by Zane Grey
“Starwell, we’ll plan to-morrow after we bury Hudnall,” said the scout.
“One only plan,” replied the other, a lean, dark, forceful looking Westerner whom Tom felt he would not care to cross. “We buff-hunters must band together an’ trail them Comanches.”
“Reckon you’re right, Star,” returned Pilchuck, grimly. “But there’s no rush. Them redskins have done more’n kill Hudnall, I’ll bet you. They’ve been raidin’. An’ they’ll strike for the Staked Plain. That means we’ve got to organize. If there’s a hell of a place in the world it’s shore the Staked Plain.”
Supper without the cheerful presence of Hudnall would have been a loss, but the fact that he lay dead, murdered, surely mutilated, out there on the prairie, was monstrous to Tom. He could not eat. He wandered about camp, slowly realizing something beyond the horror of the calamity, a gradual growth from shock to stern purpose. No need to ask Pilchuck what was in his mind! The plainsman loomed now in Tom’s sight big and strong, implacable and infallible.
Tom stood guard with Stronghurl during the earlier watches of the night; and the long-drawn mournful howl of the prairie wolf had in it a new significance. This wild West was beginning to show its teeth.
CHAPTER XI
MORNING CAME, AND Pilchuck had the men stirring early. When Tom walked out to the camp fire dawn was brightening, and there was a low roll of thunder from the eastward.
“We’re in for a thunderstorm,” he said to the scout, who was cooking breakfast.
“Storm, mebbe, but not thunder-an’-lightnin’ storm,” replied Pilchuck. “That sound you hear is new to you. It’s a stampede of buffalo.”
“Is that so? . . . Say, how like thunder!”
“Yep, we plainsmen call it the thunderin’ herd. But this isn’t the main herd on the rampage. Somethin’, most likely Indians, has scared the buffalo across the river. They’ve been runnin’ south for an hour. More buffalo over there than I had an idee of.”
“Yes, I saw miles of scattered herds as I rode up the river,” said Tom.
“I smell smoke, too, an’ fact is, Doan, I don’t like things a damn bit. If the main herd stampedes — holy Moses! I want to be on top of the Staked Plain. Reckon, though, that’s just where we’ll be.”
“You’re going after the Comanches?” inquired Tom, seriously.
“Wal, I reckon. It’s got to be done if we’re to hunt buffalo in peace.”
Burn Hudnall presented himself at the camp fire, his face haggard with grief; but he was now composed. He sat at breakfast as usual, and later did his share of the tasks. Not long afterward Starwell and his men rode into camp, heavily armed and formidable in appearance.
“Jude, what you make of that stampede across the river?” he asked, after greetings were exchanged.
“Wal, I ain’t makin’ much, but I don’t like it.”
“We heerd shootin’ yesterday at daylight down along the river from our camp,” returned Starwell. “Small-bore guns, an’ I don’t calkilate hunters was shootin’ rabbits for breakfast.”
“Ahuh! Wal, after we come back from buryin’ Hudnall we’ll take stock of what’s goin’ on,” said Pilchuck. “By that time camp will be full of hunters, I reckon.”
“Hardy rode twenty miles an’ more down the river, gettin’ back late last night. He said there’d be every outfit represented here this mornin’.”
“Good. We kept the horses picketed last night, an’ we’ll be saddled in a jiffy.”
Burn Hudnall led that band of mounted men up on the prairie and southwest toward the scene of yesterday’s tragedy. The morning was hot; whirlwinds of dust were rising, like columns of yellow smoke; the prairie looked lonesome and vast; far out toward the Staked Plain showed a dim ragged line of buffalo. Across the river the prairie was obscured in low covering of dust, like rising clouds. The thunder of hoofs had died away.
Tom Doan, riding with these silent, somber men, felt a strong beat of his pulse that was at variance with the oppression of his mind. He was to be in the thick of wild events.
In perhaps half an hour the trotting horses drew within sight of black dots on the prairie, and toward these Burn Hudnall headed. They were dead and unskinned buffalo. Presently Burn halted alongside the first carcass, that of a bull, half skinned.
“Here’s where I was, when the Indians came in sight over that ridge,” said Burn, huskily. “Father must be lyin’ over there.”
