Collected Works of Zane Grey

by Zane Grey

  CHAPTER XV

  SPELLBOUND, BRITE GAZED at the thrilling and frightful spectacle. A gigantic wave rose and swelled across the creek to crash over the opposite bank. In another moment the narrow strip of muddy water vanished, and in its place was a river of bristling horns, packed solid, twisting, bobbing under and up again, and sweeping down with the current. But for that current of deep water the stream bed would have been filled with cattle from bank to bank, and the mass of the herd would have plunged across over hundreds of dead bodies.

  In an incredibly short space the whole herd had rolled into the river, line after line taking the place of the beasts that were swept away in the current. From plunging pell-mell the cattle changed abruptly to swimming pell-mell. And when the last line had gone overboard the front line, far down the stream, was wading out on the other side.

  The change from sodden, wrestling crash to strange silence seemed as miraculous as the escape of the herd. Momentum and current forced the crazy animals across the river. Two hundred yards down all the opposite shelving shore was blotted out by cattle, and as hundreds waded out other hundreds took their places, so that there was no blocking of the on-sweeping tide of heads and horns. It was the most remarkable sight Brite had ever seen in connection with cattle.

  Texas Joe was the first to break out of his trance.

  “ —— thet fool!” he thundered, with a mighty curse and with convulsed face, eyes shut tight, and tears streaming from under the lids, with lips drawn and cheeks set in rigid holes, he seemed to gaze up blindly at the sky, invoking help where there was no help, surrendering in that tragic moment to the inevitable and ruthless calling of the trail driver.

  Pan Handle rode down to the scored bank where San Sabe had disappeared. His comrade Holden followed slowly. Rolly Little bestrode his horse as if stunned.

  Brite remembered Reddie, and hastened to her side. With bowed head and shaking shoulders she bent over, hanging to the pommel of her saddle.

  “Brace up, Red,” said Brite, hoarsely, though deeply shaken himself. “We got to go through.”

  “Oh — we’d grown — like one family,” cried the girl, raising her face.

  “Reddie, drive yore remuda in,” shouted Texas, in strident voice. “Deuce, take Holden an’ foller the herd. Rest of yu help me with the wagon.”

  * * * * *

  Night settled down again, silent except for the rush of the sliding river and the strange back-lashes of sand-laden water. Moze bustled silently around the camp fire. Several of the drivers were eating as if that task, like the others, had to be done. Texas, Pan Handle, Deuce, and Rolly were out on guard, hungry and wet and miserable. Reddie had gone supperless to bed. Brite sat drying his legs, fighting his conscience. Three young faces appeared spectrally in the white embers of the fire!

  Next day it was as if the trail drivers had never weakened and almost cracked. Obstacles heightened their spirits and deadened their memories. Deer Creek was bone dry. The stock got through the following day without water. A third drive over miles of wasteland and dragging sand put horses as well as cattle in a precarious condition. All night long the herd milled like the ceaseless eddy of a river, bawling and lowing. No sleep or rest that night for any of Brite’s outfit! If next morning they found a branch of the South Canadian dusty and dry, that would be the end.

  Indians stopped with Moze that night. “No water!” they said. Buffalo had ranged to the West.

  At dawn the drivers pointed the herd and goaded them on ruthlessly. The sun rose red in a copper sky. The heat veils floated up from the sand. Miles from the branch of the Canadian the old mossy-horns scented water. The riders could not hold them. Nothing could stop the thirst-maddened brutes. When the leaders launched out, the whole herd stampeded as one. The trail drivers had a wild run, but without hope of checking the stampede. They rolled on, a sweeping, thundering clatter, shaking the earth and sending aloft a great yellow cloud of dust.

  The river checked that stampede and saved Brite incalculable loss. Once across the South Branch into grassy level range again, the trail drivers forgot the past and looked only ahead. Day after day passed. At Wolf Creek they encountered the long-looked-for buffalo herd, the ragged strings of which reached out to the east. Texas Joe rested his outfit and stock a day at this good camp site.

  A sultry night presaged storm. But the interminable hours wore to dawn, and the torrid day passed without rain. Texas Joe, sensing another storm, drove the herd into the head of a narrow valley, steep-walled and easy to guard.

  “I doan’ like this heah weather,” said Whittaker, breaking a somber silence around the camp fire.

