Buffalo Stampede

by Zane Grey

  Molly could not remove her eyes from the poor brute. She saw him and all about him with a distinctness she could never forget. She heard the husky gurgle of water as he drank thirstily. Below him the slow current of the stream was tinged red. For what appeared a long time he drank. Then he raised his great head. The surroundings held no menace for him. He seemed dazed and lost. Molly saw the rolling eyes as he lurched and turned. He was dying. In horror Molly watched him stagger into the willows and slowly crash out of sight. After that she listened until she could no longer hear the crackling of brush and twigs.

  Then Molly relaxed and sank back into her former seat. Her horror passed with a strange shuddering sensation, leaving in her a sickening aversion to this murderous buffalo hunting.

  “I’d never marry Tom Doan unless he’d give that up,” she soliloquized gravely.

  * * * * *

  The sun mounted high and the heat of the May day quieted the birds. The bees, however, kept up their drowsy hum. No more buffalo disturbed Molly’s spasmodic periods of sewing and reading, and the long spells of dreaming. Hours passed. Molly heard no horses or men, and not until the afternoon waned toward its close did she start back to camp. To retrace her steps was not an easy matter, but at last she wound her way through the brush to the open space. Camp was deserted, so far as anyone stirring about was concerned. Molly missed one of the wagons.

  Some time later, while she was busy making her own cramped quarters more livable, she heard the voices of men, the thud of hoofs, and the creak of wheels. With these sounds the familiar oppression returned to her breast. Jett would soon be there, surly and hungry. Molly swiftly concluded her task and hurried down out of her wagon.

  Presently the men came trooping into camp on foot, begrimed with dust and sweat, and manifestly weary. Catlee was carrying a heavy burden of four guns.

  Jett looked into his tent. “Come out, you lazy jade!” he called roughly, evidently to his wife. “A buffalo wolf has nothin’ on me for hunger.” Then he espied Molly, who was in the act of lighting a fire. “Good! You’d make a wife, Molly.”

  “Haw! Haw!” laughed Follonsbee sardonically, as he threw down hat, gloves, vest, and spread his grimy hands. “No water! Gimme a bucket. If I had a wife, there’d be water in camp.”

  “Huh! You hawk-faced Yankee . . . there ain’t no woman on earth who’d fetch water for you,” taunted Pruitt.

  “Wal, if Hank thinks he can teach Jane to fetch an’ carry, he’s welcome to her,” responded Jett.

  This bluff and hearty badinage, full of contention as it was, marked a change in the demeanor of Jett and his men. Catlee, however, took no part in it. He was connected with Jett’s outfit, but did not belong there.

  Mrs. Jett then appeared among them, and her advent, probably because of Jett’s remark, occasioned ill-suppressed mirth. “I heard what you said, Rand Jett,” she retorted, glaring at him. “You can’t make me welcome to any man, much less a hide thief like Hank Follonsbee.”

  “Shut your face,” returned Jett, in an entirely different tone. “You know your job. Rustle to it.”

  That ended the approach to humor. When Follonsbee fetched the water, they all washed and splashed with great gusto. This pleasant task finished, they showed plainly what little leisure was now possible to them, for they got their kits, and began reloading shells and sharpening knives.

  “Catlee, you clean the guns,” ordered Jett.

  While thus busily engaged, they talked of the day’s hunt—of the half hour of shooting that was fun and the eight hours of skinning that was labor—of the hide-stretching still to do before sleep could be thought of. Molly listened with keen ears in the hope they might drop some word of the Hudnall outfit, but she spent her attention in vain.

  Presently Mrs. Jett called: “Come an’ get it!”

  “Or you’ll throw it out, huh?” queried Jett, rising with alacrity.

  They ate hurriedly and prodigiously, in silence, and each man reached for what he wanted without asking.

  Jett was the first to finish supper. “Fill up, you hawgs,” he said to his comrades, “we’ve work to do. . . . Jane, you an’ Molly clean up . . . then go to bed. We’ll be just outside the grove, stretchin’ hides.”

  Molly lay awake a long while that night, yet did not hear the men return. Next day they had breakfast before sunrise and were off with a rush. Molly spent quiet hours on the shady bank, where the sweetness and music were undisturbed. Another day passed in which she saw nothing of the men except at the morning and evening meal hours. Jett and his helpers were settling into the strenuous routine of hide hunting.

