A Buffalo Robe for Bertha Doan

About the Book

Following each of the three winters she spends in Ohio, eleven year old Bertha Doan comes back for the summer to her adobe home on the Red River, the Northern border of Texas. Her Quaker father has established a trading post there which is the chief outfitter of cattle drives going north each spring. The uncouth cowboys are a contrast to her polite Ohio friends and Bertha prefers the Comanche friends who come to Doan sot trade.

A reckless cowboy rides into the Comanche camping ground near Bertha’s home, upsetting the cooking fire of Chief Quanah Parker’s wife, Chony, and causing burns to her head. Bertha puts out the fire and rescues their baby son for which she is given a buffalo robe in gratitude. Bertha is delighted but her little sister, Mabel, refuses to sleep in the same room with it. Bertha appeals to her parents who give Mabel her adored dead brother’s room for her own.

The cowboy is jailed for ten days and then is released into the custody of a nearby rancher who hires him to spy on the Comanches. He believes them responsible for the cattle thefts on his ranch.

Meanwhile Mabel begins to pick up a hostile attitude toward Indians which puzzles Bertha. Her mother is also concerned about Mabel’s absences from supervision. Bertha begins to worry that her sister is going to the cowboy camp and learning the talk against Indians.

The annual picnic brings everyone’s attention to the preparations for the Maypole dance and the horse race to follow. On picnic day a scheme to accuse Quanah Parker of stealing a calf brings the reckless cowboy to the river crossing where he and his friends wait for Quanah and his family to appear. Bertha happens to overhear them plotting and runs to Mabel to help stall the plans. They ride Mabel’s pony and arrive just in time to intercept the cowboys as they are preparing to offer Quanah a calf.

The scheme failed. Mabel is sorry that she had trusted the cowboy to teach her roping, a plan of her own to acquire roundup skills. The race goes well with Mabel’s pony in the lead and she receives a handmade gift from Quanah Parker.

The cowboy shot himself accidentally, and with no one else around to help, Bertha did what she could to ease his pain. When he dies, Bertha and Mabel helped to bury him.