the Thundering Herd (1984) (22 page)

That had happened day before yesterday.

The camp of two hunters, names not known, had been set upon by Indians, presumably the same band, on the main branch of the Pease.

The hunters were out after buffalo. They found wagons, hides, tents, camp destroyed; only ammunition and harness being stolen.

These hunters had made their way to the main camps.

An informant from down the river told that some riders, presumably Indians, had fired the prairie grass in different widely separated places, stampeding several herds of buffalo.

Most of the representatives from the camps up the river had nothing particularly important to impart, except noticeable discontent in the main herd of buffalo, and Starwell's repetition of the facts relating to the shots he and his camp-mates had heard yesterday morning.

Whereupon a lanky man, unknown to Pilchuck's group, spoke up:

"I can tell aboot thet. My name's Roberts. I belong to Sol White's outfit across the river. We're from Waco, an' one of the few outfits from the South. This mawnin' there was a stampede on our side, an' I was sent across to scout around. I crossed the river aboot two miles above heah. Shore didn't know the river an' picked out a bad place. An' I run plumb on to a camp thet was so hid I didn't see it. But I smelled smoke an' soon found where tents, wagons, an' hides had been burnin'. There was two daid men, scalped, lyin' stripped, with sticks poked into their stomachs--so I hurried up this way to find somebody."

"Men, I want a look at that camp," declared Pilchuck, rising.

"Some of you stay here an' some come along. Star, I'd like you with me. Roberts, you lead an' we'll follow."

Tom elected to remain in camp with those who stayed behind; he felt that he had seen enough diabolical work of the Comanches. Burn Hudnall likewise shunned going. Ory Tacks, however, took advantage of the opportunity, and rode off with Pilchuck. Tom tried to find tasks to keep his mind off the tragic end of Hudnall and the impending pursuit of the Indians.

Pilchuck and his attendants were gone so long that the visiting hunters left for their own camps, saying they would ride over next day. Worry and uncertainty were fastening upon those men who were not seasoned Westerners. They had their own camps and buffalo hides to consider. But so far as Tom could ascertain there was not a dissenting voice against the necessity for banding together to protect themselves from Indians.

About mid-afternoon the scout and newcomer from across the river returned alone. Pilchuck was wet and muddy from contact with the river bank; and his mood, if it had undergone any change, was colder and grimmer.

"Doan, reckon I'm a blunt man, so get your nerve," he said, with his slits of piercing eyes on Tom.

"What--do you mean?" queried Tom, feeling a sudden sinking sensation of dread. Bewildered, uncertain, he could not fix his mind on any effort.

"This camp Roberts took me to was Jett's. But I think Jett got away with your girl," announced Pilchuck.

The ground seemed to fail of solidity under Tom; his legs lost their strength, and he sat down on a log.

"Don't look like that," ordered Pilchuck, sharply. "I told you the girl got away. Starwell thought the Indians made off with her.

But I reckon he's wrong there."

"Jett! Milly?" was all Tom could gasp out.

"Pull yourself together. It's a man's game we're up against.

You're no tenderfoot any more," added Pilchuck, with a tone of sympathy. "Look here. You said somethin' about your girl tyin' her red scarf up to give you a hunch where she was. Do you recognize this?"

He produced a red scarf, soiled and blackened.

With hands Tom could not hold steady to save his life he took it.

"Milly's," he said, very low.

"Reckoned so myself. Wal, we didn't need this proof to savvy Jett's camp. I'd seen his outfit. These dead men Roberts happened on belonged to Jett's outfit. I recognized the little sandy-haired teamster. An' the other was Follonsbee. Got his name from Sprague."

Then Tom found voice poignantly to beg Pilchuck to tell him everything.

"Shore it's a mess," replied the scout, as he sat down and wiped his sweaty face. "Look at them boots. I damn near drowned myself.

Wal, Jett had his camp in a place no Indians or buffalo-hunters would ever have happened on, unless they did same as Roberts.

