THE BISON.
When we reached high ground again the twilight was fading to a
semicircle of bloodshot gray in the northwest. The wind still blew
squarely in our faces. Down in the coulée we had not noticed it so much,
but now every breath was rank with the smell of grass-smoke, and each
mile we traversed the stink of it grew stronger.
"We'll be blamed lucky if we don't run into a prairie-fire before
mornin'," Piegan grumbled. "If that wind don't let up, she'll come
a-whoopin'. It'll be a sure enough smoky one, too, with this mixture uh
dry grass an' the new growth springin' up. It didn't rain so hard down
in this country, I notice. Ain't that a lalla of a smell?"
Neither of us answered, and Piegan said no more. It grew dark--dark in
the full sense of the word. The smoke-burdened atmosphere was impervious
to the radiance of the stars. Only by Smith's instinctive sense of
direction did we make any headway toward the mouth of Sage Creek. Even
MacRae owned himself somewhat at fault, once we came among the buffalo.
They barred our path in dimly-seen masses that neither halted,
scattered, nor turned aside when we galloped upon them in the gloom. We
were the ones who gave the road, riding now before, now behind the
indistinct bulk of a herd, according as we judged the shorter way.
More dense became the brute mass. Whirled this way and that, as Piegan
led, I knew neither east, west, north or south from one moment to
another. Betimes we found a stretch of open country, and gave our horses
the steel, but always to bring up suddenly against the bison plodding in
groups, in ranks, in endless files. They were ubiquitous; stolid
obstructions that we could neither avoid nor ride down. Our progress
became monotonous, a succession of fruitless attempts to advance;
hopeless, like wandering in a subtle maze. Bison to the right of us,
bison to the left of us, an uncounted swarm behind us, and as many
before--but they neither bellowed nor thundered; they passed like
phantoms in the night, soundlessly save for the muffled trampling of
cloven hoofs, and here and there upon occasion hoarse coughings that
were strangled by the wind.
And we rode as silently as the bison marched. For each one of us had
seen that one-minded pilgrimage of the brown cattle take place in moons
gone by. I recalled a time when a trail-herd lay on the Platte and the
buffalo barred their passing for two days--even made fourteen riders and
three thousand Texas steers give ground. Is it not history that the St.
Louis-Benton river-boats backed water when the bison crossed the
Missouri in the spring and fall? Remembering these, and other times that
the herds had gathered and swept over the plains, a plague of monstrous
locusts, pushing aside men and freight-trains, I knew what would happen
should the buffalo close their ranks, marshal the scattered groups into
closer formation, quicken the pace of the multitude that poured down
from the north. And presently it happened.
Insensibly the number of moving bodies increased. The consolidation was
imperceptible in the murk, but nevertheless it took place. We ceased to
find clear spaces where we could gallop; a trot became impossible. We
were hemmed in. A rank animal odor mingled with the taint of smoke.
Gradually the muffled beat of hoofs grew more pronounced, a shuffling
monotone that filled the night. We were mere atoms in a vast wave of
horn and bone and flesh that bore us onward as the tide floats
driftwood.
The belated moon stole up from its lair, hovered above the sky-line, a
gaudy orange sphere in the haze of smoke. It shed a tenuous glimmer on
the sea of bison that had engulfed us; and at the half-revealed sight
MacRae lifted his clenched hands above his head and cursed the
circumstance that had brought us to such extremity. That was the first
and only time I knew him to lose his poise, his natural repression.
Still water runs deep, they say; and a glacial cap may conceal
subterranean fires. Trite similes, I grant you--but, ah, how true. The
good Lord help those phlegmatics who can stand by unmoved when a
self-contained man reveals the anguish of his soul in one passionate
outburst. Could the fury that quivered in his voice have wreaked itself
on the bison and the men we followed, the stench of their blasted
carcasses would have reached high heaven. But the bison surrounded us
impassively, bore us on as before; somewhere, miles beyond, Lessard
pursued the evil tenor of his way; and MacRae's futile passion, like a
wave that has battered itself to foam against a sullen cliff, subsided
and died. Later, while we three cast-aways drifted with the bovine tide,
he spoke to Piegan Smith.
"How are we going to get through?"
"Dunno. But we _will_ get through, yuh c'n gamble on that." Optimism
rampant was the dominating element in Piegan's philosophy of life.
As if to prove that he was a true prophet, the herd split against a
rocky pinnacle, and on this we stranded. So much, at least, we had
gained--we were no longer being carried willy-nilly out of our way.
"If they'd only scatter a little," MacRae muttered.
But for a long two hours the bison streamed by our island, dividing
before and closing behind the insensate peak that alone had power to
break their close-packed ranks. Then came an opening, a falling apart;
slight as it was, we plunged into it with joy. Thereafter we were
buffeted like chips in the swirling maw of a whirlpool; we fought our
way rod by rod. Here an opening, and we shot through; there a solid wall
of flesh for whose passing we halted, lashing out with quirts and
spurring desperately to hold our own--a war for the open road against an
enemy whose only weapon was his unswerving bulk. And we won. We pushed,
twisted, spurred our way through the ranks of a hundred thousand bison.
Jostling, cursing the brute swarm, we crowded our horses against the
press, and lo! of a sudden we reined up on open ground--the bison, like
a nightmare, were gone. Off in the gloom to one side of us a myriad of
hoofs beat the earth, the hoarse coughings continued, the animal odor
exhaled--but it was no longer a force to be reckoned with. We were free.
We had outflanked the herd.
[Illustration: A WAR FOR THE OPEN ROAD AGAINST AN ENEMY WHOSE ONLY
WEAPON WAS HIS UNSWERVING BULK.
_Page 256._]