by Zane Grey
“By thunder, we’ll pull then!” boomed Hudnall.
“Reckon we’ve some good huntin’ here, as long as this bunch hangs around the water,” interposed Pilchuck. “We’ve got it ’most all to ourselves.”
“That’s sense,” said Dunn conclusively. “I’ll be glad to stay. But when we do pull for the Staked Plains country, you want to look for some wild times. There’ll be hell along the Red River this summer.”
* * * * *
In the swiftly flying days that succeeded Dunn’s joining Hudnall’s outfit Tom developed rapidly into a hunter and skinner of buffalo. He was never an expert shot with the heavy Sharps, but he made up in horsemanship and daring what he lacked as a marksman. If a man had nerve, he did not need to be skilful with the rifle. It was as a skinner, however, that Tom excelled all of Hudnall’s men. Tom had been a wonderful husker of corn; he had been something of a blacksmith. His hands were large and powerful, and these qualifications, combined with deftness, bade fair to make him a record skinner.
The Hudnall outfit followed the other outfits, which they never caught up with, south along that stream in the rear of this herd of buffalo. Neither Dunn nor Pilchuck knew for certain that wild stream flowed into the Red River, but, as the days grew into weeks, they inclined more and more to that opinion. If it was so, luck was merely with them. Slowly the herd gave way, running when hunted some miles to the south, and next day always grazing east to the river. The morning came, however, when the herd did not appear. Pilchuck rode thirty miles south without seeing it. He was of the opinion, and Dunn agreed with him, that the buffalo had at last made for the Red River. So that night, plan was made to abandon hunting for the present and to travel south in search of the main herd.
Tom took stock of his achievements, and was exceedingly amazed and exultant. How quickly it seemed that small figures augmented to large ones!
He had hunted, in all, twenty-four days. Three hundred and sixty buffalo had fallen to his credit. But that was not all. It was the skinning that he was paid for, and he had skinned four hundred and eighty-two buffalo—an average of twenty a day. Hudnall owed him $144.60. Tom had cheerfully and gratefully worked on a farm for $20 a month. This piling up of dollars was incredible. He was dazzled. Suppose he hunted and skinned buffalo for a whole year! The prospect quite overwhelmed him. Moreover the camp life, the open wilderness, the hard riding, and the thrill of the chase—these had worked on him insensibly, until before he realized it he was changed.
Chapter Five
There was just daylight enough to discern objects when Molly Fayre peeped out of the wagon, hoping against hope that she would be able to wave a farewell to the young man, Tom Doan. She knew his name, and all the names of the Hudnall party. For some reason her stepfather was immensely curious about other outfits, yet avoided all possible contact with them.
But no one in Hudnall’s camp appeared to be stirring. The obscurity of the gray dawn soon swallowed the grove of trees and the prairie schooners. Molly lay back in her bed in the bottom of the wagon and closed her eyes. Sleep would not come again. The rattle of wagon trappings, the roll of the crunching wheels, and the trotting clip-clop of hoofs not only prevented slumber, but also assured her that the dreaded journey down into the prairie had begun in reality.
This journey had only one pleasing prospect—and that was a hope, forlorn at best, of somewhere again seeing the tall handsome stranger who had spoken so kindly to her and gazed at her with such thoughtful eyes.
Not that she hoped for anything beyond just seeing him! She would be grateful for that. Her stepfather would not permit any friendships, let alone acquaintances, with buffalo hunters. Five weeks with this stepfather had taught her much, and she feared him. Last night his insulting speech before Tom Doan had created in Molly the nucleus of a revolt. She dared to imagine a time might come, in another year when she became of age, that would give her freedom.
The meeting with Tom Doan last night had made, all in twelve hours, a change in Molly Fayre. His look had haunted her, and even in the kindly darkness it had power to bring the blood to her face. Then his words so full of fear and reproach—I may never see you again!—they had awakened Molly’s heart. No matter what had inspired them. Yet she could harbor no doubt of this fine-spoken, clear-eyed young man. He was earnest. He meant that not seeing her again would cause him regret. What would it mean to her—never to see him again? She could not tell. But seeing him once had lightened her burden.
