ciboleros

Alvina cracked her whip over the head of the horses pulling the wagon she drove for Don Moises Chavez. The wagon train was underway, headed for the Llano Estacado. It was boom-time for residents of the upper Pecos River Valley. Los Americanos had taken over twenty years before, establishing Fort Bascom up on the Canadian River. As Alvina hollered at her horses, the Civil War was raging in the eastern United States. Some of the officers sent to lead the troops in defending “the territories” were the incompetent, untrustworthy, and shirkers that could not perform on the battlefield.

Fort Bascom had some of the worst of the Union Army. Captain Bergmann, and Lieutenants Healy, Jennings, Wood, and Vose began manipulating the Comancheros and Ciboleros that ventured out on to the plains, making money “hand over fist” dealing in buffalo hides, stolen Texas cattle, liquor, and even the “captive” trade – ransoming Confederate Texas kids from the Comanches. After two centuries of living on the barter system, hard cash had a magnetic appeal to the Pecos Valley folks. Don Moises had upgraded from carretas (wooden carts) to wagons with his growing annual profits.

Everybody laughed at Alvina’s husband – he always found an excuse to not go on the annual buffalo hunt. She desperately wanted the meat, hides and tallow for her kids – children of los ciboleros have a better life. Marquitos had been a bad choice for a husband – the only boy in a family of girls and doted upon.

“I will do it if you won’t,” she had shouted at Marquitos. She marched down to where Don Moises had been readying the expedition – and she had been in luck.  Pedro de Urdemales had broken his leg and his wagon needed a driver. Don Moises first said no – it had to be a man with courage, not a woman, but Alvina had been insistent, and finally grabbed Pedro’s horses and hitched them to the wagon. El Cacahuate and Senor Cantinflas were tricky horses, fractious and prone to getting into unpredictable and comedic situations (comedic when it was all over with.) They had obeyed her every command, and when Don Moises saw that… well, he had to say okay. Alvina left her children with her widowed mother.

The wagon train moved south of Puerto de Luna on the west side of the Pecos and made the crossing where the Maxwell hacienda and trading post offered a chance to stock up on cheap trade goods for the Comanches. They might or might not run into members of Mow-way’s band.  El Pelado, the guide, was kin by marriage to one of his wives. El Pelado was a strange character. He had lived as a Comanche for years, but when cholera swept the camp and his kids died, his wife (a sister of one of Mow-way’s wives) had gone crazy. “You brought me misery! It would have been better if we had not had kids. Go away!” He came to Puerto de Luna, where he had been born. He lived alone and spent most of his time herding sheep far from any one else.

El Pelado had told Don Moises that big thunderstorms had been forming almost daily down toward the sandy Los Medanos region. The playa lakes would be full south of the trail to Muchaque, and buffalo drifted towards the big thunderclouds, knowing grass would be green when they got to where it had rained. El Pelado mocked anyone in which he detected officious, arrogant or presumptive behavior, saying the most outlandish things. Don Moises knew his worth, and despite his irreverent and often caustic repartee, knew that they would be going where few other Comancheros and Ciboleros go, where the hunting might be good.

El Pelado took a liking to Alvina. “You do the unexpected, you think for yourself.” He appointed himself brown round and white flat (dung) and wood gatherer for her nightly cookfire. He unexpectedly riding up now and then and chucking a sackful of the precious material on to the wagon as they traveled along. “Hijita, I love your hot panocha (mush of ground up sprouted grains ;). You know the herbs of the field so well – your cooking is such a pleasure!”

After a week and a half on the trail, El Pelado told Alvina, “Tomorrow we scratch la ceja” (literally “the eyebrow,” for the llano was for days a dark line on the eastern horizon as they traveled) “and venture up on top of the Llano. Things will not be what they seem. It is a land of mirage, a land of subtlety. There will be lakes where you don’t expect them, and the lakes that you see for hours will not be there. Most of the time the area south of the Valle de Simanola is antelope range. We will feast well tomorrow night!”

The next day El Pelado rode off away from the wagon train. About a mile away, he dismounted, and crawled on his belly, then started waving white cloth on a yucca stalk. By the time the wagon train had gone a mile, his rifle spoke once. In another 20 minutes he came back with the gutted and bled carcass. Everybody got a piece of fresh meat that night while enjoying a musical performance by El Cuate. The best of the ciboleros that did the actual killing of the buffalo, El Cuate was also a talented minstrel.

He sung a sad corrido he had composed about Manuel Maes, who had lost his life last year when his new horse shied as he prepared to jab the 12 foot lance into a buffalo. The blade hit a shoulder bone and like a chain reaction, the butt of his lance had been jammed hard into his belly and up under his ribcage at the solar plexus. “Caballo alazan tostado, que tu la muerta me dites en este llano estacado -- vienes a hacer calavera – Oh, my sorrel horse, will you deliver death to me on the llano estacado – you come to make me a skeleton!”

El Cuate was the most flamboyant of the cibolero hunters. Like most, he wore leather trousers and jacket, but his had embossed designs and bead work. His flat straw hats had several colors of ribbons along the sweatband. His carcage (quiver of bow and arrows) was of white buffalo hide first carried by his French-Comanche grandfather. His 12 foot long lance was in a case suspended from the pommel of the saddle and anchored to the girths. All around the scabbard for the lance were more dancing ribbons. Shiny tin milagros set into the leather twinkled in the sun. His new American rifle was suspended in a similar fashion at his other knee.

In another week they reached a base camp at Lagunas Sabinas (present day Cedar Lake near Seagraves.) El Pelado cautioned the members of the wagon train not to use the dozens of “abandoned” tipi poles as firewood. “This is the birthplace to an up and coming leader of the Comanches – a half-Anglo hombre by the name of Quanah. He has gotten a strong reputation, never losing a man on a raid, and bringing back honor and goods for everyone. Mow-way is his mentor. He listens to a dreamer by the name of Isa-tai, who sees the Comanche living free forever on and around the Llano. Most of them are probably over at Muchaque, hunting for winter meat at the headwaters of the Rio Colorado. Their presence there will increase the numbers of buffalo here.”

In the morning three bands of buffalo came to the playa for water. After watching the behavior of the first two groups, the ciboleros gathered the 70 or so buffalo of the third group into a corrida bunched tightly together, causing the running herd to jostle together and slow down. The ciboleros took turns dashing to the edge of the herd and lancing or sending arrows into the flanks of the fattest cows. El Cuate lanced two, sent five tumbling with arrows, and killed yet another with his rifle –killing twice as many as any other ciboleros.

Alvina became one of his skinners. She quickly learned how to slice the meat into tasajo – long strips of meat that dried on racks as the hunting continued for two weeks. Her culinary skills enhanced by her herbal knowledge made her a popular figure in camp.  During a feast on the last night before the ciboleros headed for home she told El Pelado, “When I get home, I will place Marquitos’ belongings outside the door.” She paused and then asked, “You think he will understand the significance of that Comanche custom?”

When they returned home, he did understand that she was divorcing him. Marquitos killed Alvina, screaming as he stabbed her that she had shamed him by breaking the laws of his Penitente morada. He then ran away across the Pecos to Alamogordo Creek near the llano. El Pelado and El Cuate followed, and caught him. They hung Marquitos to the tallest cottonwood in the bosque along the only running water in that valley. El Pelado took her children and their grandmother far away, and cared for them as his own.