the Thundering Herd (1984)

by Grey, Zane

  In the spring of 1877, when, according to the scouts, the backbone of the Southwest raiding tribes had been broken, Tom Doan bade good- by to Burn Hudnall, his friend and comrade for so long. Dave Stronghurl had months before gone back to Sprague's Post to join his wife, and Burn, now that the campaign had ended, wanted to see his wife and people.

  "I reckon I'm even with the Comanches," he said, grimly. That was his only reference to his father's murder.

  "Well, Burn, we've seen wild life," mused Tom, sadly. "I'm glad I helped rout the Comanches. They've been robbed, I suppose, and I can't blame them. But they sure made a man's blood boil for a fight."

  "What'll you do, Tom?" queried Burn.

  Doan dropped his head. "It'd hurt too much to go back to Sprague's Post--just yet. You see, Burn, I can't forget Milly. Of course she's dead long ago. But then, sometimes I see her in dreams, and she seems alive. I'd like to learn the truth of her fate. Some day I might. Pilchuck and I are going south to the Brazos. The last great hunt is on there."

  "I'm goin' to settle on a ranch at Sprague's," said Burn. "Father always said that would be center of a fine cattle an' farmin' district some day."

  "Yes, I remember. It used to be my dream, too. But I'm changed.

  This roving life, I guess. The open range for me yet a while!

  Some day I'll come back."

  "Tom, you've money saved," returned Burn, thoughtfully. "You could buy an' stock a ranch. Isn't it risky carryin' round all your money? There's worse than bad Comanches now in the huntin' field."

  "I've thought of that," said Tom. "It does seem risky. So I'll ask you to take most of my money and bank it for me."

  "It's a good idea. But see here, old man, suppose you don't come back? You know, we've seen things happen to strong an' capable men down here. Think how lucky we've been!"

  "I've thought of that, too," said Tom, with gravity. "If I don't show up inside of five years invest the money for your children.

  Money's not much to me any more. . . . But I'm likely to come back."

  This conversation took place at Wheaton's camp, on the headwaters of the Red River, in April. A great exodus of freighters was taking place that day. It was interesting for Tom to note the development of the hide hauling. The wagons were large and had racks and booms, so that when loaded they resembled hay wagons, except in color. Two hundred buffalo hides to a wagon, and six yokes of oxen to a team and twenty-five teams to a train! Swiftly indeed were the buffalo disappearing from the plains. Burn Hudnall rode north with one of these immense freighting outfits.

  Tom and Pilchuck made preparations for an extended hunt in the Brazos River country, whence emanated rumors somewhat similar to the gold rumors of '49.

  While choosing and arranging an outfit they were visited by a brawny little man with a most remarkable visage. It was scarred with records of both the sublime and the ridiculous.

  "I'm after wantin' to throw in with you," he announced to Pilchuck.

  The scout, used to judging men in a glance, evidently saw service and character in this fellow.

  "Wal, we need a man, that's shore. But he must be experienced," returned the scout.

  "Nary tenderfoot, scout, not no more," he grinned. "I've killed an' skinned over four thousands buffs. An' I'm a blacksmith an' a cook."

  "Wal, I reckon you're a whole outfit in yourself," rejoined Pilchuck, with his rare broad smile. "How do you want to throw in?"

  "Share expense of outfit, work, an' profit."

  "Nothin' could be no more fair. I reckon we'll be right glad to have you. What's your handle?"

  "Wrong-Wheel Jones," replied the applicant, as if he expected that cognomen to be recognized.

  "What the hell! I've met Buffalo Jones, an' Dirty-Face Jones an'

  Spike Jones, but I never heard of you. . . . Wrong-Wheel Jones!

  Where'd you ever get that?"

  "It was stuck on me my first hunt when I was sorta tenderfooty."

  "Wal, tell me an' my pard here, Tom Doan," continued the scout, good-humoredly. "Tom, shake with Wrong-Wheel Jones."

  After quaintly acknowledging the introduction Jones said: "Fust trip I busted a right hind wheel of my wagon. Along comes half a dozen outfits, but none had an extra wheel. Blake, the leader, told me he'd passed a wagon like mine, broke down on the Cimarron.

