The Buffalo Wallow

by JACK TENNISON

ELLIS beat me to the warmest place in the soddy, behind the cookstove against the wall. He was bigger than I was and fat. I was little and skinny, but before 1 could squirm past Earl, our cowhand, who had his feet in the oven, and Uncle Lige, who stood at the front warming his hands over the cracked lids, Ellis was in the woodbox, which had never held any wood since it came from Wisconsin to Central Nebraska thirteen years before in the covered wagon, Californy bound.

The year, ‘81. I was eight. My cousin Ellis, two years older, had to twist the hay for the cookstove as kindling, and I shoved big ears of yellow corn on this for fuel. Not a stick of wood in this prairie country big enough to make an arrow if a boy wanted to play bow’n arrow. No coal either since the big February blizzard snowed the land in.

The soddy was a one-room house, table and stove at one end; and across the other was a sheeting partition behind which Uncle Lige and Aunt Effie slept. Lige never got out of bed without his long legs tangling this wall, and Effie’s opinion of farmers and cowhands was awful to hear.

Some mornings Earl came into the clapboard lean-to, where Ellis and I slept, with a lantern. Our outer bed covering was an old buffalo skin with the hair half worn off. Blizzard days fine hard snow rattled through the warped clapboards, and when we got up we shoved a powdery drift from our chins and slid out upon the frozen dirt floor. Earl would be sawing meat from a frozen carcass which hung by the end of our bed. He’d start at the rump, and by spring was sawing close to the critter’s ears. The first thing a child saw on a cold winter morning was the red insides of a dead cow. But Ellis and I grabbed frozen boots and raced for the soddy. First there got the warmest spot and piled his boots on the stove lids to thaw them softer. No chance at the oven. Menfolks always grabbed that.

Aunt Effie was trying to get near her stove with a pan of sody biscuits. She said: “You menfolks back from that stove. Get your hoofs out o’ that oven, Earl! Lands, a body can’t make a batch o’ cookies without ‘em tastin’ o’ ol’ wool socks an’ wet boots. Hustle that fire, Chick. Lige, don’t put the fire out with that snow droppin’ from your whiskers!”

Uncle Lige gazed dreamily out the one small window which Ellis and I had shoveled from the drifts. Lige said: “Well, sir, icicles drippin’ spring’s here, an’ I aim to break that West Eighty. Yes, sir, Bobbee— last dang prairie on this ranch. Farm now— no dang ranch.”

Earl fell so bad he went out and gazed south towards Texas where cows were still cows. Ellis and I fell no better.

“Corn,” Lige smiled still dreamily. “First breakin’ corn. You boys big enough to help now. Ellis can jab holes in that sod and Chick can drap seeds. An’ if Earl stays as a hand —”

Effie slammed the oven door, which hung on a barbed-wire hinge. “Ain’t critters enough now for a cow rider. Earl’s just like the other hands we keep winters. Board ‘em for chores. Come spring an’ they vamoose.”

“Chores!” I yelled. “Cow fellers don’t do chores. Ellis an’ me do all the chores. Earl claims it hurts his hands to milk.”

Ellis and I looked out across the snow-buried West Eighty. If Lige plowed that prairie he’d ruin the whole summer for us.

Hidden far out there in the grass was the old Buffalo Waller, and what a hangout for boys in a treeless land! The Waller was the shallow pit gouged out of the prairie by uncounted generations of buffalo as they rubbed their itchy backs on the under-sand. Forty feet across and six feet deep in one spot. Around the rim grew wild bluestem and buffalo grass, and the little pink wild roses in spring. Under the sod rim we had dug tunnels for shelter from the fierce July sun and for hide-outs for all the plunder we hooked from the ranch. Nobody cared. It was all broken useless stuff. Frayed lariats, worn-out bridles, pieces of strap and trace chain.

