To My Fourth Wife, Huang, Bin (Aka; Xiao Mao)

FERO

A novel

by

LEE A. WOOD

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DEDICATION

To my fourth wife, Huang, Bin (aka; Xiao Mao),

for her; love, patience, and understanding.

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Chapter One

* PATCH 1876 *

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The man sat by a small, dying fire. He was a patient man and had been sitting in one position for a long time. His legs, encased in denim pants, were stretched out in front of him. His rifle: a; smooth-bore, hexagon barrel, 50 calibre, Sharps, rested across his lap.

The man was leaning back against a well-worn, western style, saddle. An old, battered, tin cup, half filled with lukewarm coffee, rested on the butt of a fairly new, and shiny clean, 45/70 rifle which lay on the ground beside him. His thick fingers were covered with oil from having recently cleaned his rifles and his pistol.

The pistol, a 44-Remington, rested loosely in a holster on his hip. The holster, too, had been oiled, and from his sitting position he had practiced his draw. He was fairly fast but he concentrated more on accuracy than on speed. Though neither weapon had been fired in the last two days he had cleaned the dust out of them and had them ready, as he always did.

Beside the burly man, on one side of him, next to the rifle, sat the iron skillet and tin fork that had cooked and served his breakfast.

He had rolled out of his blanket when the sun had climbed over the horizon and added a couple of sticks to the small fire that he had kept going all night. The fire and the blanket had kept the night chill away, but still, he had not been able to sleep.This man was not a coward but he was surrounded by the possibility of death.

The noise had abated during the hours of darkness and its absence had been the more frightening because he couldn't see the source of it, yet he knew the source was still there. Now that the sun had illuminated the source, though the noise had grown in volume, he felt easier, but was still unable to relax.

He had killed men, and women too, for that matter. He had been in knife fights, and drunken shoot outs, and fought off Indian attacks, but he knew that in this instance neither his fists nor his knife could save him. His guns would not save him. The use of them would probably hasten his demise.

Not an educated man in the terms of schooling but knowledgeable in the ways of the wild he knew that only by sitting patiently could he hope to survive.

And so he sat, watching, and listening, to the tide that had swept around the hill he had ridden up, late, the day before. If he could have seen the other side of the hill, before he reached the summit, and known that the tide was there, on the other side, he could have stayed back and waited for it to ebb before he had tempted to cross this area.

He was a fool. He had vainly hoped that the tide would not be on the other side of the hill and he had let the memories of what was behind him urge him into making a wrong decision. Now he was trapped with no way to advance and no way to retreat.

So, he waited and found things to do that could be done quietly. Things he had been putting off, like mending the hole in his britches, sewing a button on his shirt, relacing bindings on some of the cross saddles for the pack horses, particularly the ones that he had taken from the old prospector. The old man was a typical prospector, unknowing in the ways of care and his bindings were in poor condition.

Thoughts of the old man he had killed brought back thoughts of the daughter. Such long silken hair, the blue-black of a raven's back. Large breasts, slim hips, and long legs. Legs that should have been wrapped around him. Wrapped around him now, to help him while away the time on this hill that was surrounded by the brown tide.

Instead of stitching harness he could be stitching her. If she hadn't fought so hard he wouldn't have had to kill her, at least not for a couple of days.

Remembering, how he had almost taken her, made him feel randy. If only she had been more cooperative. Damn virgins anyway. Damn women. "Damn.", He caught himself just in time. He was about to curse out loud and that would not do. Any loud noise could result in his death.

He looked, from the top of the little hillock, surrounded by the surging tide. His shoulders twisting so that his vision covered more of a circle. He froze, when he was looking due West, then quickly remembered to keep turning and watch with his peripheral vision.

He noted the exact direction of what had caught his attention and then perfunctorily completed his sweep of the horizon.

The horizon was many miles from him in every direction. A horizon of light gold as it reflected the morning sun. A horizon that surrounded the sea of brown that surrounded him. The rapidly rising sun was highlighting the waves in the sea around him. A vast undulating tide surging around his little island.

He looked where he had seen other islands yesterday. They had been lower than the one he was on and unoccupied. Now they were buried beneath the brown waves and he noticed the area that he occupied was smaller than the last time he had inspected it.

