the Thundering Herd (1984)

by Grey, Zane

  "Take it easy an' slow," he advised Tom, complacently. "Comanches can't stand a long fight. They're riders, an' all we need is patience. On the ground we can lick hell out of them."

  The old plainsman's nonchalance was incredible, yet vastly helpful to Tom. He put a hard curb on his impetuosity, and forced himself to wait and think carefully of every action before he undertook it.

  Therefore he found a position where he could command a certain limited field of rocks without risk to himself. It was like peeping through a knot hole too small for any enemy to see at a distance. From this vantage point Tom caught fleeting glimpses and flashes of color, gray and bronze, once a speck of red. But these vanished before he could bring his rifle into play.

  "If you see suthin' move shoot quick as lightnin'," said the old plainsman. "It might be a gopher or a cottontail, but take no chances. It's likely to be a two-legged varmint."

  Intense concentration, and a spirit evolving from the hour, enabled Tom to make considerable progress toward the plainsman's idea of fighting Comanches. Tom fired again and again, at the flit of a bird across a narrow space, at the flash of gun, a gleam of a feather. But he could never see whether or not he hit an Indian.

  Strange to note, however, was the fact that these fleeting movements of something were never repeated in the same place.

  Concentration brought to Tom the certainty that he was seeing a faint glimpse now and then of these elusive Comanches. This, with the crack of Winchesters and hum of bullets, in time bred in him some semblance of the spirit of the old plainsman. It was indeed a fight. He had his part to perform. Life was here, and an inch away sped death. Grim, terrible, but exalting, and strangely memorable of a vague past! Tom Doan realized the inheritance he had in common with men, white or red.

  The hours passed swiftly for the fighters. Another wounded man joined Roberts and Ory Tacks, and the ordeal must have been frightful for them. Tom forgot them; so did all the defenders of that position. The glaring sun poured down its heat. Stones and guns were so hot they burned. No breeze stirred. And the fight went on, favorable for the buffalo-hunters because of their fortifications, unfavorable in regard to time. They were all parching for thirst. By chance or blunder the canteens had been left on the saddles and water had come to be almost as precious as powder. The old plainsman cursed the Staked Plain. Tom's mouth appeared full of cotton paste. He had kept pebbles in his mouth till he was sick of them.

  Noon went by. Afternoon came. The sun, hotter than ever, began to slope to the west. And the fight went on, narrowing down as to distance, intensifying as to spirit, magnifying peril to both sides. The Creedmoors from the Starwell and Harkaway forces kept up the bulk of the shooting. They were directing most of their fire down into the encampment, no doubt to keep the Comanches there from joining their comrades on the slope. Mustangs showed on the farther points, and evidently had strayed.

  Presently Pilchuck came crawling on hands and knees, without his rifle or coat. A bloody patch showed on his shoulder.

  "Tom, reckon I got punctured a little," he said. "It ain't bad, but it's bleedin' like hell. Tear my shirt sleeve off an' tie it round under my arm over my shoulder tight."

  An ugly bullet hole showed angrily in the upper part of the scout's shoulder, apparently just through the flesh.

  "Notice that bullet come from behind," said Pilchuck. "There shore was a mean redskin on your side. He hit two of us before I plugged him. There--good. . . . Now how's the rest of your hospital?"

  "I don't know. Afraid I forgot," replied Tom, aghast.

  "Wal, I'll see."

  He crawled over to the wounded man and spoke. Tom heard Roberts answer, but Ory Tacks was silent. That disturbed Tom. Then the scout came back to him.

  "Roberts 's sufferin' some, but he's O. K. The young fellar, though, is dyin', I'm afraid. Shot in the groin. Mebbe--"

  "Pilchuck! . . . Ory didn't seem bad hurt--"

  "Wal, he is, an' if we don't get some water he'll go," declared the scout, emphatically. "Fact is, we're all bad off for water. It's shore hot. What a dumbhead I was to forget the canteens!"

  "I'll go after them," returned Tom, like a flash.

  "It's not a bad idee," said Pilchuck, after a moment's reflection.

  "Reckon it'd be no riskier than stayin' here."

  "Direct me. Where'd you leave the horses?"

  The scout faced south, at right angles with the cross-fire from the Comanches, and presently extended his long arm.