  'Peared it had some good wheels. So I harnessed my hosses, rode one an' led t'other. I found the wagon, but the LEFT HIND WHEEL was the only one not busted. So I rode back to camp. Blake asked me why I didn't fetch a wheel back, an' I says: 'What'd I want with TWO left hind wheels? I got one. It's the right one thet's busted. Thet left hind wheel back thar on thet wagon would do fust rate, but it's on the wrong side.' An' Blake an' his outfit roared till they near died. When he could talk ag'in he says: 'You darned fool. Thet left hind wheel turned round would make your right hind wheel.' An' after a while I seen he was right. They called me Wrong-Wheel Jones an' the name's stuck."

  "By gosh! it ought to!" laughed Pilchuck.

  In company with another outfit belonging to a newcomer named Hazelton, with a son of fifteen and two other boys not much older, Pilchuck headed for the Brazos River.

  After an uneventful journey, somewhat off the beaten track, they reached one of the many tributaries of the Brazos, where they ran into some straggling small herds.

  "We'll make two-day stops till we reach the main herd," said Pilchuck. "I've a hankerin' for my huntin' alone. Reckon hide- hunters are thick as bees down on the Brazos. Let's keep out of the stink an' musketeers as long as we can."

  They went into camp, the two outfits not far apart, within hailing distance.

  It was perhaps the most beautiful location for a camp Tom had seen in all his traveling over western Texas. Pilchuck said the main herd, with its horde of hide-hunters, had passed miles east of this point. As a consequence the air was sweet, the water unpolluted, and grass and wood abundant.

  Brakes of the tributary consisted of groves of pecan trees and cottonwoods, where cold springs abounded, and the deep pools contained fish. As spring had just come in that latitude, there were color of flowers, and fragrance in the air, and a myriad of birds lingering on their way north. Like the wooded sections of the Red River and the Pease River Divide had been, so was this, Brazos district. Deer, antelope, turkey, with their carnivorous attendants, panthers, wildcats, and wolves, had not yet been molested by white hunters.

  Perhaps the Indian campaigns had hardened Tom Doan, for he returned to the slaughter of buffalo. He had been so long out of the hunting game that he had forgotten many of the details, and especially the sentiment that had once moved him. Then this wild life in the open had become a habit; it clung to a man. Moreover, Tom had an aching and ever-present discontent which only action could subdue.

  He took a liking to Cherry Hazleton. The boy was a strapping youngster, freckle faced and red headed, and like all healthy youths of the Middle West during the 'seventies he was a worshiper of the frontiersman and Indian fighter. He and his young comrades, brothers named Dan and Joe Newman, spent what little leisure time they had hanging round Pilchuck and Tom, hungry for stories as dogs for bones.

  Two days at this camp did not suffice Pilchuck. Buffalo were not excessively numerous, but they were scattered into small bands under leadership of old bulls; and for these reasons offered the conditions best suited to experienced hunters.

  The third day Tom took Cherry Hazleton hunting with him, allowing him to carry canteen and extra cartridges while getting valuable experience.

  Buffalo in small numbers were in sight everywhere, but as this country was rolling and cut up, unlike the Pease prairie, it was not possible to locate all the herds that might be within reaching distance.

  In several hours of riding and stalking Tom had not found a position favorable to any extended success, though he had downed some buffalo, and young Hazleton, after missing a number, had finally killed his first, a fine bull. The boy was wild with excitement, and this brought ba
ck to Tom his early experience, now seemingly so long in the past.

  They were now on a creek that ran through a wide stretch of plain, down to the tributary, and no more than two miles from camp. A large herd of buffalo trooped out of the west, coming fast under a cloud of dust. They poured down into the creek and literally blocked it, crazy to drink. Tom had here a marked instance of the thirst-driven madness now common to the buffalo. This herd, numbering many hundreds, slaked their thirst, and then trooped into a wide flat in the creek bottom, where trees stood here and there.

  Manifestly they had drunk too deeply, if they had not foundered, for most of them lay down.

  "We'll cross the creek and sneak close on them," said Tom. "Bring all the cartridges. We might get a stand."

  "What's that?" whispered Cherry, excitedly.

  "It's what a buffalo-hunter calls a place and time where a big number bunches and can be kept from running off. I never had a stand myself. But I've an idea what one's like."

  They crept on behind trees and brush, down into the wide shallow flat, until they were no farther than a hundred yards from the resting herd. From the way Cherry panted Tom knew he was frightened.

