the Thundering Herd (1984)

by Grey, Zane

  Milly had seen him draw maps in the dirt. To this end she took up a stick.

  "The west is there," she said, thoughtfully. "I saw the sun set.

  Then the north is there. Northwest is my direction. It was ten days' travel from Pease River to Sprague's Post. . . . Here's the Pease."

  And she drew a line in the sand.

  "Yesterday I came thirty miles--maybe forty, almost due north, to this stream. Then I'm here." She made a dot in the sand, and another line representing this stream. "I don't dare try to find my way back to the buffalo camps. I might meet the Indians. I must not follow this stream west. I must cross it and head northwest. I must cross every stream I meet. When I reach one too deep to ford I must follow along it till I find a place."

  Milly's reasoning was the result of her experience with the Jett outfit. It took no particular degree of intelligence to calculate about where she was on the prairie and what to do to get out. The great task was to accomplish what her judgment dictated. She had traveled enough over the untrodden prairie to have some faint conception of the enormity of what faced her. Thought of meeting with buffalo-hunters persistently flaunted hopes. They encouraged her, but she could not trust to them. This Texas prairie covered a vast space, and in it she was lost.

  "That's all!" she said, blankly.

  The moment of decision had come. Milly drew a deep breath and flung wide her arms, with hands clenching. How she hated to leave the apparent protection of these friendly cottonwoods! Then, with a great throb in her breast, she turned to mount the wagon.

  Not reluctant indeed were the horses. They had grazed and drunk their fill and they knew their noses were pointed homeward, away from the buffalo fields. Milly had all she could do to hold them.

  She drove out of the grove, to the right where the buffalo had worn a wide trodden belt down to the stream. The last fifty yards were quite downhill. Milly reined in to scrutinize her first obstacle of the day.

  Thousands of buffalo had forded the stream here. Far as she could see, the banks on both sides were trodden fresh and dark with tracks. At this point the stream was perhaps three feet deep and forty wide; nothing for strong and nimble buffalo to ford. But these buffalo had not been hampered with a wagon. Still, the crossing was not especially bad. Jett would not have given it a second glance. He would have plunged across. The sandy bottom would assuredly be hard packed. Milly had only to start right, not too carefully, and to keep the horses going.

  She threw on the brake and called to the horses. "Get up! Whity!

  Specks! . . . Easy now!"

  They trotted down the slope--faster--faster, Milly leaned back on the reins. Her face blanched. Her teeth clenched. It was fearful, yet it roused defiance. She could drive them. They were eager, unafraid. The wagon propelled them. Plunge! the water crashed and splashed high. And the wagon bounced after them, to souse into the stream, over the front wheels. Milly was deluged.

  For an instant she could not see for water in her eyes, for the flying spray. But she called to the horses. They took the stream at a trot. It was no deeper than their knees, and they sent sheets of muddy water ahead of them. The opposite bank was low, easy for them; and Milly, before she realized it, pulled up on the level open prairie.

  "Easy, and I got a bath!" she cried, exultantly. "Oh, Whity and Specks, I love you!"

  She searched for her scarf to wipe her wet face and hair. But it, too, like her little gun, was gone. She had lost it. No! She recalled that she had left it tied on the hoop of the wagon cover in Jett's camp. The memory startled her. Suppose Tom Doan should at last find Jett's camp and see her red scarf. But that misery for him could never be. The Indians would have made blackened embers of that camp.

  Milly took her direction from the sun and drove out upon the prairie. It was a gray, beautiful plain, luxuriant with ripened grass, sloping very gently to the north. Far to the eastward she espied the black horizon--wide line of buffalo. They had grazed down the stream. In the bright sunlight the whole panorama was splendid and stirring to Milly.

  The horses started at a trot, and in the thick grass slowed to a steady brisk walk. The wagon was light, the ground level; and this powerful team had no serious task ahead of them, if they were only guided aright. Milly was excited, thrilled, and yet troubled. The adventure was tremendous, but the responsibility too great except for moments of defiance or exaltation. She could not all the time remain keyed up with a spirit that was unquenchable.