When he saw nothing else that required his immediate attention he turned back to the small red speck that he had seen on the far edge of the brown tide. He looked where he had seen it and thinking he had lost it, turned his head and picked it up again with his peripheral vision. He watched it for a long while as it zig zagged back and forth and slowly got larger. Whatever it was, it was getting closer.

When he had first noticed the spot it had been bright red but the colour had dimmed until now it was a darkness. Though it was larger now that it was closer he would not have spotted it now that it was darker. He realized that the reason it was dark was that it was no longer reflecting the sun. The sun had passed its zenith and the bobbing object was a shadow among shadows.

He had been so intent on watching this strange apparition that he had not noticed how hot it had become, nor that he was hungry. He had also forgotten to scan the rest of the horizon. He turned to this task now, not seeing any change anywhere else. Moving very slowly he lay the sharps beside the 45/70.

Rising, he walked to a row of several packs that were designed to be carried by horse or mule. From one of these leather containers he withdrew a couple of meadow muffins and pieces of wood that he had gathered as he had been riding.

Since he had lots of pack animals, and lots of time, whenever he found dry fuel he would stop to pick it up. He was a man who liked to cook his meals. He had cold meals only when he had no fuel or if he were on the run and had no time.

Gathering a handful of dry grass, he rekindled the hot coals of his fire. The frying pan was still uncleaned since breakfast but he used it to fry some bacon and beans.

He congratulated himself on having taken the time to reload the prospector's horses before he stole them. The old man had been on the outward leg of his journey and his packs were still full.

Because the old geezer had had his daughter with him he had provisioned well, taking more supplies and pack horses than a prospector would normally carry.

From one of several water kegs the man filled a pot. Adding some coffee beans he put the already blackened pot in the middle of his smokeless fire.

From another pack he extracted the makings of Sourdough bread and mixing it up he stirred it around in the skillet.

As he ate the stolen food, directly from the frying pan, he scanned the horizon and turned again to the place where he had seen the dot. The dot was larger now and close enough to confirm his earlier suspicions. It was definitely a man on horse back.

The rider was wearing some kind of hat but was still too far away to make out any other details. The man was walking his horse slowly back and forth, parallel to the hill and now and then would make it side step in the direction of the hill.

From this distance only the top of the horse could be seen and it looked like the man in red was sitting on a board riding between the crests of brown waves. As the rider drew closer the man on the hill could see how the man in red would walk his horse forward between a couple of the great shaggy beasts who's humped backs gave the impression of brown waves.

When the animal on the nearer side of him would stop to graze the rider would urge his horse in front of the animal and if there was room he would side step it between the one that had stopped and the one in front of it.

Sometimes he would have to make his horse walk backwards and sometimes he would have to walk it for some distance before he got an opening. Slowly but surely he was making a side wards path through the sea of Bison.

The man by the fire put his hand on the pistol at his side, he loosened it in its holster then he pushed it back in. For a moment he looked at the rifle lying by the fire but then turned to look again at the horseman foolishly trying to swim through a sea of migrating buffalo.

The killer knew that if by some weird string of chance that the man on the horse was following him, and why else would he be so foolhardy as to try to pass amongst a forest of four thousand pound animals, and should succeed in reaching this oasis in the sea of beasts, he could not use his guns to kill.

The sound of a gunshot, any loud, sudden noise, could startle these momentarily placid animals and turn the calm sea into a raging storm of maddened beef. A living tidal wave that would engulf the top of his dry hillock and swallow him and his pack horses like straws in a hurricane.

No, if this approaching stranger should make it through the bison, and was intent on his demise, he would have to use a silent defence.

He moved to one of the packs and removed a wet stone. Taking up a position by the dying fire he spent the better part of the afternoon watching the approach of the rider and sharpening his Bowie knife.

The same knife that had killed the prospector would kill the rider. Kill while making no sound that would cause the buffalo to stampede.

Not that Buffalo really needed an excuse to stampede. At any moment they could decide they wanted to go somewhere in a hurry and run right over his little camp without him having any say in the matter. As he thought this he looked around him, as he had many times in the last twenty-eight, sleepless, hours. Everywhere he looked, as far as the eye could see, was a sea of shaggy brown, undulating across the prairies.

