By the time we had issued from the borderland of hills and ravines and noisy little streams rushing through narrow gorges, and by the time we had left the last trees behind and were committed to the true prairie, I had had time to recover from the last of my bruises. I had learned to ride, and I had made a poor beginning in the handling of a horse-hair lariat. And, above all, I was enjoying the purest happiness, for at the suggestion of Chris Hudson I was appointed huntsman to serve with Chuck Morris.
Among the hills it was well enough to scour here and there, and a fair share of the luck fell to me - or a little more than a fair share. For, as I have said, I had learned to make bullets count, which simply means that I had learned not to miss. Chuck, genius though he was with a gun in a crisis, was always too careless. However, the game we shot we always brought in together, and neither made any claims. I never boasted, and I think that Chuck was grateful for my silence. He, as head huntsman, received the praise, and I let him take it as a very cheap way of paying off that expensive horse on which I was riding. I never could understand, however, the way in which he would accept tributes that were not his due. He was generous to a fault. Money or any other possession was nothing to him, if it would please a friend. At the same time he hated to hear others praised. That was only one of the first peculiarities I was to observe in that remarkable man. By then, however, we had embarked at last on the vast sea of the prairies.
PRAIRIE DANGERS
I realized suddenly that we were in a new world. Chuck and I had ridden foolishly far the preceding evening in pursuit of a wounded deer. We had spent half of the night in getting back to the caravan, so that, when the morning came and the caravan lurched ahead, he and I tumbled into a wagon and rode on through most of the morning. When we crawled out from under canvas at last, thoroughly slept out, I found around me a huge green ocean where all the waves were frozen in place - soft swells of ground and then irregular long stretches over which the sun rippled. Nothing lived here but the wind and the grass. And the face of every man around me was changed, just as faces change on board ship when the land drops below the horizon and the vessel is committed to the sea at last. I cannot define the change. But at first everyone was more subdued, more watchful, with a strain of anxiety beginning to tell. Perhaps it was the gradual cessation of talk that wakened both Chuck and me.
I was a bit oppressed, at first. But half an hour later Chuck and I were riding out to find fresh meat. When we had pressed on into the silence beyond the sound of the rattling caravan, it seemed to me, looking around to the great horizon, that I felt the curve of the earth's surface, pressing us up closer to the sky. The sky itself became my intimate, so that, half the time, I rode with my face up, watching the sweep of little wind-torn clouds. I looked at Chuck, smiling, and Chuck smiled back at me. We were like two children and very happy. I knew in that moment that this was the life for which I was meant, and I could see, as I stared around me, what had made Chuck Morris the man he was.
We found nothing on that day. Chuck told me, as we turned back toward the caravan that evening, that we should find hunting the prairies a very different matter from hunting through the hills, where there was life among the trees everywhere and along the streams. Coming back we crossed fully five miles over which the grass was trampled and eaten low. The ground bore myriad marks of hoofs, as though all the cattle in the world had come this way and been pooled here, milling and stamping. And we found one skeleton, of which even the bones had been torn apart.
"A buffalo herd," said Chuck.
"Good heavens!" I cried. "Are there this many buffalo in the world?"
"This is only a small herd. I've seen the prairie black with them as far as your eye could stretch. This crowd passed along here some time ago."
We reached camp and found it a gloomy place. The men were silent and all busy with the preparation of supper. When we reported that we had no game for them, they answered not a word - as though they expected no good news to come out of this land sea.
Chuck and I ate our meal hastily and then walked out to get away from that atmosphere of dread and sorrow. Before we had gone a quarter of a mile from the wagons, Chuck told me that this dismal cloud would disappear from the caravan after a day or two, and that they would all be as merry as ever. At first the prairies always made men homesick - except the few men who were born to love the prairie. He did not have to tell me that he and I were among the exceptions. He had hardly finished telling me this when he suddenly dropped flat on his face and swept me down beside him.