So in Molly Fayre there was born a dream. Hard work on a farm had been her portion—hard work in addition to the long journey to and from school. She did not remember her father, who had been one of the missing in the war. It had been a tragedy, when she was sixteen, for her mother to marry Randall Jett, and then live only a few months. She had no relatives. Boys and men had tormented her with their advances, and their importunities, like the life she had been forced to lead, had not brought any brightness. Relief indeed had been hers during those months when her stepfather had been absent hunting buffalo. But in March he had returned with another wife, a woman hard-featured and coarse and immeasurably jealous of Molly. He had sold the little Missouri farm, and brought his wife and Molly south, inflamed by his prospects of gaining riches in the buffalo fields.
From the start Molly had dreaded that journey. But she could not resist. She was in Randall Jett’s charge. Besides she had nowhere to go; she knew nothing except the work that fell to the lot of a daughter of the farm. She had been apathetic, given to broodings, and a growing tendency toward morbidness. All the days of that traveling southward had been alike, until there came the one in which her kindness to a horse had brought her face to face with Tom Doan. What was it that had made him different? Had the meeting been only last night? Did she love him?
The wagon rolled on down the uneven road, and the sudden lighting of the canvas indicated that the sun had risen. Molly heard the rattling of the harness on the horses. One of the wagons, that one driven by Jett, was close behind.
Movement and sound of travel became more bearable as Molly pondered over the difference one day had wrought. It was better that she was going on the road of the hide hunters, for Tom Doan was one of them. Every thought augmented something vague and deep that baffled her. One moment she would dream of yesterday—that incident of casual meeting, suddenly to become one of strangely locked eyes—how all day she had watched Hudnall’s camp for sight of the tall young man—how she had listened to Jett’s gossip with the men about the other outfits—how thrilled she had been when she had met Tom Doan again. It had not been altogether fear of her stepfather that had made her run off from this outspoken, keen-eyed young man. She had been suddenly beset by unfamiliar emotions. The touch of his hands—his look—his speech! Molly felt again the uplift of her heart, the swell of breast, the tingling race of blood, the swift vague fearful thoughts.
The next moment Molly would try to drive away the sweet insidious musing, to ponder over her presence there in this rattling wagon, and what might be in store for her. There had been a break in the complexity of her situation. Something, a new spirit, seemed stirring in her. If she was glad of anything, it was for the hours in which she could think. This canvas-topped wagon was her house of one room, and, when she was inside, with the openings laced, she felt the solitude her soul needed. For one thing, Jett never objected to her seeking the privacy of her abode, and she now, with her newborn intention, sensed that it was because he did not like to see the men watching her. Yet he watched her himself, with his big, hard, blue eyes. Tom Doan’s eyes had not been like that. She could think of them and imagine them, so kindly piercing and appealing.
This drifting from conjecture and broodings into a vague sort of enchanting reverie was a novel experience for Molly. She resisted a while, then yielded to it. Happiness abided therein. She must cultivate such easy means of forgetting the actual.
* * * * *
Molly’s wagon lumbered on over the uneven road, and just when she imagined s
he could no longer stand the jolting and confinement, it halted.
She heard Jett’s gruff voice—the scrape of the brakes on the wagon behind—and then the unsnapping of harness buckles, and the clinking thud of heavy cooking ware thrown to the ground. Molly opened the coarse slit at the back of her wagon, and, taking up the bag that contained her mirror, brush and comb, soap, towel, and other necessities, she spread the flaps of the door and stepped down to the ground.
Halt had been made at the edge of a clump of trees in a dry arroyo. It was hot, and Molly decided she would put on her sunbonnet as soon as she had washed her face and combed her hair.
“’Mawnin’, girl,” drawled a lazy voice. It came from the man, Catlee, who had driven her wagon. He was a swarthy fellow of perhaps forty years, rugged of build, garbed as a teamster, with a lined face that seemed a record of violent life. Yet Molly had not instinctively shrunk from him as from the others.