  "It is sort of skittish," whispered Tom, "but if they run our way we can climb a tree."

  "I'm not--scared. It's--just--great," rejoined the lad, in a tone that hardly verified his words.

  "Crawl slow now, and easy," said Tom. "A little farther--then we'll bombard them."

  At last Tom led the youngster yards closer, to a wonderful position behind an uprooted cottonwood, from which they could not be seen.

  Thrilling indeed was it even for Tom, who had stalked Comanches in this way. Most of the buffalo were down, and those standing were stupid with drowsiness. The heat, and a long parching thirst, then an overcharged stomach, had rendered them loggy.

  Tom turned his head to whisper instruction to the lad. Cherry's face was pale and the freckles stood out prominently. He was trembling with wild eagerness, fear and delight combined. Tom thought it no wonder. Again he smelled the raw scent of buffalo.

  They made a magnificent sight, an assorted herd of all kinds and ages, from the clean, glossy, newly shedded old bulls down to the red calves.

  "Take the bull on your right--farthest out," whispered Tom. "And I'll tend to this old stager on my left."

  The big guns boomed. Tom's bull went to his knees and, grunting loud, fell over; Cherry's bull wagged his head as if a bee had stung him. Part of the buffalo lying down got up. The old bull, evidently a leader, started off.

  "Knock him," whispered Tom, quickly. "They'll follow him." Tom fired almost simultaneously with Cherry, and one or both of them scored a dead shot. The buffalo that had started to follow the bull turned back into the herd, and this seemed to dominate all of them. Most of those standing pressed closer in. Others began to walk stolidly off.

  "Shoot the outsiders," said Tom, quickly. And in three seconds he had stopped as many buffalo. Cherry's gun boomed, but apparently without execution.

  At this juncture Pilchuck rushed up behind them.

  "By golly! you've got a stand!" he ejaculated, in excited tones for him. "Never seen a better in my life. Now, here, you boys let me do the shootin'. It's tough on you, but if this stand is handled right we'll make a killin'."

  Pilchuck stuck his forked rest-stick in the ground, and knelt behind it, just to the right of Tom and Cherry. This elevated him somewhat above the log, and certainly not hidden from the buffalo.

  "Case like this a fellow wants to shoot straight," said the scout.

  "A crippled buff means a bolt."

  Choosing the bull the farthest outside of the herd, Pilchuck aimed with deliberation, and fired. The animal fell. Then he treated the next in the same manner. He was far from hurried, and that explained his deadly precision.

  "You mustn't let your gun get too hot," he said. "Over-expansion from heat makes a bullet go crooked."

  Pilchuck picked out buffalo slowly walking away and downed them.

  The herd kept massed, uneasy in some quarters, but for the most part not disturbed by the shooting. Few of those lying down rose to their feet. When the scout had accounted for at least two dozen buffalo he handed his gun to Tom.

  "Cool it off an' wipe it out," he directed, and taking Tom's gun returned to his deliberate work.

  Tom threw down the breech-block and poured water through the barrel, once, and then presently again. Taking up Pilchuck's ramrod Tom ran a greasy patch of cloth through the barrel. It was cooling rapidly and would soon be safe to use.

  Meanwhile the imperturbable scout was knocking buffalo down as if they had been tenpins. On the side toward him there was soon a corral of dead buffalo. He never missed; only seldom was it necessary to take two shots to an animal. After shooting ten or twelve he returned Tom's gun and took up his own.

  "Best stand I ever saw," he said. "Queer how buffalo act sometimes. They're not stupid. They know somethin' is wrong. But you see I keep knockin' down the one that leads off."

  Buffalo walked over to dead ones, and sniffed at them, and hooked them with such violence that the contact could be heard. An old bull put something apparently like anger into his actions. Why did not his comrade, or perhaps his mate, get up and come? Some of them looked anxiously round, waiting. Now and then another would walk out of the crowd, and that was fatal for him. Boom! And the heavy bullet would thud solidly; the buffalo would sag or jerk, and then sink down, shot through the heart. Pilchuck was a machine for the collecting of buffalo hides. There were hundreds of hunters like him on the range. Boom! Boom! Boom! boomed out the big fifty.

