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CHAPTER 3. THE LAST HERD
Over gray No-Man's-Land stole down the shadows of night.
The undulating prairie shaded dark to the western horizon, rimmed with a fading
streak of light.
Tall figures, silhouetted sharply against the last golden glow of sunset, marked the
rounded crest of a grassy knoll. "Wild hunter!" cried a voice in sullen
rage, "buffalo or no, we halt here.
Did Adams and I hire to cross the Staked Plains?
Two weeks in No-Man's-Land, and now we're facing the sand!
We've one keg of water, yet you want to keep on.
Why, man, you're crazy! You didn't tell us you wanted buffalo
alive.
And here you've got us looking death in the eye!"
In the grim silence that ensued the two men unhitched the team from the long, light
wagon, while the buffalo hunter staked out his wiry, lithe-limbed racehorses.
Soon a fluttering blaze threw a circle of light, which shone on the agitated face of
Rude and Adams, and the cold, iron-set visage of their brawny leader.
"It's this way," began Jones, in slow, cool voice; "I engaged you fellows, and you
promised to stick by me. We've had no luck.
But I've finally found sign--old sign, I'll admit the buffalo I'm looking for--the last
herd on the plains. For two years I've been hunting this herd.
So have other hunters.
Millions of buffalo have been killed and left to rot.
Soon this herd will be gone, and then the only buffalo in the world will be those I
have given ten years of the hardest work in capturing.
This is the last herd, I say, and my last chance to capture a calf or two.
Do you imagine I'd quit? You fellows go back if you want, but I keep
on."
"We can't go back. We're lost.
We'll have to go with you. But, man, thirst is not the only risk we
run.
This is Comanche country. And if that herd is in here the Indians
have it spotted." "That worries me some," replied the
plainsman, "but we'll keep on it."
They slept. The night wind swished the grasses; dark
storm clouds blotted out the northern stars; the prairie wolves mourned dismally.
Day broke cold, wan, threatening, under a leaden sky.
The hunters traveled thirty miles by noon, and halted in a hollow where a stream
flowed in wet season.
Cottonwood trees were bursting into green; thickets of prickly thorn, dense and
matted, showed bright spring buds. "What is it?" suddenly whispered Rude.
The plainsman lay in strained posture, his ear against the ground.
"Hide the wagon and horses in the clump of cottonwoods," he ordered, tersely.
Springing to his feet, he ran to the top of the knoll above the hollow, where he again
placed his ear to the ground.
Jones's practiced ear had detected the quavering rumble of far-away, thundering
hoofs. He searched the wide waste of plain with
his powerful glass.
To the southwest, miles distant, a cloud of dust mushroomed skyward.
"Not buffalo," he muttered, "maybe wild horses."
He watched and waited.
The yellow cloud rolled forward, enlarging, spreading out, and drove before it a darkly
indistinct, moving mass. As soon as he had one good look at this he
ran back to his comrades.
"Stampede! Wild horses!
Indians! Look to your rifles and hide!"
Wordless and pale, the men examined their Sharps, and made ready to follow Jones.
He slipped into the thorny brake and, flat on his stomach, wormed his way like a snake
far into the thickly interlaced web of branches.
Rude and Adams crawled after him.
Words were superfluous. Quiet, breathless, with beating hearts, the
hunters pressed close to the dry grass.
A long, low, steady rumble filled the air, and increased in volume till it became a
roar. Moments, endless moments, passed.
The roar filled out like a flood slowly released from its confines to sweep down
with the sound of doom.
The ground began to tremble and quake: the light faded; the smell of dust pervaded the
thicket, then a continuous streaming roar, deafening as persistent roll of thunder,
pervaded the hiding place.
The stampeding horses had split round the hollow.
The roar lessened.
Swiftly as a departing snow-squall rushing on through the pines, the thunderous thud
and *** of hoofs died away. The trained horses hidden in the
cottonwoods never stirred.
"Lie low! lie low!" breathed the plainsman to his companions.
