by Zane Grey
* * * * *
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. Molly 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 Specks started of their own accord, splashed across the shallow lake, and pulled up on the gray flat expanse.
Molly 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. Molly 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 around her head had snapped and gone. The horses splashed into a buffalo wallow, and drank of the fresh rainwater.
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. Molly’s clothes dried as the gray miles passed behind the tireless horses.
The day’s journey ended at a river, and, as if her troubles need be multiplied, it was unfordable at that point. Molly camped. And 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 shade of trees. No tracks, no trails, no old camps—the region was like a luxuriant barren land.
Next morning she found a buffalo ford, not used for long. 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 west of the Staked Plains, and still lost! These carcasses were black and dried; they had no odor; they were ghastly heaps of bones and desiccated flesh. She drove ten miles across this belt of death and decay, and no sign of horse or wagon cheered her aching sight.
Molly 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 Molly, 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 Molly. “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 around the brake. Whity and Specks needed no guidance now, no urging, no help. They were on the homeward stretch. With steady clip-clop they trotted on, clicking off the miles. Whity was going lame and Specks had a clanging shoe, but these were small matters.
Molly sank down, overwhelmed with joy. On the Fort Elliott road! The Llano Estacado showed no longer the deceiving purple of distance. It showed gray and drab, shadowy clefts, rock wall, and cañons. She forced herself to eat and drink, though the dried meat and bread was hard to swallow. She must brace up. Many were the buffalo hunters who traveled this road. Surely before the hour was gone she would see a white wagon on the horizon. Molly lifted her head to gaze backward, toward the south, and then forward toward the north. The prairie was still a lonely land. Yet how different!
She rested, she thought, she gazed the hours away, and something came back to her.
Afternoon waned and sunset came, and with the fading of rosy and golden light the horses snorted their scent of water. Molly was stronger. Hope had wonderfully revived her. And she called to the horses.
Another horizon line reached! It was the crest of one of the prairie slopes. Long had it been unattainable, hiding while it beckoned onward. A green-mantled stream crossed just below. Molly’s aching and exhausted heart throbbed to sudden recognition. She had camped here. She knew those cottonwoods. And strong sweet wine of renewed life fired her veins.
Whity and Specks remembered. This was the cold sweet water from the uplands, well loved by the buffalo hunters. They snorted and lifted dusty shaggy hoofs, to plod on, and stop. Molly looked down on the green bank where Catlee had voiced his sympathy.
* * * * *
Another sunset, one of gold and red out of purple clouds, burned over the prairie land. The sloping shadows crept along the distant valleys; the grassy undulating expanse shone with dusky fire. And a winding river, like a bright thread, lost itself in the far dim reaches.
Molly Fayre drove Whity and Specks across the cattle dotted pasture that flanked the riverbanks outside of Sprague’s Post.
Horses mingled with the cattle. Between the road and the cottonwoods, camps sent up their curling columns of blue smoke. Tents gleamed rosily in the sunset glow. Dogs ran out to herald the coming of another team. Curious buffalo hunters, on the way south, dropped out to halt Molly. Natives of the post strolled across from the store to question the traveler from the buffalo fields.
“Howdy, sonny,” greeted a white-haired old Westerner, with keen blue eyes flashing over weary horses, and wagon with its single occupant. “All by yourself?”
“Yes,” replied Molly, amazed to hear her husky voice.
Men crowded closer, kindly, interested, beginning to wonder.
“Whar you from?” queried the old man.
“Pease River,” replied Molly.
“Aw, say now, sonny, you’re. . . .” Then he checked his query, and came closer, to lay a hand on the smoking horse nearest him. The rugged faces, some bronzed, some with the paleness that was not long of the prairie, were lifted to Molly. They seemed beautiful, so full of life, kindness, interrogation. They dimmed in Molly’s sight, through her tears.