"Straight ahead," he whispered to me.
I looked through the grass, as he had told me to do. Up to the top of a little hummock, just before us, rode a half-naked Indian and halted there. There was a steady south wind that blew the feathers in his hair to the side. I remember wondering at his long, smooth, naked arms. He carried a rifle, and he was staring down toward the caravan. We were so close that we could see the stir of his chest as he breathed. Then he backed his horse out of sight and disappeared, and after a moment we heard a feeble drumming of hoofs.
Chuck sat up. "We'll get back to camp," he said.
"What's wrong?" I asked. "We've nothing to fear from the Indians. We've done them no harm."
"I don't like the looks of that fellow. He ought to have ridden straight into the camp and asked for something to eat and for a gift or two. That's what he would have done, probably, if he had been friendly. I don't like it at all. As for never having harmed them, that doesn't matter. The wrong that one white man does them, they lay up against all white men."
When we reached camp, he went straight to Gregory and reported what he had seen. Gregory was playing cards and drinking a good deal more than was good for him. He looked at Chuck Morris with a flushed, reckless face and told him he was a young fool to make a ruction about one Indian.
So Chuck backed out. "The worst of it is," he said, "that we have a drunken fool at the head of this party. I don't like it. I've half a mind to break away and cut back by myself."
He talked a good deal more in this strain. That night, as we lay awake murmuring to one another after the rest were asleep, he sent my blood cold by saying: "There's no watch tonight. Have you noticed?"
Just at that moment, by an inspired accident, a long, smooth howling began far away in the night, a devilish noise that stopped my breath like a leap into icy water.
"What do you suppose it is?" I breathed.
He chuckled a little as he answered: "It's not Indians, tenderfoot. It's buffalo wolves. You saw that skeleton today? That's where they nipped off a straggler from the big herd."
I hardly more than dozed that night, expecting every moment to hear the screeching of Indians as they rushed for the attack, the beating of hoofs, and the roar of guns. But that attack did not come.
The next day Morris and I compared notes on the ridiculous carelessness with which this caravan was heading through the prairie. But the days went by, and nothing happened. There was no sign of Indians. Ten days - and still no Indians. But there was also no fresh meat.
Gregory called us in to him and said: "Fresh meat tomorrow, boys, or the next day you can drive horses, and somebody else will take up the job."
There was no use arguing. He was half drunk, as usual, and very angry. Chuck and I knew perfectly well that we were the best hunters in the crowd, with the possible exception of Chris Hudson, and we were not sure of that. We decided that we would range farther than ever in quest of game the next day, so we were up in the cool of the dawn and started away. We ranged all morning, riding recklessly far and straight out from the caravan, but we found no sign of game. Finally we reached a low hump of ground - what passed for a real hill on the prairie - and from that vantage point we searched the horizon.
"There's not a thing," I said.
"What's yonder?" asked Chuck, stiffening his arm to point.
"The sun flashing on some rocks, I suppose."
"Antelope," said Chuck. "Damned if it ain't antelope. Now,
if we have a little luck, we'll give them meat tonight."
We had luck in the very beginning, at the least, for the wind was a steady breeze, cutting straight from the antelope to us. We rode like mad straight ahead for a time. Then, in a low, shallow swale, we left the horses, which were trained to stand when the reins were thrown over their heads, like the cow ponies of the present-day ranchmen. We sneaked over the next high place, wriggling along on our stomachs and pushing the rifles ahead of us. There we saw the antelope just before us. They were not by any means in point-blank range, but we dared not risk frightening the whole herd away by climbing farther over the ridge. Even as it was we nearly lost them.