Throb of hoofs again became audible, not loud and madly pounding as those that had
passed, but low, muffled, rhythmic.
Jones's sharp eye, through a peephole in the thicket, saw a cream-colored mustang
bob over the knoll, carrying an Indian. Another and another, then a swiftly
following, close-packed throng appeared.
Bright red feathers and white gleamed; weapons glinted; gaunt, bronzed savage
leaned forward on racy, slender mustangs. The plainsman shrank closer to the ground.
"Apache!" he exclaimed to himself, and gripped his rifle.
The band galloped down to the hollow, and slowing up, piled single file over the
bank.
The leader, a short, squat chief, plunged into the brake not twenty yards from the
hidden men. Jones recognized the cream mustang; he knew
the somber, sinister, broad face.
It belonged to the Red Chief of the Apaches.
"Geronimo!" murmured the plainsman through his teeth.
Well for the Apache that no falcon savage eye discovered aught strange in the little
hollow! One look at the sand of the stream bed
would have cost him his life.
But the Indians crossed the thicket too far up; they cantered up the slope and
disappeared. The hoof-beats softened and ceased.
"Gone?" whispered Rude.
"Gone. But wait," whispered Jones.
He knew the savage nature, and he knew how to wait.
After a long time, he cautiously crawled out of the thicket and searched the
surroundings with a plainsman's eye.
He climbed the slope and saw the clouds of dust, the near one small, the far one
large, which told him all he needed to know.
"Comanches?" queried Adams, with a quaver in his voice.
He was new to the plains. "Likely," said Jones, who thought it best
not to tell all he knew.
Then he added to himself: "We've no time to lose.
There's water back here somewhere.
The Indians have spotted the buffalo, and were running the horses away from the
water."
The three got under way again, proceeding carefully, so as not to raise the dust, and
headed due southwest.
Scantier and scantier grew the grass; the hollows were washes of sand; steely gray
dunes, like long, flat, ocean swells, ribbed the prairie.
The gray day declined.
Late into the purple night they traveled, then camped without fire.
In the gray morning Jones climbed a high ride and scanned the southwest.
Low dun-colored sandhills waved from him down and down, in slow, deceptive descent.
A solitary and remote waste reached out into gray infinitude.
A pale lake, gray as the rest of that gray expanse, glimmered in the distance.
"Mirage!" he muttered, focusing his glass, which only magnified all under the dead
gray, steely sky.
"Water must be somewhere; but can that be it?
It's too pale and elusive to be real. No life--a blasted, staked plain!
Hello!"
A thin, black, wavering line of wild fowl, moving in beautiful, rapid flight, crossed
the line of his vision. "Geese flying north, and low.
There's water here," he said.
He followed the flock with his glass, saw them circle over the lake, and vanish in
the gray sheen. "It's water."
He hurried back to camp.
His haggard and worn companions scorned his discovery.
Adams siding with Rude, who knew the plains, said: "Mirage! the lure of the
desert!"
Yet dominated by a force too powerful for them to resist, they followed the buffalo-
hunter. All day the gleaming lake beckoned them
onward, and seemed to recede.
All day the drab clouds scudded before the cold north wind.
In the gray twilight, the lake suddenly lay before them, as if it had opened at their
feet.
The men rejoiced, the horses lifted their noses and sniffed the damp air.
The whinnies of the horses, the clank of harness, and splash of water, the whirl of
ducks did not blur out of Jones's keen ear a sound that made him jump.
It was the thump of hoofs, in a familiar beat, beat, beat.
He saw a shadow moving up a ridge.
Soon, outlined black against the yet light sky, a lone buffalo cow stood like a
statue.
A moment she held toward the lake, studying the danger, then went out of sight over the
ridge.
Jones spurred his horse up the ascent, which was rather long and steep, but he
mounted the summit in time to see the cow join eight huge, shaggy buffalo.
The hunter reined in his horse, and standing high in his stirrups, held his hat
at arms' length over his head. So he thrilled to a moment he had sought
for two years.
The last herd of American bison was near at hand.
