the Thundering Herd (1984)

by Grey, Zane

  The site of Hudnall's camp was now the rendezvous of from twenty to thirty outfits, most of which 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 with whom Tom Doan had clashed before, on the same issue.

  Tom had been a faithful and tireless follower of Pilchuck, as much from loyalty to the cause as from desire for revenge on the Comanches, whom he was now convinced had either killed or carried off Milly Fayre. No authentic clew 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 a single wagon and but few horses, had at last stricken Tom's last remnant of hope.

  Accordingly, Tom's state of mind was not conducive to tolerance, especially of such greed and selfishness as was manifested by some of the hunters.

  Cosgrove was louder than usual in voicing his opinions.

  "Aw, to hell with the Indians," he said. "I'm a-goin' to keep on huntin' buffalo. It's nothin' to me who goes off on wild-goose chases."

  "Cosgrove, you won't be missed, that's sure," retorted Tom.

  "What d'ye mean?" demanded the other, his red, bloated face taking on an ugly look. He swaggered over to Tom. There was a crowd present, some thoughtful, many indifferent.

  "I mean we don't want such fellows as you," replied Tom.

  "An' why not? Didn't Pilchuck just ask me?"

  "Sure. He's asked a couple of hundred men, and lots of them are like you--AFRAID TO GO!"

  "What!" shouted Cosgrove, hotly.

  "We'll be better off without cowards like you," returned Tom, deliberately standing up, strung for any move.

  "You're a liar!" flashed Cosgrove, advancing threateningly.

  Tom knocked him down. Then, as Cosgrove, cursing with rage, scrambled to his knees and drew his gun, the crowd scattered away on each side. All save Pilchuck, who knocked the half-leveled gun out of Cosgrove's hand and kicked it far aside.

  "Hyar!" yelled the scout, sternly. "You might get hurt, throwin' a gun that way. I'm advisin' you to cool down."

  "He needn't, far as I'm concerned," spoke up Tom, ringingly. "Let him have his gun."

  Pilchuck wheeled to see Tom standing stiff, gun in hand.

  "You young rooster!" ejaculated Pilchuck, in surprise and disapproval. "Put that gun up an' rustle back to camp."

  Thus had Tom Doan at last answered to the wildness of the buffalo range.

  Worse, however, grew out of that incident, though it did not affect Tom Doan in any way.

  One of Pilchuck's lieutenants was a Texan known on the range as Spades Harkaway, a man to be feared in a quarrel. He had been present when Tom had knocked down young Cosgrove, and later he had taken exception to the talk of a man named Hurd, who was in the same outfit with Cosgrove.

  Rumor of a fight reached Hudnall's camp that night, but not until next day were the facts known. Hurd had denounced Pilchuck's campaign, which had brought sharp reply from Harkaway. Bystanders came between the men at the moment, but later the two met again in Starwell's camp. Hurd had been imbibing red liquor and Harkaway had no intention of avoiding trouble. Again the question of Pilchuck's Indian campaign was raised by Hurd and coarsely derided.

  To this Harkaway had answered, first with a flaming arraignment of those hunters who meant to let Pilchuck's company stand the brunt of the fighting, and secondly with short, cutting contempt for Hurd. Then the latter, as the story came, had shot at Harkaway from behind other men. There followed a bad mess, in which the Texan killed Hurd and crippled one of his friends.

  These fights traveling along the shortened lines of camp, brought the question to a heated pitch and split the hunters in that district. The majority, however, turned out to be on the side of the Hurd and Cosgrove type. Pilchuck had over fifty men to take on his campaign, and about the same number to remain behind to protect camps and hides. These men were to continue to hunt buffalo, but only on limited parts of the range near the camps, and always under the eyes of scouts patrolling the prairie, with keen eyes on the lookout to prevent surprise. Over twenty outfits, numbering nearly seventy-five men, who had not the nerve to fight Indians or to remain on the range, left that district for Fort Elliott and Sprague's Post, to remain until the Indian trouble was ended.

