by Zane Grey
“I knew if there had been other Comanches near, they would have shot at me. So I ran the rest of the way to where the horses were hidden. I didn’t find them until Jake Devine saw me and called. He and Al Thorndyke were guarding the horses. They’d heard the shots close by, and saw me coming. I got to them, presently, all out of breath, and weak as a cat.
“‘Tom you’re all bloody,’ said Jake. He was scared.
“I told them as best I could what had happened. They tore off my shirt, which looked like a bloody wet flag. But it wasn’t all blood. I sure sweat on that crawl. It turned out my wound was a long cut across my back, not under the skin. The boys tied it up so tight I was in a straight jacket.
“‘I’ve got to take some canteens back pronto,’ I said.
“‘I’ll go. You stay with Al,’ said Jake.
“But Al said he’d go, too. They argued. I got a word in and said they couldn’t find the way back. I’d have to go. All the time we could hear shooting, and it grew hotter.
“‘Boys, I gotta git in thet fight,’ declared Jake.
“‘What’s the use of us hidin’ here? If the Indians come, we wouldn’t hold the hosses. We’d be goners,’ declared Al.
“So they decided to go with me. Taking two canteens each, we started back. It was easy enough walking, but, when we began to stoop along, it was hard to drag the heavy canteens, hanging from your neck. You see, when we stood up, the canteens would swing comfortably, but, when we stooped, they would swing down from our necks.
“We reached the place where I’d shot the Comanche. He lay stark . . . eyes wide open . . . his hands spread. A swarm of flies was already around him, attracted by the blood. They buzzed like bees.
“‘Fellars, I’ll take thet Injun’s gun an’ belt,’ said Jake.
“And so he did. But how he managed to pack this was beyond me. From there we had to crawl flat on our bellies. It was harder than digging coal. Luckily I had laid a trail. We crawled in single file, ten feet apart, and rested every little bit. I couldn’t keep on without stopping. I was weak in muscle. But my wind was pretty good. I think the big drink of water helped me.
“Whenever I stopped, I would listen to the shooting, and it struck me more and more that the fight was hotter. For that reason I redoubled my efforts. I might get back too late. So I didn’t rest again, though I had sense enough to go slower. . . . Going back was not so exciting. It was different. Nothing but bullets could have stopped me, but I found it a harder job. You see I’d been shot once, and I knew the chances were against ever making it.
“We’d gotten close to where Pilchuck and his men were shooting when a sharp-eyed Indian to my right spotted me and sent a bullet through the top of my hat. Jake was right behind me. He shot. I squirmed around to see him on his knees, just lowering his gun. He looked sort of black and his eyes blazed.
“‘Go on, Tom. Thet redskin is feed for lizards,’ he whispered.
“Then I remembered that Jake was an old-time Westerner, used to fighting Indians. So I crawled on. Bullets now began to sing over us, from both sides. Jake kept prodding my feet, and pushing me. Sometimes he would shove me six inches, rooting my face in the dirt. ‘Crawl, you belly-whopper,’ he would whisper. And then he’d call to Al. ‘Come on. D’ye want to get plugged all by yourself?’
“At last we reached the smoky place that marked Pilchuck’s position. It sure took nerve for us to crawl up on the men. But Pilchuck had thought of my return. He was on the look-out, and we got there.
“‘Shore was good work, Tom,’ he said. ‘Hurry to Ory an’ Roberts.’
“I got to Ory first. He was lying flat under a sort of sun-shade Roberts had rigged up, using his shirt and a stick. Ory had a clammy pale face. He was conscious, for, when I lifted his head, he opened his eyes. He tried to speak, but couldn’t. Drink! He sure did. Then he lay back and smiled at me. ‘Much obliged . . . Tom,’ he whispered, with the strangest look. The way he relaxed and shut his eyes didn’t strike me at the time, but afterward I knew this was when he died.