Crossed the river there. Accident! . . . Doan, this fellow Jett is a hide thief an' he had bad men in his outfit. His camp was destroyed by Comanches all right, the same bunch that killed Hudnall. But I figure Jett escaped in a light wagon, before the Indians arrived. Follonsbee an' the other man were killed BEFORE the Indians got there. They were shot with a needle gun. An' I'm willin' to bet no Comanches have needle guns. All the same they was scalped an' mutilated, with sticks in their bellies. Starwell agreed with me that these men were killed the day or night before the Indians raided the camp."

"Had Jett--gotten away--then?" breathlessly asked Tom.

"Shore he had. I seen the light wheel tracks an' Milly's little footprints in the sand, just where she'd stepped up on the wagon.

I followed the wheel tracks far enough to see they went northeast, away from the river, an' also aimin' to pass east of these buffalo camps. Jett had a heavy load, as the wheel tracks cut deep. He also had saddle horses tied behind the wagon."

"Where'd you find Milly's scarf?" asked Tom, suddenly.

"It was tied to the back hoop of a wagon cover. Some of the canvas had been burned. There was other things, too, a towel an' apron, just as if they'd been hung up after usin'."

"Oh, it is Milly's!" exclaimed Tom, and he seemed to freeze with the dreadful significance it portended.

"So much for that. Shore the rest ain't easy to figure," went on Pilchuck. "I hate to tell you this part, Doan, because--wal, it IS worryin' . . . I found trail where a bleedin' body, mebbe more'n one, had been dragged down the bank an' slid off into the river.

That's how I come to get in such a mess. The water was deep there an' had a current, too. If we had hooks an' a boat we could drag the river, but as we haven't we can only wait. After some days corpses float up. I incline to the idee that whoever killed Follonsbee an' the other man is accountable for the bloody trail leadin' to the river. But I can't be shore. Starwell thinks different from me on some points. Reckon his opinion is worth considerin'. In my own mind I'm shore of two things--there was a fight, mebbe murder, an' SOMEBODY rode away with the girl. Then the Comanches came along, destroyed the camp, an' scalped the men."

"An' say, scout," spoke up Roberts, "you're, shore forgettin' one important fact. The Indians left there trailin' the wagon tracks."

"Ahuh, I forgot that," replied the scout, averting his gaze from Tom's. "Jett had a good start. Now if he kept travelin' all night--"

"But it looks as if he had no knowledge of the Indians comin'," interrupted Tom, intensely.

"Shore. All the same, Jett was gettin' away from somethin'. He'd rustle far before campin'," continued the scout, doggedly bent on hoping for the best.

This was not lost on Tom nor the gloomy cast of Pilchuck's lean face. Tom could not feel anything save black despair. Either Jett had the girl or the Indians had her--and the horror seemed that one was as terrible as the other.

Tom sought his tent, there to plunge down and surrender to panic and misery.

Next morning the hunters round their early camp fires were interested to hear a low thunder of running buffalo. It floated across the river from the south and steadily grew louder.

"That darned herd comin' back," said Pilchuck, uneasily. "I don't like it. Shore they're liable to cross the river an' stampede the main herd."

An hour later a hunter from below rode in to say that buffalo by the thousands were fording the river five miles below.

Pilchuck threw up his hands.

"I reckoned so. Wal, we've got to make the best of it. What with raidin' Comanches an' stampedin' buffalo we're done for this summer-- as far as any big haul of hides is concerned."

Men new to the hunting fields did not see the signs of the times as Pilchuck and the other scouts read them; and they were about equally divided for and against an active campaign against the Indians.

A good many hunters along the Pease continued their hide-hunting, indifferent to the appeal and warning of those who knew what had to be done.

The difficulty lay in getting word to the outfits scattered all over northern Texas. For when the buffalo-hunters organized to make war upon the marauders, that meant a general uprising and banding together of Comanches, Kiowas, Arapahoes, and Cheyennes.

