CHAPTER 11

Morning came, and Pilchuck had the men stirring early. When Tom walked out to the camp fire dawn was brightening, and there was a low roll of thunder from the eastward.

“We’re in for a thunderstorm,” he said to the scout, who was cooking breakfast.

“Storm, mebbe, but not thunder-an’-lightnin’ storm,” replied Pilchuck. “That sound you hear is new to you. It’s a stampede of buffalo.”

“Is that so?… Say, how like thunder!”

“Yep, we plainsmen call it the thunderin’ herd. But this isn’t the main herd on the rampage. Somethin’, most likely Indians, has scared the buffalo across the river. They’ve been runnin’ south for an hour. More buffalo over there than I had an idee of.”

“Yes, I saw miles of scattered herds as I rode up the river,” said Tom.

“I smell smoke, too, an’ fact is, Doan, I don’t like things a damn bit. If the main herd stampedes–holy Moses! I want to be on top of the Staked Plain. Reckon, though, that’s just where we’ll be.”

“You’re going after the Comanches?” inquired Tom, seriously.

“Wal, I reckon. It’s got to be done if we’re to hunt buffalo in peace.”

Burn Hudnall presented himself at the camp fire, his face haggard with grief; but he was now composed. He sat at breakfast as usual, and later did his share of the tasks. Not long afterward Starwell and his men rode into camp, heavily armed and formidable in appearance.

“Jude, what you make of that stampede across the river?” he asked, after greetings were exchanged.

“Wal, I ain’t makin’ much, but I don’t like it.”

“We heerd shootin’ yesterday at daylight down along the river from our camp,” returned Starwell. “Small-bore guns, an’ I don’t calkilate hunters was shootin’ rabbits for breakfast.”

“Ahuh! Wal, after we come back from buryin’ Hudnall we’ll take stock of what’s goin’ on,” said Pilchuck. “By that time camp will be full of hunters, I reckon.”

“Hardy rode twenty miles an’ more down the river, gettin’ back late last night. He said there’d be every outfit represented here this mornin’.”

“Good. We kept the horses picketed last night, an’ we’ll be saddled in a jiffy.”

Burn Hudnall led that band of mounted men up on the prairie and southwest toward the scene of yesterday’s tragedy. The morning was hot; whirlwinds of dust were rising, like columns of yellow smoke; the prairie looked lonesome and vast; far out toward the Staked Plain showed a dim ragged line of buffalo. Across the river the prairie was obscured in low covering of dust, like rising clouds. The thunder of hoofs had died away.

Tom Doan, riding with these silent, somber men, felt a strong beat of his pulse that was at variance with the oppression of his mind. He was to be in the thick of wild events.

In perhaps half an hour the trotting horses drew within sight of black dots on the prairie, and toward these Burn Hudnall headed. They were dead and unskinned buffalo. Presently Burn halted alongside the first carcass, that of a bull, half skinned.

“Here’s where I was, when the Indians came in sight over that ridge,” said Burn, huskily. “Father must be lyin’ over there.”

He pointed toward where a number of black woolly dead buffalo lay scattered over the green plain, and rode toward them. Presently Pilchuck took the lead. His keen eye no doubt had espied the corpse of Hudnall, for as he passed Burn he said, “Reckon it’d be more sense for you not to look at him.”

Burn did not reply, but rode on as before. Pilchuck drew ahead and Starwell joined him. The riders scattered somewhat, some trotting forward, and others walking their horses. Then the leaders dismounted.

“Somebody hold Burn back,” shouted Pilchuck, his bronze face flashing in the sunlight.

But though several of the riders, and lastly Tom, endeavored to restrain Burn, he was not to be stopped. Not the last was he to view his father’s remains.

“Reckon it’s Comanche work,” declared Pilchuck, in a voice that cut.

Hudnall’s giant body lay, half nude, in grotesque and terrible suggestiveness. He had been shot many times, as was attested to by bullet holes in his torn and limp limbs. His scalp had been literally torn off, his face gashed, and his abdomen ripped open. From the last wound projected buffalo grass which had been rammed into it.

All the hunters gazed in silence down upon the ghastly spectacle. Then from Burn Hudnall burst an awful cry.

“Take him away, somebody,” ordered Pilchuck. Then after several of the hunters had led the stricken son aside the scout added: “Tough on a tenderfoot! But he would look. Reckon it’d be good for all newcomers to see such a sight… Now, men, I’ll keep watch for Comanches while you bury poor Hudnall. Rustle, for it wouldn’t surprise me to see a bunch of the devils come ridin’ over that ridge.”

With pick and shovel a deep grave was soon dug, and Hudnall’s body, wrapped in a blanket, was lowered into it. Then the earth was filled in and stamped down hard. Thus the body of the careless, cheerful, kindly Hudnall was consigned to an unmarked grave on the windy prairie.

Pilchuck found the tracks of the wagon, and the trail of the Comanches heading straight for the Staked Plain.

“Wal, Star, that’s as we reckoned,” declared the scout.

“Shore is,” replied Starwell. “They stole wagon, hosses, gun, hides –everythin’ Hudnall had out here.”

“Reckon we’ll hear more about this bunch before the day’s over. Must have been fifty Indians an’ they have a habit of ridin’ fast and raidin’ more’n one place at a time.”

“Jude, my idee is they’d not have taken the wagon if they meant to make another raid,” said Starwell.

“Reckon you’re right. Wal, we’ll rustle back to camp.”

