THE CHASE
The summer flamed up into sudden heat, and seared all the grasses, and
cut down the timid flowers. Then gradually there came the time of
shorter days and cooler nights. The grass curled tight down to the
ground. The air carried a suspicion of frost upon some steel-clear
mornings. The golden-backed plover had passed to the south in long,
waving lines, which showed dark against the deep blue sky. Great
flocks of grouse now and then rocked by at morning or evening. On the
sand bars along the infrequent streams thousands of geese gathered,
pausing in their flight to warmer lands. On the flats of the
Rattlesnake, a pond-lined stream, myriads of ducks, cranes, swans, and
all manner of wild fowl daily made mingled and discordant chorus.
Obviously all the earth was preparing for the winter time.
It became not less needful for mankind to take thought for the morrow.
Winter on the Plains was a season of severity for the early settlers,
whose resources alike in fuel and food were not too extensive.
Franklin's forethought had provided the houses of himself and
Battersleigh with proper fuel, and he was quite ready to listen to
Curly when the latter suggested that it might be a good thing for them
to follow the usual custom and go out on a hunt for the buffalo herd,
in order to supply themselves with their winter's meat.
Before the oncoming white men these great animals were now rapidly
passing away, from month to month withdrawing farther back from the
settlements. Reports from the returning skin-hunters set the distance
of the main herd at three to five days' journey. The flesh of the
buffalo was now a marketable commodity at any point along the railway;
but the settler who owned a team and a rifle was much more apt to go
out and kill his own meat than to buy it of another. There were many
wagons which went out that fall from Ellisville besides those of the
party with which Franklin, Battersleigh, and Curly set out. These
three had a wagon and riding horses, and they were accompanied by a
second wagon, owned by Sam, the liveryman, who took with him Curly's
_mozo_, the giant Mexican, Juan. The latter drove the team, a task
which Curly scornfully refused when it was offered him, his cowboy
creed rating any conveyance other than the saddle as far beneath his
station.
"Juan can drive all right," he said. "He druv a cook wagon all the way
from the Red River up here. Let him and Sam drive, and us three
fellers'll ride."
The task of the drivers was for the most part simple, as the flat floor
of the prairies stretched away evenly mile after mile, the horses
jogging along dejectedly but steadily over the unbroken short gray
grass, ignorant and careless of any road or trail.
At night they slept beneath the stars, uncovered by any tent, and
saluted constantly by the whining coyotes, whose vocalization was
betimes broken by the hoarser, roaring note of the great gray buffalo
wolf. At morn they awoke to an air surcharged with some keen elixir
which gave delight in sense of living. The subtle fragrance of the
plains, born of no fruit or flower, but begotten of the sheer
cleanliness of the thrice-pure air, came to their nostrils as they
actually snuffed the day. So came the sun himself, with heralds of
pink and royal purple, with banners of flaming red and gold. At this
the coyotes saluted yet more shrilly and generally. The lone gray
wolf, sentinel on some neighbouring ridge, looked down, contemptuous in
his wisdom. Perhaps a band of antelope tarried at some crest. Afar
upon the morning air came the melodious trumpeting of wild fowl, rising
from some far-off unknown roosting place and setting forth upon errand
of their own. All around lay a new world, a wild world, a virgin
sphere not yet acquaint with man. Phoenicians of the earthy seas,
these travellers daily fared on into regions absolutely new.
Early upon the morning of the fourth day of their journey the
travellers noted that the plain began to rise and sink in longer waves.
Presently they found themselves approaching a series of rude and
wild-looking hills of sand, among which they wound deviously as they
might, confronted often by forbidding buttes and lofty dunes whose only
sign of vegetation was displayed in a ragged fringe of grass which
waved like a scalp lock here and there upon the summits. For many
miles they travelled through this difficult and cheerless region, the
horses soon showing signs of distress and all the party feeling need of
water, of which the supply had been exhausted. It was nearly noon
while they were still involved in this perplexing region, and as none
of the party had ever seen the country before, none could tell how long
it might be before they would emerge from it. They pushed on in
silence, intent upon what might be ahead, so that when there came an
exclamation from the half-witted Mexican, whose stolid silence under
most circumstances had become a proverb among them, each face was at
once turned toward him.
"Eh, what's that, Juan?" said Curly--"Say, boys, he says we're about
out of the sand hills. Prairie pretty soon now, he says."
"And will ye tell me, now," said Battersleigh, "how the haythen knows a
bit more of it than we oursilves? He's never been here before. I'm
thinkin' it's pure guess he's givin' us, me boy."
"No, sir," said Curly, positively. "If Juan says a thing like that, he
knows. I don't know how he knows it, but he shore does, and I'll
gamble on him every time. You see, he ain't hardly like folks, that
feller. He's more like a critter. He knows a heap of things that you
and me don't."
"That's curious," said Franklin. "How do you account for it?"
"Kin savvy," said Curly. "I don't try to account for it, me. I only
know it's so. You see if it ain't."
And so it was. The wall of the sand hills was for a time apparently as
endless and impervious as ever, and they still travelled on in silence,
the Mexican making no further sign of interest. Yet presently the
procession of the sand dunes began to show gaps and open places. The
hills grew less tall and more regular of outline. Finally they shrank
and fell away, giving place again to the long roll of the prairie,
across which, and near at hand to the edge of the sand hills, there cut
the open and flat bed of a water way, now apparently quite dry.
"We're all right for water now," said Sam. "See that little pile of
rocks, 'bout as high as your head, off to the right down the creek?
