by Zane Grey
“Jett? Let’s see. He was the man with the yellow beard. Come to think of it he wasn’t very civil.”
“I heard some talk about Jett uptown,” went on Pilchuck. “’Pears I’ve met him somewheres, but it’s slipped my mind. He’s one of the hide hunters that’s got a doubt hangin’ on him. Just doubt, it’s only fair to say. Nobody knows anythin’. Jett has come out of the Panhandle twice with thousands of hides. He’s made money.”
“Well, that’s interestin’,” replied Hudnall. “He’s just been married. My wife had some talk yesterday with a woman who must have been Missus Jett. She was from Missouri an’ had a grown daughter. Married a few weeks, she said. My wife got a hunch this woman an’ daughter weren’t keen about the hide-huntin’ business.”
“Well, when you get on the Staked Plains, you’ll appreciate Missus Jett’s feelings,” remarked Pilchuck dryly.
Tom listened to this talk, much interested, recording it in memory. Then he asked if all the buffalo hunters followed the same line of travel,
“Reckon they do,” replied Pilchuck. “There’s only one good road for a couple of hundred miles. Then the hunters make their own roads.”
“Do they scatter all over the plains?” went on Tom.
“Well, naturally they hang around the buffalo. But that herd is ’most as big as the Staked Plains.”
Tom had no knowledge of this particular part of Texas, but he did not fail to get a conception of magnitude.
“When do we pull out?” he concluded.
“Soon as we hitch up.”
In less than an hour the Hudnall outfit, with three wagons drawn by strong teams, was on the move. The women rode with the drivers. Tom had the job of keeping the saddle horses in line. They did not want to head out into the wilderness, and on the start were contrary. After a few miles, however, they settled down to a trot and kept to the road.
Soon the gleam of the town, and the groves of trees, and columns of smoke disappeared behind a rolling ridge, and all around appeared endless gray-green plain, bisected by a white road. No other wagons were in sight. Tom found the gait of his horse qualified to make long rides endurable. The lonely land was much to his liking. Jack rabbits and birds were remarkable for their scarcity. The plain appeared endlessly undulating, a lonesome expanse, mostly gray, stretching away on all sides. The soil was good. Someday these wide lands would respond to cultivation.
The Hudnall outfit traveled steadily until about 4:00 p.m., making about twenty-five miles. A halt was called in a grove of elm trees that had long appealed to Tom’s eye. It amused him to see the amiable contention between Pilchuck and Hudnall. The former, like all guides and scouts long used to outdoor life, wanted to camp at the first available spot, where others had camped. But Hudnall sought a fresh and untrammeled place, driving some distance off the road, to a clean glade under spreading elms just beginning to green. A shallow creek ran under the high bank. Birds and rabbits were plentiful here, and cat and coyote tracks showed on the muddy shore.
There was work for everybody, and something of confusion. Further experience in making camp was essential before things could be done smoothly and expeditiously.
“I laid out jobs for everybody. Now rustle,” was Hudnall’s order.
The teams were unhitched and turned loose to drink and graze. Harness and collars were hung upon the front wheels. Tom scouted for firewood, which appeared plentiful, and the ring of his axe resounded through the glade. Hudnall and his son lifted cook stove and mess box from a wagon, then the cooking utensils and tableware. A level spot was cleaned off, a fire started on the ground and also in the stove, then the meal preparations were turned over to the women. Hudnall erected a tent for himself and his wife. Sally’s bed was made in the wagon. Pilchuck helped Stronghurl pitch a tent beside their wagon, but he spread his own bed, consisting of blankets on a tarpaulin, outside under the trees. Burn Hudnall put up a tent for himself and his wife, and Tom unrolled his bed under Burn’s wagon.
At sunset they ate supper. The gold and pink of western sky appeared to send a reflection upon the winding stream of water. Everybody was hungry, and even Pilchuck seemed to feel something good in the hour and the place. If there had been any misgivings on the part of the women, they had now vanished. The talk was jolly and hopeful. Sally Hudnall made eyes at Tom, and then, seeing her advances were apparently unobserved, she tried the same upon Stronghurl.
After supper Tom chopped and carried wood for the campfire that night, and for next morning. This done, he strolled along the creek toward the grazing horses. Fresh green grass grew abundantly on the banks, and insured reasonably against the horses straying that night. Tom decided not to hobble Dusty.