“Roberts took his drink and passed the canteen to the other wounded fellow. Then the old white-headed plainsman crawled over and got his share. I only had to see them drink to thank my lucky stars I had fetched the water. Pilchuck told me afterward those three canteens whipped old Nigger Horse. But I didn’t even know then we were fighting the old Comanche chief.
“After that, I lay an hour or more behind a rock, watching for sight of an Indian. The firing was stronger on our part, owing to the restlessness of the Indians. Finally they quit shooting from both sides of us, and none of us saw anything more to shoot at.
“‘Shore, it’s a trick?’ said Pilchuck.
“‘Wal, if so we’ll know soon,’ said Jake.
“‘Fellars, them Comanches air licked,’ averred the old-timer. ‘An’ they’re crawlin’ back to their hole.”
“‘You might be correct,’ agreed the scout. ‘But mebbe it’s only a trick to draw us on?’
“‘Jude, they’re goin’ to make tracks out of that cañon,’ added the older man positively.
“‘Wal, in that case, we ought to work down closer.’
“‘Some of us. If you’re askin’ me, Jude, I say you keep a few fellars hyar with them thet’s crippled, an’ let me take the rest of the outfit an’ sneak back to the cañon.”
“Pilchuck thought this a good idea, provided the bunch of Comanches on each side of us had surely gone. It didn’t take much longer to find out. While the old plainsman was scouting west of us, Harkaway arrived with his force, and said the Comanches were in retreat. Pilchuck left a few men with us and took all the rest to join Starwell. I got on a high rock where I could see down into the cañon. The Comanches were running around like ants in a nest where a horse had stepped. A line of mounted Indians was standing guard, to cover the retreat. Starwell’s gang was shooting some, but Pilchuck’s didn’t fire a shot. I could see them working down toward where the slope broke off into the cañon. The Comanches began to climb out on the opposite side where the squaws and children and young braves had gone earlier. All that were left were fighting Comanches, and they were not going to leave anything in camp. I was surprised to see how many Indians we’d been fighting. Pretty soon Pilchuck’s new force opened up. And then began the big fight. It sure woke up us cripples, all except poor Ory Jacks. There was a roar of Creedmoors and a rattle of Winchesters.
“I saw the Comanches give ground, and finally make a break to escape. Most of them followed the pack outfits up the slope, but some of them, in a hurry, and wicked riding devils, raced down through the gateway. They rode like fiends and shot as they rode. But despite their horsemanship and nerve they didn’t all get through. Just before sunset the cañon was empty, except for crippled horses. The Comanches took their dead and wounded with them.
“Pilchuck came panting back up the slope, with his force of men, and they were all elated. They had routed a much larger band of Indians than they had expected to find.
“‘Men, I’ve a hunch we did a lot of damage,’ said the scout. ‘It’s been a great day for the buffalo hunters. Now let’s look to our own wounded, an’ hustle to camp before dark.’
“It shocked Pilchuck, and sobered the whole band, to discover Ory Jacks was dead, Miller dying, Black dead, and one of Hark-away’s men had been killed, and left where he fell. Besides that, Roberts was pretty badly injured, and seven others, including Pilchuck and I, were suffering from painful, though not serious hurts.
“‘Get the horses, some of you,’ ordered Pilchuck, and he sat on a rock, his lean face dark with powder and sweat. Blood oozed from his bandaged shoulder. He looked grim and tragic. ‘God! I thought we was gettin’ away easy. I didn’t realize. . . . Wal, this means breakin’ the Comanches.’
“The horses were brought, and the dead men were hung over their saddles. Miller died unconscious. It was a strange sad procession that reached camp. I was too sick to get up, once I fell off my horse. Our wounds were washed and dressed
. Next morning, we buried our dead and broke camp, the worst of the cripples riding on the wagons. That night we were down off the Staked Plains. In three days we reached the Pease River camps, to spread the news and get ready for another campaign against the Comanches.”
Chapter Seventeen
The middle of July found Tom Doan and Pilchuck far down in the Brazos, in the thick of the slaughter. Thirty miles of buffalo hunters drove the last great herd day by day toward its doom.
