Tucket's Travels

by Gary Paulsen

  Now Francis was on his own. At that moment he felt a kind of peacefulness he had not felt since he'd first taken up with Jason Grimes.

  Or boredom, he thought, sitting in the late-afternoon sun. He felt not peacefulness so much as boredom. When he had left the mountain man he had ridden back to meet up with a wagon train waiting at the burned-out hulk of Spot Johnnie's trading post.

  They had welcomed him with open arms and had themselves left early the next morning. The wagon master approached him as they were lining out the wagons in the predawn gray light.

  “Do you wish to be assigned to a wagon?”

  Francis had been looking at the wreckage of Spot Johnnie's post, burned by the Pawnees, in the same direction as the place where he had left Jason Grimes. “What?”

  The wagon master smiled and put his hand on Francis's shoulder. “He seemed like a good man …”

  “Who?”

  “The mountain man. He seemed good, a man you would miss being around …”

  “Well, he wasn't,” Francis said curtly. “He wasn't worth spit.” He turned to look at the wagon master. “And I don't want to talk about him anymore. What was that about a wagon?”

  The wagon master sighed. “Do you wish to be assigned to one?”

  Francis looked at them, lumbering along, kids and loose stock running alongside. They were already raising clouds of dust, and there were masses of flies around the horses and oxen—hungry, biting flies. “No, thank you. I'll just free range, if that's all right.”

  “Maybe you could ride wide and hunt for us as well.”

  Francis nodded. “I figured on it.” He suddenly realized he was talking a lot like Jason Grimes— short, almost cutoff sentences—and he smiled and shrugged. “I mean it seemed the best way for me to help as we go along. Just until we get out farther west and I can get some word about my folks. I'll have to be leaving you then …”

  “Of course.”

  The wagon master had ridden off then, riding a Morgan horse that could either pull or ride—a lummox kind of horse, Francis thought—and Francis checked his rifle, made sure the percussion cap was on the nipple tightly, and wheeled the mare toward a ridge off to the north.

  If the truth were known, he was glad to be away from the train. He had often been alone in the last months—even when he was with Grimes. Sometimes when they were trapping he was alone for a full day, now and then longer. He had in some ways come to enjoy it. He didn't have to talk to people and it gave him time for thinking.

  And he needed to think now. He let the mare pick up the pace to a trot—she wanted to run but he held her back in case he needed speed later— and guided her with his knees until they were on the ridge. Then he eased her over and down the side a bit so he wouldn't be outlined against the sky. It was something Grimes had taught him. Against the sky it was too easy to be seen—either by game or by enemy—and when he was well down from the edge, he swung the mare left and headed west.

  He worked his eyes and ears automatically and let his mind start going over the problem.

  He felt as if his life had a hole torn in the middle of it—almost the same feeling he'd had when he was taken from the wagon train—and he realized with some surprise that it came from leaving Mr. Grimes.

  Francis had not thought they were that close and in some measure hated the man and now this, to feel this … this missing the one-armed mountain man.

  It made no sense.

  The mare slowed and Francis saw her ears perk forward, and she looked suddenly to the right front as a covey of quail jumped from some brush.

  Francis was sliding off the side of the horse and halfway to the ground, the rifle cocked and swinging up under the mare's neck when he saw a coyote come out of the brush with a quail in his mouth.

  “Could have been anything …” He smiled, eased the hammer down to the safely click and remounted. “Anything …”

  His feet found the stirrups and he kneed the mare into motion once again. The ridge he was riding alongside started to rise and in front ended where it hit a shallow bluff. He could not see over the bluff and moved back up the ridge to the left and made sure there was a place where the wagon train—now moving slowly about two miles to his left and rear—would have room to get through the bluffs.

  He still did not ride the mare to the top of the ridge, but moved up just until his head was high enough to see and then back down.

  The bluff ahead beckoned him more. Grimes was, for the moment, out of his thinking—there was something about seeing over the next hill, some need—and he heeled the mare to pick up the pace.

  She stepped into an easy canter and climbed the shallow back of the bluff and stopped just as she came on top, and it was here that Francis saw the edge of the world.

  Spread out below, reaching away to the horizon and beyond, reaching away west forever, the land, flat and impossibly large, lay before him.

  “It …” Francis did nor finish.

  Even the mare had stopped, seemed to be staring at the view, her ears twitching to knock off flies.

  “It's too big,” he said finally, and realized he meant it. The land was just too big, too big to see, to own—too big to cross. Too big for anything.

  It's bad enough on a horse, he thought, how could the wagons, the milc-an-hour wagons, ever hope to cross it? It would take them years …

  The prairie he had already crossed was enormous—newspapers in the East called it a sea of grass—but Francis had never seen more than a hill or two at a time. This way, from the bluff edge, he could see it all, or a large part of it, and for a moment the bigness kept him from seeing details.

  Then the marc stumbled as a gopher hole caved in under her foot, and it snapped Francis back to reality.

  In detail the plain before him proved to be not just empty grass, which he'd first thought. Three or four miles to the west, there was a large, dark smudge that seemed to be surrounded by dust clouds. He thought it was trees or low brush, but as he watched, it seemed to move, crawling slowly across the prairie, and he knew it then.