A few hundred yards from camp the creek circled through a grove of larger elms, and eddied in a deep pool. Here, on a log, Tom lingered and indulged in rest and musings. His thoughts seemed to flow and eddy like the stream, without any apparent reason. But when thought of the girl, Molly, recurred, it abided with him. Here in the solitude of this grove he seemed to remember more vividly, and, after reviewing all the details concerning her, it seemed to him not improbable that she was unhappy and unfortunately situated. I . . . I can’t tell you more, she had said hurriedly, in a tone he now realized held shame and fear. Tom meditated over that, and at the end of an hour, when dusk was creeping under the trees, he threw off the spell, and retraced his steps toward camp. There was little chance of his ever seeing her again. With resignation to that and the vague sadness attending it, he put her out of his mind.
Soon a campfire blazed through the dusk, and seen from afar, with the black shadows of men crossing its brightness, it made a telling picture. Tom joined the circle, sitting and standing around it. The air had grown cold, making the warmth most agreeable.
“That ’tarnal smoke follows me everywhere I turn,” said Sally Hudnall as she moved to a seat beside Stronghurl.
“Elm wood ain’t so good to burn,” observed Pilchuck. “Neither is cottonwood. Smoke smells an’ makes your eyes smart.”
“Mary has a likin’ for hickory,” said Hudnall. “Golly, I’ll never again have apple pie baked over a hickory fire.”
“Unless you go back to Illinois,” added his wife dryly.
“Which’ll never be, Mary,” he replied with finality.
His words, tinged with a suggestion of failure back there in Illinois, checked conversation for a moment. They all had places dear to look back upon. Pioneers had to sacrifice much. Tom gazed at the circle of quiet faces with more realization and kindness. Buffalo hunting was but to be an incident. It had dominated his thought. In the background of his mind, in the future, had been the idea of a ranch. With these people home and farm were paramount. Tom wondered if they were not starting out upon an ill-advised enterprise. Not to think of its peril!
* * * * *
Day by day the Hudnall outfit traveled over the prairie, sometimes west, and then south, yet in the main always southwest. They made from fifteen to twenty-five miles a day, according to condition of the road, and favorable places to camp. Now and then they passed a freighting outfit of several wagons, heavily loaded with buffalo hides. The days passed into weeks, until Tom lost track of them.
Down here on the great plains spring had surely come. All was green and beautiful. The monotony of the country had been broken up by streams winding away between wooded banks, yet the rolling level seemed to hold generally, viewed from afar. On clear mornings a gray heave of higher ground appeared to the south. What farther north had been an openness and sameness of country now assumed proportions vast and striking.
One sunset, when halt was made for camp in an arroyo, Pil-chuck waived his usual work, and rode off up a slope. Reaching the summit, he dismounted, and, elevating a short telescope, he looked long to the southward. Later, when he returned to the camp, all eyes fixed upon him.
“See anythin’?” queried Hudnall impatiently.
Tom felt a thrill merely from the look of the scout.
; “Buffalo,” announced Pilchuck.
There was a moment’s silence. The women responded more quickly to this good news. Hudnall seemed slow and thick. Burn Hudnall threw down a billet of wood he had held in his hand.
“Buffalo,” he echoed, and the quick look of gladness he flashed upon his father proved how much he had been responsible for this trip.
“How many?” demanded Hudnall, with a long stride toward the scout.
“Reckon I couldn’t say, offhand,” replied Pilchuck. “Herd is another day’s ride, south.”
Sally Hudnall interrupted her father as he was about to speak again. “Oh, I’m crazy to see a herd of buffalo. Are there lots of them?”
“Tolerable many,” replied Pilchuck, with a look of professional pride. “Reckon this herd is about fifteen miles long an’ three or four deep.”
Then Hudnall let out a stentorian roar, and that was a signal for equally sincere if not so exuberant a rejoicing from the others.
