by Zane Grey
Burn did not reply, but rode on as before. Pilchuck drew ahead and Starwell joined him. The riders scattered somewhat, some trotting forward, the others walking their horses. Then the leaders dismounted.
“Somebody hold Burn back!” shouted Pilchuck, his bronze face flashing in the sunlight.
But although several of the riders, and lastly Tom, endeavored to restrain Burn, he was not to be stopped. Not the last was he to review his father’s remains.
“Reckon it’s Comanche work,” declared Pilchuck, in 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 torso 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 that 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 tamped 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 Plains.
“Wal, Jude, that’s as we reckoned,” declared the scout.
“Shore is,” replied Starwell. “They stole wagons, 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 that’s mine, too. Wal, we’ll rustle back to camp.”
* * * * *
Upward of thirty hunters, representative 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 news to impart.
An old white-haired hunter declared vigorously: “By God, 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 around Pilchuck and Starwell 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 to tell later. Then he questioned the visiting hunters in turn.
Rathbone’s camp, thirty miles west, on a creek running down out of the Staked Plains, had been burned by Comanches, wagons and horses stolen, and the hunters driven off, just escaping with their lives. That had happened 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 walked one night and two days to reach 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.
Then 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 fact of the shots he and his campmates had heard yesterday morning.
Whereupon a lanky hunter, 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 onto a camp that 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 Jacks, 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 new camps, saying they would ride over next day. Worry and uncertainty were fastening upon those hunters 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 of banding together to protect themselves from Indians.
About midafternoon the scout and newcomer from across the river returned alone. Pilchuck was wet and muddy from contact with the riverbank, 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 lose 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! Molly? My heavens,” 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.
“Molly’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 could ever have happened on it, unless they did same as Roberts. Crossed the river right 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 Ind
ians 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 those 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’ Molly’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 Molly’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 Molly’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 and 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 come 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 coming,” 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 or the gloomy cast of Pilchuck’s lean face. Tom could not see 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 around their early campfires 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 Plains 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 who were in the buffalo country. Buffalo Jones, already famous as a plainsman of the buffalo, was there, as strong in his opinion that the Indians 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 Río 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 that, if they did not drive the white hunters from the range, they were doomed.
“Only the buffalo hunters can open up the Southwest to the farmer and cattleman,” averred Jones. “The U.S. Army can’t do it. . . . But what a pity the buffalo must go! Nature never constructed a more perfect animal.”
The buffalo, according to Jones, was an evolution of the Great Plains, and singularly fitted to survive and flourish on its vast and varied environment. The blizzard of Montana or the torrid sirocco of the Staked Plains was no hindrance to the travel of the buffalo. His great, shaggy, matted head had been constructed to face the icy blasts of winter, the sandstorms and hot gales of the summer. A buffalo always faced danger, whatever it might be.
Different men addressed the council, and none was more impressive than Pilchuck.
“Men, I’ve lived my life on the plains. I’ve fought Indians all down the line from Montana. I’ve seen for a long time that we buffalo hunters have got to fight these southern tribes or quit huntin’. If we don’t kill off the buffalo, there’ll never be any settlin’ of northern Texas. We’ve got to kill the Comanches, an’ lick the Kiowas, Cheyennes, an’ Arapahoes. I reckon we’ll have to deal with Apaches, too. . . . Now the Indians are scattered all over, same as the buffalo hunters. We can’t organize one expedition. There ought to be several big outfits of men, well equipped, strikin’ at these Indians already on the warpath. . . . We hunters along the Pease River divide will answer for that section. There’s a bunch of Comanches been raidin’, an’ are now hidin’ up in the Staked Plains. Outfits ought to take care of the Brazos River district an’ also the Red River. . . . Now there’s one more point I want to drive home. Camps an’ outfits should be moved close together in these several districts that expect to send out fightin’ men. An’ an equal or even stronger force should be left behind to protect these camp posts. . . . Last, I shore hope the tenderfoot hunters will have sense enough to collect at these posts, even if they won’t fight the Indians. For there’s goin’ to be hell. This will be a fight for the buffalo . . . the Indians fightin’ to save the buffalo an’ the white men fightin’ to kill the buffalo. It’ll be a buffalo war, an’ I reckon right hereabouts, halfway between the Brazos an’ Fort Elliott, will be the hottest of it. I just want every man of you, who may be on the fence about fightin’, an’ mebbe doubtin’ my words, to go out an’ look at the acres an’ acres of buffalo hides, an’ then ask himself if the Indians are goin’ to stand that.”
* * * * *
The old scout turned the tide in favor of general arming against the tribes on all points of the range. Then Pilchuck, with his contingent from the Pease River, left for thei
r own camps, four days’ travel, determined to take the field at once against the Comanches.
They visited every camp on the way south and solicited volunteers, arriving at Pease River with twenty-seven men ready to follow Pilchuck to the end. One of them was a friendly Osage Indian scout called Bear Claws by the men; another a Mexican who had been a scout in the U.S. Army service, and was reported to know every trail and water hole in the wild Staked Plains.
But Pilchuck, elated by his success in stirring up the hunters to the north, was fated to meet with a check down on the Pease River. Seventy-five of the hundred hunters who had agreed to take part in the campaign backed out, to Pilchuck’s disgust. Many of these had gone back to hunting buffalo, blind to their danger or their utter selfishness. Naturally this not only held up Pilchuck’s plan to start soon on the campaign, but also engendered bad blood.
* * * * *
The site of Hudnall’s camp was now the rendezvous of from twenty to thirty outfits, most of whom had failed the scout. At a last conference of hunters there Pilchuck, failing to persuade half of these men to fall in line, finally delivered a stinging rebuke.
“Wal, all I got to say is you’re hangin’ behind to make money while some of us have got to go out an’ fight to protect you.”
One of these reluctants was a young man named Cosgrove, a hard-drinking loud-mouthed fellow who Tom Doan had clashed with before, on the same issue.
Tom had been a faithful and tireless follower of Pilchuck, as much from loyalty to the cause as desire for revenge on the Comanches, who, he was now convinced, had either killed or carried off Molly Fayre. No authentic clue of Jett’s escape or death had been found, but vague rumors of this and that and more destroyed camps toward the north, especially a one-night-stand camp with single wagon and but few horses, had at last stricken Tom’s last remnant of hope.