He pointed toward where a number of black woolly dead buffalo lay scattered over the green plain, and rode toward them. Presently Pilchuck took the lead. His keen eye no doubt had espied the corpse of Hudnall, for as he passed Burn he said, “Reckon it’d be more sense for you not to look at him.”
Burn did not reply, but rode on as before. Pilchuck drew ahead and Starwell joined him. The riders scattered somewhat, some trotting forward, and others walking their horses. Then the leaders dismounted.
“Somebody hold Burn back,” shouted Pilchuck, his bronze face flashing in the sunlight.
But though several of the riders, and lastly Tom, endeavored to restrain Burn, he was not to be stopped. Not the last was he to view his father’s remains.
“Reckon it’s Comanche work,” declared Pilchuck, in a voice that cut.
Hudnall’s giant body lay, half nude, in grotesque and terrible suggestiveness. He had been shot many times, as was attested to by bullet holes in his torn and limp limbs. His scalp had been literally torn off, his face gashed, and his abdomen ripped open. From the last wound projected buffalo grass which had been rammed into it.
All the hunters gazed in silence down upon the ghastly spectacle. Then from Burn Hudnall burst an awful cry.
“Take him away, somebody,” ordered Pilchuck. Then after several of the hunters had led the stricken son aside the scout added: “Tough on a tenderfoot! But he would look. Reckon it’d be good for all newcomers to see such a sight. . . . Now, men, I’ll keep watch for Comanches while you bury poor Hudnall. Rustle, for it wouldn’t surprise me to see a bunch of the devils come ridin’ over that ridge.”
With pick and shovel a deep grave was soon dug, and Hudnall’s body, wrapped in a blanket, was lowered into it. Then the earth was filled in and stamped down hard. Thus the body of the careless, cheerful, kindly Hudnall was consigned to an unmarked grave on the windy prairie.
Pilchuck found the tracks of the wagon, and the trail of the Comanches heading straight for the Staked Plain.
“Wal, Star, that’s as we reckoned,” declared the scout.
“Shore is,” replied Starwell. “They stole wagon, hosses, gun, hides — everythin’ Hudnall had out here.”
“Reckon we’ll hear more about this bunch before the day’s over. Must have been fifty Indians an’ they have a habit of ridin’ fast and raidin’ more’n one place at a time.”
“Jude, my idee is they’d not have taken the wagon if they meant to make another raid,” said Starwell.
“Reckon you’re right. Wal, we’ll rustle back to camp.”
More than thirty hunters, representatives of the outfits within reaching distance of Hudnall’s, were assembled at camp when the riders returned from their sad mission. All appeared eager to learn the news, and many of them had tidings to impart.
An old white-haired hunter declared vigorously: “By Gord! we air goin’ to give the buffalo a rest an’ the Injuns a chase!”
That indeed seemed the prevailing sentiment.
“Men, before we talk of organizin’ let’s get a line on what’s been goin’ on,” said Pilchuck.
Whereupon the hunters grouped themselves in the shade of the cottonwoods, like Indians in Council. The scout told briefly the circumstances surrounding the murder of Hudnall, and said he would leave his deductions for later. Then he questioned the visiting hunters in turn.
Rathbone’s camp, thirty miles west, on a creek running down out of the Staked Plain, had been burned by Comanches, wagons and horses stolen, and the men driven off, just escaping with their lives. That had hap
pened day before yesterday.
The camp of two hunters, names not known, had been set upon by Indians, presumably the same band, on the main branch of the Pease. The hunters were out after buffalo. They found wagons, hides, tents, camp destroyed; only ammunition and harness being stolen. These hunters had made their way to the main camps.
An informant from down the river told that some riders, presumably Indians, had fired the prairie grass in different widely separated places, stampeding several herds of buffalo.
Most of the representatives from the camps up the river had nothing particularly important to impart, except noticeable discontent in the main herd of buffalo, and Starwell’s repetition of the facts relating to the shots he and his camp-mates had heard yesterday morning.