While we lay there, one of the big ones, on the farther swell of ground, suddenly tossed up his head, and his whole rump turned white with a flash like a tin pan. It was a very astonishing thing to see - as though someone had touched a match to him - except that fire would never have been so brilliant. After that, which seemed to be a signal, the heads of the others went up, and their rumps flashed white - a wave which in an instant had passed through the entire herd. Then they began to run. I mean that they turned themselves into dark streaks slashed with white. I had never seen anything so lovely as those dainty-limbed creatures. When they started away, I thought, for an instant, they had taken wing.
I had occasion afterward to find out that their running is not so miraculously fast. But it is fast enough, considering that a one hundred-pound antelope can run almost as swiftly as a blooded race horse. Nothing else on the prairie can rival them - not even a jack rabbit, which is almost too fast for belief. At any rate, fast as they ran, Morris and I got in a shot apiece, and each of us dropped a buck. They were fat ones. Mine weighed one hundred pounds, by my guess. Chuck's must have been close to one hundred and twenty or one hundred and thirty. As usual, he was childishly glad because he had brought down the better game. He was singing and whistling all the time he was cleaning his kill.
We were both in such spirits, now, that we decided to tie the bodies on the horses and lead the animals for a few miles, so that we could rest them a little, rather than give them an extra burden at the very beginning of their return trip. Although we were extremely anxious to reach the caravan before night, so that they would have the meat for the evening meal, we jogged on for five or six miles in this fashion, leading the horses, then we mounted and rode. I remember asking Chuck about the flash signal of the antelope, and he pointed out to me two white disks on either side of the tail of the antelope. The hair is long on the outside of the disk - perhaps four inches. It is short in the center, and all that hair can be turned out, so that the spot is greatly increased in size, and the flat-lying white hair catches the sunlight just like a mirror does.
We were talking about that when I first saw the signal ahead of us, a white, thick column rising beyond the sun mist. I showed it to Chuck Morris, and his face turned pale in an instant.
"A prairie fire?" I asked him, because I had heard a good deal about them.
RECKONING
I stared at Chuck with a growing dread in my heart, but he did not speak. He turned and cut the antelope away from his saddle - all that precious fresh meat of which we had been so happy and so proud. I did not ask questions about that. I simply followed his example and then sent my brown after his gray. It was hard to keep pace with that flying mare. Up to that time I had thought secretly that this talk about the blood of White Smoke was a silly prejudice on the part of Chuck Morris rather than a real superiority. For it seemed to me that there was nothing the gray mare could do that my brown gelding could not manage.
I saw the difference on that wild ride across the prairie. Chuck, in spite of the greater weight which he made in the saddle, could have ridden away from me at any time, if he had chosen to do so. The gray mare was still sliding over the ground at an easy gallop when the brown gelding was utterly spent, his head bobbing, his hoofs pounding. If I had learned to love horseflesh before this, I learned at that moment to value blood and bone and the heart that knows no weakness.
We did not speak on the whole return trip, but there was no need of talk. We thought of only one terrible possibility, and, when we reached the source of the smoke, we saw that our fears had been prophetic, indeed. There lay the caravan, a crumbled, blackened ruin. The story was told even by the smoldering remnants of the wagons. There had not been time to curl the train into a perfect circle. The danger struck too quickly after the first warning. While the rear wagons were hurrying up, and while the front wagons were slowly turning back to make the circle, the charge struck home. Through the gap the screaming riders must have poured. After that there was no chance to make an organized defense. Ten men in good positions may keep off a thousand Indians - for a time, at the least. But when it comes to scattering fight, man to man, it takes a rare good white man to beat an Indian when the latter is attacking with his first rush. At any rate, not a soul remained alive, and most of them had been burned beyond recognition. First the Indians had looted the wagons of all that was useful to them. Then they had thrown the bodies of the whites into the wagons and set them all on fire, trusting to the fire itself to wipe out the traces of their crime. But we, wandering slowly through that dreadful place, were able to identify a few of the bodies, and from every one the scalp had been ripped away. There were fifty-three dead men. Not a soul had escaped except the two of us.
