Shortgrass Song Read Online Free

started dropping into the Monument Creek drainage. That was the day the wind picked up from the south, and he began thinking of dry-land sailing in his little milk wagon. He knew he was no more than a day or two away from Ab Holcomb’s ranch. He predicted that when he arrived, he would find out Ab and Ella had moved on to Oregon.

THREE
    Buster’s wind wagon balked now and then between gusts, and in places where the slope leveled out, but for almost half an hour he kept sailing west, singing an old work shanty called “Haul on the Bowline” when the running was smoothest. He found a nailhead to hitch the banjo strap on so he didn’t have to hold it against the wind. He got moving up to ten or fifteen miles an hour on one stretch.
    The plains continued to pitch more severely toward the west, causing the milk wagon to run faster and Buster to sing louder:
    Haul on the bowline, the ship she is a-rollin’
    Haul on the bowline, the bowline, haul.
    Chesapeake Bay had nothing on the shortgrass plains. There was no lighthouse like Pikes Peak.
    Over the square bow of the wind wagon, he saw a wide swale dropping off before him. With the jolting of the craft over the rough prairie, he could see only enough of the terrain to tell that the swale would give him his highest speeds yet. He grinned, adjusted the sheet, and hitched it back on its nailhead. He hoped to get rolling as fast as he could into the swale so his momentum would take him as far as possible up the other side.
    The fiddle and the mandolin jumped in the forecastle with every bump the wagon wheels met. Buster settled lower in the buffalo chips. He hung his left arm over the port gunnel to better see around the sail and to keep his vessel aright in case a powerful gust tried to heel her over to the starboard. The sheet slipped an inch on its nail, so he double hitched it and started singing again.
    Haul on the bowline, the bosun is a-growlin’
    Haul on the bowline, the bowline, haul.
    The wind wagon reached the steepest pitch now, diving into the swale, running faster than a galloping horse. Buster held his hat down with one hand.
    Something caught his eye over the top of the mast. A ragged black slash across the sky. Two, three, four of them—circling. Buzzards! Something dead? They soared and banked low on the southern wind over the swale. He watched one of them, its wing feathers splayed like fingers, as it swooped toward the ground and then— into the ground. It vanished like a prairie dog! Now it shot out of the plains fifty yards over!
    Buster pulled himself higher in the rattling milk wagon. Down in the bowl of the swale ahead, he could just make out the rim of a sand bluff. He was sailing headlong toward a plains canyon!
    â€œTurn her to the wind, Buster!” he said to himself, but the wagon tongue proved useless as a tiller. He pulled against it with everything he had, but it wouldn’t change the cut of the wheels.
    He glanced ahead, saw the near edge of the gully, closer than he could have imagined. He had ten seconds to stop! He yanked at the sheet, double hitched on the nailhead. Finally getting it loose, the sail slacked leeward, but momentum kept him rolling. “Heel her over!” He rocked side to side, but the wagon wouldn’t tip, its center too low.
    Three seconds to stop, or fly over the bluff! Buster let the wagon tongue drag astern. He leapt over the transom and landed with both feet on the tongue. It cut into the ground like a harrow, raising a plume of dust. The wagon slowed, but the leading wheels reached the bluff and rolled off. The running gear under the wagon box slammed against the precipice and slid. Buster saw something below—smoke-blackened cones bristling with lodge poles—ten or twelve of them.
    When the trailing wheels hit the ledge, the wagon bucked Buster off the tongue and back into the box as it plummeted down the steep bank of the gully. Children screamed and dogs barked as