  Buffalo. A herd five or six miles across, grazing and kicking up dust.

  Or, Francis thought, food for the wagon train. He had never shot a buffalo—with Grimes he had taken deer and antelope, and they'd eaten a lot of beaver meat when they were trapping, but never a buffalo, and he wasn't sure just how to hunt them.

  “Do I just ride out there and shoot one?” The mare twitched her cars, listening to his voice. “Is that the way?”

  In truth one would not be enough. There were ten wagons—some thirty people—and they would probably want to store meat for the future.

  Two, at least, maybe three or four buffalo.

  He looked back and to the left and saw the thread of dust rising from the wagon train. He could go back for them, bring some men from the train with rifles to help. But few of them had horses, were stuck with oxen, and besides he didn't much want to be with the men from the wagons somehow. And it would take two hours to go back and get them.

  So his first thought came back. “We'll just have to ride down there and shoot a couple of them.”

  It proved to be the second biggest mistake of his life.

  The mare took over.

  Francis checked the cap on his rifle to insure that it would fire and started the little mare down the front of the bluff to the plain below.

  It wasn't quite vertical, but very near it, and the little pony squatted back on her haunches to keep from falling forward.

  She was nearly running when she hit the bottom. Francis started to hold her back, but she picked up the pace to a canter, then a full lope, and aimed right at the center of the massive herd.

  Things started to happen very fast, and almost none of them were under Francis's control.

  The mare flattened her ears and lined our at a dead run. The distance to the herd was diminishing rapidly, almost instantly. One second they were stumbling down the face of the bluff and Francis was checking his rifle and the next
they were at the side of the buffalo herd.

  The mare stumbled, caught her footing and dived into the herd. Francis had one fleeting image of a bull that seemed to blot out the world and then was immersed in a sea of buffalo, so close they were pressing on the mare's side, rubbing against his leg, bellowing and snorting, raising clouds of dust.

  The mare, an Indian pony, had hunted buffalo before. The method used by Indians was to get in close so an arrow or lance could be used, and she remembered her training well.

  She took Francis in so close she nearly knocked a large cow over, slamming Francis against her side.

  Francis reacted without thinking. He was too close to aim, so he just pressed the muzzle against the shoulder of the cow where he guessed her heart would be, eared the hammer back with his thumb, and fired.

  The effect was immediate and startling. The cow went down, caving in and cartwheeling, dead almost before she hit the ground, and the rest of the world blew up.

  The herd had been made nervous, at least those near Francis, by the horse running into their midst. But there were wild horses everywhere. The buffalo were used to seeing them all the time, and while the mare running into the herd startled them, they did not really see Francis, only the horse, and would quickly have settled down.

  The gunshot ended any chance of peace. They had never heard gunfire before, but they had heard thunder, which meant lightning, and thunder and lightning terrified them.

  They panicked, instantly, and within a moment of the panic the entire herd—forty to fifty thousand buffalo, had Francis been able to count them—broke into a thundering stampede.

  By this time, Francis and the mare were near the middle of the herd. Francis had hall a second to grab the mare's mane, wrap his fingers in the hair and hang on before the herd took her.

  It was like being caught in a living river. The buffalo had been aimed south while they grazed and that was the direction they ran. It was impossible to see. Dust rose in an almost solid mass, so thick at times Francis couldn't see the mare's ears, and within moments even the sky was gone.

  Without seeing the sun, Francis couldn't tell direction, but it didn't matter. They were caught in the herd, and he let the mare run. She stumbled several times at first, until she caught the stride, but the close press of the buffalo seemed to almost hold her up.

  They ran forever.

  Or so it seemed. In the thick muck of dirty air, the deafening bellowing of the stampeding buffalo, and the constant push of the animals, Francis forgot time, place, anything and everything, trying to stay on the mare and stay alive.

  An hour passed, he was sure of it, and the buffalo kept running. They slowed, or started to, then something would restart them and they'd be off again. The mare settled into the run, covered with sweat, her shoulders pounding. Once the herd seemed to turn, seemed to be wheeling in a huge circle, but he still couldn't see the sun, still couldn't tell what direction they were moving. When they finally stopped, blowing snot and wheezing, the mare staggering with fatigue, Francis didn't have the slightest idea where they were, how far they had come, or in which direction.

  They had turned once. He had felt the herd move, swinging around to the left. Or was it right? He sat on the mare, catching his breath while she whooshed beneath him, blowing to recover from the run.

  Except for the dust, which was rapidly settling, it might not have happened. Buffalo grazed peacefully around him while he looked this way and that, trying to locate himself. His left hand was still clutched in the mare's mane, and he released it, the knuckles aching. He had carried the rifle in his right hand, and he remembered now that it was empty from when he had shot the cow.

  He blew dust from the nipple and action and reloaded, sitting on the horse. Powder, patch, and ball, then the ramrod, all done carefully, slowly so as not to bother the buffalo close around him, though they seemed to have forgotten he was there.