The cow would not venture far from the main herd; the eight stragglers were the old
broken-down bulls that had been expelled, at this season, from the herd by younger
and more vigorous bulls.
The old monarchs saw the hunter at the same time his eyes were gladdened by sight of
them, and lumbered away after the cow, to disappear in the gathering darkness.
Frightened buffalo always make straight for their fellows; and this knowledge contented
Jones to return to the lake, well satisfied that the herd would not be far away in the
morning, within easy striking distance by daylight.
At dark the storm which had threatened for days, broke in a fury of rain, sleet and
hail.
The hunters stretched a piece of canvas over the wheels of the north side of the
wagon, and wet and shivering, crawled under it to their blankets.
During the night the storm raged with unabated strength.
Dawn, forbidding and raw, lightened to the whistle of the sleety gusts.
Fire was out of the question.
Chary of weight, the hunters had carried no wood, and the buffalo chips they used for
fuel were lumps of ice.
Grumbling, Adams and Rude ate a cold breakfast, while Jones, munching a biscuit,
faced the biting blast from the crest of the ridge.
The middle of the plain below held a ragged, circular mass, as still as stone.
It was the buffalo herd, with every shaggy head to the storm.
So they would stand, never budging from their tracks, till the blizzard of sleet
was over.
Jones, though eager and impatient, restrained himself, for it was unwise to
begin operations in the storm. There was nothing to do but wait.
Ill fared the hunters that day.
Food had to be eaten uncooked. The long hours dragged by with the little
group huddled under icy blankets. When darkness fell, the sleet changed to
drizzling rain.
This blew over at midnight, and a colder wind, penetrating to the very marrow of the
sleepless men, made their condition worse. In the after part of the night, the wolves
howled mournfully.
With a gray, misty light appearing in the east, Jones threw off his stiff, ice-
incased blanket, and crawled out.
A gaunt gray wolf, the color of the day and the sand and the lake, sneaked away,
looking back.
While moving and threshing about to warm his frozen blood, Jones munched another
biscuit. Five men crawled from under the wagon, and
made an unfruitful search for the whisky.
Fearing it, Jones had thrown the bottle away.
The men cursed. The patient horses drooped sadly, and
shivered in the lee of the improvised tent.
Jones kicked the inch-thick casing of ice from his saddle.
Kentuck, his racer, had been spared on the whole trip for this day's work.
The thoroughbred was cold, but as Jones threw the saddle over him, he showed that
he knew the chase ahead, and was eager to be off.
At last, after repeated efforts with his benumbed fingers, Jones got the girths
tight. He tied a bunch of soft cords to the saddle
and mounted.
"Follow as fast as you can," he called to his surly men.
"The buffs will run north against the wind. This is the right direction for us; we'll
soon leave the sand.
Stick to my trail and come a-humming." From the ridge he met the red sun, rising
bright, and a keen northeasterly wind that lashed like a whip.
As he had anticipated, his quarry had moved northward.
Kentuck let out into a swinging stride, which in an hour had the loping herd in
sight.
Every jump now took him upon higher ground, where the sand failed, and the grass grew
thicker and began to bend under the wind.
In the teeth of the nipping gale Jones slipped close upon the herd without
alarming even a cow. More than a hundred little reddish-black
calves leisurely loped in the rear.
Kentuck, keen to his work, crept on like a wolf, and the hunter's great fist clenched
the coiled lasso. Before him expanded a boundless plain.
A situation long cherished and dreamed of had become a reality.
Kentuck, fresh and strong, was good for all day.
Jones gloated over the little red bulls and heifers, as a miser gloats over gold and
jewels.
Never before had he caught more than two in one day, and often it had taken days to
capture one.
This was the last herd, this the last opportunity toward perpetuating a grand
race of beasts. And with born instinct he saw ahead the day
of his life.
At a touch, Kentuck closed in, and the buffalo, seeing him, stampeded into the
heaving roll so well known to the hunter.
Racing on the right flank of the herd, Jones selected a tawny heifer and shot the
lariat after her.
