Fergie's Buffalo

From the field journal in a quaking hand, Thursday:

‘This buffalo I’ve been following now for nine days has slender, cleft hooves, sharp, too small for hi~ weight. It’s a wonder he doesn’t sink in the frequent patches of soft prairie mud and tall grass he seems to prefer. I do, even in my boots, but he doesn’t. Curious.”

And again:

“He looks terribly stupid in the face, covered with matty beards and curls; thick, stranded, stinking hair the color of dried blood--unkempt-­nothing graceful or lovely about him. He seems to know I’m here. Sometimes he just stares at me for hours. His foul breath steams in the early morning.

From the next day’s field entry:

“He will move ploddingly, then suddenly dart off like a wild bushpig when some primitive semblance of a thought reaches his dim brain, clattering off across the flats broken-field style with his eyes popped till the whites surround them, like a halfback on a busted play, spooked to death by little or nothing apparent. Keeping up while remaining hidden difficult.”

Later that evening, in the tent:

“This buffalo is incredibly dumb. I doubt he knows night from day. I’m certain he’s never thought about it. Stupid, dull, senseless beast! How can one justify his existence?”

And from an entry labeled “Midnight, after a bottle of hooch:”

“Surely his only raison d’ètre is to make coarse, stringy meat for the cougar or a rude robe for the Indian winter--sport for the pony boys? a dark icon for a Remington or West?”

A final entry, Saturday, in a sure hand:

“In form and dignity the buffalo of the plain is at one with his own chips--a bad sketch. . . a natural blunder.”

Interspersed among these highlights appear several cryptic notations and marginalia:

“This, after thirty—four years!

“‘The Long, Unhappy Life of Fergus Bestwick’. He never charged; I never fired.”

“The program was little more than a slide show, a firstrate flop. . turgid. . .squamous.
The Times:

“The buffalo correspondent for Animericana had a dirty job, but someone had to do it.”

“Fergus Bestwick--of the Indianapolis Bestwicks. He had never even been west of Illinois till that time.”

“An unfair assignment, a bad mismatch.”

Later the following excerpts were found from the minutes of the editorial boardroom meeting of Animericana magazine, dated August 15:

“But he does know what he’s writing about, that’s the point. Bestwick knows his buffalo! “--chief editor Bob Walsh.

“Like Scudder knew his fish.” ——assistant editor Bill Barry.

“Well, I don’t know, it seems too intense. “--publisher Howard Hannah.

“He looked him in the eye and the buffalo blinked first! “--pressman Joe Wyznecki.

“He was not ‘buffaloed’ . “——Barry.

“I say we print! “--Wyznecki.

In the December 4 Herald appears the first and only review, page 17:

“After a delay of several weeks the Kiwanis Travelogue series of Tuesday night reluctantly presented Fergus Bestwick’s’Animals of the Plain.’ Bestwick, a freelance writer-photographer for the now-defunct Animericana magazine, was awarded the right to present the show following a vociferous court battle this September and early October.

“Following an organ medley by Booneville’s own Guy Short, Bestwick strode onto the high school auditorium stage in safari drag and flung what some said was a buffalo skin over the lectern. The audience of several rows then saw a sequence of over two hundred slides showing a single buffalo in his western Nebraska habitat. Several dozen of these seemed almost identical, depicting the beast staring at the camera at close range. Others were blurred, some were apparently abstract. All were accompanied by an animated, at times rambling narrative which one audience member called ‘disturbed’.”

“Tim Hayden, Kiwanis President, apologized to the audience following the program and promised to sue the receivers of Animericana s assets for a full refund of ticket prices.

Bestwick, during a perspiring postshow interview, however, called it a triumph’, dismissing the choruses of boos and catcalls which punctuated the presentation as ‘orchestrated by the opposition’ and ‘sour grapes on their [Kiwanis~] part.’

“He said that at no time did he feel intimidated or threatened, despite the shredding of the buffalo skin by ‘hired stooges’ during a projector lamp change. Bestwick said he would probably not sue for damages. ‘I couldn’t see their faces,’ he reported, ‘only their forms, five or six of them. It was very dark.’”

The next spring, following a record flood of the Midwest after months of heavy snow accumulation, Fergus Bestwick returned to western Nebraska in quest of what he termed “the personification of evil.”

The wheels of his rented safari wagon spun over the soft mud flats of several counties in giant crisscrossing patterns reported by several pilots of small aircraft.

After several weeks he located the beast near a farmhouse, “staring at me quizically.” He felled it with one shot and returned to Indianapolis.

When questioned about the incident several months later, he was quoted as answering, “What buffalo?”