  On the fourth day they broke camp, and traveled twenty miles down the same side of the river, to halt in the only clump of trees Molly had noted for hours. Next morning Jett’s men were again hunting buffalo. That night they did not return until long after dark. Molly had gone to bed, but she heard their gruff, weary voices.

  The following day was again one of breaking camp and traveling south. Molly made the observation that the country changed, while yet it seemed the same, and she concluded that it was the vastness and wildness that grew. Next morning she heard shooting up until noon. She was so grateful to be left alone that the hours seemed to fly. There was always a place where she could hide near camp, and Jett seldom forgot to mention this. As they journeyed farther south, his vigilance as well as his excitement increased day by day. From the campfire talk Molly gathered that both number of buffalo and of hunters were augmenting. Yet Jett appeared to have established the rule of travel one day and hunt the next. As he progressed, the work grew more arduous. There was no road over this endless plain, and the level stretches were cut up, sometimes necessitating the unloading and reloading of the wagons. May succeeded to June. The plain was now one wide rolling expanse of green, waving gently to every breeze; the stream courses were marked by a line of deeper green, trees now in full foliage. Herds of buffalo began to show to the east of this stream Jett was following. His hunting, however, he did on the west side, where Molly understood the buffalo were in larger numbers.

  At length Jett traveled two days southward, and then crossed the stream to its west bank, and, following it down on that side, he was halted by a large river.

  “Hey, boys, here’s the Red, an’ it’s our stampin’ ground this summer,” he rolled out sonorously.

  For a camp he chose a spot hard to reach, as well as hard to see from above. A forest of timber and brush bordered both sides of this Red River, and once down in it neither river nor plain could be seen. Jett spent the remainder of that day making permanent camp. Follonsbee, who he sent on a reconnoitering ride up the river, returned about sunset.

  “Believe I saw fifty square miles of buffalo,” he announced impressively, sitting his saddle and gazing down at the leader.

  “Huh! I took that for granted,” replied Jett. “How far did you go?”

  “Reckon about five miles up an’ climbed a big bluff above the river. Could see for miles. An’ shore that sight stumped me. Why, Rand, I couldn’t see the end of buffalo, an’ I was usin’ the telescope, too.”

  “What’s more to the point . . . how many outfits could you spot?” demanded Jett impatiently.

  “Wal, I spotted enough, an’ some to spare,” drawled the other. “West of the bluff I seen camp smokes all along the river, far as I could see.”

  “Any camps close?”

  “Only two between ours an’ the bluff,” replied Follonsbee. “Then there’s one on the point across the creek. Reckon outfits are strung down the river, too. Buffalo everywhere.”

  “Ahuh! It’s the main herd. Now, I wonder will they run north.”

  “Reckon so. But if they do, they’ll turn back.”

  “You figger on their bein’ blocked by the gang of hide hunters behind us?”

  “Prezactly. We couldn’t be in a better stand. This big herd is massed in a triangle. River on the south. Staked Plains on the west, an’ on the third side thousands of hunters.”

>   “Yes. It seems that way. Mighty big bit of country, but it is a trap.”

  “Where do the Indians come in your calculatin’?” queried Follonsbee.

  “Nowhere. If they get mean, the buffalo hunters will band together an’ do what the soldiers couldn’t do . . . chase the damned redskins up in their Staked Plains an’ kill them.”

  “Wal, it looks like a hell of a summer, huh?”

  “I reckon so, all around. It means the end of the buffalo, an’ that means peace with the Indians, whether they fight or not.”

  “Rand, this is the huntin’ ground of Comanches, Cheyennes, Kiowas, an’ Arapahoes. The land an’ the buffalo are theirs.”

  “Theirs . . . hell!” exploded Jett in contempt.

  “Shore, I know your sentiments,” returned Follonsbee rather shortly. “Like most of these hide hunters you say wipe the red-skins off the earth. To me it looks like a dirty trick. I’d rather steal from a white man than an Indian. . . . But I’m givin’ you my idee for what it’s worth. We’ll have to fight.”

  Jett appeared for the moment in a brown study, while he paced up and down, swinging a short rope he had in his hand.

