“But what do you do with buffalo?” Ada said.  “Do you eat it?  Is it like deer?”  She frowned at the drawings.  “We didn’t have buffalo back east.  Not that I ever knew of.”

“It’s the same idea as deer, just doesn’t taste the same.  You can roast it or eat some parts raw, and yes when you dry it, it does have some resemblance to boot leather,” Chace said without taking his eyes from the paper.  “But it gives more than that.  Beds, shelter, fuel for the fire, weapons, clothing, rope for the horses, the string on a bow, the bag that holds water, the ladle for the soup and there is soup to be had, just not ducks wrapped in bacon.  You can even make a boat out of what you get from a buffalo, if you ever have a need for a boat.”

“Those are a lot of buffalo,” Jeremy said again.  “Can we put them up?”

“Absolutely,” Charlotte said.  She closed her eyes, thanked whatever gods had brought him to her, and began to tack the buffalo drawings up one after the other in a line that spanned the wall from one end to the other while Ada and Brewster sat thinking.

“How do you get rope?” Brewster said.  He’d given up the caution of asking if he could ask questions.

“Depending on what kind of rope you want, you’d either take parts of the muscle, that’s what you’d use to string a bow, or you’d cut rawhide into strips and soak them for something like a halter.”

“What holds water?” Ada said.

“The bladder, the part inside that holds their water.”

“How is it your bed?”

“You wrap up in a pile of buffalo robes and that’s your bed.”

“They’re warm,” Brewster said.  “I guess they would be.”

“They’ve kept the people of the tribes warm for a thousand years.”  Chace was quiet for a moment, his eyes on the drawings on the wall.  “When the hunt’s over, for what the buffalo’s given, for how much it means to your people, you say a prayer.  Always.  You give thanks.”

And then there was silence in the room again.

40

40

Chace handed Charlotte an opened letter.  She only needed to look at his face.  “Whatever it is, it’s not good,” she said.

“Depends.  I was with Colonel Hutchinson last night.  He wanted to know some things, but then he always wants to know some things.  In passing, he mentioned having some curiosity about this.”

“I guess he doesn’t think to consult his wife in these matters.”  She knew what it was without even having to ask.  She unfolded the page and read.  It was from her father to the commanding officer of the fort, announcing his imminent arrival.

“It was bound to happen,” Chace said.  “After everything that’s gone on, he had to come.”