It fell true, but being stiff and *** from the sleet, failed to tighten, and the
quick calf leaped through the loop to freedom.
Undismayed the pursuer quickly recovered his rope.
Again he whirled and sent the loop. Again it circled true, and failed to close;
again the agile heifer bounded through it.
Jones whipped the air with the stubborn rope.
To lose a chance like that was worse than boy's work.
The third whirl, running a smaller loop, tightened the coil round the frightened
calf just back of its ears.
A pull on the bridle brought Kentuck to a halt in his tracks, and the baby buffalo
rolled over and over in the grass. Jones bounced from his seat and ***
loose a couple of the soft cords.
In a twinkling; his big knee crushed down on the calf, and his big hands bound it
helpless. Kentuck neighed.
Jones saw his black ears go up.
Danger threatened. For a moment the hunter's blood turned
chill, not from fear, for he never felt fear, but because he thought the Indians
were returning to ruin his work.
His eye swept the plain. Only the gray forms of wolves flitted
through the grass, here, there, all about him.
Wolves!
They were as fatal to his enterprise as savages.
A trooping pack of prairie wolves had fallen in with the herd and hung close on
the trail, trying to cut a calf away from its mother.
The gray brutes boldly trotted to within a few yards of him, and slyly looked at him,
with pale, fiery eyes. They had already scented his captive.
Precious time flew by; the situation, critical and baffling, had never before
been met by him.
There lay his little calf tied fast, and to the north ran many others, some of which he
must--he would have. To think quickly had meant the solving of
many a plainsman's problem.
Should he stay with his prize to save it, or leave it to be devoured?
"Ha! you old gray devils!" he yelled, shaking his fist at the wolves.
"I know a trick or two."
Slipping his hat between the legs of the calf, he fastened it securely.
This done, he vaulted on Kentuck, and was off with never a backward glance.
Certain it was that the wolves would not touch anything, alive or dead, that bore
the scent of a human being.
The bison scoured away a long half-mile in the lead, sailing northward like a cloud-
shadow over the plain.
Kentuck, mettlesome, over-eager, would have run himself out in short order, but the
wary hunter, strong to restrain as well as impel, with the long day in his mind, kept
the steed in his easy stride, which,
springy and stretching, overhauled the herd in the course of several miles.
A dash, a swirl, a shock, a leap, horse and hunter working in perfect accord, and a
fine big calf, bellowing lustily, struggled desperately for freedom under the
remorseless knee.
The big hands toyed with him; and then, secure in the double knots, the calf lay
still, sticking out his tongue and rolling his eyes, with the coat of the hunter
tucked under his bonds to keep away the wolves.
The race had but begun; the horse had but warmed to his work; the hunter had but
tasted of sweet triumph.
Another hopeful of a buffalo mother, negligent in danger, truant from his
brothers, stumbled and fell in the enmeshing loop.
The hunter's vest, slipped over the calf's neck, served as danger signal to the
wolves.
Before the lumbering buffalo missed their loss, another red and black baby kicked
helplessly on the grass and sent up vain, weak calls, and at last lay still, with the
hunter's boot tied to his cords.
Four! Jones counted them aloud, add in his mind,
and kept on.
Fast, hard work, covering upward of fifteen miles, had begun to tell on herd, horse and
man, and all slowed down to the call for strength.
The fifth time Jones closed in on his game, he encountered different circumstances such
as called forth his cunning.
The herd had opened up; the mothers had fallen back to the rear; the calves hung
almost out of sight under the shaggy sides of protectors.
To try them out Jones darted close and threw his lasso.
It struck a cow. With activity incredible in such a huge
beast, she lunged at him.
Kentuck, expecting just such a move, wheeled to safety.
This duel, ineffectual on both sides, kept up for a while, and all the time, man and
herd were jogging rapidly to the north.
Jones could not let well enough alone; he acknowledged this even as he swore he must
have five.
Emboldened by his marvelous luck, and yielding headlong to the passion within, he
threw caution to the winds.