  Chapter XII

  Pilchuck's band contained fifty-two men, most of whom owned, or had borrowed Creedmoor Sharps 45-caliber rifles for this expedition.

  These guns were more reliable and of longer range than the big fifties. Each man took at least two hundred loaded cartridges.

  Besides that, reloading tools and extra ammunition were included in the supplies. Four wagon loads of food and camp equipment, grain for horses, and medical necessities, were taken in charge of the best drivers.

  This force was divided into three companies--one of twenty men under Pilchuck, and two, of sixteen men each, under old buffalo- hunters. This was to facilitate camping operations and to be in readiness to split into three fighting groups.

  Tom Doan was in Pilchuck's company, along with Stronghurl, Burn Hudnall, Ory Tacks, Starwell, Spades Harkaway, the Indian called Bear Claws, Roberts, and others whom Tom knew. There were at least eight or ten hunters, long used to the range, and grim, laconic men who would have made any fighting force formidable.

  Pilchuck, Bear Claws, Starwell, and Tom formed an advance guard, riding two miles ahead of the cavalcade. Both the scout and Starwell had powerful field-glasses. The rear guard consisted of three picked men under Harkaway. The route lay straight for the Staked Plain and was covered at the rate of fifteen miles a day.

  At night a strong guard was maintained.

  On the fourth day the expedition reached the eastern wall of the Staked Plain, a stark, ragged, looming escarpment, notched at long distances by canyons, and extending north and south out of sight.

  This bold upheaval of rock and earth now gave at close hand an inkling of the wild and inhospitable nature of the Staked Plain.

  The tracks of Hudnall's wagon led into a deep-mouthed canyon down whose rugged bottom poured a clear stream of water. Grass was abundant. Groves of cottonwood trees filled the level benches.

  Game of all kinds abounded in these fastnesses and fled before the approach of the hunters. Before noon of that day a small herd of buffalo, surprised in an open grassy park, stampeded up the canyon, completely obliterating the wagon tracks Pilchuck was following, and all other signs of the Comanches.

  This flight of the buffalo, on the other hand, helped to make a way where it was possible to get the four wagons of supplies up on the Staked Plain. Many horses and strong hands made short work of this labor.

  Tom Doan gazed in fascination at the wild, strange expanse before him, the Staked Plain, which though notorious of reputation, was so little known. He had expected to find it a gray level plain of sand. Sand there was, assuredly, but many other things at the same time, as appeared manifest in the sand dunes and bluffs and the ragged irregular brakes, and patches of grass, and wide areas of brush. In Tom's opinion, hunting Indians up there was indeed the wild-goose chase which the expedition had been stigmatized by many of the hunters who had remained behind.

  Nevertheless, the Mexican scout led straight to the spot where there had recently been a large encampment of Comanches. They had been gone for days, no doubt having gotten wind of the campaign against them. The tracks of Hudnall's wagon were found again.

  As it was now late in the day, camp was pitched here, with the three forces of hunters close together. By dark, supper was finished, the horses were picketed and herded, guards were on duty, and Pilchuck was in council with his two scouts and the more experienced of his men. It was decided to hold that camp for the next day,
and send out detachments with the scouts to try and locate the Comanches.

  Round the camp fire that night Tom made the further acquaintance of Spades Harkaway, and found him an unique character, reticent as to himself, but not unwilling to talk about Texas, the buffalo, and the Indians. He had twice crossed the Staked Plain from its western boundary, the Pecos River, to the headwaters of the Brazos on the east.

  "Thet name Llano Estacado means Staked Plain," said the Texan. "It comes from the early days when the Spanish Trail from Santa Fe to San Antone was marked by 'palos,' or stakes. There was only two trails across in them days an' I reckon no more now. Only the Indians know this plain well an' they only run in heah to hide awhile. Water an' grass are plentiful in some parts, an' then there's stretches of seventy miles dry an' bare as a bone. Reckon aboot some of the wildest an' roughest holes in Texas are up heah, as shore you-all will find oot."