“Good morning, Mister Catlee,” she responded. “Can I get some water?”
“Shore, miss. I’ll hev it for you in a jiffy,” he said, and, stepping up on the hub of a front wheel, he rummaged under the seat, to fetch forth a basin. This he held under a keg that was wired to the side of the wagon.
“Dry camp, Catlee,” spoke up a gruff voice from behind. “Go easy on the water.”
“All right, boss, easy it is,” he replied as he twisted a peg out of the keg. He winked at Molly, and deliberately let the water flow out until the basin was full. This he set on a box in the shade of the wagon. “Thar you are, miss.”
Molly thanked him, and proceeded leisurely about her ablutions. She knew there was a sharp eye upon her every move and was ready for the gruff voice when it called out: “Rustle you, Molly! Help here, an’ never mind your good looks!”
Molly minded them so little that she scarcely looked at herself in the mirror, and, when Jett reminded her of them, which he was always doing, she wished that she was ugly. Presently, donning the sunbonnet that served the double duty of shading her eyes from the hot glare and hiding her face, she turned to help at the campfire tasks.
Mrs. Jett, Molly’s stepmother, was on her knees before a pan of flour and water, which she was mixing into biscuit dough. The sun did not bother her, apparently, for she was bare-headed. She was a handsome woman, still young, dark, full-faced, with regular features, and an expression of sullenness.
Jett strode around the place, from wagon to fire, his hands quick and strong to perform two things at once. His eyes, too, with their hard blue light, roved everywhere. They were eyes of suspicion. This man was looking for untoward reactions in the people around him.
Everybody worked speedily, not with the goodwill of a camp party that was wholesome and happy, bent on an enterprise hopeful, even if dangerous, but as if dominated by a driving spirit. Very soon the meal was ready, and the men extended pan and cup for their portion, which was served by Mrs. Jett.
“Eat, girl!” called Jett peremptorily.
Molly was hungry enough, albeit she had been slow, and, receiving her food and drink, she sat down upon a sack of grain. While she ate, she watched from under the wide rim of her sunbonnet.
Did she imagine a subtle change had come over these men, now that the journey toward the wild buffalo country had begun? Follonsbee had been with Jett before and evidently had the leader’s confidence, as was evinced by the many whispered consultations Molly had observed. He was a tall, spare man, with evil face, red from liquor and exposure, and eyes that Molly had never looked into twice. Pruitt had lately joined the little caravan. Small of stature, though hardy, and with a sallow face remarkable in that its pointed chin was out of line with the bulging forehead, he presented an even more repulsive appearance than Follonsbee. He was a rebel and lost no opportunity to let that fact be known.
These men were buffalo hunters, obsessed with the idea of large sums of money to be made from the sale of hides. From what little Molly had been able to learn, all the men except Catlee were to share equally in the proceeds of the hunt. Molly had several times heard argument to that effect—argument always discontinued when she came within their hearing.
Molly had become curious about her stepfather and his men. This interest of hers dated back no further than yesterday, when her meeting with Tom Doan, and a few words exchanged with the pleasant Mrs. Hudnall, and her eager watching the Hudnall camp, had showed her plainly that Jett’s was a different kind of outfit. No good humor, no kindliness, no gay words or pleasant laughs, no evidence of wholesome anticipation. Jett had never been a man she could care for, yet up to the last few weeks he had been endurable. The force of him had changed with the advent of these other men and the journey into unsettled country. In him Molly now began to sense something sinister.
They did not speak often. The business of eating and the hurry maintained by Jett were not altogether cause for this taciturnity. Catlee was the only one who occasionally made a casual remark, and then no one appeared to hear him.
“Rustle along, you-all,” ordered Jett gruffly as he rose from his meal.
“Do you aim to camp at Wade’s Crossin’ tonight?” queried Follonsbee.
“No. We’ll water an’ get wood there, an’ go on,” returned Jett briefly.