A lame old cow with a red calf caught his eye; in he spurred his willing horse and
slung his rope. It stung the haunch of the mother.
The mad grunt she vented was no quicker than the velocity with which she plunged
and reared. Jones had but time to swing his leg over
the saddle when the hoofs beat down.
Kentuck rolled on the plain, flinging his rider from him.
The infuriated buffalo lowered her head for the fatal charge on the horse, when the
plainsman, jerking out his heavy Colts, shot her dead in her tracks.
Kentuck got to his feet unhurt, and stood his ground, quivering but ready, showing
his steadfast courage.
He showed more, for his ears lay back, and his eyes had the gleam of the animal that
strikes back. The calf ran round its mother.
Jones lassoed it, and tied it down, being compelled to cut a piece from his lasso, as
the cords on the saddle had given out. He left his other boot with baby number
five.
The still heaving, smoking body of the victim called forth the stern, intrepid
hunter's pity for a moment. Spill of blood he had not wanted.
But he had not been able to avoid it; and mounting again with close-shut jaw and
smoldering eye, he galloped to the north.
Kentuck snorted; the pursuing wolves shied off in the grass; the pale sun began to
slant westward. The cold iron stirrups froze and cut the
hunter's bootless feet.
When once more he came hounding the buffalo, they were considerably winded.
Short-tufted tails, raised stiffly, gave warning.
Snorts, like puffs of escaping steam, and deep grunts from cavernous chests evinced
anger and impatience that might, at any moment, bring the herd to a defiant stand.
He whizzed the shortened noose over the head of a calf that was laboring painfully
to keep up, and had slipped down, when a mighty grunt told him of peril.
Never looking to see whence it came, he sprang into the saddle.
Fiery Kentuck jumped into action, then hauled up with a shock that almost threw
himself and rider.
The lasso, fast to the horse, and its loop end round the calf, had caused the sudden
check. A maddened cow bore down on Kentuck.
The gallant horse straightened in a jump, but dragging the calf pulled him in a
circle, and in another moment he was running round and round the howling,
kicking pivot.
Then ensued a terrible race, with horse and bison describing a twenty-foot circle.
***! ***!
The hunter fired two shots, and heard the spats of the bullets.
But they only augmented the frenzy of the beast.
Faster Kentuck flew, snorting in terror; closer drew the dusty, bouncing pursuer;
the calf spun like a top; the lasso strung tighter than wire.
Jones strained to loosen the fastening, but in vain.
He swore at his carelessness in dropping his knife by the last calf he had tied.
He thought of shooting the rope, yet dared not risk the shot.
A hollow sound turned him again, with the Colts leveled.
***!
Dust flew from the ground beyond the bison. The two charges left in the gun were all
that stood between him and eternity.
With a desperate display of strength Jones threw his weight in a backward pull, and
hauled Kentuck up.
Then he leaned far back in the saddle, and shoved the Colts out beyond the horse's
flank. Down went the broad head, with its black,
glistening horns.
***! She slid forward with a crash, plowing the
ground with hoofs and nose--spouted blood, uttered a hoarse cry, kicked and died.
Kentuck, for once completely terrorized, reared and plunged from the cow, dragging
the calf. Stern command and iron arm forced him to a
standstill.
The calf, nearly strangled, recovered when the noose was slipped, and moaned a feeble
protest against life and captivity.
The remainder of Jones's lasso went to bind number six, and one of his socks went to
serve as reminder to the persistent wolves. "Six! On! On! Kentuck! On!"
Weakening, but unconscious of it, with bloody hands and feet, without lasso, and
with only one charge in his revolver, hatless, coatless, vestless, bootless, the
wild hunter urged on the noble horse.
The herd had gained miles in the interval of the fight.
Game to the backbone, Kentuck lengthened out to overhaul it, and slowly the rolling
gap lessened and lessened.
A long hour thumped away, with the rumble growing nearer.
Once again the lagging calves dotted the grassy plain before the hunter.
He dashed beside a burly calf, grasped its tail, stopped his horse, and jumped.