And guns! The only playthings we ever had were guns. Useless guns. A six-shooter with no trigger, a muzzle-loading shotgun with the breech blown out. A Civil War musket which my dad had given me along with a gray Johnny Reb cap when he went off to Mexico to fight some more, not having had enough with Sherman for four years it seemed. My mother had died, and he dumped me, aged three, on Aunt Effie’s lap. Well, sir. Bobbee, I had the only gun that would shoot —except it was longer than I was and an awful kicker. And I could hardly lift it. Then the beautiful old Kentucky rifle, with octagon barrel, silver inlay in the polished walnut stock, too heavy for both of us. But it wouldn’t shoot. We had no flints for the powder pan rusted to the vent, and a ramrod had been broken off in the muzzle, likely in Boone’s day. Nobody knew. The relic had come down in Effie’s family from her folks back East. Back East was some awful place beyond the sunrise which Ellis and I hated. Back East was where the Mortgage came from. We heard a lot about the Mortgage. Effie used it to scare us into garden work, and it was something for Lige to swear at.

2

FROM the end of one year to the next autumn we didn’t travel ten miles from the ranch but in November Ellis and I would be taken to town, with Effie bundled on the floor of the wagon, to get boots, and Lige to pay Int’rust on the Mortgage. We were always scared; Elbe said if Lige didn’t, have enough money we wouldn’t get boots and the Mortgage would run us out of house and home. Lige said them dang New Yorkers were at the bottom of this. He said them New Yorkers didn’t work. All they did was to walk up and down a big street all day wearing plug hats and collecting Int’rust from pore fellers out West.

Town consisted of a grain elevator, a stock-loading chute, two saloons, and the store, a dark place smelling of leather. We hated that place, too, for out of it we stumbled in new high stiff boots with copper toes, after months of freedom, barefooted in the prairie grass. With boots you had to start school over the frozen road ruts. Boots never seemed warm or dry; but in spring you’d slash the insteps out and be free, for a day would come when you couldn’t get swollen feet out of them. Freedom then! Frosty mornings you chased a cow up and warmed feet by squatting in the spot where she had bedded.

Spring was fine also because then you quit school. Let Teacher holler; she couldn’t catch you. Effie would jaw some but we’d show a vast interest in her new garden and ride fence with the wirestretcher to mend the places where the last range stock had shoved through into Lige’s newly planted corn. Lige said if he knew which were his he’d ride over to the last prairie sections and shoot them, but they weren’t worth skinning. He said ranching had busted him up; no more dang cows for him except milk critters.

Ellis said: “Just give us some powder for the muskit an’ Chick an’ me will ride Ol’ Tops an’ Jewel out there an’ chase them steers to Texas.”

“You boys stay away from them mean critters,” Lige warned. “An’ you been bookin’ powder an’ shot off me; an’ what you been doin’ to Earl’s ca’tridges? They won’t shoot none, the pore feller says.”

We knew. If Earl and some other cowhand picked up in a barroom came home drunk and snoozed it off in Earl’s straw-covered bunk shack, we got busy with their ammunition. Take the shells out of their forty-fives, and hidden in the Buffalo Waller, we’d twist the bullets free. Empty the powder into our bottle, fill the shell with sand, and crimp the bullet back in. Take the six-shooter back and stick it in the victim’s holster.

Then, some fine morning the cowpoke would want target practice on a post owl or jack rabbit. Pull trigger, snap the caps vainly, and then swear — at the hardware man who sold him his ca’tridges. If the poor lads had ever examined their shells they’d have semi the tampering. But they never did. Ellis and I concluded that cowhands didn’t have much sense.

When Earl came home some drunk, he’d give us a dime to sneak some grub out of the soddy without Effie knowing it. But she always did. My little, sharp-eyed aunt! She ran things as much as she could — and better than menfolks at that. Good old Lige, tall and grizzled and hairy of ears, lost in his dream of a big farm someday — if he didn’t pull out for Califomy where he’d headed for once, but a horse died and he and Effie squatted right here, homesteaded, timber-claimed, and bought virgin prairie.

Ellis an I learned much from our various cowhands but we didn’t mention this learning to Effie.

Somehow she’d find out. Once I overheard her say to Lige: “Them boys been hookin’ a drink outa Earl’s bottle. Land, what next? I saw Chick stealin’ powder out your flask to take out to the Waller an’ fight Indians. They’re gettin’ tough.”