  Several miles of travel brought her to the summit of the gradual slope of valley, and here, as on the side from which she had come, she obtained commanding view of the surrounding country. It was grand, but she had eyes only for the northwest. Across the leagues of billowy prairie, so gray and monotonous and lonely, there stood a purple escarpment, remote and calling. It was the Llano Estacado. Milly recognized it, and seemed for an instant to forget the sense of being lost. But it was far away, and the northern end disappeared in purple haze. On the other hand it was a landmark ever present from high points, and somewhere between it and her present position ran the road of the buffalo-hunters.

  To her left meandered the green line of trees, like a fringed ribbon on the soft gray of prairie, and it headed toward the Staked Pain, where she knew all these Texas streams had their source.

  "I could reach the road to-day or to-morrow, if I drove straight west," soliloquized Milly.

  It was a sore temptation, but her good sense forbade her to take such added risk. The Comanches were between her and the buffalo camps. She must aim diagonally across the prairie, toward the extreme northwest corner of the escarpment, and perhaps four or five days she would strike the road. Then she would know the camping grounds, and would surely fall in with oncoming hunters or outgoing freighters. To find water at night, and to cross such streams as she met--these were her present problems.

  Meanwhile, as she drove on, thinking only of this incredible journey, she could not help seeing and being momentarily thrilled by the wild creatures of the prairie.

  Sleek gray, white-rumped antelope scarcely bothered to trot out of her path, and with long ears erect they watched her pass. Wild?

  These beautiful prairie deer were not wild. Milly believed she could in time have had them eating out of her hand, like she had the squirrels and birds at the Pease River camp. It was men who made animals wild.

  She ranged the wide gray expanse for sight of buffalo. There were none. She saw a band of coyotes sneaking round the antelope.

  Farther on she espied a gaunt wolf, almost white, watching her from a ridge-top. Rabbits were always scurrying from before the horses, and prairie birds flitted out of the grass. Once Milly saw a red hawk poised in midair, fluttering its wings with marvelous rapidity, and then it shot down like a streak, to strike the grass and rise with a tiny animal in its talons. Always beauty and life present, and with them, cruelty--death!

  Milly drove from early morning until an hour before sunset, when she reached the only water of the day. It was a pond in a sandy stream-bed. There were fringes of hackaberry brush along the banks, but no sheltering trees. Farther west some six or eight miles she thought she espied the green of timber, but that was far away and off her line of direction. She must take what afforded; and to this end she unhitched, turned the horses loose, and made the simple preparations for her own wants.

  Whity and Specks, as she had christened the horses, after drinking at the pond returned to linger near the wagon. They manifested extraordinary interest in Milly and even got in her way.

  "What's the matter with you white-faced beggars?" she asked. "It's oats you want, yes? Well, I'm not going to let you eat all the oats right away."

  Yet she was not proof against their nosing round her. Long had she been gentle and kind to these horses--the more so because of Jett's brutality. They knew her well, and now that she was master they began to prove the devotion of dumb brutes. Milly gave them sparingly of the oats, and petted them, and talked the more because solitude had begun to impinge up
on her mind.

  This sunset hour found her tired after the long day's drive. With change of action, followed by food and drink she needed, there came a rally of spirits. Darkness soon hid the lonely, limitless expanse from Milly's gaze, and then it seemed the night was lonelier. Only a faint murmur of insects! She would have welcomed a mourn of wolf, or even a cry of panther. A slight breeze fanned the red embers of the meager fire. She went to bed afraid of the silence, the night, afraid of sleep, yet she could not keep her eyes open or stay the drowsy fading away of senses.

  Next morning Milly was up early, and on the way before sunrise.

  She started well. But at the end of the first hour she ran into rough prairie, hindering travel. The luxuriant prairie grass failed and the gray earth carried only a scanty covering. The horses plowed up dust that rose and blew back upon her; the sun grew hot and glaring; and there was a wide area of shallow washes, ditches, gullies, like the depressions of a washboard. Having plodded miles into this zone, she could not turn back, unless absolutely balked, so she applied herself to careful driving, and kept on, true as possible to the distant purple landmark.