If the weather had been uncomfortable in midsummer on the Pease River Divide, here it was worse than hot. Moreover up there in earlier days the hunting had been comparatively easy. Here it was incessant toil. The buffalo had to be chased.
The prairie was open, hot, dusty, and vast. Always the buffalo headed to the wind; they would drink and graze, and go on, noses to the breeze. If the wind changed overnight, in the morning they would be found turned around, going toward it. All day they grazed against it. They relied on their scent more than on sight or hearing, and in that open country the wind brought them warning of their foes. But for the great number of hide hunters these buffalo might have escaped any extended slaughter.
The outfits were strung along the Brazos for many miles, and as the buffalo had to drink, they were never far from water. Thus a number of hunters would get to them every day, kill many on the chase, and drive them on to the next aggregation of hunters.
* * * * *
Tom Doan had been in hard action for over two months, and he and Pilchuck and Jones had killed three thousand four hundred and twenty buffalo, losing only a small percentage of skins. Their aim was to last out the summer and fall, if endurance could be great enough. They had no freighting to do now; they sold their hides in bales on the range.
The days grew to be nightmares. As the buffalo were driven up the river, then back down, and up again, the killing was done for weeks in a comparatively small area. It got to be that Tom could not ride many rods without encountering either a pile of bones, or rotten carcass, or one just beginning to decompose, or a freshly skinned one torn over the night before by the packs of thousands of coyotes that followed the herd. Some days hundreds of newly skinned buffalo shone red along with the blackened carcasses over a stretch of miles. Buzzards were as thick as bees. And the stench was unbearable. The prairie became a gruesome ghastly place, and the camps were almost untenable because of flies and bugs, ticks and mosquitoes. These hunters stuck to a job that in a worthy cause would have been heroic. As it was they descended to butchers, and each and all of them sank inevitably. Boom! Boom! Boom! All day long the denotations filled the hot air. No camp was out of hearing of the guns. Wagons lumbered along the dusty roads. All the outfits labored day and night to increase their store of hides, riding, chasing, shooting, skinning, hauling, and pegging, as if their very lives depended upon incessant labor. It was a time of carnage.
Long had Tom Doan felt the encroachment of a mood he had at one time striven against—a morbid estimate of self, a consciousness that this carnage would debase him utterly if he did not soon abandon it. Once there had been a wonderful reason for him to give up the hunting. Molly Fayre! Sometimes still her dark eyes haunted him. If she had not been lost, he would long ago have quit this bloody game. The wound in his heart did not heal. Love of Molly abided, and that alone saved him from the utter debasement of hard life at a hard time.
One morning, when he drove out on the dust-hazed stinking prairie, he found a little red buffalo calf standing beside its mother, that Tom had shot and skinned the day before. This was no new sight to Tom. Nevertheless in the present case there seemed a difference. These calves left motherless by the slaughter had always wandered over the prairie, lost, bewildered; this one, however, had recognized its mother and would not leave her.
“Go along! Get back to the herd!” yelled Tom, shocked despite his callousness.
The calf scarcely noticed him. It smelled of its hide-stripped mother, and manifestly was hungry. Presently it left off trying to awaken this strange horribly red and inert body, and stood with hanging head, dejected, resigned, a poor miserable little beast. Tom could not drive it away, and, after loading its mother’s hide in the wagon, he returned twice to try to make it run off. Finally he was compelled to kill it.
This incident boded ill for Tom. It fixed his mind on this thing he was doing and left him no peace. Thousands and thousands of beautiful little buffalo calves were rendered motherless by the hide hunters. That was to Tom the unforgiveable brutality of the greedy men. Calves just born, just able to suck, and from that to yearlings, were left to starve, to die of thirst, to wander until they dropped or were torn to shreds by the vicious wolves. No wonder this little calf showed in its sad resignation the doom of the species!
* * * * *
August came. The great herd massed. The mating season had come, and both bulls and cows, slaves to the marvelous instinct that had evolved them, grew slower, less wary, heedless now to the scent of man on the wind.
