"Can you figure it, Neulin?" "I saw him." "He beelined right through here." "Old rat is collecting that 1 0,000." "That slope there, about 300 yards it's the only cover." "No one can run that fast, not even that Chinaman." "Well, where'd he go?" "Your tread must be light and sure as though your path were upon rice paper." "It is said a Shaolin priest can walk through walls." "Looked for, he cannot be seen." "Listened for, he cannot be heard." "Touched, he cannot be felt." "This rice paper is the test." "Fragile as the wings of the dragonfly, clinging as the cocoon of the silkworm." "When you can walk its length and leave no trace you will have learned." "Any idea--?" "You know how much a hide fetches hereadays?" "Did I hurt you?" "By Jupiter, I'm in a humor to put blue sky into your belly." "I lost them!" "I lost them." "You would have killed the calf." "You're danged right, I would've." "I'd have killed both of them." "Which is wrong." "It's my work!" "My trade, you understand?" "The calf must live." "He's buffalo." "Buffalo was born to be cut down." "No, to grow, to live." "And he is different, this one." "Chinaman, you been touched by the sun." "You better settle up." "I have no money." "Don't you ever come between me and my buffalo again." "How did you do that?" "We must part now." "It is dangerous for me to stay here, and you must find your mother." "Do not be afraid." "You will find her before dark." "There is time." "We have met before." "Yes." "Yes, I think we have." "But where?" "When?" "You are asking me to help you." "I knew it would be so." "I'm with you, grasshopper." "Be calm." "Perhaps you would like to tell me of your dream?" "There was an animal, a beast." "A very strange beast." "Did he have more than one head?" "No, master." "An excess of legs?" "No." "You said he was strange." "His shoulders were like mounds." "His head did not rise above them." "He was like an ox, yet he was not an ox." "Was he of great size?" "No, master." "No higher than my chin and most gentle." "I could tell he was very young." "And he was frightened of something." "And you were frightened for him?" "Yes." "This is not like other dreams I have had." "Even now, I feel as if it was real and I was truly there." "Perhaps you were, grasshopper." "Or perhaps you will be." "But I know it was a dream." "Do you?" "Have I been here at your side and am I leaving you now to drift back to sleep or has this too been a dream?" "Come." "We will find a place to hide you." "Come." "Well, I'll be a mule's litter!" "We was just about to give up on you, Branch." "Thought sure you'd gone to Texas." "Draw me one, Fred." "You just up and left." "Where'd you go?" "I went out a-looking." "He's aiming for one of us to favor him." "All right, Branch." "You went a-looking, and you found some." "How many?" "Well, now, it ain't the number that counts." "They're out there, that's what counts." "They're back, and they've got their calves with them." "Strange you ain't got no hides to show." "Pretty soon now, they're gonna be blackening the plains for all to see." "Just like it used to be." "We ain't arguing with you, Branch." "I'd have come back with the hides." "l'm waiting for the rest of the herd." "What herd?" "Man would have to be bird-witted to pluck a leaf and lose the tree." "What herd?" "The herd that's coming." "Ain't." "You boys better start thinking about getting your steel sharpened." "There'll be a lot of skinning to do before long." "Wolves, maybe, not buffalo." "Now, you reckon that you can tell me about buffalo?" "You've been serving that gullet wash so long it might be likely you don't know a live buffalo when you see one." "Used to be a body could hardly find a place in here to stand." "What happened to them?" "Where are these people?" "They'll be back." "They'll be streaming down that street any day now." "On the way to where?" "He has no fear of you." "He knows I do not wish to hurt him but only to care for him until he can care for himself and be free." "Never free." "No more." "Once, his brothers were like the grass that covered the land." "But that time has long since passed away." "Now it's this." "What do you do with so many bones?" "Sell them." "It is turned to powder." "They say it makes the corn grow tall." "He will not grow tall." "He will starve." "I will feed him." "Too young." "Has not been weaned." "I will find him milk." "Why do you trouble yourself?" "He cannot die." "He must live." "I know a woman in the town." "I have seen her carrying milk." "I am grateful." "That's not what I call a whole lot of faces." "Yeah." "Well, if he's here, he ought to stand out clean." "Grasshopper?" "Yes, master." "is it I or a dream?" "It is you, master, as it truly was last night." "I will accept your judgment." "After you left, I remembered more of the dream and of the strange beast who was so frightened." "Yes?" "He tried to speak to me." "He tried again and again, but he was unable." "Then he turned and was gone." "Did he simply disappear?" "No." "He passed through a red door." "is it your wish to enter?" "Yes, I believe I will then learn what the gentle beast was trying so hard to say." "Let's see. I'll follow you." "It is only an empty chamber." "Has it no purpose?" "Let us