  “If the Indians are on the warpath, as we hear, won’t they wait till this bunch of hunters has a big store of hides on hand . . . before startin’ that fight?” he queried shrewdly.

  “I reckon they would,” admitted Follonsbee.

  “An’ when they do come raidin’, we’re goin’ to get the hunch in plenty of time, aren’t we?” went on Jett.

  “We shore have a fine stand, with hunters east an’ west of us, an’ millions of buffalo out there, we can’t hardly be surprised.”

  “Wal, then, what’s eatin’ you?” growled Jett.

  “Nothin’. I was just gettin’ things clear. We’re equal on the main points. Now one more. The sooner we make a big stake the better?”

  Jett nodded a significant acquiescence to that query, and then went about his tasks. Follonsbee, dismounting, took the saddle off his horse. Soon after that Mrs. Jett called him to supper.

  * * * * *

  At this camp Molly lost her wagon as an abode, a circumstance on the moment much to her displeasure. The wagon, being high off the ground, and with its box sides, had afforded more of protection, if not comfort. Jett had removed hoops and canvas bodily, and had established them as a tent, some little distance from the main camp. Molly pondered apprehensively over this removal by some rods from the rest of the tents. Perhaps Mrs. Jett had inspired this innovation, and, if so, Molly felt that she would welcome it. But she had doubts of every move made by the leader of the outfit.

  Upon entering the improvised tent, Molly found that she could not stand erect, but in all the other particulars it was an improvement. She could lace both doors tightly, something impossible when the tent was on the wagon. She unrolled her bed and made it up. Then she unpacked and unfolded her clothes, and hung them conveniently at the back. Her bag, with its jumbled assortment of things she had thought so poor, now, in the light of this wild travel, assumed proportions little short of precious. She could have been worse off—something that before had never crossed her mind. Without soap, linen, and muslin, a sewing kit, mirror, a few books, and many other like articles, she would have found this camp life in the wilderness something formidable to face.

  “But . . . it’s not much of a hope chest,” she murmured ruefully. When she went outside again, daylight was still strong, and the afterglow of sunset was spreading in beautiful effulgence over the western sky. Molly gazed about her. It appeared that a jungle lay between camp and the river. Jett and his men were in earnest and whispered council, with guns and tools and ammunition for the moment forgotten. Mrs. Jett sat a forlorn and sullen figure in front of her tent. Molly needed and wanted exercise. She began to walk around the camp. No one paid any heed to her. Indeed, since reaching the buffalo fields, she had become a negligible attraction, for which she was devoutly thankful.

  Summer had indeed come to this northern part of Texas. The air was drowsy and warm. She found a few belated flowers blossoming in a shaded place. A spring bubbled from under a bank, and, as she passed it, frogs plumped into the water. She heard the mournful cooing of turtle doves.

  Molly found a trail that evidently made a short cut of the distance up to the plain, and she followed it, not without misgivings. Jett, however, did not call her, and emboldened by this she ventured on. The slope was gradual and covered by heavy timber. Her heart began to beat, and her breath to come and go quickly. She felt the stagnant blood enliven to the call made upon it. She saw a flare of gold and rose sky beyond the black tree trunks. It was not so very far from camp—this first level of the plain. She wanted to see the great herd of buffalo. Thus engrossed she went on to the edge of the timber, and halted there to gaze outward. A wonderful green plain stretched away to the west, rising gradually. It was barren of animals. The rich colors of the afterglow were fading. Was that a level purple-gray bank of cloud along the horizon or a range of upland hills?

  A clip-clop of trotting horses made her start sharply. Wheeling, she espied a rider close upon her. He had come from around a corner of the wooded slope.

  Molly took backward steps, meaning to slip out of sight. But the rider had seen her. Coming on so quickly, while she was slow in moving, he rode right upon her, and, uttering an exclamation of surprise, he leaped from the horse.

  Sight of him down on the ground where Molly could see him better gave her a galvanizing shock. Was this tall young man the image of her dreams? She stared. He took a step forward, his ruddy face lighting. He seemed strange somehow, yet she knew him. His eyes pierced her, and she suddenly shook with a sure recognition of them.

  “Molly!” he cried incredulously. His tone held the same wonderful thing that was in his look.

