the Thundering Herd (1984)

by Grey, Zane

  "An' I have shore some news for you. Do you remember old Nigger Horse, the chief of that band of Comanches we fought--when I had this heah arm broke?"

  "I'm not likely to forget," replied Tom.

  "Wal, the Comanches that are left are slowly comin' in to Fort Sill an' goin' on the reservation. An' from some of them we got facts aboot things we never was shore on. The soldiers lately had a long runnin' fight with old Nigger Horse. Some sergeant killed the old chief an' his squaw, an' that shore was a good job."

  "Nigger was a bad Comanche," agreed Tom. "Did you ever hear any more about Hudnall's gun?"

  "Shore. We heerd all aboot it, an' from several bucks who were in our fight where I had my arm broke, an' other fights afterwards. . . . I reckon you remember Hudnall had a fine gun, one shore calculated to make redskins want it. An' possession of that rifle was bad medicine to every consarned Indian who got it.

  Nigger Horse's son had it first. He was the brave who led that ride down the canyon to draw our fire. He shore had spunk. Wal, I reckon he was full of lead. Then an Injun named Five Plumes got it.

  'Pears we killed him. After that every red-skin who took Hudnall's rifle an' cartridges got his everlastin'. Finally they quit usin' it, thinkin' it was bad medicine. Now the fact is, those Comanches who used Hudnall's gun got reckless because they had it, an' laid themselves open to our fire. But they thought it had a spell of the devil."

  Chapter XVIII

  The middle of July found Tom Doan and Pilchuck far down on the Brazos, in the thick of the slaughter. Thirty miles of buffalo- hunters drove the last great herd day by day toward extermination.

  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 round, traveling 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 slayers.

  Tom Doan had been in hard action for over two months; and he and Pilchuck and Jones had killed thirty-nine 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 accomplished for weeks in comparatively small area. It got to be so 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 thousand 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 shambles; 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 detonation 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. Milly 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 Milly 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 the hide on 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 unforgivable brutality. 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 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.

  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 robe 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 th
eir 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 buffs 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.

  "Buffs 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 to-day?" 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've sickened on this job, an' I shore know that, 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."

  For the first time Tom experienced a reluctance to a continuation of the old mode of traveling south. Why not turn north once more?

  The thought was a surprise. There was no reason to start north, unless in answer to the revulsion of hide-hunting. This surely would be his last buffalo hunt. But he did not think it just to his partners to quit while they wanted to keep on. His reflection then was that Pilchuck was wearing out, both in strength and in greed.

  They rode west, aiming to reach the river some four or five miles farther on.

  It was a cloudy, sultry summer morning, with storm in the air. The prairie was not here a beautiful prospect. Tom seemed to gaze over it rather than at it. Westward the undulating gray rise of ground stretched interminably to a horizon bare of landmarks. Far in the east rays of sunlight streamed down between sullen, angry, copper and purple-hued clouds. The north threatened. It was black all along the horizon. Still, oppressive, sultry, the air seemed charged.

  From time to time Pilchuck turned in his saddle to gaze backward along the empty range, and then up at the cloudbank. It appeared to Tom as if the scout were looking and listening for something.

  "What 're you expecting?" queried Tom, yielding to curiosity. "A thunderstorm?"

  "Wal, I'll be darned if I know," ejaculated Pilchuck. "Shore I wasn't thinkin' about a storm. Wasn't thinkin' at all! Must be just habit with me. . . . But now you tax me, I reckon I'm oneasy about that herd."

  Pilchuck led west farther than he had calculated, and struck the river at a wonderful place where the prairie took a sudden dip for miles, sheering steeply to the shallow water. Here was the buffalo ford, used by the herds in their annual migrations. Trees were absent, and brush and grass had not the luxuriance common to most stretches of river bank. From prairie rim to margin of river sloped a long steep bank, even and smooth; and at one point the wide approach to the ford was split and dominated by a rocky eminence, the only high point in sight along the river.

  The place seemed dismal and lonely to Tom, as he sat on his horse while Pilchuck forded the river. Contrary to most river scenes, this one was lifeless. Not a bird or animal or a fish or turtle in sight! Loneliness and solitude had their abode in this trodden road of the buffalo.

  At length the scout returned and rode up to Tom.

  "Wal, I wouldn't care to get a team stuck in that sand," he remarked. "It shore ain't packed none. . . . Lend me your glass."

  The scout swept a half circle of the horizon, and finally came to a halt westward, at a point on the prairie some distance from the river.

  "See some small bunches of buffalo," he said. "Let's ride up on them, make our kill, skin what we get, an' pick them up with the wagon on our way south to-morrow."

  "You're the boss," replied Tom.