  At last, after more than an hour of this incredible stolidity to the boom of gun and the fall of their numbers, the resting buffalo got up, and they all moved round uneasily, uncertainly. Then Pilchuck missed dead center of a quartering shot at a bull that led out. The bullet made the beast frantic, and with a kind of low bellow it bounded away. The mass broke, and a stream of shaggy brown poured off the flat and up the gentle slope. In a moment all the herd was in motion. The industrious Pilchuck dropped four more while they were crowding behind, following off the flat. A heavy trampling roar filled the air; dust, switching tufted tails, woolly bobbing backs, covered the slope. And in a few moments they were gone. Silence settled down. The blue smoke drifted away. A gasp of dying buffalo could be heard.

  "Reckon I never beat this stand," said the scout, wiping his wet, black hands. "If I only hadn't crippled that bull."

  "Gosh! It was murder--wusser'n butcherin' cows!" ejaculated the boy Cherry. Drops of sweat stood out on his pale face, as marked as the freckles. He looked sick. Long before that hour had ended his boyish sense of exciting adventure had been outraged.

  "Lad, it ain't always that easy," remarked Pilchuck. "An' don't let this make you think huntin' buffalo isn't dangerous. Now we'll make a count."

  One hundred and twenty-six buffalo lay dead in space less than three acres; and most of them were bulls.

  "Yep, it's my record," declared the scout, with satisfaction. "But I come back fresh to it, an' shore that was a grand stand. Boys, we've got skinnin' for the rest of to-day an' all of to-morrow."

  The two outfits gradually hunted down the tributary towards its confluence with the Brazos. As the number of buffalo increased they encountered other hunters; and when May arrived they were on the outskirts of the great herd and a swarm of camps.

  Hide thieves were numbered among these outfits, and this necessitated the consolidation of camps and the need for one or more men to be left on guard. Thus Tom and Cherry often had a day in camp, most welcome change, though tasks were endless. Their place was at a point where the old Spanish Trail from the Staked Plain crossed the Brazos; and therefore was in line of constant travel. Hunters and freighters, tenderfeet and old timers, soldiers and Indians, passed that camp, and seldom came a day when no traveler stopped for an hour.

  Cherry liked these days more than those out on the range. He was being broken in to Pilch
uck's strenuous method and the process was no longer enticing.

  Once it happened that Cherry and Dan Newman were left together.

  Tom had ridden off to take up his skinning, in which he had soon regained all his old-time skill, but he did not forget to admonish the boys to keep out of mischief. Wrong-Wheel Jones, who had been recovering from one of his infrequent intemperate spells, had also been left behind. When Tom returned he found Jones in a state of high dudgeon, raving what he would do to those infernal boys. It was plain that Wrong-Wheel had very recently come out of the river, which at this point ran under a bank close to camp. Tom decided the old fellow had fallen in, but as the boys were not to be found, a later conclusion heaped upon their heads something of suspicion.

  At last Tom persuaded him to talk.

  "Wal, it was this way," began Wrong-Wheel, with the air of a much- injured man. "Since I lost them two hundred hides--an' I know darn well some thief got them--I been drinkin' considerable. Jest got to taperin' off lately, an' wasn't seein' so many queer things. . . .

  Wal, to-day I went to sleep thar in the shade on the bank.

  Suthin' woke me, an' when I opened my eyes I seed an orful sight.

  I was scared turrible, an' I jest backed off the bank an' fell in the river. Damn near drowned! Reckon when I got out I was good an' sober. . . . An', say, what d'ye spose them boys done?"

  Wrong-Wheel squinted at Tom and squirted a brown stream of tobacco into the camp fire.

  "I haven't any idea," replied Tom, with difficulty preserving a straight face.

  "Wal," went on Jones, "you know thet big panther Pilchuck shot yestiddy. Them boys hed skinned it, shot-pouched it, as we say, an' they hed stuffed it with grass, an' put sticks in fer legs, an' marbles fer eyes. An' I'm a son-of-a-gun if they didn't stand the dummy right in front of me, so when I woke I seed it fust, an' I jest nat'rally went off my head."

  Another day an old acquaintance of Tom's rode in and halted on his way to Fort Worth.

  "Roberts!" exclaimed Tom, in glad surprise.

  "Just come from Fort Sill," said Roberts, evincing equal pleasure.