  “Oh . . . it is you!” burst out Molly, all at once beside herself. She ran straight to meet him. It was not clear that she ran into his arms, but she found herself there. He had kissed her and she had kissed him back before she realized what was happening.

  “Molly! Say . . . what luck! I’d given up ever seeing you again,” he said, trying to hold her arms that were sliding from him as she started back.

  “Tom . . . Doan!” she ejaculated in realization. She felt hot blood flame her face. What had she done? Shamed and frightened, yet tingling with a joy nothing could check, she backed falteringly away. His glad eyes held her gaze, though she strove to avert it. Had he changed? His face was thinner, darker, a red bronze where it had been clear tan.

  “Sure it’s Tom Doan,” he replied in delight. “So you remembered me?”

  “Remembered . . . you?” faltered Molly. “I . . . I. . . .”

  A loud halloo from the wooded slope below interrupted her. It was Jett’s voice, calling her back to camp.

  “That’s Jett,” she whispered hurriedly. “He must not see you.”

  “Go back. You’ve time. He’s far off,” replied Doan.

  “Ah, yes . . . I must go.”

  “Listen . . . just a second,” he whispered, following her, taking her hand. He seemed intense. “Hudnall’s camp is only a few miles up the river. I’m with him, you know. . . . Meet me here tonight when the moon comes up. That’ll be early.”

  “Here . . . at night?” murmured Molly tremulously. The idea was startling.

  “Yes. At moon rise. Promise!” he entreated.

  “I’ll come.”

  “Don’t be afraid. I’ll be waiting for you . . . right here. . . . Go back to camp now. Don’t give yourself away.” Then he shot her a bright intent look, and strode noiselessly away, leading his horse into the grass.

  Molly wheeled to run down into the woods, almost coming to disaster in her excitement. It was farther to camp than she thought and some parts of the trail necessitated care in the gathering twilight. Jett did not appear to be coming after her. In a few moments she recovered from her breathless headlong precipitation. The flicker of a campfire shone through the woods, and t
hat would have guided her had she lost the plain trail. Thoughts and emotions relative to the meeting with Tom Doan were held in abeyance. She must hurry back to camp and allay Jett’s suspicions or fears concerning her. Dusk had fallen. When she reached camp, which she approached leisurely, she saw Jett and all his outfit grouped around the campfire.

  “Where’re you been?” he asked gruffly.

  “Walking under the trees,” she replied easily.

  “Why didn’t you answer me?”

  “Do I have to yell because you do?” she returned.

  “Haw! Haw! Haw!” roared Follonsbee, and he gave Pruitt a dig in the ribs.

  “Wal,” continued Jett, evidently satisfied, “when it gets dark that’s your bedtime. Jane can set up all night if she likes.”

  “Because I’ve no need of beauty sleep, eh?” demanded the woman sarcastically.

  “Why, you’re a handsome jade,” responded Jett.

  Molly found in the situation a development of her own resourcefulness. She did not want this hour after supper to appear different from any other, so she stood a moment back of the circle of light, watching the campfire, and then, going to where the water pail stood, she took a drink. Leisurely then she moved away to her tent. How glad now that it stood apart from the others!

  Molly crawled inside to flop down on her bed. For a moment the self-restraint under which she had been straining lingered by reason of its very intensity. Then suddenly it broke. In the darkness of her tent she was safe. Thought of Jett and his outfit flashed into oblivion.

  Oh . . . what has happened? What have I done? What am I going to do? she thought to herself. It all rushed back, strong and sweet and bewildering. She had to fight feeling in order to think. Some incredibly good instinct had prompted her to stray away from camp. Tom Doan! She had met him. In all that wide vast wilderness the one and only person she had met was the one she yearned for. She had spoken to him; she had promised to meet him later when the moon rose.

  Tremendous as was the import of these facts it did not seem all. What had happened? With mounting pulse she forced herself to recall everything, from the moment she had heard the horse. How she strung out the sensations of that meeting! Had she felt them all then? No—some of them, the deeper ones, were an augmenting of those that had been thoughtless. Could she ever gather into one comprehensive actuality the wildness of amaze, joy, and hope that had constituted her recognition of Tom Doan? What had gone on in her mind all these endless days? Futile to try to understand why! She had run straight into his arms. The shame of such an act was as terrible as the sweetness of recalling it.