“Tell us about it,” I suggested, in a matter of fact, round-the-campfire voice. Had the silent plainsman ever told a complete and full story of his adventures? I doubted it. He was not the man to eulogize himself.
A short silence ensued. The cabin was snug and warm; the ruddy embers glowed; one of Jim’s pots steamed musically and fragrantly. The hounds lay curled in the cozy chimney corner.
Jones began to talk again, simply and unaffectedly, of his famous exploit; and as he went on so modestly, passing lightly over features we recognized as wonderful, I allowed the fire of my imagination to fuse for myself all the toil, patience, endurance, skill, herculean strength and marvelous courage and unfathomable passion which he slighted in his narrative.
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 tramp 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