call it the Chamber of the Answer." "Tell me what you see." "Only the red door." "Does it lie before you?" "Yes." "Then that is where your answer must be waiting." "Behind the red door." "But I am behind it." "Are you?" "Branch" "Who are you?" "It is not proper for me to enter without permission." "Forgive me." "Ain't nobody entered this house proper." "Look the girls are gone, and I am retired so I'm sorry, but you're just out of luck." "You have no milk?" "What?" "Milk." "Who put you up to this?" "Tashaka the Indian." "He said he has seen you carrying milk." "Well, I suppose he has." "I've been down to Vern Dixon's quite often lately." "I don't know who's more ornery, him or the cow." "He lives near here?" "Just down the road a bit." "It's a barn set back from the street." "You'll hear him." "l am grateful." "Only answered your question." "You're awful serious about getting this milk." "I am." "Well, who's it for, a baby?" "Yes, a baby." "Well, now, look, you...." "You tell old Vern that Edna said to treat you right, you hear?" "Howdy." "Hi." "He's headed this way." "Haven't seen him." "Three whiskeys." "How much you talking about?" "Enough to fill this bucket." "Gonna cost you." "I will pay you with my work." "Work?" "Well, more than likely you and I ain't got the same notion of the idea." "What does it mean to you?" "Come on." "You see this puny gob of junk?" "What do you say about moving it around to the other side of the barn?" "I would say I would do it." "Well, mister, maybe you and I talk the same kind of talk." "How about you men?" "How much?" "Hundred dollars." "You seen him?" "A hundred?" "And you boys get the fat end?" "That's the way it works." "We find him, you get nothing." "I wish to thank you." "I always keep my end of the bargain." "A bottle makes it easier for him." "Well, I got plenty of them." "Look at him take that down." "Just out of his mother's womb and he already knows what it's like to be hungry." "And frightened." "And alone." "Before long, he'll wonder why she ever birthed him." "Do not fear." "She will be taken care of." "She is about to bring forth a new life." "I know, master." "I heard her baby cry." "That is most unusual." "Do I deceive myself?" "Could such a thing truly happen?" "It was you who heard." "Life calls to life." "A baby not yet born calls to me." "I do not understand." "Nor do I." "But how beautiful." "Before long, he'll wonder why his mother ever birthed him." "And your child?" "Will he wonder too?" "How did you know?" "I knew." "No kid should have to grow up the way I did." "Your child will know a different world." "A better one?" "Who can say?" "I wanna be sure I can give my child something." "You will give him life." "No, I mean beyond that." "Beyond?" "Life is everything." "What more could you give him?" "Look over here, Chinaman." "That's the face." "I wanted to be sure." "If there's trouble girl, you're sure gonna find it." "This here's a wanted man." "It don't mean nothing to me." "I got to fretting you might come to harm." "Get back up to the house." "You can't tell me what to do." "I come and go as I please." "You heard me." "Get back up to the house." "Let him be, Branch." "There's a price on his head." "Fat as brawn." "It's powerful tempting." "Are you that low?" "He got between me and my buffalo." "He cost me." "You and your buffalo?" "They're gone, Branch." "Can't you ever strike hands with that?" "They're coming down from Canada." "I got it on reliable witness." "You been talking to yourself?" "There ain't none left to come down from anywhere." "You wiped them all out." "When Caine gets through with his wet-nursing there'll be a whole new herd roaming the land." "Ain't that right, Caine?" "lt is my wish." "lt's my wish too." "You raise them up, I'll cut them down." "Ain't you ever gonna be tired of killing?" "Not as long as there's buffalo out there to be hunted." "You mean, to be butchered." "Hunted, I said." "Hunted is what I meant." "It's the skinners that deal in butchering." "They don't care for the buffalo." "He's nothing but a mass of no-account underneath a hide." "And what does he mean to you?" "To me?" "He's an adversary." "He's a force on the land." "Full grown, he's 2000 pounds of thundering muscle, slashing horn." "With eyes so dim he can't even see where your bullets are coming from." "There's something going on here about buffalo, maybe." "Both of you know, and nobody's saying." "You ain't doing him no good, Caine." "And you ain't serving your own health idling around here." "Take him out to tall grass, turn him loose and then keep moving." "And will you kill him there?" "Well, if I get him in my sights, I will." "I'm a hunter." "Can you be nothing else?" "No." "Never." "Only combat." "It's buffalo." "No peace." "Buffalo." "That man won't ever bend." "He is the father of your child." "He does not know it?" "No." "And he's never gonna know." "I'd like as not to never see him again." "Life keeps growing." "Soon your child will make itself known to all." "Maybe." "And maybe not." "Whiskey." "Again." "I'd sooner starve than hunt a human being." "Chinaman or not." "It's as low a trade as ever was thought of." "Pays mighty good." "Hey, say, I'm looking for a Chinaman." "He's tall, maybe