  The strong horses, used to a heavy hand, could not altogether be controlled by Milly, and they plunged into many places without her sanction. What with holding the reins as best she could, and constant heed to brake and distance, and worry lest she would damage a wheel, she was in grievous straits most of that day. It passed swiftly, swallowed up in miles of hard going, and left no time for scanning the prairie or fearful imaginings. It was work.

  Toward evening she drew out of this zone and came presently to good grass once more, and just at dusk hauled up to a timber belt that bordered water. The thirsty horses stamped to get down to it.

  Milly labored to unhitch them, and when the task was done she sank to the ground to rest. But she was driven to secure firewood while there was light enough. She felt too tired to eat, yet she knew she must eat, or else fail altogether of strength. The long hanging to the reins was what had exhausted Milly. Her hands hurt, her arms ached, her shoulders sagged. Driving that iron-mouthed team was a man's job. Milly was no weakling, but her weight and muscular force were inadequate to the demand of such driving.

  Supper, bed, night, sleep--they all passed swiftly, and again the sun rose. Milly could not find a place to ford the stream. It was not a depth of water that prevented, but high banks unsafe to attempt. For miles she drove along it, glad of the green foliage and singing birds and wild creatures, and especially glad that its course for most of the morning ran a little west of north. When, however, it made an abrupt turn to the west, she knew she must cross. She essayed the best ford she could find, made it safely, wet, shaken, frightened, and nearly pulled apart. On that far side she rested in the shade, and wept while she ate.

  When about to start again she remembered that the men had never passed a stream or pond without watering the horses. Whereupon she took the bucket and went down to fill it. Four trips were necessary to satisfy the thirst of Whity and Specks. She had done well.

  "We had two dry camps between Sprague's and the Pease," she said, and thought she must not forget that.

  The afternoon drive began favorably. The sun was somewhat hazed over, reducing the heat; a level prairie afforded smooth travel; the horses had settled down into steady stolid work. The miles came slowly, but surely.

  Milly's courage had not failed, but she was beset by physical ills, and the attendant moods, fancies, thoughts that could not everlastingly be overcome. She grew to hate the boundless prairie- land, so barren of life, of any color but gray, of things that might mitigate the deceit of distance. Nothing save gray level and purple haze! It wore on her, ever flinging at her the attributes of the prairie openness, a windy vastness, empty of sound, movement, the abode of solitude, the abode of loneliness. Lonely, lonely land! She was as much lost as ever. There was no road, no river, no camp, no mountain, only the dim upflung false Llano Estacado, unattainable as ever.

  But while Milly succumbed to her ills and her woes the horses plodded on. They knew what they had to accomplish, and were equal to it. They crowded the hours and miles behind them, and bore Milly to another watercourse, a wide glade-bordered enlargement of a stream, where ducks and cranes and kingfishers gave life to the melancholy scene.

  While she performed her tasks the lake changed from blue to gold, and at last mirrored the rose of sunset sky. Then dusk fell sadly, and night came, dark, lonely, pierced by the penetrating trill of frogs and the dismal cry of a water fowl. They kept Milly awake and she could not shake the encroachment of morbid thoughts. Where was she? What would become of her? The vast gloomy prairie encompassed her, held her a prisoner, threatened her with madness.

  She had feared Indians, rivers, accidents, but now only the insupportable loneliness. Would she not die of it and be eaten by buzzards? The stars that had been so beautiful, watching, helpful, now seemed pitiless, remote, aloof, with their pale eyes on her, a girl lost on the endless prairie. What was beyond those stars?

  Not a soul, no kindly great spirit to guide her out of this wilderness? Milly prayed once more.

  She dragged herself from bed next day, long after sunrise, and had spirit to begin the ordeal, if her flesh was weak.

  Whity and Specks waited in camp for their oats. Milly scorned herself for dreading they would run away, leaving her utterly alone. She fed them and caressed them, and talked as if they were human. "You belong to me," she said. "I was Jett's stepdaughter.