“Well, this ain’t no place for a boy if he can’t tough up. They got to have powder an’ lead for their muskit, so I don’t say nothin’. Just hope they don’t blow themselves up.”

3

THE ancient Buffalo Waller was the center of our life. Down in it you were out of sight. Over us meadow larks sang sweetly, the red-winged blackbirds darted; and high above in the cloudless blue long angles of ducks and geese headed north, and from higher still, almost invisible, came the faint cries of the sandhill cranes. They never ravaged Lige’s newly planted corn as the geese did. We rode out to chase them from the fields and hunted them at sunset. Game laws were never heard of but game was safe from us. I was too little to aim the muskit, so Ellis dragged it through muddy sloughs while the millions of ducks and geese watched interestedly. Then took off with scornful clamor when we neared. We came home wet, cold, and subdued. Someday we’d show them durn ducks. And one dusk I was dragging the muskit home alone when a mighty cloud of teal went over. I jammed the butt of the muskit in the mud, the muzzle skyward, shut my eyes, and pulled the trigger. The gun jumped out of my hands, but down came a bluewing! What a thrill when you’re eight!

I grabbed the duck and ran yelling to the soddy. Nobody would believe I shot a duck. I couldn’t aim that gun. Ellis had never yet hit anything with the muskit no matter how much stolen powder and slugs he crammed down her. Effie wouldn’t cook my duck. Too little lor four folks, and anyhow it must have dropped dead with heart trouble. The next day I lugged it to the Waller and roasted it on a ramrod over a grass fire. Ellis took a big chunk. But he wouldn’t eat the little snake I baked likewise.

Before we quit school a boy from south section said that Earl had passed his place one morning riding his pinto and dragging his pack horse with pots and pans clattering against his blanket roll. And swearing at his third cayuse for tagging along when he didn’t want it.

We didn’t know our cowhand had quit us. Effie said: “Soon’s them cow fellers smell farm work they light out for Texas or some place.”

We chored hard hoping to divert Lige’s mind from that prairie Eighty. We burned the dried grass off t he top and sides of the soddy so new pretty grass and weeds could sprout. Lige had started his rusty checkrower to plant the North Eighty. From the Waller we heard the faint clickity-click, and sometimes we’d go follow Lige around, making him talk, anything to delay the man on his spring work so he wouldn’t start first breakin’ on our last prairie. Lige would stop corn planting, take a chew, and tell us more about the Mortgage and them dang Plug Hat New Yorkers. He said New York was a hell of a place. You had to have some kind of card before you could go hunting. And if you wanted to shoot somebody you had to get a permit from the sheriff. We stared hard at the level skyline. Back East must be an awful place. I couldn’t imagine how boys lived there. I thought all boys lived as we did. We never confided in grownups, and they didn’t pay much attention to us. If we never complained about anything then they couldn’t meddle. That was exactly what we wanted. No preachin’, no doctorin’, no askin’ Did it hurt ? or How you feel?

Effie said in some lands folks didn’t get enough to eat. We didn’t believe it. We saw the rotting mounds of grain in the spring, the gorging cattle fighting around it, all the chickens roosting around and laying eggs everywhere in season; and all the cabbage, potatoes, turnips, buried in the pits and rotting when the snows melted, all the beef and pork kept frozen until it summer-spoiled — and then more critters would be butchered, and all the meat we couldn’t use given away to folks who’d ride in for butchering day — and Ellis and I didn’t believe that Chinee boys or anybody could go hungry as Lige read in the County Republican — when he could get a copy.

Earl hadn’t been gone a week before his third cayuse came back, the useless outlaw he didn’t want. Cowhands in those days were not romantics or hero-minded. They thought a man was crazy trying to gentle a mean horse when you had good ones.

Now Ellis and I had a cow pony! A shaggy, walleyed pothellied critter, hanging again around the corn piles. Lige said let the durn sorry fool kill himself eating, but Ellis and I had large visions of roping and bucking and swearing like men.

We spent a week figuring how to gentle that pony. First catch him, of course. We laid lariats around the fodder corn pile and hid along the corral wire. For days all we got was mean looks; and then, one morning he jerked up a mouthful and the rope went over his ears! We yelled and jerked, he bucked and jumped. He dragged us through mudholes and loose wires until the noose got his wind. He fell over popeyed. We were cut and sprained, all three of us half dead.