  With the ball seated firmly on the powder, he took a cap from his possibles sack, pinched it to make it fit tight, and put it on the nipple, eased the hammer slowly to the safety notch.

  “There,” he said aloud, then winced when a cow standing nearby started at the sudden sound and turned her massive head toward the mare. He had to remember to keep quiet while he worked his way out of the herd.

  The problem was which way to go. He guessed they had been running at a good fifteen miles an hour for over an hour.

  He thought they had come south. But the dust had covered the sun and now there were low, thick clouds over it, and Francis had no way of knowing direction.

  The dust settled as he thought on what to do and with that he saw that he was near the edge of the herd. Scattered groups of buffalo stood between him and clear prairie. He silently nudged the mare into movement—she staggered a bit but kept walking—and moved through the buffalo to the clear area.

  The mare was still breathing heavily, and he knew whatever he wanted to do, he would have to give her a rest first—at least four or five hours, better to let her rest all night.

  He pulled her up when he was thirty yards past the edge of the herd and dismounted.

  He was almost viciously hungry—had not eaten since the previous evening and then had only a tin cup of thin soup and some pan bread the women with the train had made up. There were buffalo nearby and he hadn't had red meat in over a week, so be picked a young bull forty yards off and dropped him with a shot through the neck.

  The herd immediately stampeded again as Francis had figured—but he was well clear of them and they ran in a direction away from him. The mare jumped with the shot, but he held tight to her catch rein and there was no problem.

  This time he reloaded at once, recapping the nipple before approaching the downed bull, carefully ready to give it another shot if it came at him.

  Francis poked the bull with the muzzle of the rifle, but it had been a clean shot, breaking the bull's neck, and it was dead.

  Still, some instinct, some wariness made him stand back from the bull, sweep his eyes around, rioting every small bush or depression, anywhere anybody could hide. He smelled the air, listened, but there were no strange odors—-just the smell of the buffalo—and no sounds but the horn rattle and coughing bellow of the herd, now half a mile away where they had stopped from the run after his shot to kill the bull.

  He used the catch rope to make a twist hobble for the mare, took the saddle off, and let her go to graze. She had been hobbled before and moved her front feet in small steps while she fed. Francis would have liked to let her roll, but the hobbles prevented that and he didn't dare let her go loose. She'd take off and he would be afoot.

  With the mare settled in for rest and grass, he turned to the dead buffalo. It had fallen straight down, on its chest, its chin furrowed into the dirt.

  He had never skinned a buffalo, and when he tried to turn it over to get to the underside, he found it was impossible to move it. The bull was too heavy to even roll over.

  For a full minute, he studied the carcass and finally decided he wouldn't be able to skin and clean it as he had done with deer and antelope when he was with Jason Grimes.

  As much as it bothered him to waste any part of the animal, he would just have to take meat from the dead bull the best he could. He had sharpened his knife the day before on the small stone be carried in his possibles bag, and he leaned the rifle carefully against the front shoulder of the bull-where he could reach it fast if he needed to—and pulled the knife from the leather scabbard he had on a strap over his shoulder.

  He cut down the center of the back, surprised at how easily the skin opened to reveal the yellow-white back-fat and rich meat. The meat was still warm and the thick smell of blood came up into his nose and caught. It made his hunger worse, and he cut a chunk of meat from the back and ate it raw, chewing it only a few bites before swallowing it.

  “Good,” he mumbled to himself. “So good …”

  It took him less than half an hour to peel the hide down both sides and cut a l
arge portion of meat from the hump and tenderloin and set it aside.

  Clouds of flies surrounded him. They were part ot the buffalo herd anyway, laying eggs in the fresh manure that covered the prairie wherever the herd moved. They were drawn by death and the fresh smell of blood, and within a few moments Francis couldn't see anything through them. They carpeted the meat he set aside, covered his hands, face, were in his eyes.

  “Fire …” He knew that smoke would drive them away, and he found some dry grass and twigs, poured a tiny amount of powder from his horn in the middle of the pile—noted that the horn was less than half full—and struck a spark with his flint. The spark hit the powder, flashed it, and the heat started the grass and kindling. He quickly added more sticks, dry grass, and some larger pieces he found nearby.

  When the fire was high—uncomfortable in the heat of the evening—he propped a six- or seven-pound slab of meat up on sticks close to the flame to cook and went to gather more wood.

  He had decided to spend the night and he wanted enough wood to last until morning. The dead wood was sparse, however, and by the time he had made a pile large enough to last it was nearly dark and the smell of the cooked meat was driving him crazy.

  He had never been hungrier and he sat by the fire on his rolled-out bedroll, leaning against the saddle and ate the entire piece of meat, taking small sips from his canteen between chunks.

  As soon as it was hard dark, coyotes came in to the dead bull—not thirty yards away—and ate. He could see their eyes shining in the light from the fire as they tore at the buffalo but he knew they would not bother him and he paid them no mind.

  With his stomach bulging and the warm fire on his face sleep hit him like a wall. Something bothered him and he couldn't quite pin it down— something that he was doing wrong—but the feeling wasn't strong enough to keep him awake.