  "See that low bluff--not far--the last one reachin' down into this basin. It's behind there. You can't miss it. Lucky the rocks from here on are thick as cabbages."

  "I can make it," declared Tom, doggedly. "But to get back! That stumps me."

  "Easy. You've got to go slow, pickin' the best cover. Just lay a line of little stones as you crawl along. Reckon the Comanches are all on these two sides of us, but there MIGHT be some tryin' to surround us."

  "Anything more?" queried Tom, briefly.

  The scout apparently had no thought of the tremendousness of this enterprise to Tom. It was as if he had naturally expected of Tom what he would do himself if he had not been partially incapacitated.

  Tom realized he had never in his life received such a compliment.

  It swelled his heart. He felt light, hard, tense, vibrating to a strange excitation.

  "Wal, I can't think of anythin'," replied the scout. "Comin' back be slower'n molasses, an' get the drift of the fight. We're holdin' these redskins off. But I reckon Starwell an' Harkaway have been doin' more. If I don't miss my guess they've spilled blood down in the canyon. Comanches are great on horseback, but they can't stick out a fight like this. If they rush us we're goners. If they don't they'll quit before sunset."

  Chapter XIII

  Milly Fayre rode out of Sprague's Post on the front of a freighter's wagon, sitting between Jett and his wife. The rest of Jett's outfit followed close behind, Follonsbee and Pruitt in the second wagon, and Catlee driving the last.

  For as long as Milly could see the Hudnalls she waved her red scarf in farewell. Then when her friends passed out of sight Milly turned slowly to face the boundless prairie, barren of life, suddenly fearful in its meaning, and she sank down, stricken in heart. What she had dreaded was now an actuality. The courage that had inspired her when she wrote the letter to Tom Doan, leaving it with Mrs. Hudnall, was a courage inspired by love, not by hope. So it seemed now.

  "Milly, you ain't actin' much like a boy, spite them boy's clothes," said Jett, with attempt at levity. "Pile over in the back of the wagon an' lay down."

  Kindness from Jett was astounding, and was gratefully received by Milly. Doing as she was bidden, she found a comfortable place on the unrolled packs of bedding, with her head in a shade of the wagon seat. It developed then that Jett's apparent kindness had been only a ruse to get her away so he could converse with his wife in low, earnest tones. Milly might have heard all or part of that conversation, but she was not interested and did not listen.

  Dejectedly she lay there while the steady trot of the horses carried her back toward the distant buffalo range. To be torn from her kind and loving friends at the post and drawn back into the raw hard life led by her stepfather was a bitter and sickening blow.

  Her sufferings were acute; and as she had become used to hope and happiness she was now ill fitted to cope with misery and dread.

  She did not think of the future or plan to meet it; she lived in the present and felt the encroaching of an old morbid and fatalistic mood, long a stranger to her.

  The hours passed, and Jett's deep, low voice appeared never to rest or cease. He did not make a noon stop, as was customary among the buffalo-hunters. And he drove until sunset.

  "Forty miles, bedam!" he said, with satisfaction, as he threw the reins.

  Whether Milly would have it so or not, she dropped at once back into the old camp life, with its tasks. How well she remembered!

  The smoke of the camp fire made her eyes smart and brou
ght tingling as well as hateful memories.

  The other wagons drove up rather late, and once more Milly found herself under the hawk eyes of Follonsbee and the half-veiled hidden look of the crooked-faced Pruitt. Her masculine garb, emphasizing her shapely slenderness, manifestly drew the gaze of these men. They seemed fascinated by it, as if they both had discovered something. Neither of them spoke to her. Catlee, however, gave her a kindly nod. He seemed more plodding in mind than she remembered him.

  One by one the old associations returned to her, and presently her fleeting happiness with the Hudnalls had the remoteness and unreality of a dream and she was again Jett's stepdaughter, quick to start at his harsh voice. Was that harshness the same? She seemed to have a vague impression of a difference in his voice, in him, in all of his outfit, in the atmosphere around them.

  A stopping place had been chosen at one of the stream crossings where hundreds of buffalo-hunters had camped that year, a fact Jett growled about, complaining of the lack of grass and wood. Water was plentiful, and it was cold, a welcome circumstance to the travelers. Jett had an inordinate thirst, probably owing to his addiction to rum at Sprague's.

  "Fetch some more drinkin' water," he ordered Milly.