Whereupon a lanky man, unknown to Pilchuck’s group, spoke up:
“I can tell aboot thet. My name’s Roberts. I belong to Sol White’s outfit across the river. We’re from Waco, an’ one of the few outfits from the South. This mawnin’ there was a stampede on our side, an’ I was sent across to scout around. I crossed the river aboot two miles above heah. Shore didn’t know the river an’ picked out a bad place. An’ I run plumb on to a camp thet was so hid I didn’t see it. But I smelled smoke an’ soon found where tents, wagons, an’ hides had been burnin’. There was two daid men, scalped, lyin’ stripped, with sticks poked into their stomachs — so I hurried up this way to find somebody.”
“Men, I want a look at that camp,” declared Pilchuck, rising. “Some of you stay here an’ some come along. Star, I’d like you with me. Roberts, you lead an’ we’ll follow.”
Tom elected to remain in camp with those who stayed behind; he felt that he had seen enough diabolical work of the Comanches. Burn Hudnall likewise shunned going. Ory Tacks, however, took advantage of the opportunity, and rode off with Pilchuck. Tom tried to find tasks to keep his mind off the tragic end of Hudnall and the impending pursuit of the Indians.
Pilchuck and his attendants were gone so long that the visiting hunters left for their own camps, saying they would ride over next day. Worry and uncertainty were fastening upon those men who were not seasoned Westerners. They had their own camps and buffalo hides to consider. But so far as Tom could ascertain there was not a dissenting voice against the necessity for banding together to protect themselves from Indians.
About mid-afternoon the scout and newcomer from across the river returned alone. Pilchuck was wet and muddy from contact with the river bank; and his mood, if it had undergone any change, was colder and grimmer.
“Doan, reckon I’m a blunt man, so get your nerve,” he said, with his slits of piercing eyes on Tom.
“What — do you mean?” queried Tom, feeling a sudden sinking sensation of dread. Bewildered, uncertain, he could not fix his mind on any effort.
“This camp Roberts took me to was Jett’s. But I think Jett got away with your girl,” announced Pilchuck.
The ground seemed to fail of solidity under Tom; his legs lost their strength, and he sat down on a log.
“Don’t look like that,” ordered Pilchuck, sharply. “I told you the girl got away. Starwell thought the Indians made off with her. But I reckon he’s wrong there.”
“Jett! Milly?” was all Tom could gasp out.
“Pull yourself together. It’s a man’s game we’re up against. You’re no tenderfoot any more,” added Pilchuck, with a tone of sympathy. “Look here. You said somethin’ about your girl tyin’ her red scarf up to give you a hunch where she was. Do you recognize this?”
He produced a red scarf, soiled and blackened.
With hands Tom could not hold steady to save his life he took it.
“Milly’s,” he said, very low.
“Reckoned so myself. Wal, we didn’t need this proof to savvy Jett’s camp. I’d seen his outfit. These dead men Roberts happened on belonged to Jett’s outfit. I recognized the little sandy-haired teamster. An’ the other was Follonsbee. Got his name from Sprague.”
Then Tom found voice poignantly to beg Pilchuck to tell him everything.
“Shore it’s a mess,” replied the scout, as he sat down and wiped his sweaty face. “Look at them boots. I damn near drowned myself. Wal, Jett had his camp in a place no Indians or buffalo-hunters would ever have happened on, unless they did same as Roberts. Crossed the river there. Accident! . . . Doan, this fellow Jett is a hide thief an’ he had bad men in his outfit. His camp was destroyed by Comanches all right, the same bunch that killed Hudnall. But I figure Jett escaped in a light wagon, before the Indians arrived. Follonsbee an’ the other man were killed before the Indians got there. They were shot with a needle gun. An’ I’m willin’ to bet no Comanches have needle guns. All the same they was scalped an’ mutilated, with sticks in their bellies. Starwell agreed with me that these men were killed the day or night before the Indians raided the camp.”
“Had Jett — gotten away — then?” breathlessly asked Tom.
“Shore he had. I seen the light wheel tracks an’ Milly’s little footprints in the sand, just where she’d stepped up on the wagon. I followed the wheel tracks far enough to see they went northeast, away from the river, an’ also aimin’ to pass east of these buffalo camps. Jett had a heavy load, as the wheel tracks cut deep. He also had saddle horses tied behind the wagon.”