“Yes, Pease River,” she replied hurriedly and low. “My outfit fought . . . killed themselves. . . . Comanches swam the river . . . I drove Whity and Specks through
the breaks . . . the Indians chased us . . . we ran into stampedes of buffalo . . . driven all day . . . surrounded . . . dust and roar. . . . Oh, it was terrible! . . . but they slowed up . . . they carried us all day . . . forty miles. . . . Since then I’ve camped and drove . . . camped and drove, days, days, days, I don’t . . . know . . . how . . . many!”
A silence ensued after Molly’s long poignant speech. Then the old Westerner scratched his beard in perplexity.
“Sonny, air you jest foolin’ us or jest out of your haid? You shore look fagged out.”
“It’s . . . gospel . . . truth,” panted Molly.
“My boy,” began the kindly interrogator, with graver voice, and again his keen gaze swept over grimy horses, and travel-worn wagon.
“Boy!” exclaimed Molly, as spiritedly as her huskiness would permit. “I’m no boy . . . ! I’m a girl. Molly Fayre!”
Chapter Sixteen
In 1876 upward of two hundred thousand buffalo hides were shipped east over the Santa Fe railroad, and hundreds of thousands more went north from Fort Worth, Texas.
For this great number of hides that reached the market East and Abroad there were at least twice the number of hides sacrificed on the range. Old buffalo hunters generally agreed on the causes for this lamentable fact. Inexperienced hunters did not try or learn to poison the hides, which were soon destroyed by hide bugs. Then as many buffalo were crippled as killed outright and skinned, and these wounded ones stole away to die in coulées, or the breaks of the rivers. Lastly a large percentage of buffalo were chased by hunters into the quagmires and quicksands along the numerous streams, there to perish.
1877 saw the last of the raids by Comanches and Kiowas, a condition brought around solely by the long campaign of united bands of buffalo hunters, who chased and fought these Indians all over the Staked Plains. But this campaign was really a part of the destruction of the buffalo, and that destruction broke forever the strength and spirit of these hard-riding Indians.
In the winter and spring of that year the number of hide-hunting outfits doubled and trebled and quadrupled, and from the Red River to the Brazos, over that immense tract of Texas prairie, every river, stream, pond, water hole, and spring, everywhere buffalo could drink was ambushed by hunters, with heavy guns. The poor buffalo that were shot down had to keep on traveling, until the time came when a terrible parching thirst made them mad. Then, when in their wanderings to find some place to drink, when they scented water, they would stampede, and in their madness to assuage an insupportable thirst, would plunge over one another in great waves, crushing to death those underneath.
* * * * *
Tom Doan, during the year and a half of the Indian raids, fought through three campaigns against Comanches, Kiowas, and Llano Estacado Apaches.
Pilchuck’s first organizing of buffalo hunters into a unit to fight Comanches drove the wedge that split the Indians, and likewise it inspired and roused the hide hunters from the territory line to the Río Grande. Thus there was a war on the several tribes, as well as continued slaughter of the buffalo.
In the spring of 1877, when, according to the scouts, the backbone of the Southwest raiding tribes had been broken, Tom Doan bade good bye 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 Molly. 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. Someday 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 someday.”
“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. Someday I’ll come back.”
“Tom, you’ve money saved,” returned Burn thoughtfully. “You could buy an’ stock a ranch. Isn’t it risky carryin’ around 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 head-waters 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, from 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 like a map, both record of the sublime and the ridiculous.
“I’m after wantin’ to throw in with you,” he said to Pilchuck.
The scout, used to judging Western 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 thousand buffalo. An’ I’m a blacksmith an’ a cook.”
“Wal, I reckon you’re a whole outfit in yourself,” rejoined Pil-chuck with his rare broad smile. “How do you want to throw in?”
“Share expense of outfit, work, an’ profit.”
“Nothin’ could be 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 no 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 unharnessed 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 s
ays . . . ‘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.
Breaks 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 was 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 once felt. 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 that only action could subdue.