The other men made no comment, and presently they rose, to set about their tasks. The horses were hitched up while munching their grain out of the nose bags. Molly wiped the plates and utensils that Mrs. Jett hurriedly and silently washed.
“Mother, I . . . I wish we were not going on this hunt,” ventured Molly, at last, for no other reason than that she could not stand the silence.
“I’m not your mother, girl,” replied the woman tersely. “Call me Jane, if the name Missus Jett makes you jealous.”
“Jealous? Why should I be jealous of that name?” asked Molly, in slow surprise.
“You’re no more related to Jett than I am,” said Mrs. Jett, pondering darkly. She seemed a thick-minded person. “For my part I don’t like the hunt, either. I told Jett so, an’ he said . . . ‘like it or lump it, you’re goin’.’ I reckon you’d better keep your mouth shut.”
Molly did not need such admonition, so far as her stepfather was concerned. But from that moment she decided to keep both eyes and ears open. Jett’s domineering way might be responsible for the discontent of his wife and the taciturnity of his men.
When all was in readiness to resume the journey, Molly asked Jett if she could ride on the seat with the driver.
“Reckon not,” answered Jett as he clambered to his own seat.
“But my back gets tired. I can’t lie down all the time,” remonstrated Molly.
“Jane, you ride with Catlee an’ let Molly come with me,” said Jett.
“Like hob,” sneered his wife, with a sudden malignant flash of eyes that was a revelation to Molly. “Wouldn’t you like that fine now, Rand Jett?”
“Shut up,” returned Jett, in mingled anger and discomfiture.
“You’re mighty afraid some man will look at that girl,” she went on, regardless of his gathering frown. “How’s she ever goin’ to get a husband?”
Jett glared at her and ground his teeth.
“Oh, I see,” continued Mrs. Jett, without lowering her strident voice. “She ain’t goin’ to get a husband if you can help it. I’ve had that hunch before.”
“Will you shut up?” shouted Jett furiously.
Whereupon the woman lifted herself to the seat beside him. Jett started his team out toward the road. As Pruitt and Follonsbee had driven ahead in their wagon, Molly was left alone with Catlee, who seemed to be both amused and sympathetic.
“Climb up heah, miss,” he said.
Molly hesitated, and then suddenly the new turn of her mind obstructed her old habit of obedience, and she nimbly stepped to a seat beside the driver.
“Reckon it’ll be warmer out heah in the sun, but there’s a breeze, an’ you can see around,” he said.
“It’s much nicer.”
Catlee plied
his long lash, cracking it over the horses without touching them, and they moved off in easy trot. The road lay downhill, and ahead the gray prairie rolled in undulating vast stretches to the horizon.
“Are we going to Indian Territory?” Molly asked the driver.
“Miss, we’re in the Territory now,” he replied. “I don’t know when, but in a few days we’ll cross the line into the Panhandle of Texas.”
“Is that where the buffalo are?”
“I ain’t shore aboot that. I heard Jett say the big herd would be comin’ north an’ likely run into the hunters somewheres near Red River.”
“Will all the hunters go to the same place?”
“Shore they will, an’ that’ll be where the buffalo are.”
Molly did not analyze the vague hope that mounted in her breast. She felt surprise to find she wanted to talk, to learn things.
“Is this strange country to you?” she asked.
“Shore is, miss. I never was west of the Missouri till this trip. Reckon it’s goin’ to be hard. I met some hunters last night. They was celebratin’ their arrival in town, an’ I couldn’t take too great stock in their talk. But shore they said it was bad down heah where we’re goin’ . . . I’m afraid it ain’t no place for a girl like you.”
“I’m afraid so, too,” said Molly.
“Jett ain’t your real father?” queried Catlee.
“He’s my stepfather,” replied Molly, and then in few words she told Catlee about herself, from the time her mother had married Jett.
“Well, well, that accounts,” rejoined Catlee, in tones unmistakably kind. But he did not vouchsafe to explain what he meant. Indeed her simple story seemed to have silenced him. Yet more than before, she felt his sympathy. It struck her singularly that he had stopped talking because he might have committed himself to some word against her stepfather.