“Where’d you find Milly’s scarf?” asked Tom, suddenly.
“It was tied to the back hoop of a wagon cover. Some of the canvas had been burned. There was other things, too, a towel an’ apron, just as if they’d been hung up after usin’.”
“Oh, it is Milly’s!” exclaimed Tom, and he seemed to freeze with the dreadful significance it portended.
“So much for that. Shore the rest ain’t easy to figure,” went on Pilchuck. “I hate to tell you this part, Doan, because — wal, it is worryin’ . . . I found trail where a bleedin’ body, mebbe more’n one, had been dragged down the bank an’ slid off into the river. That’s how I come to get in such a mess. The water was deep there an’ had a current, too. If we had hooks an’ a boat we could drag the river, but as we haven’t we can only wait. After some days corpses float up. I incline to the idee that whoever killed Follonsbee an’ the other man is accountable for the bloody trail leadin’ to the river. But I can’t be shore. Starwell thinks different from me on some points. Reckon his opinion is worth considerin’. In my own mind I’m shore of two things — there was a fight, mebbe murder, an’ somebody rode away with the girl. Then the Comanches came along, destroyed the camp, an’ scalped the men.”
“An’ say, scout,” spoke up Roberts, “you’re, shore forgettin’ one important fact. The Indians left there trailin’ the wagon tracks.”
“Ahuh, I forgot that,” replied the scout, averting his gaze from Tom’s. “Jett had a good start. Now if he kept travelin’ all night—”
“But it looks as if he had no knowledge of the Indians comin’,” interrupted Tom, intensely.
“Shore. All the same, Jett was gettin’ away from somethin’. He’d rustle far before campin’,” continued the scout, doggedly bent on hoping for the best.
This was not lost on Tom nor the gloomy cast of Pilchuck’s lean face. Tom could not feel anything save black despair. Either Jett had the girl or the Indians had her — and the horror seemed that one was as terrible as the other.
Tom sought his tent, there to plunge down and surrender to panic and misery.
Next morning the hunters round their early camp fires were interested to hear a low thunder of running buffalo. It floated across the river from the south and steadily grew louder.
“That darned herd comin’ back,” said Pilchuck, uneasily. “I don’t like it. Shore they’re liable to cross the river an’ stampede the main herd.”
An hour later a hunter from below rode in to say that buffalo by the thousands were fording the river five miles below.
Pilchuck threw up his hands.
“I reckoned so. Wal, we’ve got to make the best of it. What with raidin’ Comanches
an’ stampedin’ buffalo we’re done for this summer — as far as any big haul of hides is concerned.”
Men new to the hunting fields did not see the signs of the times as Pilchuck and the other scouts read them; and they were about equally divided for and against an active campaign against the Indians.
A good many hunters along the Pease continued their hide-hunting, indifferent to the appeal and warning of those who knew what had to be done.
The difficulty lay in getting word to the outfits scattered all over northern Texas. For when the buffalo-hunters organized to make war upon the marauders, that meant a general uprising and banding together of Comanches, Kiowas, Arapahoes, and Cheyennes. Also there were Apaches on the Staked Plain, and they, too, according to reports, were in uneasy mood. Therefore buffalo-hunters not affiliated with the war movement, or camping in isolated places unknown to the organizers, stood in great peril of their lives.
Investigation brought out the fact that a great number of hunters from eastern Texas were on the range, not in any way connected with the experienced and time-hardened band camped on the trail of the main herd. Effort was made to get word to these eastern hunters that a general conference was to be held at Double Fork on a given date.
Over three hundred hunters attended this conference, including all the scouts, plainsmen, and well-known frontier characters known to be in the buffalo country. Buffalo Jones, already famous as a plainsman, and later known as the preserver of the buffalo, was there, as strong in his opinion that the Indian should be whipped as he was in his conviction that the slaughter of buffalo was a national blunder.
It was Jones’s contention that the value and number of American buffalo were unknown to the world — that the millions that had ranged the Great Plains from Manitoba to the Rio Grande were so common as to be no more appreciated than prairie-dogs. Their utilitarian value was not understood, and now it was too late.
The Indians knew the value of the buffalo, and if they did not drive the white hunter from the range, the beasts were doomed.