Ellis got his breath. “Go git your saddle. It’s no good anyhow if he acts bad.”

I got my relic, which had no stirrups, no horn, no leather on the seat. I rode a mess of wood splinters and old hair rubbed off the work horses we used fence riding. But now a real cow pony.

We kept him choked close to the lariat pin. Ellis gave him a little air when he strangled too much. He didn’t seem to have the strength of a cat. We got the saddle over his bony spine and worked the cinch down under and around his belly. He opened his mouth to gasp and Ellis got the bit between his teeth when he lost consciousness again. Ellis said: “Let the bugger up. You git first ride, for it’s your saddle.”

“Who? Me first?” I got the rope off his neck and a soothing hand to his nose. He heaved a mighty sigh and stood up tottering. I put a hand on the saddle and then to his shaggy neck. Then he started. I’d never heard of a rodeo but this critter knew the business. He bucked, spraddled, and wiggled. He rose on his hind legs and came down close to Ellis’s ears. Ellis fled and the bridle jerked off our mustang’s nose. The critter was mad. He made a sideswipe that knocked me back into the barbed wire, and then started. Down the rutty road, faster and faster — south.

“Now see what you gone an’ done!” Ellis yelled. “Got your saddle too! Why didn’t you hop on him?”

“Who? Me? Look at him scoot. Wish I was on him. Headed for Texas, I bet. I’d sure see Texas.”

“What you want Texas for? Just a lot o’ cows an’ ain’t we all cut an’ jerked sore milkin’ an’ fight in’ ‘em now?”

We never saw our cow horse again. Bound for Texas with a saddle on his back.

Ellis and I limped about for a week, rope galls and barbed-wire slashes hidden from Effie. Lige grinned and said nothing. He always figured we were in some devilment and should get out of it on our own hook. He was plowing his old fields, and we had great hopes that he’d forgotten his first break in’ on the prairie Eighty.

Ellis came to me one day: “There’s a wagon man campin’ by the corral, an’ he’s got a bobtailed dog. What he Calls a screwtail terrier. He says we ought to make all our pups stylish like Lis with bobtails. Want to try it ?”

“Sure. We’ll cut their tails off.

“Naw. That makes ‘em runty he says. You got to chaw tails off, kind of a side-windin’ jerk, to make good screwtail pups.”

“Well, we’ll take that best pup out to the Waller an’ fix him stylish. We got to clean the Waller, anyhow. That dang dead cow’s got her cars up again. Rain’s washin’ her clear out.”

That cow had been a housekeeping problem two summers. She’d blizzard-drifted into our fort, died, and buried in snow until it melted. We couldn’t drag her out, so we tried to bury her. Dug with hands and sticks and a broken spade and got sand over her at last.

But she wouldn’t stay in her grave. She swelled and smelled free every big rain. This second summer she didn’t smelt so strong but Effie said we did. She said between boys and dogs she was in a state o’ mind. Our dogs roamed far, dining on winter-dead cattle. Our poor starved dogs! All they had to live on was beefsteak and pork ribs, liver, side meat, white bread, sody biscuits and chicken gravy.

We carried thee best pup out to the Waller the next day. He looked suspiciously back for his mammy when I straddled him. Ellis seemed suspicious too. 1 yelled for him to chaw that tail before ihe pup squirmed. He just took a liltlo nibble but the pup yelled some. I said: “That ain’t, no good. Lemme get a chaw.”

“Sure. Give it kind of a twisty chaw the feller said, to make a screwtail. Give him a sidewinder like.”

I took a good deep chaw, my mouth full of hair. The pup screamed murder, fought from under me and headed home. Ellis said: “Now see what you gone an’ done. Hear him yelp! Where’s his tail if you chawed if off?”

“I dunno. Mcbbe T swallered it, There was hair on somethin’.”

“You’re a dang liar! I see his tail wavin’ right now!”

When that pup saw me again he went to a gopher hole, stuck his tail in it, and sat down firmly. Grew to be a fine old hound but he never trusted me all his life.

