Buffalo Robes

I was going through some old stuff when I came across this. It's about twenty years old. Something I wrote when I first started writing. I thought I'd throw it out there for fun.

***

Buck Stops Here was squatting, and with her back propped up against a tall white birch she shattered the silence of the forrest with her painful noise. She gave birth to her twelfth child, a boy. It would be her last. She called him Another Hard Earned Buck.

"That be last thing I open legs for!" she said.

Many months had passed and Buck Stops Here was relentless in her decision to keep her husband, Passing The Buck, out from under the warmth of her buffalo robes. "Father can stick watering tool in wintry lake," she whispered to her newborn. "My well staying dry."

Meanwhile, at Under The Stars There Are Those Who Wonder (a local smoking hut), her husband was getting pie-eyed and reflective with I'm The Medicine Man And Get To Wear The Buffalo Hat.

"I am in much pain, medicine man," Passing The Buck said.

"Women!" the medicine man said.

"And the little ones have me at the end of my wits."

"Little ones!"

"And my mother-in-law . . ."

"Argh!"

"Medicine man?" he said. "Will I ever share the warmth of her buffalo robes again?"

The medicine man closed his eyes and searched his soul for the answer.

"Medicine man?" Passing the Buck said. "Have the gods answered my question? Will I ever dip watering tool in well again?  Medicine man?"

"Zzzzzzzz...zzzzzzz...zzzzzzz...."

"The night will be long and cold," Passing The Buck said , and he took the pipe from the old man's hand and fired it up.