  "Wal, I wish some one was bossin' me," returned Pilchuck, enigmatically.

  They trotted off over the gray prairie, and after traveling a couple of miles, could see the buffalo plainly. Meanwhile a slight breeze began to blow from the north.

  "I'll be darned!" ejaculated Pilchuck, with annoyance. "Wind's turned again. If it blows stronger we'll not slip up on this bunch."

  Another mile brought increase of wind, and the wary buffalo, catching the scent of the killers, loped away over the prairie.

  Pilchuck watched them in disgust. "Run, you old dunder-heads! Run clear across the Rio Grande! . . . Tom, I reckon we're all spoiled by the past easy huntin'. It'll never be easy again. An' somehow I'm glad. Let's work back."

  They turned about to face the breeze, now quite strong, cooler, with a heavy scent of rotting buffalo carcasses.

  "Faugh!" exclaimed the scout. "I'd rather have nose an' eyes full of Cottonwood smoke."

  Tom's quick ear caught a very low rumble of thunder. He turned his head. The sound had ceased. It had come on a stronger puff of wind.

  "What'd you hear?" inquired the scout, whose eye never missed anything.

  "Thunder."

  "Wal, it does look stormy. But I never trust thunder in this country," replied the scout, significantly.

  He halted his horse; and Tom did likewise. They gazed at the north. Dull, leaden mushrooming clouds were moving toward them, not rapidly, but steadily, in heavy changing forms. They merged into a purple-black mass down which streaked thin zigzag ropes of lightning.

  "Storm all right," observed Pilchuck. "Listen."

  After a moment in which nothing was heard save the heaving of horses, the rattle of bridle, and creak of leather, the scout dismounted.

  "Get off, Tom, an' walk away from the horses. . . . Listen now."

  Presently Tom again heard the low dull rumble.

  "There," he said.

  "Shore. That's genuine thunder, an' it means rain for this stinkin' dusty hot range. . . . Listen some more, Tom."

  The two men stood apart, Pilchuck favoring his right ear, Tom his left; and they remained motionless. Several times the mutter of thunder, distinct now to Tom, caused the scout to nod his head.

  "Reckon that's not what I'm expectin'," he said, gloomily. "An' we've no time to stand here all day. . . . Listen hard, Tom.

  You're younger than me."

  Tom's sluggish blood quickened a little. He had been two years with this old plainsman, during which there had been numberless instances of his sagacity and vision, and remarkable evidences of experience. Pilchuck was worrying about that herd of buffalo.

  Thereupon Tom bent lower, held his breath, and strained his ear with all intensity possible.
Again he heard the muttering long rumble--then the beat of his heart, the stir of his hair over his temple--the sweep of wind. Thunder again! That was all; and he abandoned the strain.

  "Nothing but storm," he told Pilchuck.

  "I reckon my ears are old, an' my imagination makes me think I hear things," returned the scout. "But a moment ago . . . Try again. I want to be SHORE."

  Thus incited, Tom lent himself to as sensitive and profound listening as was possible for him. This time he seemed to hear the thunder as before, somewhat louder; and under it another, fainter sound, an infinitely low roar that did not die out, that went on and on, deadened by another mutter of thunder, and then, when this was gone, beginning again, low, strange, unceasing.

  Then he straightened up and told Pilchuck what he had heard. How sharply and intelligently the scout's gray eyes flashed! He made no reply, except to raise one of his brawny hands. Leaving it extended, he froze in the attitude of an Indian listening. Tom again lent his ear to the strengthening breeze. Thunder--then long low menacing roar--thunder again--and roar! He made his own deductions and, lifting his head, waited for the scout to speak.

  Long did Pilchuck maintain that tense posture. He was a slow, deliberate man on occasions. Sometimes he would act with the most incredible speed. Here he must have been studying the volume, direction, distance of this thrilling sound, and not its cause.

  Suddenly his big brown hand clenched and shot down to crack into the palm of the other. He wheeled to Tom, with gray lightning in his eyes.

  "Stampede! . . . The whole herd!" he ejaculated. "I've been expectin' it for days."

  Then he gazed across the northern horizon of the prairie round to a point due east.

  "You notice we can see only four or five miles," he said. "The prairie rises slow for about that distance, then dips. That'd deaden sound as well as hide any movin' thing. We can't be shore that herd is far away. . . . Funny how we run into things. Reckon we'd better ride!"

  They mounted, and were off at a gallop that gave place to a run.

  Tom had lost his fleet, faithful Dusty, and was now riding a horse strong and sound and fairly fast, but no match for Pilchuck's hunter. So Tom fell behind gradually. He did not goad the horse, though he appreciated Pilchuck's brief hint of danger.