  “Wal, who does?” rejoined Texas, wearily. “But a good soakin’ rain would help us oot.”

  “Shore, if it rained rain.”

  “My hair cracks too much to suit me,” said another.

  “Reddie, how’s the remuda?”

  “Actin’ queer,” she replied. “Sniffin’ the air, poundin’ the ground, quiverin’ all over.”

  Brite feared that the peculiar condition of earth, atmosphere, and sky presaged one of the rare, awe-inspiring, and devastating electric storms that this region was noted for. He recalled what trail drivers had told which seemed too incredible to believe. But here was the strange red sunset, the absolutely still and sultry dusk, the overcast sky that yet did not wholly hide the pale stars, the ghastliness of the unreal earth.

  “World comin’ to an end!” ejaculated Texas Joe. Like all men of the open, used to the phenomena of the elements, he was superstitious and acknowledged a mysterious omniscience in nature.

  “Fine night to be home sparkin’ my girl,” joked Rolly Little.

  “Rolly, boy, yu’ll never see home no more, nor thet flirtin’ little redhaid,” taunted Deuce Ackerman, fatalistically.

  “Come to think of thet, all redhaids are flirty an’ fickle,” philosophized Texas.

  Reddie heard, but for once had no audacious retort. She was obsessed with gravity.

  “Tex — Dad — it ain’t natural,” she said, nervously.

  “Wal, lass, whatever it is, it’ll come an’ pass, an’ spare us mebbe, please God,” rejoined the cattleman.

  “Boss, is it gonna be one of them storms when electricity runs like water?” queried Texas.

  “I don’t know, Tex, I swear to goodness I don’t. But I’ve heahed when the sky looks like a great white globe of glass with a light burnin’ inside thet it’ll burst presently an’ let down a million jumpin’ stars an’ balls an’ ropes an’ sparks.”

  Texas got to his feet, dark and stern. “Fork yore hawses, everybody. If we’re goin’ to hell we’ll go together.”

  They rode out to join the four guards already on duty.

  “What’s comin’ off?” yelled Less Holden, as the others came within earshot.

  “We’re gamblin’ with death, cowboy,” returned Texas Joe.

  So indeed it seemed to Brite. The weird conditions imperceptibly increased. It became so light that the faces of the drivers shone like marble in moonlight. There were no shadows. Darkness of night had been eliminated, yet no moon showed, and the stars had vanished in the globe overhead.

  “We can hold ’em in heah onless they stampede,” said Texas. “What’s the stock doin’, Less?”

  “Not grazin’, thet’s shore. An’ the remuda is plumb loco.”

  Brite followed Reddie over to the dark patch of mustangs, huddled in a compact drove under the west wall. This embankment was just steep and high enough to keep the mustangs from climbing. A restless nickering ran through the mass. They trooped with low roar of hoofs away from the approaching riders.

  “Just a little fussy, Dad,” said Reddie, hopefully.

  “Cain’t yu sing them quiet, Reddie?” asked Brite.

  “I’ll try, but I shore don’t feel like no nightingale tonight,” replied Reddie. “I haven’t heahed any of the boys.”

  In low and quavering tones Reddie began “La Paloma,” and as she progressed with the
song, her sweet and plaintive voice grew stronger. The strange atmosphere appeared to intensify it, until toward the close she was singing with a power and beauty that entranced the listening cattlemen. When she finished, Texas Joe, who seldom sang, burst out with his wild and piercing tenor, and then the others chimed in to ring a wonderful medley down that lonely valley. The remuda quieted down, and at length the great herd appeared chained to music.

  The trail drivers sang in chorus and in quartets, duets and singly, until they had repeated their limited stock of songs, and had exhausted their vocal powers.

  When they had no more to give, the hour was late, and as if in answer, from far down the range rumbled and mumbled low thunder, while pale flashes of lightning shone all over the sky.

  The drivers sat their horses and waited. That they were uneasy, that they did not smoke or sit still, proved the abnormality of the hour. They kept close together and spoke often. Brite observed that Reddie seldom let her restless black move a rod away.

  The rumble of thunder and the queer flashes might have presaged a storm, but apparently it did not come closer. Brite observed that the singular sheen became enhanced, if anything. The sultry, drowsy air grew thicker. It had weight. It appeared to settle down over stock and men like a transparent blanket.