4

SPRING was warming up. The little clear-water pools in the prairie grass, reflecting the pink wild roses, were drying. But the red-winged blackbirds teetered on the reeds, the meadow larks sang sweetly, the jack rabbits played at sunset, and the big black and yellow bumblebees built tough paper nests at the grass roots; and we got badly stung up trying to get their black strong honey. Everything was as in other springs, so we hoped. Maybe there’d be no first breakin’ of the ancient sod; maybe Lige was sparing our last prairie from the plow.

We worked more than boys should trying to please the folks. Lige had us riding out to chase the last duck flights from his sprouting corn. We helped Effie make soft soap, churn the butter, weed the garden, and chase the chickens from it. So many hens laying out everywhere that eggs were a nuisance.

When a black dust storm came out of the Southwest in the spring drouth and blew all of Lige’s wheat out of his fields before it got well sprouted, Ellis and I were jubilant. If he had to replant he’d never break the last prairie.

When rains came Lige’s wheat sprouted in his cornfields, in the rutty road, everywhere except where he’d planted it. Lige just grinned; he’d planted too much land anyhow maybe.

This looked hopeful to us. But one day I saw Ellis running through the row of little cottonwoods which would be the windbreak on the blizzard side of the house. He yelled wildly at me. “He’s doin’ it! Got his plow in the West Eighty, an’ singin’ fit to kill! Chick, you do somethin’ quick, stop him!”

I followed out through the windbreak and stared west. Right by our feet across the road line a black furrow began and ran out through the virgin prairie. A beautiful, first breakin’ furrow, maybe; not a clod in it, just a long black ribbon held firm by the tough grass roots. The ancient sod which had never been stirred in its million years under the sun and snows. The little pink roses and the clearwater pools of spring were gone but a meadow lark called from waist-high grass and striped gophers frolicked before us. But they wouldn’t stay there now. They wouldn’t have their ancient home and they wouldn’t stay in the muddy cornfields. When the prairie was gone the last wild things would go too.

Ellis and I didn’t talk. It took a long time for Lige’s rollin’ cutter plow to round a “land” and come back to the first furrow. But in the silence we heard the distant clank of trace chains, then the panting of the team and the soft hiss of the cutter slicing the sod. I saw Jewel’s ears and then Lige’s old gray hat. The plow came slowly along and stopped.

Ellis turned away staring down the black furrow far as he could see it in the grass. Ellis’s pa saw that. He addressed himself to me, grinning: “Hi, young feller! You never saw such a first breakin’ furrow afore, did you? Not a crack in it. Now that’s tough ol’ prairie, ain’t it ?”

“Yeh, I guess,” I muttered sulkily.

“Fetch me the water jug. Then you boys foller me out, an’ at the far end we’ll let the team blow, an’ talk.”

I got the jug but I wouldn’t speak to Lige. We heard the water gurgle down his gullet, then he grinned. How could the man be so cheerful, all sweaty but like a man who’d done a good deed? The old coot knew what he’d done — ruined the Waller forever.

He said “Giddap,” and his ornery cutter hissed into the second furrow. Ellis and I followed along, our toes in the smooth black bottom of it. On and on went Lige behind Jewel and Old Tops. Ellis grunted back to me: “This time he’ll go whack into the Waller. Bust the sod down on our cave. We better run ahead an’ yank out the muskit an’ the Kentucky gun, save some o’ the stuff.”

But we plodded on dismally, eyes down to the cursed furrow. So we didn’t notice it was turning slightly left. But after a while Lige yelled: “Whoa, you critters! Rest a spell. First breakin’ prairie gants a team up bad.”

The plow stopped. Ellis ran around ahead of it. He vanished over the rim of the Waller and I heard him yelling excitedly.

I started that way and Lige stopped me. The furrow made a skirl and went off a hundred feet to the left of the Waller. I began yelling myself. “Doggone! Missed it, by Swanny!”

“The durndest thing,” said Lige. “This team just balked on me on that first furrow. Ol’ Tops balkin’ an’ geein’ off loco.”

“Wouldn’t plow up the Waller?” I’d never heard such foolishness in all my born days. It was tragic.