More than thirty hunters, representatives of the outfits within reaching distance of Hudnall’s, were assembled at camp when the riders returned from their sad mission. All appeared eager to learn the news, and many of them had tidings to impart.

An old white-haired hunter declared vigorously: “By Gord! we air goin’ to give the buffalo a rest an’ the Injuns a chase!”

That indeed seemed the prevailing sentiment.

“Men, before we talk of organizin’ let’s get a line on what’s been goin’ on,” said Pilchuck.

Whereupon the hunters grouped themselves in the shade of the cottonwoods, like Indians in Council. The scout told briefly the circumstances surrounding the murder of Hudnall, and said he would leave his deductions for later. Then he questioned the visiting hunters in turn.

Rathbone’s camp, thirty miles west, on a creek running down out of the Staked Plain, had been burned by Comanches, wagons and horses stolen, and the men driven off, just escaping with their lives. 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. Seventy-five of the hundred hunters who had agreed to take part in the campaign backed out, to Pilchuck’s disgust. Many of these had gone back to hunting buffalo, blind to their danger or their utter selfishness. Naturally this not only held up Pilchuck’s plan to start soon on the campaign, but also engendered bad blood.

The site of Hudnall’s camp was now the rendezvous of from twenty to thirty outfits, most of which had failed the scout. At a last conference of hunters there Pilchuck, failing to persuade half of these men to fall in line, finally delivered a stinging rebuke.

“Wal, all I got to say is you’re hangin’ behind to make money while some of us have got to go out an’ fight to protect you.”

One of these reluctants was a young man named Cosgrove, a hard-drinking loud-mouthed fellow with whom Tom Doan had clashed before, on the same issue.

Tom had been a faithful and tireless follower of Pilchuck, as much from loyalty to the cause as from desire for revenge on the Comanches, whom he was now convinced had either killed or carried off Milly Fayre. No authentic clue of Jett’s escape or death had been found, but vague rumors of this and that, and more destroyed camps toward the north, especially a one-night-stand camp with a single wagon and but few horses, had at last stricken Tom’s last remnant of hope.

Accordingly, Tom’s state of mind was not conducive to tolerance, especially of such greed and selfishness as was manifested by some of the hunters.

Cosgrove was louder than usual in voicing his opinions.

“Aw, to hell with the Indians,” he said. “I’m a-goin’ to keep on huntin’ buffalo. It’s nothin’ to me who goes off on wild-goose chases.”

“Cosgrove, you won’t be missed, that’s sure,” retorted Tom.

“What d’ye mean?” demanded the other, his red, bloated face taking on an ugly look. He swaggered over to Tom. There was a crowd present, some thoughtful, many indifferent.

“I mean we don’t want such fellows as you,” replied Tom.

“An’ why not? Didn’t Pilchuck just ask me?”

“Sure. He’s asked a couple of hundred men, and lots of them are like you –AFRAID TO GO!”

“What!” shouted Cosgrove, hotly.

“We’ll be better off without cowards like you,” returned Tom, deliberately standing up, strung for any move.

“You’re a liar!” flashed Cosgrove, advancing threateningly.

Tom knocked him down. Then, as Cosgrove, cursing with rage, scrambled to his knees and drew his gun, the crowd scattered away on each side. All save Pilchuck, who knocked the half-leveled gun out of Cosgrove’s hand and kicked it far aside.

“Hyar!” yelled the scout, sternly. “You might get hurt, throwin’ a gun that way. I’m advisin’ you to cool down.”

“He needn’t, far as I’m concerned,” spoke up Tom, ringingly. “Let him have his gun.”

Pilchuck wheeled to see Tom standing stiff, gun in hand.

“You young rooster!” ejaculated Pilchuck, in surprise and disapproval. “Put that gun up an’ rustle back to camp.”

Thus had Tom Doan at last answered to the wildness of the buffalo range.

Worse, however, grew out of that incident, though it did not affect Tom Doan in any way.

One of Pilchuck’s lieutenants was a Texan known on the range as Spades Harkaway, a man to be feared in a quarrel. He had been present when Tom had knocked down young Cosgrove, and later he had taken exception to the talk of a man named Hurd, who was in the same outfit with Cosgrove.

Rumor of a fight reached Hudnall’s camp that night, but not until next day were the facts known. Hurd had denounced Pilchuck’s campaign, which had brought sharp reply from Harkaway. Bystanders came between the men at the moment, but later the two met again in Starwell’s camp. Hurd had been imbibing red liquor and Harkaway had no intention of avoiding trouble. Again the question of Pilchuck’s Indian campaign was raised by Hurd and coarsely derided. To this Harkaway had answered, first with a flaming arraignment of those hunters who meant to let Pilchuck’s company stand the brunt of the fighting, and secondly with short, cutting contempt for Hurd. Then the latter, as the story came, had shot at Harkaway from behind other men. There followed a bad mess, in which the Texan killed Hurd and crippled one of his friends.

These fights traveling along the shortened lines of camp, brought the question to a heated pitch and split the hunters in that district. The majority, however, turned out to be on the side of the Hurd and Cosgrove type. Pilchuck had over fifty men to take on his campaign, and about the same number to remain behind to protect camps and hides. These men were to continue to hunt buffalo, but only on limited parts of the range near the camps, and always under the eyes of scouts patrolling the prairie, with keen eyes on the lookout to prevent surprise. Over twenty outfits, numbering nearly seventy-five men, who had not the nerve to fight Indians or to remain on the range, left that district for Fort Elliott and Sprague’s Post, to remain until the Indian trouble was ended.