the Thundering Herd (1984)

by Grey, Zane

  "Yes, it does," replied Tom.

  "Come along then, you buffalo-chasin', Comanche-ridin' Llaner Estacador," went on Dave. "We've orders to fetch you home before these hyar town girls set eyes on you."

  They dragged Tom and his belongings out of the crowd, pushed him up into a spring-wagon, and while Burn piled his baggage in the back, Dave climbed up beside him and started a team of spirited horses out along the river road.

  If the welcome accorded Tom by Burn and Dave had touched him, that given by their women folk reached deeply to his heart. They were all at the front of Burn's fine ranch house. Burn's wife was weeping, it seemed for joy; and Sally Hudnall gave Tom a resounding kiss, to his consternation. Mrs. Hudnall, whose motherly face showed the ravages of grief, greeted him in a way that made Tom ashamed of how he had forgotten these good people. She took possession of him and led him indoors, ahead of the others. They had all seemed strange, hurried, suppressing something. They were not as Tom remembered. Alas! had he grown away from wholesome simplicity? They wanted to welcome him to their home.

  Mrs. Hudnall shut the door. Tom had a sense that the room was large, lighted by windows at each end. Clearing his throat, he turned to speak. But Mrs. Hudnall's working face, her tear-wet eyes, made him dumb. There was something wrong here.

  "Tom, you're changed," she began, hurriedly. "No boy any more! I can see how it hurts you to come back to us."

  "Yes, because of--of Milly," he replied, simply. "But you mustn't think I'm not glad to see you all. I am. You're my good friends.

  I'm ashamed I never appreciated you as I should have. But that hard life out there--"

  "Don't," she interrupted, huskily. "You know how it hurt me. . . .

  But, Tom, never mind the past. Think of the present."

  "My heart's buried in that past. It seems so long ago. So short a time to remember! I--"

  "Didn't you ever think Milly might not have been lost?" she asked.

  "Yes, I thought that--till hope died," replied Tom, slowly.

  "My boy--we heard she wasn't killed--or captured--or anything," said Mrs. Hudnall, softly.

  "Heard she wasn't? My God! That would only torture me," replied Tom, poignantly. He felt himself shaking. What did these people mean? His mind seemed to encounter that query as a wall.

  "Tom, we KNOW she wasn't," flashed the woman, with all the ecstasy in face and voice.

  He staggered back suddenly, released from bewilderment. He realized now. That had been the secret of their excitement, their strangeness. His consciousness grasped the truth. Milly Fayre was not dead. For an instant his eyes closed and his physical and spiritual being seemed to unite in a tremendous resistance against the shock of rapture. He must not lose his senses. He must not miss one word or look of this good woman who had given him back love and life. But he was mute. A strong quiver ran over him from head to foot. Then heart and pulse leaped in exquisite pain and maddening thrill.

  "Milly is here," said Mrs. Hudnall. "We tried again and again to send you word, but always missed you. Milly has lived here--ever since she escaped from Jett--and the Indians. She has grown.

  She's taught the school. She is well--happy. She has waited for you--she loves you dearly."

  Voice was wrenched from Tom. "I see truth in your face," he whispered, huskily. "But I can't believe. . . . Let me SEE her!"

  Mrs. Hudnall pushed back the door and went out. Some one slipped in. A girl--a woman, white of face, with parted lips and great, radiant black eyes! Could this be Milly Fayre?

  "OH--TOM!" she burst out, in broken voice, deep and low. She took a forward step, with hands extended, then swayed back against the door. "Don't you--know me?"

  "I'd lost all hope," whispered Tom, as if to himself. "It's too sudden. I can't believe . . . You ghost! You white thing with eyes I loved!"

  "It's your Milly, alive--alive!" she cried, and ran to envelop him.

  Later they stood by the open window watching the sun set gold over the dim dark line of the Llana Estacado. She had told her story.

  Tom could only marvel at it, as at her, so changed, so wonderful, yet sweet and simple as of old.

  "You shall never go back to the buffalo range," she said, in what seemed both command and appeal.

  "No, Milly," he replied, and told her the story of the stampede of the thundering herd.

  "Oh, how wonderful and terrible!" she replied, "I loved the buffalo."

  Mrs. Hudnall called gayly to them from the door. "Tom--Milly, you can't live on love. Supper is ready."

  "We're not hungry," replied Milly, dreamily.

  "Yes, we are," added Tom, forcefully. "We'll come. . . . Milly, I'm starved. You know what camp grub is. A year and a half on hump steak!"

  "Wait. I was only teasing," she whispered, as with downcast eyes, like midnight under their lashes, she leaned a little closer to him. "Do you remember my--my birthday?"

  "I never knew it," he replied, smiling.

  "It's to-morrow."

  "You don't say. Well, I did get back at the right time. Let's see, you're eighteen years old."

  "Ah, you forget! I am nineteen. You lost me for over a year."

  "But, Milly, I NEVER forgot what was to have been on your eighteenth birthday, though I never knew the date."

  "What was to have been?" she asked, shyly, with a slow blush mantling her cheek.

  "You were to marry me."

  "Oh, did I promise that?" she questioned, in pretended wonder.

  "Yes."

  "Well, THAT was for my eighteenth birthday. You never hunted me-- you hunted only buffalo. You might have had me. . . . But now you shall wait till--till I'm twenty."

  "Milly, I hunted for you all through summer, fall, winter. And my heart broke."

  "But--but I can only marry you on a birthday," she replied, shaken by his words, and looked up at him with dusky, eloquent eyes.

  "Dear, I'm so happy to find you alive--to see you grown into a beautiful woman--to know you love me--that I could wait for ten birthdays," he said, earnestly. "But why make me wait? I've had a lonely hard life out there in the buffalo fields. It has taken something from me that only you can make up for. I must go back to my dream of a ranch--a home, cattle, horses, tilling the soil.

  Have you forgotten how we planned when we met in secret under the cottonwoods? Those moonlight nights!"

  "No, I never forgot anything," she whispered, her head going down on his shoulder.

  "Well--since to-morrow is your nineteenth birthday, and I've lost you for an endless hateful year--marry me to-morrow. Will you?"

  "Yes!"

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