“Yeh. Go scratch Tops’s ear. She started it, an’ I couldn’t do a thing with ‘em. Must be them of plugs got to rememberin’ all the hot days you boys helped, mendin’ fence an’ runnin’ cows, sweatin’ on their bony backs. They just reared up an’ left mebbe a whole acre o’ prairie around your Waller.”

More foolishness. But Ellis was down in the Waller, jumping up and down on the dead dried cow. Even she seemed to grin from her bony skull. Ellis yelled: “Come see! What got into Lige, such foolishness? Blamin’ them of horses?”

I joined him and kicked the dried cow. “He never aimed to bust up the Waller. Just tickled him all spring scarin’ us. I bet Effie made him do this! Let’s go holler at her. Git home!”

We ran through our last prairie, down the cool black bottom of the furrow. What a beautiful first breakin’ furrow! We burst into the sod house, where Effie stood with floury hands.

“Know what? Lige left us a whole acre o’ prairie! For Chick an’ me around the Waller!”

“Ain’t ever goin" to be plowed by anybody forever!”

Effie’s small sun-leathered face had a rare sweet smile. “It sure won’t be, long as I got a say with this land. Last prairie belongs to you boys. You worked hard cleanin’ the place up. Run git your ol’ guns an’ play shootin’. Land, I’ll burn my cookies! Get out of my way — an’ who stole the crock o’ buttermilk I was coolin’ in the windmill tank?”

We ran for our prairie yelling. “Ain’t ever goin’ to he plowed! Not ever forever!”

5

WE lost. Nearly seventy years later I saw the ranch again. Ellis now lived in town but he drove me out in his fine ear along good roads lined with box elders and big cottonwoods. He said: “Chick, I’m eighty an’ never been sick abed in my life. How you feel now?”

“Never sick in my life. That old West must have made us tough buggers. Well, where’s the ranch?”

He drove on as if not hearing me. But he talked: “You know that first winter they homesteaded here, they lived in a covered wagon. It must have been tough. But I never heard a complaint out of Effie or Lige. Cheerful folks. With all his talk Lige never got to Californy. Never got anywhere forty miles from his land in forty years. Wound up in Farmers’ Valley buryin’ ground. But Effie saw Californy! That first war boom she sold out at big prices. Went to Californy and didn’t like it. Came back to sleep by Lige again. Battled the land to the end of their days, and laughed.”

“Old-timers started to make this a pretty country— but — show me the section corners so I can tell where’s the ranch.”

He stopped and pointed: “There. See it?”

I didn’t answer and he stopped talking. We sat in silence. I looked above whispering corn in tassel. Not a thing else. Not a windbreak tree, a windmill, a stick of fence or corral, or soddy; not a sign to show that boys had played and grownups laughed and worked here. Corn, bright blades, waving tassels. Mighty corn — food for a world!

“Come on, Ellis. I don’t like this country now. Show me the Waller, and where’s the schoolhouse?”

A yellow school bus went past filled with shouting children. A fine cheerful country, a land that had no legends, no history, not an event that anyone would remember. Ellis drove west along a fine road. At the next section corner he stopped. He pointed again over waving corn. “There’s the Buffalo Waller. See it?”

I had to look a long time. At last I made out a slight depression in the mighty cornfields. Ellis said: “You know what? When Effie sold she tried to fix the deed so our prairie’d never be broke up. Said the last acre belonged to the boys. Said mebbe Chick’d come back someday and want to play in the Waller. Me an’ the lawyers never let her know what the big company had done out here. But once, after she’d passed ninety, she got to the bank an’ bawled ‘em out. Said if anybody ever plowed that acre they were worse than Plug Hat New Yorkers.”

Then I said, “Ellis, you remember we always thought we were fooling Lige and Effie, keeping all our doings and troubles from them and never complaining, but now I believe they knew all the time!”

“Sure — and never meddled. Laughed and let us run free. Chick, we had something that’s lost forever.”

Little old tough-bodied, tough-minded Effie, pioneer woman of the West! Long as she could, trying to keep that bit of ancient prairie sod for the meadow larks and gophers, the big black and yellow bumblebees — and boys who might come back someday. Symbol of a lost primal land.