Also there were Apaches on the Staked Plain, and they, too, according to reports, were in uneasy mood. Therefore buffalo- hunters not affiliated with the war movement, or camping in isolated places unknown to the organizers, stood in great peril of their lives.

Investigation brought out the fact that a great number of hunters from eastern Texas were on the range, not in any way connected with the experienced and time-hardened band camped on the trail of the main herd. Effort was made to get word to these eastern hunters that a general conference was to be held at Double Fork on a given date.

Over three hundred hunters attended this conference, including all the scouts, plainsmen, and well-known frontier characters known to be in the buffalo country. Buffalo Jones, already famous as a plainsman, and later known as the preserver of the buffalo, was there, as strong in his opinion that the Indian should be whipped as he was in his conviction that the slaughter of buffalo was a national blunder.

It was Jones's contention that the value and number of American buffalo were unknown to the world--that the millions that had ranged the Great Plains from Manitoba to the Rio Grande were so common as to be no more appreciated than prairie-dogs. Their utilitarian value was not understood, and now it was too late.

The Indians knew the value of the buffalo, and if they did not drive the white hunter from the range, the beasts were doomed.

"Only the buffalo-hunters can open up the Southwest to the farmer and cattleman," averred Jones. "The U. S. army can't do it. . . .

But what a pity the buffalo must go! Nature never constructed a more perfect animal."

The buffalo, according to Jones, was an evolution of the Great Plains, and singularly fitted to survive and flourish on its vast and varied environment. He estimated the number as ten million.

The blizzard of Montana or the torrid sirocco of the Staked Plain was no hindrance to the travel of the buffalo. His great, shaggy, matted head had been constructed to face the icy blasts of winter, the sandstorms and hot gales of the summer. A buffalo always faced danger, whatever it might be.

Different men addressed the council, and none were more impressive than Pilchuck.

"Men, I've lived my life on the plains. I've fought Indians all down the line from Montana. I've seen for a long time that we buffalo-hunters have got to fight these Southern tribes or quit huntin'. If we don't kill off the buffalo there'll never be any settlin' of northern Texas. We've got to KILL the Comanches, an' lick the Kiowas, Cheyennes, an' Arapahoes. I reckon we'll have to deal with Apaches, too. . . . Now the Indians are scattered all over, same as the buffalo-hunters. We can't organize one expedition. There ought to be several big outfits of men, well equipped, strikin' at these Indians already on the warpath. . . .

We hunters along the Pease River divide will answer for that section. There's a bunch of Comanches been raidin', an' are now hidin' up in the Staked Plain. Outfits ought to take care of the Brazos River district an' also the Red River. . . . Now there's one more point I want to drive home. Camps an' outfits should be moved close together in these several districts that expect to send out fightin' men. An' an equal or even strong force should be left behind to protect these camp posts. Last, I shore hope the tenderfoot hunters will have sense enough to collect at these posts, even if they won't fight the Indians. For there's goin' to be hell. This will be a fight for the buffalo--the Indians fightin' to SAVE the buffalo an' the white men fightin' to KILL the buffalo. It'll be a buffalo war, an' I reckon right hereabouts, halfway between the Brazos an' Fort Elliott, will see the hottest of it. I just want every man of you who may be on the fence about fightin', an' mebbe doubtin' my words, to go out an' look at the ACRES AN' ACRES of buffalo hides, an' then ask himself if the Indians are goin' to stand that."

The old scout turned the tide in favor of general arming against the tribes on all points of the range. Then Pilchuck, with his contingent from the Pease River, left for their own camps, four days' travel, determined to take the field at once against the Comanches.

They visited every camp on the way south and solicited volunteers, arriving at Pease River with twenty-seven men ready to follow Pilchuck to the end. One of these was a friendly Osage Indian scout called Bear Claws by the men; another a Mexican who had been a scout in the United States army service and was reported to know every trail and water hole in the wild Staked Plain.

But Pilchuck, elated by his success in stirring up the hunters to the north, was fated to meet with a check down on the Pease River.