  She took the pail and went down the bank under the big, rustling, green cottonwoods. Catlee was at the stream, watering the horses.

  "I seen you comin', an' I says who's that boy?" he said, with a grin. "I forgot."

  "I forgot, too," she replied, dubiously. "I don't like these-- these pants. But I've made a discovery, Catlee. I'm more comfortable round camp."

  "Don't wonder. You used to drag your skirts round. . . . Gimme your bucket. I'll fill it where the water's clear."

  He waded in beyond where the horses were drinking and dipped the pail. "Nothin' like good cold water after a day's hot ride."

  "Jett drank nearly all I got before and sent me for more."

  "He's burnin' up inside with red liquor," returned Catlee, bluntly.

  Milly did not have any reply to make to that, but she thanked Catlee, and taking the pail she poured out a little water, so she would not spill it as she walked.

  "Milly, I'm sorry you had to come back with Jett," said Catlee.

  She paused, turning to look at him, surprised at his tone. His bronze face lacked the heat, the dissolute shades common to Jett and the other men. Milly remembered then that Catlee in her opinion had not seemed like the rest of Jett's outfit.

  "Sorry? Why?" she asked.

  "I know Sprague. He's from Missouri. He told me about you, an' your friend Tom Doan."

  "Sprague told you--about--about Tom!" faltered Milly, suddenly blushing. "Why, who told him?"

  "Mrs. Hudnall, he said. Sprague took interest in you, it 'pears.

  An' his wife is thick with the Hudnall women. Anyway, he was sorry Jett took you away--an' so'm I."

  Milly's confusion and pain at the mention of Tom did not quite render her blind to this man's sympathy. She forced away the wave of emotion. Her mind quickened to the actuality of her being once more in Jett's power and that she had only her wits and courage to rely upon. This hard-faced, apparently dull and somber man might befriend her. Milly suddenly conceived the inspiration to win him to her cause.

  "So am I sorry, Catlee," she said sadly, and her quick tears were genuine. Indeed, they had started to flow at mention of Tom's name. "I--I'm engaged to Tom Doan. . . . I was--so--so happy.

  And I'd never had--any happy times before. . . . Now I've been dragged away. Jett's my stepfather. I'm not of age. I had to come. . . . And I'm terribly afraid of him."

  "I reckon," rejoined Catlee, darkly, "you've reason to be. He an' the woman quarreled at Sprague's. He wanted to leave her behind.

  For that matter, the four of them drank a good deal, an' fought over the hide money."

  "For pity's sake, be my friend!" appealed Milly.

  The man stared at her, as if uncomprehending, yet somehow stirred.

  "Catlee," she said, seeing her advantage and stepping back to lay a hand softly on his arm, "did you ever have a sister or a sweetheart?"

  "I reckon not or I'd been another kind of man," he returned, with something of pathos.

  "But you're not bad," she went on, swiftly.

  "Me not bad! Child, you're crazy! I never was anythin' else. An' now I'm a hide thief."

  "Oh, it's true, then? Jett is a hide thief. I knew something was terribly wrong."

  "Girl, don't you tell Jett I said that," replied Catlee, almost harshly.

  "No, I won't. I promise. You can trust me," she returned, hurriedly. "And I could trust you. I don't think you're really bad. Jett has led you into this. He's bad. I hate him."

  "Yes, Jett's bad all right, an' he means bad by you. I reckon I thought you knowed an' didn't care."

  "Care! If he harms me I'll kill him and myself," she whispered, passionately.

  The man seemed to be confronted with something new in his experience, and it was dissipating a dull apathy to all that concerned others.

  "So that's how a good girl feels!" he muttered.

  "Yes. And I ask you--beg you to be a man--a friend--"

  "There comes Pruitt," interrupted Catlee, turning to his horses.

  "Don't let him or any of them see you talkin' to me."

  Milly bent over the heavy bucket and, avoiding the dust raised by Pruitt with his horses, she hurried back to camp. Her return manifestly checked hard words between Jett and his wife. Milly took up her tasks where they had been interrupted, but with this difference, that she had become alive to the situation among these hide thieves. Jett's status had been defined, and the woman was no doubt culpable with him. Catlee's blunt corroboration of Milly's fears had awakened her spirit; and the possibility of winning this hardened man to help her in her extremity had inspired courage and resolve. All in a flash, then, it seemed she was the girl who had written that brave letter to Tom Doan.

