As he neared the landmark brow of the hill he used to locate his ravine, Bass overheard muted snorts that grew in volume the closer he neared his camp. Instantly concerned for the mare, Titus set off at an ungainly trot with the canteen swinging at the end of one arm, the pot sloshing from the other. Reaching the top of the ravine, he skidded to a halt, staring down to find the mare grazing contentedly at the mouth of the ravine … no more than fifteen yards away from where one of the dark-skinned beasts rooted about in a circle, slowly hobbling round and round, clearly in some sort of distress.
From time to time the animal jerked its head around toward its hindquarters, tongue flicking out in vain as if to lap at the source of its discomfort. From his vantage point Bass glanced at the other buffalo grazing nearby, none of which paid any attention to the commotion—instead, some went on grazing, while at this time of the day most had already found themselves a suitable patch of ground, where they collapsed to their bellies and began to chew their cud with great self-satisfaction.
“Just like Pap’s damned cows,” he muttered, then remembered how he never got all that good at coaxing milk from an udder. “N-never was my cows anyhow,” he said as he settled to the grass to watch the scene at the mouth of the ravine.
The short-horned beast continued to paw at the ground, nostrils snorting in short bursts, then lolled its tongue in a pant, interspersed with rapid-fire bellows as it nosed round and round on all fours … then without any ceremony or warning the creature stopped dead in its tracks and let out a long, guttural cry as it shuddered the entire length of its body. And as Bass watched in dumbfounded amazement, the animal humped up its back just as a bluish membrane began to emerge from its rear quarters, the glistening mass expanding longer and thicker as the beast snorted, bellowing in pain.
“Jumpin’ Jehoshaphat! That there’s a buffler cow,” he exclaimed, licking his lips in anticipation of watching the event. “And she’s ’bout to shed herself of a calf.”
Pretty durn close to watching one of the family’s cows drop a calf, he thought.
The newborn buffalo had dropped close to halfway out when the cow’s quivering hindquarters weakened and she collapsed, sprawling on the ground there at the mouth of Bass’s ravine, fully in the seizure of labor.
It was characteristic of the buffalo cow to seek out a site all her own when she was due to give birth—forsaking all companionship with other cows, much less the bulls. The entire birth process usually took close to two hours after the onset of the first contraction.
Here at this late stage Bass watched the cow squirming on her side, at times raising her uppermost hind leg in an attempt to ease the birth process as she jerked her neck backward in spasms of pain. From time to time she thrashed that hind leg as more of the grayish-blue sack continued to slither onto the grassy prairie.
From the end of that fetal sack Titus watched a tiny hoof thrash, suddenly poking its way free, tearing the membrane near its own hindquarters. Then the leg lay completely still. Fearing that the calf was stillborn, Bass rocked up on his knees, expectant. After the cow huffed through those final moments of her exertion, she began to roll onto her legs, pulling herself away from the fetal sack that lay still upon the grass, slowly clambering to her feet before she turned about to sniff at what had just issued from her.
After inspecting the sack from top to bottom, the cow began to chew at the several holes torn in the membrane, appearing to rip at the sack, enlarging the holes through which Bass caught glimpses of the shiny, dark hide of the newborn calf tucked inside. Slowly, mouthful by mouthful—and beginning not at the head but at that hind hoof that protruded from the glistening membrane—the cow went about steadily devouring that slimy sack crusted with grass and dirt at the mouth of the ravine.
Cautiously the packmare began to advance, her nose on the wind as she picked up more of the birthing scent. But she did not approach all that close before the cow caught sight of the horse and whirled on the mare—snorting, bellowing her warning with a long-tongued bawl. It was evident the mare understood that most primitive of warnings, turning away with a whinny of her own. Likely she had given birth to colts her own self, Titus brooded. In her own primal way she would understand just how protective the cow would choose to be at just such a moment.
Returning to her calf, the cow continued tearing at the membrane, devouring every shred of it from the newborn’s shiny, slick body, eventually eating the last of it plastered around the calf’s head. Barely breathing himself, Titus waited, anxious as the cow licked up and down the length of the calf’s muzzle, its nostrils—stimulating her baby. Finally the young animal squirmed at long last, moving on its own.
Strange behavior, this—especially for an animal not in the least considered a carnivore. Yet something innate and intrinsic compelled the cow to continue to lovingly lick at the newborn calf’s coat until she had expelled the afterbirth, then devoured it as well.
The sun had fallen fully beyond the hills by the time some other cows moseyed over to the mouth of the ravine to give this newcomer a cursory sniff, perhaps to help the mother lick its coat—all of them tolerated by the cow with the exception of one yearling bull she swiped at with a horn and drove off with a warning bawl.
As the cow stood protectively over it in the coming twilight, the calf now made its first attempt to stand—here something on the order of half an hour following birth. It caused Titus to remember how the family’s newborn calves and even colts attempted to pull themselves up on their spindly legs, wobbling ungainly before spilling to the ground once more. But here the buffalo calf was, tottering about on its quaking legs sooner than either of those domestic animals Bass had come to know. Again and again the calf heaved this way, then that, before it collapsed in a heap, but was quick to rise again.
Each time the calf managed to stay up longer, long enough to careen about in a crazy circle and finally locate its mother nearby—tottering over to jab its wet nose beneath the cow’s front legs, where it probed with its pink tongue and very little luck. When the cow shifted herself, so did the calf, this time nuzzling along its mother’s belly until it found a teat and latched on. As the calf greedily pulled at the nipple, it was plain to see it had been rewarded with warm milk.
“From now on, li’l one,” Titus said quietly from the side of the ravine, “you’ll know where to go first off, you wanna get fed.”
His own stomach growled of a sudden, reminding him he hadn’t fed it either. Glancing into the west, he got to his feet, sweeping up the bail to the pot and the leather strap nailed to the canteen, saying, “Be dark soon, won’t it, Titus? Ain’t got your supper started. Hell, you ain’t even got yourself a fire to hunker over come full dark.”
Of a sudden he remembered he would be bedding down tonight one horse shy of how he had taken his leave of St. Louis. It might be enough to take the starch out of any man—to cause lesser men to turn back. But Bass vowed he would press on.
Reaching the end of the ravine, he squatted next to the burned-out remnants of his fire and dragged his pouch over, pulling flint and steel from it once more.
“Leastwise that pack animal swum out like I done,” he muttered, trying hard to cheer himself as he blew on the red coal until he could set it beneath another knotted twist of dried grass. “Leastwise I got some of what fixin’s I come out with,” he convinced himself.
But, damn, did he ever hate to walk. Never took too much to that in his life, Titus decided. Even when Kingsbury and the rest of the boatmen were faced with walking back north to Kentucky’s Ohio River country along the Natchez Trace, they had bartered themselves a ride on wagons from New Orleans to the river port of Natchez itself, then walked only until they reached the Muscle Shoals, where the slavers jumped them.