I was so sick that Chuck Morris had to help me away. We climbed into the saddles, rode over the next rise, and stopped in the hollow. There I threw myself from the saddle and fell flat on my back. I stared up at the evening sky. The red of the sunset was not the only red that seemed swimming and streaming across it. Then I sat bolt erect.
"Chuck," I said, "you hear me swear that so long as I live I'll..."
He clapped his hand over my mouth. "Leave the rest of that oath be," he said. "I know what you're gonna say. You'll never treat an Indian the rest of your life to nothin' but bullets. Well, don't say it, Lew. You ought to have better sense, and you'll get better sense after a while. I've known Indians all my life. They come good, and they come bad. Just the way white men do. But if they're some bad, the whiskey that they get out of the traders makes them worse. You can't give a man poison and then blame him for what he does."
"Would you let a thing like this go, Chuck?" I asked him, full of horror. "When I think of poor Chris Hudson...."
"Chris was a fine fellow," said Morris. "But the average is what you got to think of. The average good that the traders have done for the Indians is to give them whiskey to turn them crazy and give them guns to do more murders with when they're crazy. Whiske'll kill more Indians than rifles ever will, Lew, and you'll agree with me before long."
"Why?"
"When our horses are rested a mite, you and me are going to have a look at that gang and pay them back a little for the pretty piece of work that they've done."
He had such a set look about the face that I was afraid he meant what, in fact, he really did mean. I asked him what he intended to try.
He said: "We each have a Colt and a rifle. That gives us seven shots without reloading."
He didn't offer any more explanation, and I didn't ask for any because of pride. But I was feeling rather wobbly inside, I can tell you, when we climbed onto our horses again. It was easy to follow the trail of those Indians, of course, for they had ridden off in a solid troop.
"What mighty near kills me," said Chuck, "is the number of the Indians. Why, son, there wasn't more'n sixty or seventy of the rascals, take them altogether."
It seemed to me that was quite a number, particularly for two youngsters like ourselves to play with, but I had to follow where Chuck led me. Pure shame whipped me along. I wouldn't be first, but I wouldn't be useless.
It was dark, then twilight, then black night, with all the stars scattered over the sky. Against those stars we presently came on a scaffolding on top of which was a bundled form, and under the scaffold was a dead horse. There were other scaffold
s near, built from the timber taken from the wagons, and on each scaffold was the bundled form, and beneath each frame was a dead horse.
"Five Indians," said Chuck Morris, "gone to death...one for every ten white men that they've murdered. Oh, this wouldn't be believed! It makes my blood boil. Ten for one."
Really, the actual murders in themselves seemed to make very little difference to Morris. It was the fact that they had not at least slaughtered twice as many Indians as the whites numbered - that was what punished him.
"But the horses?" I asked him.
"They kill a horse for each dead man. The braves have to have something to ride when they get to the happy hunting grounds, don't they?"
He said it rather testily, as though I should have guessed that oddity at a glance. Then we rode on, but I couldn't help looking back at those dead forms, turned toward the sky under which they had lived and fought and murdered.
After a time, Chuck pointed straight ahead. "There it is," he said.
"What?"
"The fire, of course."
I had no idea what he meant, but, after we had gone a little farther ahead, I made out a very faint glow beyond the next swale. Immediately after that we heard their voices.
"All drunk," said Morris. "All dead drunk. If they've taken too much of that poison that Gregory called whiskey, they'll wake up as dead as Gregory himself is."
We dismounted and ran up the swale. Underneath us was the fire, built of still more wood from the wagons that they had taken along with them and heaped higher with brush that they had cut down on the prairie. All around that fire we could see them. Most of them lay flat on the ground, the light glistening on the copper of their half-naked bodies. But a dozen or so were still staggering around the fire, falling down every step or two and then picking themselves up again to go on with the dance. I shall never forget the sound of their drunken maunderings as they tried to shout and sing their chants.
Brand, Max - 1925 Page 6