  He's gone. And you're mine. . . . If you ever get me out of this--"

  But she did not think she would ever get out now, unless Providence remembered her again. She had no hunger. A fever consumed her and she drank copiously of water. Hitching up was a dragging job. The heavy wagon tongue nearly broke her back. At last she was in the driver's seat. Whity and Sparks started of their own accord, splashed across the shallow lake, and pulled up on the gray flat expanse.

  Milly was either ill or almost spent, she did not know which. She had power to sit up, hold the reins, guide the horses toward that futile illusive landmark days away on the horizon, but she could not control her mind.

  The wandering roll of prairie-land mocked her with its shining gray distances, its illusive endlessness, its veils of heat. The hot sun rose, glared down, slanted to the west, and waned. She found no water that sunset. The horses had no drink. Milly mixed their oats with water from the keg. Hunger exceeded all her sensations, even the pains; and tenaciously she clung to her one idea of effort, to keep trying, to follow judgment she had made at the outset. She ate, and crawled into her wagon-bed, no longer afraid of night and loneliness. So tired--so tired she wanted to die!

  But the sun awakened her and the will to go on survived. The faithful horses waited, whinnying at her approach. Mechanically she worked, yet was aware of clumsiness and pain; that she must water them that day. The prairie smoked with heat. It beckoned, flaunted, slanted to the hot steely sky. She closed her eyes and slept with the reins in her hands; she awakened to jolt of wagon and crunching of stone. Thunder rumbled out of the sky and clouds obscured the sun. She drove into a storm, black, windy, with driving sheets of cool rain and white zigzag ropes of lightning, crashing thunder, long roll across the heavens. She was drenched to the skin and strangely refreshed. That fiery band round her head had snapped and gone. The horses splashed into a buffalo- wallow and drank of the fresh rain water.

  Away the storm rolled, purple clouds and pall of drifting gray and sheets of flame. The north showed blue again, and presently the sun shone. The horses steamed, the prairie smoked. Milly's clothes dried as the gray miles passed behind the tireless team.

  The day's journey ended at a river, and as if her troubles need be multiplied, it was unfordable at that point. Milly camped. And the morning found her slower, stiffer, yet stern to go on. This river, too--could it have been the Louisiana Red?--had a northwest trend. All day she followed it, often in the shade of trees. No tracks, no trails, no old camps--the r
egion was like a luxuriant barren land.

  Next morning she found a disused buffalo ford. The tracks were old. They stirred her sluggish blood, her submerged hopes. She gained a little therefrom. If only she could drop the reins and rest her hands, her arms! But the faithful horses had to be guided. Would she ever come to a road? Was this whole world devoid of the manifestations of travel? Miles and miles, as gray, as monotonous as a dead sea!

  Then she drove into a zone of buffalo carcasses, and was startled into wonder, hope, wild thought. Where was she? Fifty--maybe a hundred miles east of the Staked Plain, and still lost! These carcasses were black and dried; they had no odor; they were ghastly heaps of bones and hides. She drove ten miles across this belt of death and decay; and no sign of horse or wagon cheered her aching sight.

  Milly lost track of hours, days, time. Sunset, a camp by water, black night with hateful stars, the false dawn, day with its gray leagues and blistering sun, the white horses forever moving on and on and on, night, blackness, light once more, and horrible weary pangs.

  "WHAT'S THIS?" cried Milly, and wide flew her eyes. She was lying back in the wagon, where she had fallen from faintness. She remembered. It had been early morning. But now the sun was high.

  The wagon creaked, swayed, moved on to strange accompaniment--CLIP-

  CLOP, CLIP-CLOP, CLIP-CLOP. The horses were trotting on hard road.

  Was she dreaming? She closed her eyes the better to listen. Clip- clop, clip-clop, clip-clop! This was no lying trick of her jaded ears, worn out from silence.

  "Oh--thank Heaven!" panted Milly. "It's a road--a road!" And she struggled to rise. Gray endless prairie, as always, but split to the horizon by a white hard road! She staggered to the seat. But driving was not necessary. The reins were looped round the brake.