  Harkaway claimed the Llano Estacado was shaped like a ham, with a north-to-south trend, about four hundred miles long, and more than half as much wide. It was a tableland, resembling more the Russian steppes than the other upland districts known in the West. Its height above the prairie was perhaps a thousand feet. Some of its most pronounced characteristics, that had helped to make its ill fame, were enumerated and described by the Texan as tremendous obstacles to overcome on an expedition like Pilchuck's.

  "Thar's bare patches too big to see across," he specified, "an' others growed over with mesquite so thick thet ridin' it is impossible. Thar's narrow deep canyons thet can only be crossed in places miles apart. Then I've seen, myself, canyons thet opened out wide an' full of jumbles of broken cliff, where no man could go."

  Higher up on the Staked Plain there were levels of a hundred miles in length, like a gravel floor, treeless, grassless, waterless, where the wind swept all before it. There were zones where ponds of water lay at times, a few of them permanent, sulphurous, or salty, and at dry seasons unfit to drink for man or beast. Near the southern end of this strange steppe was a belt of glistening white sand dunes, many miles wide, impassable for a horse, and extremely perilous for a man. Not, however, from lack of water!

  For here the singular nature of the Staked Plain was more than unusually marked. Permanent ponds lined by reeds and rushes existed in the very region of sand dunes. Along the whole eastern escarpment of the Staked Plain, for three hundred miles, the bold rock rim was cut and furrowed by the streams that had their sources in this mysterious upland.

  Late next day the Mexican scout returned with the information that he had found the main encampment of the Comanches. He had been on a reconnoiter alone. Bear Claws and Pilchuck, who had essayed to follow the tracks of Hudnall's wagon, had actually lost all sign of them. For miles they had trailed the marks of the iron-shod wheels over an area of hard-packed gravel, only to lose them further on in tough, short, springy grass that after the recent rain left no trace.

  "The Indian says he can find the wagon tracks by making a wide circle to get off the grass," Pilchuck informed Starwell, "but that might take days. Besides, the Indians sent the wagon off their main trail. Reckon they expected pursuit. Anyway, we'll not risk it."

  When Pilchuck made this decision he did not yet know that the Mexican had located the Comanches. Upon consulting with him the information came out that a large band of Indians had been encamped in a canyon, and undoubtedly their lookouts had seen him.

  This was verified next day, after a hard ride. An Indian band, large enough to have hundreds of horses, had hastily abandoned the encampment in the canyon and had climbed up on the plain, there to scatter in all directions. Plain trails were left in several cases, but these Bear Claws would not pay any attention to. The Mexican sided with him. They concentrated on dimmer trails over harder ground to follow.

  It was after dark when Pilchuck and his men got back to camp, hungry and weary from a long day in the saddle. Next morning camp was moved ten miles to the west, to a secluded spot within easy striking distance of the place where Bear Claws had left off trailing the night before.

  That day the Osage Indian lost track of the Comanches for the reason that the trail, always dim, finally vanished altogether.

  Three days more of searching the fastnesses within riding distance of this camp availed nothing. Camp had to be moved again, this time, at the Indian's suggestion, across the baffling stretch of plain to a wild and forbidding chaos of ruined cliffs, from which center many shallow canyons wandered for some leagues.

  "Reckon we've got to rely on our field-glasses to see them before they see us," said Pilchuck.

  When the sun rose high enough next morning to burn out the shadows Pilchuck stood with his scouts and some of his men on the crest of the rocky wilderness.

  "Shore that's a hole!" he ejaculated.

  Far and wide heaved the broken billows of gray rock, like an immense ragged sea, barren, monotonous, from which the heat veils rose in curtains. Here and there a tufted cedar raised its dwarfed head, but for the most part there was no green to break the stark nudity. Naked eyes of white men could only see the appalling beauty of the place and enable the mind to grasp the deceiving nature of its distance, size and color. Pilchuck took a long survey with his field-glass.

  "Reckon all them meanderin' gorges head in one big canyon way down there," he said, handing the glass to Starwell.

  "I agree with you, an' I'm gamblin' the Comanches are there," replied Starwell, in turn handing the glass to the man nearest him.