* * * * *
Next day’s travel was the longest Tom had ever endured. The ground was dusty, the sun hot, the miles interminable, and there appeared ahead only the gray-green stretch of plain, leading the eyes with false hopes. But at last, toward sunset, a fringe of winding foliage marked the course of a stream. It seemed a goal. Beyond that water the great herd of buffalo must be grazing. An hour more of weary travel over uneven prairie—for Pilchuck had turned off the road early that morning—brought the outfit down into a coulée, the wildest and most attractive campsite that had yet fallen to them.
Tom made short work of his camp duties that evening, and soon was climbing the highest ridge. He climbed fast in his eagerness. Abruptly then he reached the top and, looking westward, suddenly became transfixed.
The sun was setting in a golden flare that enveloped the wide plain below. Half a mile from where he stood was an immense herd of huge, woolly beasts, wild and strange to his sight, but unmistakably buffalo. Tom experienced the most tingling thrill of his life. What a wonderful spectacle! It was not at all what he had pictured from tales he had heard. This scene was beautiful, and the huge straggling bulls seemed the grandest of big game beasts. Thousands of buffalo! Tom reveled in his opportunity and made the most of it. He saw that the herd circled away out of sight beyond the other end of the ridge upon which he stood. Long he gazed, and felt that he would never forget his first sight of a buffalo herd.
Upon his return to camp he found that he was not the only one late for supper. Hudnall had been out with Pilchuck. Burn was on the moment coming in with his wife and sister, who were talking excitedly about what they had seen.
“How many did you see?” asked Hudnall of Tom.
“Oh, I’ve no idea . . . all of five thousand . . . and I couldn’t see the end of the herd,” replied Tom.
“We saw ten thousand an’ that on the other side of the ridge from you,” added Hudnall tensely. His big eagle eyes were alight and he seemed to look afar. Tom sensed that Hudnall had not responded to the wildness and beauty of the spectacle. He saw thousands of hides to sell.
“Reckon I heard shootin’ down the river a couple of miles,” said Pilchuck. “There’s another outfit on the trail. We’ll be lucky if we don’t run into a dozen.”
“Is this the main herd you spoke of?” inquired Tom.
“No. This is only a little bunch,” returned Pilchuck.
Mrs. Hudnall broke up the colloquy. “Are you all daffy about buffalo? Supper’s gettin’ cold.”
“Mary, you’ll be fryin’ buffalo steak for me tomorrow night,” rejoined her husband gaily.
After supper Hudnall called the men aside for the purpose of consultation. “Pilchuck an’ me are pardners on this deal,” he said. “We’ll pay thirty cents a hide. That means skinnin’, haulin’ the hide to camp, an’ peggin’ it out. No difference who kills the buffalo.”
“That’s more than you’ll get paid by most outfits,” added Pilchuck.
Stronghurl and Burn agreed on that figure, and, as for Tom, he frankly admitted he thought 30¢ a hide was big pay.
“Huh! Wait till you skin your first buffalo,” said the scout, grinning. “You’ll swear thirty dollars too little.”
“Well, my part of this deal is settled. I furnish supplies an’ pay for hides,” said Hudnall. “Jude here will boss the hunt.”
“Not much bossin’,” said that individual. “We’re a little farther south than I’ve hunted. I rode through here with some soldiers last fall, an’ know the country. This bunch of buffalo is hangin’ along the river. Reckon there’s buffalo for miles. They’ll hang around here, unless too many outfits get chasin’ them. A good way to hunt is to catch them comin’ to drink. Aim to hit behind the shoulder, an’ shoot till he drops. Sometimes it takes two or three bullets, an’ sometimes five on the old bulls. When you hunt out in the open, you’ve got to ride like hell, chase them, an’ keep shootin’ till your cartridges are all gone.”
“That’s easy, an’ ought to be heaps of fun,” said Burn.
“Reckon so. An’ don’t forget it’s dangerous. Keep out of their reach. The real hard work comes in skinnin’ an’ peggin’ out. Before you get good enough at that to make three dollars a day, you’ll be sick of the job.”
“Three dollars,” echoed Burn in scorn. “I expect to make five times that much.”
Tom had much the same aspiration, but he did not voice it.
Pilchuck looked amused and mysterious enough to restrain undue enthusiasm. “Finally . . . an’ this is a hunch you want to take serious,” went on Pilchuck, lowering his voice so the women could not hear. “We might run onto Indians.”
That sobered all the listeners.