The calf went down with him, and did not come up.
The knotted, blood-stained hands, like claws of steel, bound the hind legs close
and fast with a leathern belt, and left between them a torn and bloody sock.
"Seven!
On! Old Faithfull! We MUST have another! the last!
This is your day." The blood that flecked the hunter was not
all his own.
The sun slanted westwardly toward the purpling horizon; the grassy plain gleamed
like a ruffled sea of glass; the gray wolves loped on.
When next the hunter came within sight of the herd, over a wavy ridge, changes in its
shape and movement met his gaze.
The calves were almost done; they could run no more; their mothers faced the south, and
trotted slowly to and fro; the bulls were grunting, herding, piling close.
It looked as if the herd meant to stand and fight.
This mattered little to the hunter who had captured seven calves since dawn.
The first limping calf he reached tried to elude the grasping hand and failed.
Kentuck had been trained to wheel to the right or left, in whichever way his rider
leaned; and as Jones bent over and caught an upraised tail, the horse turned to
strike the calf with both front hoofs.
The calf rolled; the horse plunged down; the rider sped beyond to the dust.
Though the calf was tired, he still could bellow, and he filled the air with robust
bawls.
Jones all at once saw twenty or more buffalo dash in at him with fast,
twinkling, short legs. With the thought of it, he was in the air
to the saddle.
As the black, round mounds charged from every direction, Kentuck let out with all
there was left in him. He leaped and whirled, pitched and swerved,
in a roaring, clashing, dusty melee.
Beating hoofs threw the turf, flying tails whipped the air, and everywhere were dusky,
sharp-pointed heads, tossing low. Kentuck squeezed out unscathed.
The mob of bison, bristling, turned to lumber after the main herd.
Jones seized his opportunity and rode after them, yelling with all his might.
He drove them so hard that soon the little fellows lagged paces behind.
Only one or two old cows straggled with the calves.
Then wheeling Kentuck, he cut between the herd and a calf, and rode it down.
Bewildered, the tously little bull bellowed in great affright.
The hunter seized the stiff tail, and calling to his horse, leaped off.
But his strength was far spent and the buffalo, larger than his fellows, threshed
about and *** in terror.
Jones threw it again and again. But it struggled up, never once ceasing its
loud demands for help. Finally the hunter tripped it up and fell
upon it with his knees.
Above the rumble of retreating hoofs, Jones heard the familiar short, quick, jarring
pound on the turf. Kentuck neighed his alarm and raced to the
right.
Bearing down on the hunter, hurtling through the air, was a giant furry mass,
instinct with fierce life and power--a buffalo cow robbed of her young.
With his senses almost numb, barely able to pull and raise the Colt, the plainsman
willed to live, and to keep his captive. His leveled arm wavered like a leaf in a
storm.
***! Fire, smoke, a shock, a jarring crash, and
silence! The calf stirred beneath him.
He put out a hand to touch a warm, furry coat.
The mother had fallen beside him.
Lifting a heavy hoof, he laid it over the neck of the calf to serve as additional
weight. He lay still and listened.
The rumble of the herd died away in the distance.
The evening waned. Still the hunter lay quiet.
From time to time the calf struggled and bellowed.
Lank, gray wolves appeared on all sides; they prowled about with hungry howls, and
shoved black-tipped noses through the grass.
The sun sank, and the sky paled to opal blue.
A star shone out, then another, and another.
Over the prairie slanted the first dark shadow of night.
Suddenly the hunter laid his ear to the ground, and listened.
Faint beats, like throbs of a pulsing heart, shuddered from the soft turf.
Stronger they grew, till the hunter raised his head.
Dark forms approached; voices broke the silence; the creaking of a wagon scared
away the wolves. "This way!" shouted the hunter weakly.
"Ha! here he is.
Hurt?" cried Rude, vaulting the wheel. "Tie up this calf.
How many--did you find?" The voice grew fainter.
"Seven--alive, and in good shape, and all your clothes."
But the last words fell on unconscious ears.