Buffalo Hump had started avoiding the old chief whenever he could do so without giving offense.

When Slipping Weasel came into camp Buffalo Hump was boiling a buffalo skull in a big pot he had taken from a white farm on the Trinity River.

Boiling the skull was taking a long time-- Buffalo Hump had to send Lark off several times to gather more firewood. He was boiling the skull because he wanted to make himself a new shield and he needed the thickest part of the bone for the center of his shield. Very few warriors bothered to make bone shields anymore; it was slow work.

And yet only the thickest part of the buffalo skull would turn back a rifle bullet. He had been fortunate enough to kill a bull buffalo with an exceptionally large head. The buffalo had been watering in the Blue River when Buffalo Hump saw him. He had driven the bull into deep water and killed him with an arrow; then he took the head and carried it all the way back to Texas, despite the flies and the smell, so he could boil it properly and make his shield. The skull was the thickest Buffalo Hump had seen in a long life of hunting--it was so thick that it would turn away any bullet, even one fired at point-blank range. It was important to him that he make the shield correctly. It would not be a very large shield, but it would protect him during the years he had left to raid.

All over camp the warriors were whooping and dancing because of the news Slipping Weasel had brought. It had been poor hunting lately, mainly because old Slow Tree was too lazy to go back to his own hunting ground--the game in the big canyon was exhausted. Naturally the news about Kicking Wolf's audacious theft cheered the young men up. Many of them wondered why it had not occurred to them to steal the Buffalo Horse. If they ate him they would not have to hunt so hard for a while.

Buffalo Hump thought it was a good joke too, but he did not allow the news to distract him from the task at hand, which was to fashion the best possible shield from the great head he had taken on the Blue River, far north of his usual hunting range.

When Slipping Weasel came over to sit with Buffalo Hump for a while Buffalo Hump was skimming the broth from the boiling pot and drinking it.

In the broth as in the shield was the strength of the buffalo people. He gave Slipping Weasel a cup of the broth, but Slipping Weasel, a poor hunter and indifferent fighter, did not like it much.

"It has too many hairs in it," he told Buffalo Hump, who thought the comment ridiculous.

It was the skull of a buffalo; of course the broth had hairs in it.

"Where is he taking the Buffalo Horse?" he asked. "Why didn't he bring him here, so we could eat him?" Slipping Weasel was silent for a while, mainly because he didn't know what to answer. He had met a Kiowa medicine man on his ride back, and the Kiowa told him that the news was that Kicking Wolf meant to take the big horse to Mexico and sell him to the Black Vaquero.

Slipping Weasel did not really believe such a tale, since the Black Vaquero hated all Indians, as Kicking Wolf well knew. Buffalo Hump might not believe the story either, but it was the only explanation Slipping Weasel had to offer.

"They say he is taking the horse to Mexico --he wants to sell him to the Black Vaquero," he said finally.

Buffalo Hump didn't take that information very seriously.

"If he gets there Ahumado will boil him like I am boiling this skull," he said.

Then Slipping Weasel remembered an even more surprising thing he had heard from Straight Elbow, the old Kiowa. Straight Elbow got his name because he had never been able to bend his right arm, as a consequence of which he could not hunt well.

Straight Elbow had to live on roots and acorns, like a squirrel--he searched constantly for herbs or medicines that might allow him to bend his arm, but he never found the right medicine.

"Old Straight Elbow told me something else," Slipping Weasel admitted. "He said Big Horse Scull is following Kicking Wolf. Famous Shoes is with him, and they are both walking." Buffalo Hump agreed that that was out of the ordinary. Once there had been whites who walked everywhere, but most of the old walking whites were dead.

Now the soldiers and rangers were always mounted. He went on boiling his skull. What he heard seemed like a crazy business--Kicking Wolf and Scull were both doing crazy things. Of course, old Straight Elbow was crazy himself, there might be no truth in what he said.

Buffalo Hump, though, made no comment. He had reached the age where time was beginning to seem short. He wanted to devote all his thought to his own plans, and plans he thought he should make for his people. A few years before, when the shitting sickness struck the P--the cholera--the Comanches had died so fast that he thought the end of the People had come. Then the smallpox came and killed more people, sometimes half the people in a given band. These plagues came from the air; none of the medicine men were wise enough to cure them. He himself had gone on several vigils, but his vigils had had no effect on the plague.

Still, though many died, some lived. The Comanches were not as powerful a tribe as they had been, but there was still no one on the plains who could oppose them.

They could still beat the whites back, slipping between the forts to attack farms and ranches. The white soldiers were not yet bold enough to attack them on the llano, where they lived.

Slow Tree, though boring, was not foolish; he saw what any man of sense could see: that it was the whites, not the People, who were growing more numerous. It would take many years for the young women to bear enough babies to bring the strength of the People back to what it had been before the coming of the plagues.

But the whites had not suffered much from the plagues. For every white that died, three arrived to take his place. The whites came from far places, from lands no Comanche had ever seen. Like ants they worked their way up the rivers, into the Comanche lands. Soon there would be so many that no chief could hope to kill them all in war, or drive them away.

Slow Tree was right about the buffalo, too. Every year there were fewer of them. Each fall the hunters had to range farther, and, even so, they came back with less.

Now there were signs that the bluecoat soldiers meant to come into the field against them. Soon an army might come, not just the few rangers who followed them and tried to take back captives or stolen horses. The rangers were too few to attack them in their camps; but the soldiers were not too few. For now the soldiers were only parading, but someday they would come.

Buffalo Hump saw what Slow Tree saw, but he did not intend to let the whites control him. He had never broken the earth to raise anything, and he did not intend to. It was fine for Kicking Wolf to steal the Buffalo Horse, but that was only a joke, though a bold joke.