  Supper was cooked and eaten. The men, except Catlee, were not hungry as usual, and appeared to be wearing off the effects of hard drinking. They spoke but seldom, and then only to ask for something out of reach on the spread canvas. Darkness settled down while Milly dried the pans and cups. Catlee came up with a huge armload of wood, which he dropped with a crash, a little too near Pruitt to suit his irascible mood.

  "Say, you Missouri hay seed, can't you see my feet?" he demanded.

  "I could if I'd looked. They're big enough," retorted Catlee. "I ain't wonderin' you have such a care of them."

  "Ain't you? Shore I'd like to know why?" queried Pruitt.

  "I reckon what little brains you've got are in them."

  "You damn Yank!" ejaculated the little rebel, as amazed as enraged.

  "I've shot men for less'n thet."

  "Reckon you have," rejoined Catlee with slow, cool sarcasm. "But in the back! . . . An' I'm lookin' at you."

  There was not the slightest doubt of Catlee's emergence from the character of a stolid dull teamster into something incalculably otherwise. Jett rolled out his loud, harsh laughter. It amused him, this revolt of the stupid farmer.

  Likewise it showed his subtle change. Was there reason for him to invite antagonism among his men? Assuredly there was strong antagonism toward him. Follonsbee gazed in genuine amaze at Catlee, and slowly nodded his lean buzzard-like head, as if he had before in his life seen queer things in men. As for the fiery little rebel, he was instantly transformed, in his attitude toward Catlee, from a man who had felt a raw irritation, to one who hated and who doubted. However Follonsbee read the erstwhile Missouri farmer, Pruitt got only so far as a cold and waking doubt. Enmity was thus established and it seemed to be Pruitt's natural mental attitude, and to suit Catlee better than friendliness.

  Milly heard and saw this byplay from the shadow beyond the camp- fire circle. If that were Catlee's answer to her appeal, it was a change, sudden and bewildering. The thrill she sustained was more like a shudder. In that moment she sensed a far-reaching influence, a something which had to
do with future events. Catlee stalked off into the gloom of the cottonwood, where he had made his bed.

  "Rand, are you sure thet feller is what you said he was--a Missouri farm hand, tired of workin' for nothin'?" demanded Follonsbee.

  "Hank, I ain't sure of anythin' an' I don't give a whoop," replied the leader.

  "Thet's natural, for you," said the other, with sarcasm. "You don't know the West as I know it. Catlee struck me queer. . . .

  When he called Pruitt, so cool-like, I had come to mind men of the Cole Younger stripe. If so--"

  "Aw, it's nothin'," cut in Pruitt. "Jett spoke my sentiments aboot our Yankee pard. It r'ils me to think of him gettin' a share of our hide money."

  Jett coughed, an unusual thing for him to do. "Who said Catlee got a share?" he queried, gruffly.

  Follonsbee lifted his lean head to peer at the leader. Pruitt, who was sitting back to a stump, his distorted face gleaming red in the camp-fire light, moved slowly forward to gaze in turn. Both men were silent; both of them questioned with their whole bodies. But Jett had no answer. He calmly lit his pipe and flipped the match into the fire.

  "Shore, now I tax myself, I cain't remember thet anybody said Catlee got a share," replied Pruitt, with deliberation. "But I thought he did. An' I know Hank thought so."

  "I'd have gambled on it," said Follonsbee.

  "Catlee gets wages, that's all," asserted the leader.

  "Ahuh! . . . An' who gets HIS share of the hide money?" demanded Pruitt.

  "I do," rejoined Jett, shortly.

  "Jett, I'm tellin' you that's in line with your holdin' out money for supplies at Sprague," said Follonsbee, earnestly. "You was to furnish outfit, grub, everythin', an' share even with all of us, includin' your woman. You got your share, an' her share, an' now Catlee's share."

  "I'm willin' to argue it with you, but not on an equal divvy basis."

  There followed a long silence. The men smoked. The fire burned down, so that their faces were but pale gleams. Milly sought her bed, which she had made in the wagon. Jett had sacrificed tents to make room for equal weight of buffalo hides. He had unrolled his blankets under the wagon, where the sullen woman had repaired soon after dark. Milly took off her boy's shoes and folded the coat for a pillow, then slipping under the blankets she stretched out, glad for the relief.