward climb into the air. Six struggled skyward and flapped off to the east, but one lay kicking in the stream.
    Jim Ragg and Bartle Bone came walking up Crazy Woman Creek toward the dying bird.
    â€œWhoopee, crane for breakfast,” Bartle said. He had a bowie knife in his hand. When he came to the crane he stood astraddle of the small stream, grabbed the struggling bird’s neck, and whacked its head off.

    â€œThis is a big bird,” he remarked. “It takes a damn good knife to make that clean a cut on a bird this size.”
    Held up, the crane was almost as tall as Bartle, though not quite, Bartle being a shade over six feet tall. In his youth the older mountain men had called him Tall Boy and had assigned him the deeper beaver ponds. Jim Ragg, stumpy by contrast, could barely have kept his nose above water in some of the ponds where Bartle trapped.
    Jim Ragg set down his gun and blanket and began to look for firewood. He had shot the crane in the head so as to spoil as little meat as possible, but Bartle whacked the bird’s head off without commenting on the shot. Bartle could have shot at the crane for a week and not managed to hit it in the head; it was typical that he would compliment his own knife rather than the shot. Bartle liked to be the best at everything, but in fact was only an average shot. Brilliant shots made by others were always ignored.
    Jim scanned the barren plain and didn’t see much firewood, but both men saw No Ears squatting behind a sage bush fifty or sixty yards away.
    â€œWould you be willing to join us for breakfast, or do you prefer just to sit out there and smell yourself?” Bartle yelled.
    Of course No Ears expected to be asked to breakfast. He had known the mountain men since they were youths and had helped them on many occasions when they were less experienced and might not have survived. He had lingered behind the bush merely to enjoy a moment of relief at the departure of the cranes—the birds’ behavior had shocked him badly.
    He stood up and started toward the creek, but before he had taken three steps Bartle yelled at him again.
    â€œBring some of that bush with you,” Bartle yelled. “There ain’t much