That's water there, sure."
"Yep," said Curly. "She's there, sure. Or you could git it by diggin'
anywheres in here in the creek bed, inside of four or five feet at
most."
Franklin again felt constrained to ask somewhat of the means by which
these two felt so confident of their knowledge. "Well, now, Curly," he
said, "it isn't instinct this time, surely, for Juan didn't say
anything about it to you. I would like to know how you know there is
water ahead."
"Why," said Curly, "that's the sign for water on the plains. If you
ever see one of them little piles of stones standin' up, you can depend
you can git water there. Sometimes it marks a place where you can git
down through the breaks to the creek bed, and sometimes it means that
if you dig in the bed there you can find water, 'lowin' the creek's
dry."
"But who built up the rock piles to make these signs?" asked Franklin.
"O Lord! now you've got me," said Curly. "I don't know no more about
that than you do. Injuns done it, maybe. Some says the first
wild-horse hunters put 'em up. They was always there, all over the dry
country, far back as ever I heard. You ask Juan if there ain't water
not far off. See what he says.--_Oye, Juan! Tengo agua, poco tiempo_?"
The giant did not even lift his head, but answered listlessly, "_Agua?
Si_," as though that were a matter of which all present must have equal
knowledge.
"That settles it," said Curly. "I never did know Juan to miss it on
locatin' water yet, not onct. I kin fairly taste it now. But you see,
Juan, he don't seem to go by no rock-pile signs. He just seems to
smell water, like a horse or a steer."
They now rode on more rapidly, bearing off toward the cairn which made
the water sign. All at once Juan lifted his head, listened for a
moment, and then said, with more show of animation than he had yet
displayed and with positiveness in his voice: "_Vacas_!" ("cows;
cattle").
Curly straightened up in his saddle as though electrified. "_Vacas?
Onde, Juan_?--where's any cows?" He knew well enough that no hoof of
domestic cattle had ever trod this country. Yet trust as he did the
dictum of the giant's strange extra sense, he could not see, anywhere
upon the wide country round about them, any signs of the buffalo to
which he was sure the Mexican meant to call his attention.
"_Vacas! muchas_," repeated Juan carelessly.
"Lots of 'em, eh? Well, I'd like to know where they are, my lily of
the valley," said Curly, for once almost incredulous. And then he
stopped and listened.--"Hold on, boys, listen," he said. "Look
out--look out! Here they come!"
Every ear caught the faint distant pattering, which grew into a rapid
and insistent rumble. "Cavalry, b'gad!" cried Battersleigh.
Franklin's eyes shone. He spurred forward fast as he could go, jerking
loose the thong which held his rifle fast in the scabbard under his leg.
The tumultuous roaring rumble came on steadily, the more apparent by a
widening and climbing cloud of dust, which betokened that a body of
large animals was coming up through the "breaks" from the bed of the
stream to the prairie on which the wagons stood. Presently there
appeared at the brink, looming through the white dust cloud, a mingling
mass of tangled, surging brown, a surface of tossing, hairy backs,
spotted with darker fronts, over all and around all the pounding and
clacking of many hoofs. It was the stampede of the buffalo which had
been disturbed at their watering place below, and which had headed up
to the level that they might the better make their escape in flight.
Head into the wind, as the buffalo alone of wild animals runs, the herd
paid no heed to the danger which they sought to escape, but upon which
they were now coming in full front. The horses of the hunters,
terrified at this horrid apparition of waving horned heads and shaggy
manes, plunged and snorted in terror, seeing which the first rank of
the buffalo in turn fell smitten of panic, and braced back to avoid the
evil at their front. Overturned by the crush behind them, these none
the less served to turn the course of the remainder of the herd, which
now broke away to the right, paralleling the course of the stream and
leaving the wagons of the hunters behind them and at their left. The
herd carried now upon its flank three figures which clung alongside and
poured sharp blue jets of smoke into the swirling cloud of ashy dust.
It was neck and neck for the three. The cowboy, Curly, had slightly
the advance of the others, but needed to spur hard to keep even with
Battersleigh, the old cavalryman, who rode with weight back and hands
low, as though it were cross country in old Ireland. Franklin
challenged both in the run up, riding with the confidence of the man
who learned the saddle young in life. They swerved slightly apart as
they struck the flank of the herd and began to fire. At such range it
was out of the question to miss. Franklin and Battersleigh killed two
buffaloes each, losing other head by reason of delivering their fire
too high up in the body, a common fault with the beginner on bison.
Curly ran alongside a good cow, and at the third shot was able to see
the great creature stumble and fall. Yet another he killed before his
revolver was empty. The butchery was sudden and all too complete. As
they turned back from the chase they saw that even Sam, back at the
wagon, where he had been unable to get saddle upon one of the wagon
horses in time for the run, had been able to kill his share. Seeing
the horses plunging, Juan calmly went to their heads and held them
quiet by main strength, one in each hand, while Sam sprang from the
wagon and by a long shot from his heavy rifle knocked down a good fat
cow. The hunters looked at the vast bodies lying prostrate along the
ground before them, and felt remorse at their intemperance.
"The hunt's over," said Franklin, looking at the dead animals. "We've
enough for us all."
"Yes, sir," said Curly, "we shore got meat, and got it plenty
sudden.--Juan, _vamos, pronto_!" He made signs showing that he wished
the Mexican to skin and dress the buffalo, and the latter, as usual,
proceeded to give immediate and unhesitating obedience.