  Suddenly the sky ripped across with terrific bars of lightning that gave forth a tearing, cracking sound. Rain began to fall, but not in any quantity. Brite waited for the expected clap of thunder. It did not materialize. Then he recognized for a certainty the symptoms of an electrical storm such as had been described to him.

  “Boys, we’re in for a galvanizin’,” he called. “We’re as safe heah as anywheres. We cain’t do nothin’ but take our chance an’ try to hold the cattle. But if what’s been told me is true they’ll be scared still.”

  “We’re heah, boss,” boomed Texas, and a reassuring shout came from Pan Handle.

  “Oh, Dad!” cried Reddie. “Run yore hand through yore hawse’s mane!”

  Brite did as bidden, to be startled at a cracking, sizzling sweep of sparks clear to the ears of his horse. He jumped as if he had been shot. Brite did not attempt that again. But he watched Reddie. Electric fluid appeared to play and burn with greenish fire through the black’s mane, and run out on the tips of his ears and burst. The obedient horse did not like this, but he held firm, just prancing a little.

  “Lass, the air is charged,” said Brite, fearfully.

  “Yes, Dad, an’ it’s gonna bust!” screamed Reddie as the whole range land blazed under the white dome.

  Hoarse shouts from the drivers sounded as if wrenched from them. But after that one outburst they kept mute. Brite had involuntarily closed his eyes at the intense flare. Even with his lids tightly shut he saw the lightning flashes. He opened them upon an appalling display across the heavens. Flash after flash illumined the sky, and if thunder followed it was faint and far off. The flashes rose on all sides to and across the zenith, where, fusing in one terrible blaze, they appeared to set fire to the roof of the heavens.

  The remuda shrank in shuddering, densely-packed mass, too paralyzed to bolt. The cattle froze in their tracks, heads down, lowing piteously.

  No longer was there any darkness anywhere. No shadow under the wall! No shadow of horse and rider on the ground! Suddenly the flash lightning shifted to forked lightning — magnificent branched streaks of white fire that ribbed the sky. These were as suddenly succeeded by long, single ropes or chains of lightning.

  Gradually the horses drew closer together, if not at the instigation of their riders, then at their own. They rubbed flanks; they hid their heads against each other.

  “My Gawd! it’s turrible!” cried Texas, hoarsely. “We gotta get oot of the way. When this hell’s over, thet herd will run mad.”

  “Tex, they’re struck by lightnin’,” yelled Holden. “I see cattle down.”

  “Oot of the narrow place heah, men,” shouted Brite.

  They moved out into the open valley beyond the constricted neck, and strange to see, the remuda followed, the whole drove moving as one horse. They had their heads turned in, so that they really backed away from the wall.

  The chain lightnings increased in number, in brilliance, in length and breadth until all in a marvelous instant they coalesced into a sky-wide canopy of intensest blue too burning for the gaze of man. How long that terrifying phenomenon lasted Brite could not tell, but when, at husky yells of his men, he opened his eyes, the terrific blue blaze of heaven had changed to balls of lightning.

  Here was the moment Brite believed he was demented. And these fearless cowhands shared the emotion which beset him. They gaped with protruding eyes at the yellow balls appearing from nowhere, to roll down the walls, to bounce off and burst into crackling sparks. It appeared that balls of fire were shooting in every direction to the prolonged screams of horses in terror.

  Brite took the almost fainting Reddie into his arms, and held her tight. He expected death at any instant. Zigzag balls of lightning grew in size and number and rapidity until the ground was criss-crossed with them. They ran together to burst into bits or swell into a larger ball. Then to Brite’s horror, to what seemed his distorted vision these fiendish balls ran over the horses, to hang on their ears, to drop off their noses, to roll back and forth along the reins, to leap and poise upon the rim of his sombrero. Yet he was not struck dead, as seemed inevitable.

  All at once Brite became aware of heat, intense sulphurous heat, encompassing him like a hot blanket. Coincident with that the rolling, flying balls, like the chains of lightning before them, coalesced with strange sputtering sound into a transparent white fog.

  The air reeked with burnt sulphur and contained scarcely enough oxygen to keep men and beasts alive. By dint of extreme will power Brite kept from falling off his horse with Reddie unconscious in his arms. The men coughed as if half strangled. They were bewildered. The herd had been swallowed up in this pale mysterious medium. The hissing, crackling sound of sparks had ceased.

