herd had almost been totally annihilated.
They lived like nomads. Buck tried to control the girls, but they ran wild most of the time, blond, dirty-faced urchins who had only each other for friends. They never stayed in one place long enough to plant the seeds of friendship, nor did any of the town’s children extend their friendship. Like Gypsies, his family traveled from place to place, always living on the outskirts of towns in ramshackle cabins or cheap boardinghouses.
When the Kansas plain was played out, word spread that there were buffalo to be had in Texas, so Pa moved them south. By 1876 the Texas and Pacific Railway had completed a line to Fort Worth and another massacre began in earnest. Buck was sixteen by then and had been skinning alongside his pa for two years, ever since the day he became fed up with trying to care for his sisters. He thought of those years as a skinner as the bloody years, because all he saw from morning until night was blood, until it seemed the world was awash with it.
A good buffalo hunter could skin from one hundred and fifty to two hundred buffalo a day, and Buck was one of the best. Down in Texas he worked with one hand on the knife and another ready to grab his rifle in case of an Indian attack whenever the local tribes did not take kindly to the slaughter of the mainstay of their diet.
Not only did he learn to skin, but he alternated with the others in his crew in stretching and baling hides. The odor of death was always about him, death mingled with blood and grease. He spent every waking hour killing and stripping buffalo of their hides.
When it looked like the Texas herd was nearly gone, Silas Scott wanted to be ahead of the rest, so they moved north in ‘seventy-nine. They’d been working the north for two years when the Northern Pacific laid track across the Montana plains. They and others like them had become so proficient at their work that in two years there wasn’t a buffalo to be seen. Silas Scott found himself out of work for the first time in ten years.
Buck asked his father if he ever thought about farming when homestead land was up for sale in the north, but Silas would have none of it. Why should they break their backs sweating over the soil when they had made a small fortune hunting? Silas ignored the fact that he had spent most of their fortune on fancier rifles, whiskey, ivory-handled knives, women, and gambling.
They became wolfers then, joining the many who poisoned the buffalo carcasses and took the hides off the wolves, badgers, kit foxes, and coyotes that came to feed on the carrion. When the carcasses were stripped clean, money could still be had by scavaging the hooves, horns, and bones that had been left behind. The same railroads that had once hauled hides now transported tons of buffalo bones to the East. Sugar refineries used fresh bone char to purge raw sugar liquid. Phosphorous fertilizer was made from weathered bones.
Sissy grew more and more vacant over time. Still, she helped them during the wolfing and bone scavaging. She was never one to want to leave and go off on her own like Patsy, who often disappeared for weeks at a time and then would show up back in the camp with one of the hunters. The men in camp took advantage of Sissy as often as they could get away with it. For a bauble or a new ribbon she would sleep with them, until Buck spent as much time fighting to protect her as he did skinning.
Buck had finally insisted they needed a real home. Over the years his father had become more and more forgetful and irresponsible, so much so that Buck finally decided it was time to make the decisions for all of them. He rounded up Patsy and her common-law husband along with Sissy and Silas and moved them all to Blue Creek Valley high in the Laramies where they could survive doing what they had done for the past ten years away from the condemnation of polite society in the small towns and growing cities of the West.
Thus the “bloody years”
They lived like nomads. Buck tried to control the girls, but they ran wild most of the time, blond, dirty-faced urchins who had only each other for friends. They never stayed in one place long enough to plant the seeds of friendship, nor did any of the town’s children extend their friendship. Like Gypsies, his family traveled from place to place, always living on the outskirts of towns in ramshackle cabins or cheap boardinghouses.
When the Kansas plain was played out, word spread that there were buffalo to be had in Texas, so Pa moved them south. By 1876 the Texas and Pacific Railway had completed a line to Fort Worth and another massacre began in earnest. Buck was sixteen by then and had been skinning alongside his pa for two years, ever since the day he became fed up with trying to care for his sisters. He thought of those years as a skinner as the bloody years, because all he saw from morning until night was blood, until it seemed the world was awash with it.
A good buffalo hunter could skin from one hundred and fifty to two hundred buffalo a day, and Buck was one of the best. Down in Texas he worked with one hand on the knife and another ready to grab his rifle in case of an Indian attack whenever the local tribes did not take kindly to the slaughter of the mainstay of their diet.
Not only did he learn to skin, but he alternated with the others in his crew in stretching and baling hides. The odor of death was always about him, death mingled with blood and grease. He spent every waking hour killing and stripping buffalo of their hides.
When it looked like the Texas herd was nearly gone, Silas Scott wanted to be ahead of the rest, so they moved north in ‘seventy-nine. They’d been working the north for two years when the Northern Pacific laid track across the Montana plains. They and others like them had become so proficient at their work that in two years there wasn’t a buffalo to be seen. Silas Scott found himself out of work for the first time in ten years.
Buck asked his father if he ever thought about farming when homestead land was up for sale in the north, but Silas would have none of it. Why should they break their backs sweating over the soil when they had made a small fortune hunting? Silas ignored the fact that he had spent most of their fortune on fancier rifles, whiskey, ivory-handled knives, women, and gambling.
They became wolfers then, joining the many who poisoned the buffalo carcasses and took the hides off the wolves, badgers, kit foxes, and coyotes that came to feed on the carrion. When the carcasses were stripped clean, money could still be had by scavaging the hooves, horns, and bones that had been left behind. The same railroads that had once hauled hides now transported tons of buffalo bones to the East. Sugar refineries used fresh bone char to purge raw sugar liquid. Phosphorous fertilizer was made from weathered bones.
Sissy grew more and more vacant over time. Still, she helped them during the wolfing and bone scavaging. She was never one to want to leave and go off on her own like Patsy, who often disappeared for weeks at a time and then would show up back in the camp with one of the hunters. The men in camp took advantage of Sissy as often as they could get away with it. For a bauble or a new ribbon she would sleep with them, until Buck spent as much time fighting to protect her as he did skinning.
Buck had finally insisted they needed a real home. Over the years his father had become more and more forgetful and irresponsible, so much so that Buck finally decided it was time to make the decisions for all of them. He rounded up Patsy and her common-law husband along with Sissy and Silas and moved them all to Blue Creek Valley high in the Laramies where they could survive doing what they had done for the past ten years away from the condemnation of polite society in the small towns and growing cities of the West.
Thus the “bloody years”
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