Shortgrass Song Read Online Free Page A

he pulled himself high enough to peer over the lurching sideboards. He was racing toward the tallest tepee in the camp. He would flatten it, killing its inhabitants, prompting the rest of the villagers to roast him alive over his own buffalo chips.
    When his wind wagon hit, the leading wheels straddled a lodge pole and drove straight up toward the smoke hole. The vehicle died like a rock flung to its zenith, then fell back on its tongue. It bounced on its end and pitched everything out. Buster’s fiddle and mandolin landed five feet away. The crate slid out from under the mast, and the boom swung down to slap him across the head with a discordant twanging of banjo strings, sprawling him among the scattered buffalo chips.
    A dog snarled at his heels as buzzards circled overhead. A rank odor filled his nostrils, and he willed his eyes to focus. Strange people moved around him—men crouching low for a fight, women yanking naked children away. Through them rushed a lean warrior in breechcloth and leggings, his long, flying braids wrapped in spirals of fur, his eyes hot with love of battle. He drew a lance over his shoulder as he charged, turned sideways, and skipped, gathering his weight for the thrust.
    A sharp voice barked, and the warrior with the spear loosened his grip, his palm sliding harmlessly along the shaft as his arm whipped toward his target. His startled eyes cut away from Buster, and Buster followed them.
    From the lodge against which the wind wagon lay, a dark man emerged, holding back the bearskin that covered the entrance hole. Hair fell long and loose around his broad face, and a single black-tipped feather protruded sideways from behind his head. The breadth of his jaw was severe, his mouth straight and thin lipped, his nose like an eagle’s beak. He wore a tawny suit of tanned skins, colored with beads, porcupine quills, and strips of fur. His voice knifed again toward the brave with the spear, and his eyes landed on the intruder.
    The black man forced a grin. As the dark chief came to stand over him, Buster reached for his shirt pocket. Several warriors had gathered with spears or bows—one with a flintlock rifle—but only the brave with the fur-spiraled braids seemed ready to kill and brandished his lance again when the black man reached for his pocket. Buster produced only a harmonica.
    He put the instrument in his mouth, blew a single note, and scanned his audience. He tripped up the scale. The chief smiled. Buster began playing “Old Dan Tucker,” shuffling his feet in time among the buffalo chips. He stopped on a sour note when the chief grabbed his wrist and lifted him.
    â€œDo you speak the English?” the chief asked.
    Buster nodded, felt his knees wobble under him.
    â€œI am Long Fingers. What are you called?”
    â€œBuster.”
    â€œBuster,” Long Fingers repeated, amused at the sound of the thing. “You make music like I hear at Cherry Creek. You have a fiddle?”
    â€œYes, sir,” Buster said.
    â€œYou will make music with that and eat some meat with us.” Long Fingers turned to speak to his braves, then shouted at some squaws, who scattered.
    The brave with the spear finally lowered it, growling with obvious disdain.
    Long Fingers grunted at him. “Kicking Dog wants to kill you, but I will not let him,” he said, turning to Buster.
    â€œI tell him your scalp is no good.” He put his hand on Buster’s head and felt his hair. “He calls you Buffalo Head, but I think the hair is not the same as tike buffalo.”
    â€œI wouldn’t know,” Buster said. “I ain’t seen no buffalo yet.” He scratched the curly growth of his ragged beard. “Sorry about your tent,” he said, pointing stiffly.
    â€œIt is your wagon turned over, not my lodge.”
    Men began reaching for Buster’s belongings, showing particular interest in the sail on the guitar and banjo rigging.
    â€œYou have a