“Last summer was bad an’ fall was worse,” he continued. “I don’t know now how conditions are or what the Indians are doin’. Reckon somebody, hunters or soldiers, will happen along an’ tell us. My belief is there’ll be some tough fights this year. But, of course, the redskins can’t be everywhere, an’ these buffalo are thick an’ range far. We may be lucky an’ never see a Comanche. But we’ll have to keep our eyes peeled all the time an’ we mustn’t get far apart, and, if we see or hear of Indians, we’ll move camp an’ stand guard at night.”
“Jude, that’s stronger talk than you’ve used yet,” responded Hudnall, in surprise and concern.
“Reckon so. I’m not worryin’. I’m just tellin’ you. There’ll be a heap of hunters in here this summer. An’ like as not the soldiers will see what women there are safe to the fort or some well-protected freightin’ post.”
Tom thought of the dark-eyed girl, Molly. Almost he had forgotten. How long ago that meeting seemed! Where was she now? He convinced himself that Pilchuck’s assurance of the protection of soldiers applied to all the women who might be with the hunting bands.
No more was said about Indians. Interest reverted strongly to the proposed hunt to begin on the morrow. Tom fell in with the spirit of the hour, and stayed up late around the campfire, listening to the talk and joining in. Once their animated discussion was silenced by a mournful howl from the ridge top where Tom had climbed to see the buffalo. It was a strange sound, deep and prolonged, like the bay of a hound on a deer scent, only infinitely wilder.
“What’s that?” asked somebody.
“Wolf,” replied Pilchuck. “Not a coyote, mind you, but a real old king of the plains. There’s a lot of wolves hang with the buffalo.”
The cry was not repeated then, but later, as Tom composed himself in his warm blankets, it pealed out again, wonderfully breaking the stillness. How hungry and full of loneliness! It made Tom shiver. It seemed a herald of wildness.
Tom was the first to arise next morning, and this time it was the ring of his axe and the crash of wood thrown into the campfire circle that roused the others. When Stronghurl sallied forth to find the horses, daylight had broken clear, and by the time breakfast was ready, the sun was up.
Pilchuck, returning from the ridge top, reported that buffalo were in sight, all along the
river, as far as he could see. They were a goodly distance out on the plain, and were not yet working in for a drink.
“I’ll take my turn hangin’ around camp,” said Hudnall, plainly with an effort. “There’s a lot to do an’ someone must see after the womenfolk.”
“It’d be a good idea for you to climb the ridge every two hours or so an’ take a look,” replied Pilchuck casually. But his glance at Hudnall was not casual. “I’ll leave my telescope for you. Don’t miss anythin’.”
The men saddled their horses, and donned the heavy cartridge belts. They also carried extra cartridges in their pockets. Tom felt weighted down as if by a thousand pounds. He had neglected to buy a saddle sheath for his gun, and therefore would have to carry it in his hand—an awkward task while riding.
They rode behind Pilchuck down the river, and forded it at a shallow sand-barred place, on which the horses had to go at a brisk gait to avoid miring.
“How’re we ever goin’ to get the wagons across?” queried Burn Hudnall.
“Reckon we’ve no choice,” replied Pilchuck. “The hides have to be hauled to camp. You see the actual chasin’ an’ killin’ of buffalo doesn’t take much time. Then the real work begins. We’ll have all the rest of the day . . . an’ night . . . to skin, haul to camp, an’ peg out.”
This side of the riverbank was more wooded and less precipitous than the other. Buffalo tracks were as thick as cattle tracks around a water hole. The riders halted at the top of the slope where the level plain began. Out in the grassy expanse, perhaps a mile or more, extended a shaggy dark line like a wall.
“Reckon there’s your buffalo,” said the scout. “Now we’ll scatter an’ wait under cover for an hour or so. Hide in the brush or behind a bank, anywhere till some come close. Then burn powder. An’ don’t quit the buffalo you shoot at till he’s down. When they run off, chase them, an’ shoot from your horses. The chase won’t last long, for the buffalo will run away from you.”
Pilchuck stationed Tom at this point, and rode on down the edge of the plain with the other men. They passed out of sight. In that direction Tom could not see far, owing to rising ground. To the southwest, however, the herd extended until it was impossible to distinguish between vague black streaks of buffalo and dim distance.