At the beginning of this mating time it was necessary to be within a mile or less to hear the strange roo roo roo-ooo. This sound was the bellow of a bull. Gradually day by day the sound increased in volume and range. It could be heard several miles, and gradually farther as more and more bulls bellowed in unison. Roo roo roo-ooo! It began to be incessant, heard above the boom! boom! boom! of guns.
Then the time came when it increased tremendously and lasted day and night. Tom Doan’s camp was then ten miles from the herd. At that distance the bellow was as loud as distant thunder. Roo Roo Roo-ooo! It kept Tom awake. It filled his ears. If he did fall asleep, it gave him a nightmare. When he awoke, he heard again the long mournful roar. At length it wore upon him so deeply that in the darkness and solitude of night he conceived the idea he was listening to the voice of a great species, bellowing out for life-life-life.
This wild deep roo-ooo was the knell of the buffalo. What a strange sound, vastly different from anything human, yet somehow poignant, tragic, terrible! Nature had called to the great herd, and that last million of buffalo bellowed out their acceptance of the decree. But in Tom’s morbid mind he attributed vastly more to this strange thunder, which was not the trampling thunder of their hoofs. In the dead of night when the guns were silent, he could not shake the spell. It came to him then how terribly wrong, obsessed, evil were these hide hunters. God and Nature had placed the wonderful beasts on earth for a purpose, the least of which might have been to furnish meat and robes for men in a measure of reason. But here all the meat was left to rot, and half the hides, and the remaining half went to satisfy a false demand, and to make rich a number of hunters, vastly degraded by the process.
Roo-ooo-ooo! Tom heard in that the meaning of a futile demand of Nature. * * * * *
Tom Doan and Pilchuck reined their horses on the crest of a league-sloping ridge and surveyed the buffalo range.
To their surprise the endless black line of buffalo was not in sight. They had moved north in the night. At this early morning hour the hunters were just riding out to begin their day’s work. No guns were booming, and it appeared that Tom and the scout had that part of the range to themselves.
“Wal, we spent yesterday peggin’ hides in camp, an’ didn’t think to ask Jones if the buffalo had moved,” remarked Pilchuck reflectively.
“The wind has changed. It’s now from the north,” said Tom.
“Shore is. An’ the buffalo will be grazin’ back pronto. That is, if they are grazin’.”
“Any reason to doubt it?” asked Tom.
“Wal, the breedin’ season’s just about ended. An’ that with this muggy stormy electric-charged mornin’ might cause a move. Never in my huntin’ days have I seen such a restless queer herd of buffalo as this one.”
“No wonder!” exclaimed Tom.
“Wal, it ain’t, an’ that’s a fact. . . . Do I see hosses yonder?”
Tom swept the prairie with his glass. “Yes. Hunters riding out. I see more beyond. They’re all going downriver.”
“Come to think of it, I didn’t hear much shootin’ yesterday. Did you?”
“Not a great deal. And that was early morning and far away,” replied Tom.
“Buff’ an’ hunters have worked north. Let’s see. The river makes a bend about ten miles from here, an’ runs east. I’d be willin’ to bet the herd hasn’t turned that bend.”
“Why?”
“Because they’ll never go north again. For two months the trend has been south, day by day. Some days a wind like yesterday would switch them, but on the whole they’re workin’ south. This ain’t natural for midsummer. They ought to be headed north. ’Course the mob of hunters are drivin’ them south.”
“But how about today?” inquired Tom.
“Wal, I’m shore figgerin’. Reckon I can’t explain, but I feel all them outfits ridin’ north will have their work for nothin’.”
“What will we do?”
“I’m not carin’ a lot. Reckon I’m sickened on this job, an’ I shore know thet when I stay a day in camp.”
Tom had before noted this tendency in the scout. It was common to all those hunters who had been long in the field. He did not voice his own sentiment.
“I’ve been wantin’ to ride west an’ see what that next ford is goin’ to be like,” said the scout presently. “We’ll be breakin’ camp an’ movin’ south soon, an’ the other side of the river is where we want to be.”