a touch taller than me." "Look here, there's a chance for you to earn some money." "You want big money?" "Well, what'd you say?" "Howdy." "I'm looking for a wanted man." "There's $ 1 00 in it for you if you can help me." "He's the biggest kill I ever made." "Biggest any man's ever made." "Yeah, I'll never forget that day." "Storm rolling in, the wind screaming something fierce laying grass down clear across the plain." "It took one round from 400 yards out." "When the big fella came down, the earth took to rumbling." "How many yards?" "Four hundred and" "And after the big one, I moved in, and I started working the edges of the herd." "Remember?" "Pretty soon, I got them milling in on each other." "You remember that day?" "Like it was yesterday." "Your rifle got so dang hot, I had to wet it down for you." "You ever do any hunting up around the Republican River?" "Probably before you was born." "I hear tell they cut down 6000 head in one day." "Hunters strung out for miles." "I never mixed in nothing like that." "They say you could smell the stink dead into winter." "I wanna tell you something." "If my men couldn't skin it and peg it by sundown, I let it go." "I always stuck to the code." "Take the hide and left the meat to rot." "That's some kind of code, way I see it." "Neulin, he's here." "He did a piece of work for the blacksmith less than an hour ago." "First one to flush him out, send up a signal." "We'll take him together." "He'll die out there." "Can't he stay here?" "I cannot stay." "Those men will find me." "Well, I'll take care of him." "You have your own to care for." "Let him return to the prairie." "It is his home." "Perhaps now he can find his mother." "He must go." "It is like a dream." "We thought it would be forever." "But now the memory is gone." "He was a giver of life." "We worshipped his spirit." "He gave you many things." "Great and small." "When they took me from my mother I was wrapped in the softness of his skin." "As I grew, he fed me." "He gave me warmth and shelter and cured my illness." "When I die I will sleep forever in his robe." "They will follow me." "Take the calf to the prairie and find its mother." "We'll do what we can." "lt is its only chance for life." "Well, they found him." "They've got him now." "They'll have his hide." "Kind of sounds like the old days, don't it, Fred?" "To you, maybe." "All right, this time, we're gonna bag him." "If you get a shot at him, take it." "Aim for his arm or his leg, but take it." "Half a reward's better than nothing." "Come on, now." "Look, a female." "It's his mother. lt's gotta be." "Oh, baby, you're gonna live." "You're going home." "He carries our scent." "He may not be welcome." "She wouldn't turn him away." "We will see." "Oh, what's the matter, baby?" "You scared?" "We'll walk part of the way with you, all right?" "Come on." "Come on, here." "Here we go." "Hey, Branch, you wanna sit in?" "Hey." "Branch, where you going?" "Come on." "Come on." "Come on, boy." "Come on." "Go on." "She sees him." "Why doesn't she go to him?" "Her ways are her own." "He's yours." "He's your baby." "Go on." "Go on to Mama." "That's it." "That's it." "There you go." "He's safe." "He's gonna live." "He'll kill him." "A beast." "He was frightened." "It was as if I was truly there." "Perhaps you were or will be." "Hold it right there." "That's right." "I've got you boxed in." "Nowhere out of there, except through me." "Branch, wait." "You can't do this." "You better get out of the way." "Old Sarah's got the roar of a cannon." "You've killed thousands, you don't need two more." "Back up, girl, I'm warning you." "You just take your time." "I got all day." "That's a mother nursing her baby, Branch." "ls that your adversary?" "l've come for buffalo." "That's it." "Take it easy, now." "Hold it right there." "Now, turn around." "Don't you kill no baby, Branch." "Branch, don't you kill no baby!" "I'm carrying a baby." "It's your baby." "Let it live, I'm begging you." "If you kill the calf the baby will die." "What sort of hokum is this?" "It will be so." "That's hogwash." "Perhaps it is because of all you have done in the past." "All the buffalo you have killed." "Talk to the wind, Chinaman." "The unborn child and the calf are bound together." "It's true." "I don't know how, I don't know why, but I know it'll happen." "That's crazy." "It is the truth." "I'm a hunter. I know how to hunt, but...." "Our new baby coming into the world it needs a man a man to look up to keep it from harm." "Grasshopper?" "Yes, master?" "You sit very still." "I listen for the cry of new life." "Soon." "The woman's time approaches swiftly." "The life she will bring forth will live." "That is our wish." "I know it, master." "Yes, you do." "Strange." "A thing of wonderment." "You and this infant not yet born, you are as candle and flame." "Separate and not separate." "There must be others bound together in this fashion." "I would not disagree." "Perhaps, then, there are couplings beyond couplings." "I would not disagree." "Do you think--?" "Could it be that all men are bound together and all things?" "There is no reason to believe so." "Nor reason not to believe so." "How can we learn the answer?" "That is simple." "Do not seek it."