  Tom had a good look at that magnified jumble of rocks and clefts, and the wonder of its wildness awed and thrilled him.

  Standing next to Tom was Bear Claws, the Osage Indian, and so motionless, so striking was he as he gazed with dark, piercing eyes across the void, that Tom marveled at him and felt the imminence of some startling fact. Pilchuck observed this, also, for as he stood behind the Indian he watched him steadily.

  Bear Claws was over six feet tall, lithe, lean, erect, with something of the look of an eagle about him. His bronze, impassive face bore traces of vermilion paint. Around his neck was the bear- claw necklace from which the hunters had nicknamed him. In the back of his scalp-lock, a twisted knot of hair, he had stuck the tail feathers of a prairie bird. Bright bracelets of steel shone on his wrists. He was naked to his beaded and quilled breech- clout.

  "Me," he grunted, reaching for Pilchuck's field-glass, without taking his fixed gaze from what held him. With both hands then he put the glass to his eyes.

  "Ugh!" he exclaimed, instantly.

  It was a moment of excitement and suspense for the watching men.

  Pilchuck restrained Starwell's impatience. Tom felt a cold ripple run over his body, and then as the Indian said, "Comanches!" that ripple seemed suddenly to be strung with fire. He thought of Milly Fayre.

  Bear Claws held the glass immovable, with stiff hand, while he stepped from behind it, and drew Pilchuck to the exact spot where he had stood. His long-reaching arm seemed grotesque while his body moved guardedly. He was endeavoring to keep the glass leveled at the exact spot that had held him.

  Pilchuck fastened hard down on the glass, that wavered slightly and then gradually became still. To the watching men he evidently was an eternity. But at last he spoke: "By thunder! he's right. I can just make out . . . Indians on trail--goin' down--head of that canyon all these rock draws run into. . . . Starwell, take a look. . . . Hold there, over that first splinter of cliff, in a line with the high red bluff--an' search at its base."

  Other glasses were now in use and more than one of the hunters caught a glimpse of the Comanches before they disappeared.

  A council was held right there. The distance was approximately ten miles, yet incredibly the Osage Indian had seen something to make him take the field-glass and verify his wonderful keenness of vision. The Mexican scout knew the topography of the rough rock waste and guaranteed to place Pilchuck's force within striking distance of the Comanches by dawn next day.

  Thereupon the hunters retraced their steps fr
om that high point and returned to camp. Pilchuck took the scouts to search for a well- hidden pocket or head of a box canyon where wagons and horses not needed could be concealed to advantage and protected by a small number of men. This was found, very fortunately, in the direction of the Indian encampment, and several miles closer. The move was made expeditiously before dark.

  "Reckon this is pretty good," said Pilchuck, with satisfaction.

  "We're far enough away to be missed by any scout they send out to circle their camp. That's an old Indian trick--to ride a circle round a hidin' place, thus crossin' any trail of men sneakin' close. It hardly seems possible we can surprise a bunch of Staked Plain Comanches, but the chance shore looks good."

  In the darkest hour before dawn forty grim men rode out of camp behind the Mexican and Pilchuck.

  Tom Doan rode next to Bear Claws, the fifth of that cavalcade, and following him came Spades Harkaway. No one spoke. The hoofs of the horses gave forth only dull, sodden sounds, inaudible at little distance. There was an opaque misshapen moon, orange in color, hanging low over the uneven plain. The morning star, white, luminous, like a marvelous beacon, stood high above the blanching velvet of the eastern sky.

  They traveled at walk or trot, according to the nature of the ground, until the moon went down and all the stars had paled, except the great one in the east. This, too, soon grew wan. The gray of dawn was at hand. Dismounting in the lee of a low ledge, where brush grew thick and the horses could be tied, Pilchuck left two men on guard and led the others on foot behind the noiseless Mexican.

  In less than a quarter of a mile the Mexican whispered something and slipped to his hands' and knees. Pilchuck and his followers, two and three abreast, kept close to his heels. The fact that the Mexican crept on very slowly and made absolutely no sound had the effect of constraining those behind him to proceed as stealthily.