  Slowly that fog lifted like a curtain to disclose to Brite’s eyes the dark forms of horses and riders. Cooler air took the place of the heat. A vast trampling stir ran through the herd. It seemed likewise to revivify the trail drivers.

  “Pards, air we in hell?” shouted Texas, huskily. “Or air we oot?... Boys, it’s passed away. We’re alive to tell the tale.... Ho! Ho! Brite’s ootfit on the Canadian!... The herd’s millin’, boys! — Bear in! — Ride ’em, cowboys!... By Gawd! our luck is great! — Not bad, but great!... An’ shore we’re drivin’ on to Dodge.... Ride ’em, men! — Charge an’ shoot to kill!... The night’s gone an’ the day’s busted.”

  “Hi! Hi! Hi! Hi!” screamed the drivers as they drove the leaders back.

  * * * * *

  In the gray of dawn Brite supported the swaying Reddie in her saddle back to camp.

  “Oh, Dad — my remuda! — where air they?” she sobbed.

  “Inside, lass, inside thet line of fire-eaters,” replied the old cattleman. “An’ they’ll hold!”

  * * * * *

  Only the reality of the sunrise, the calm morning with its sweet clarified air, the solid earth under their feet and the grazing stock, could ever have dispelled the nightmare of those hours of brimstone.

  Texas Joe rode in to fall off his horse and limp to the camp fire. He stretched wide his long arms, as if to embrace the fresh sweetness of the dawn.

  “On our way, men! The herd’s pointed,” he called, his voice thick and shaky. “Gimme aboot a gallon of coffee if there ain’t any likker.” He fell on a pack, favoring his lame leg. “Wal, my sins air shore wiped oot. All the hell I ever deserved I got last night.”

  * * * * *

  Five watchful, strenuous, endless days later Brite’s outfit drove across the North Fork of the Canadian River to camp on Rabbit Ear Creek.

  The day before they had passed Camp Supply in the middle of the morning. Texas Joe was too wise to make a halt. Brite rode in with the chuck-wagon.

>   This camp was teeming with soldiers, Indians, cowhands, and bearded men of no apparent occupation. It was also teeming with rumor of massacre of the wagon-train Hardy had hoped to join at Fort Sill, of trail herds north and south, of bands of rustlers operating in Kansas and rendezvousing in the Indian Territory, of twenty million buffalo between the Canadian and Arkansas rivers, of hell itself let loose in Dodge and Abiline. Brite had kept all this to himself. The boys were somber enough, and somehow they might make the drive through.

  “Aboot what time is it?” asked Whittaker, dreamily, as some of them sat in camp.

  “Sundown, yu locoed galoot,” retorted Ackerman.

  “Shore. But I mean the month an’ day.”

  “Gawd only knows.... An’ I don’t care.”

  “I’ll bet my spurs Holden can figger it oot. He’s a queer duck. But I like him heaps. Don’t yu?”

  “Cain’t say thet I do,” returned Deuce, gruffly. Brite had noted more than once how devoted the Uvalde cowboys had been to each other, and how Ackerman appeared jealous of his partner Little, now that the others were gone. Loss of San Sabe had been hard on Deuce.

  “Wal, I’ll ask him, anyhow,” went on Whittaker. “Less,” he shouted, “can yu figger oot what day this is?”

  “Shore. I’m a walkin’ calendar,” rejoined Holden, with self-satisfied air, as he pulled a tobacco-pouch from his pocket. “But don’t tell Tex. He says to hell with when an’ where it is.” He emptied a handful of pebbles out of the bag and began carefully to count them. When he had concluded he said: “Gosh, but they add up! Fifty-six.... Fifty-six days oot an’ today makes fifty-seven. Boys, we’re just three days shy of bein’ two months on the trail.”

  “Is thet all!” ejaculated Whittaker.

  “Then it’s near August?” queried Ackerman, ponderingly. “We ought to make Dodge by the end of August.... I wonder aboot thet Fort Sill wagon-train.... Boss, I forgot to ask yu. Did yu heah any word of thet wagon-train Doan expected from Fort Sill?”

  Brite could not look into the lad’s dark, eager eyes and tell the truth.