The Prairie or North American Bison, commonly called buffalo, are bigger and heavier than domesticated cattle. Like cattle they can be easily spooked, like a wave crashing against a beach, they will sweep across the land in what is called a stampede.

Although he had never seen a Buffalo stampede he recalled, vividly, the stories of the Buffalo hunters who had asked him to join their expedition.

The thought that the hunters or Indians may at this moment be behind the herd of Buffalo was not a comforting thought.

Hunters would start killing and the buffalos would try to run away. Indians would start the Buffalo running so that in their frenzy they would run off a cliff and be killed.

It was the frenzy part that drove cold fear into the man by the fire. If these huge shaggy beasts got into a frenzy they would sweep over his little hillock like a tidal wave over a South Seas island. That he had experienced.

Off the West coast of Africa his ship had set upon a German slaver battling with canoes full of natives. The German guns had destroyed the masts of his ship. He and his few remaining shipmates were adrift at the mercy of the seas. Days later the winds had driven the ship against the rocks.

Natives had found him amongst the wreckage and treated him royally. They fed him, bathed him, and supplied him with small, brown-skinned virgins. He lived like a God in Paradise. At times he had wondered if they weren't just preparing him to be a sacrifice to some God.

While sitting on the beach one day, surrounded by naked females, the sea rose up in front of him.When he had last looked the water was flat and calm for as far as the eye could see.

He heard yelling, in the native tongue, and looked up to see a wall of water rising higher and higher until it blocked out the sky. Too stunned to move, he stared in awe as some of the girls pulled at his arms and tried to get him to join the fleeing natives. The top of the Tsunami broke and the roar of the water overwhelmed his senses.

As the top of the wave came earthward he finally turned to run, only to be driven face forward into the sand. The front of his body was shaved, like a carpenter using sandpaper on wood, and ever since had grown no hair, from his forehead to his toes.

The next few minutes were like hours, time seemed to last forever. Finally able to breath he regained his senses, floating on a sea, as placid as a lake, with no land in sight in any direction.

The next day he was spotted by a passing ship which took him to America.

A stampede of Buffalo would be as horrible as that tidal wave with no chance of survival. The rock like hooves of the animals would pound his broken body into the soil of the prairies and he would become fertilizer for the grass which the buffalo would feed on, the next time they passed.

When the sun was in the western sky he quit watching the approaching rider. Getting up from his place by the dead fire he went to the water keg. Filling a wooden bucket, he walked down the North slope of the hill to the horses.

The man had picketed the horses in a `V' shaped line several feet down the steeper pitch of the hill.

It was this line of nervous animals that was causing the Buffalo to separate and pass around his little kingdom.

So as to keep the horses from seeing the oncoming waves of brown wool he had tied the horses facing up-hill. To keep them from turning around he had tied their tails to a rope. He had also blindfolded the horses on each end of the picket line.

It took him several trips from the water kegs to the horses. Now that the heat of the day was past he let each horse drink its fill. Not normally a kind man he took the time to reassure his horses with a kind word and a soft touch.

From one of the many packs he took a bag of oats and poured a small pile in front of each horse. The ground was baked hard from the relentless prairie sun and the scant grass that had been growing there had been eaten by the horses within the first hours of their stay. He would have liked to move them up the hill a few feet to some more grass but this would cause too much commotion. Instead he used his small supply of precious grain.

He made sure to move slow and keep himself out of sight, in front of the horses. Several times one of the big shaggy bulls had smelled the water and started towards the horses but had then turned and ambled after its fellow beasts.

He checked to be sure his picket stakes were in the ground solid, solid enough to hold the frightened horses in line through a second night.

Taking some more dried Buffalo patties and wood from a pack he returned to his campsite and rekindled his fire.

Expecting company for supper he prepared a feast. He placed two potatoes in the coals and opened a can of peaches. In the frying pan he made some sourdough bread and when it was ready, set it aside on a cloth.

In the pan he placed two rations of salt pork and a can of beans to which he added a good helping of black strap molasses.