The Girl at the Halfway House Part 6

"Do hit, Ma.s.s' William," replied the coloured woman at once with conviction, and extending an energetic forefinger. "You jess do whut this yer man says. Ef they's any money to be made a-cookin', I kin do all the cookin' ever you wants, ef you-all kin git anything to cook.

Yas, suh!"

"You ain't makin' no mistake," resumed Sam. "You go in and git your land filed on, and put you up a sod house or dugout for the first season, because lumber's awful high out here. It's pretty late to do anything with a crop this year, even if you had any breakin' done, but you can take your team and gether bones this fall and winter, and that'll make you a good livin', too. You can git some young stock out of the trail cattle fer a'most anything you want to give, and you can hold your bunch in here on the White Woman when you git started. You can cut a little hay a little lower down on the White Woman for your team, or they can range out in here all winter and do well, just like your cows can. You can git a lot of stock about you before long, and what with keepin' a sort of eatin' station and ranchin' it a bit, you ought to git along mighty well, I should say. But--'scuse me, have you ever farmed it much?"

"Well, sir," said Buford, slowly, "I used to plant corn and cotton, back in Kentucky, befo' the war."

"And you come from Kentucky out here?"

"Not precisely that; no, sir. I moved to Missouri from Kentucky after the war, and came from Missouri here."

Sam looked at him, puzzled. "I allowed you'd never ranched it much,"

he said, vaguely. "How'd you happen to come out here?"

The quizzical smile again crossed Buford's face. "I think I shall have to give that up, on my honour," he said. "We just seem to have started on West, and to have kept going until we got here. It seemed to be the fas.h.i.+on--especially if you'd lost about everything in the world and seen everything go to pieces all about you." He added this with a slow and deliberate bitterness which removed the light trace of humour for the time.

"From Kentucky, eh?" said Sam, slowly and meditatively. "Well, it don't make no difference where you come from; we want good men in here, and you'll find this a good country, I'll gamble on that. I've followed the front clean acrost the State, the last ten years, and I tell you it's all right here. You can make it if you take hold right.

Now I must be gittin' along again over toward Plum Centre. See you again if you stop in here on White Woman--see you several times a week, like enough. You must come up to Ellis soon as you git straightened out. Ain't many women-folks up there, but then they're fine what there is. Say," and he drew Buford to one side as he whispered to him--"say, they's a mighty fine girl--works in the depot hotel--Nory's her name--you'll see her if you ever come up to town. I'm awful gone on that girl, and if you git any chanct, if you happen to be up there, you just put in a good word for me, won't you? I'd do as much for you. I didn't know, you know, but what maybe some of your women-folks'd sort of know how it was, you know. They understand them things, I reckon."

Buford listened with grave politeness, though with a twinkle in his eye, and promised to do what he could. Encouraged at this, Sam stepped up and shook hands with Mrs. Buford and with the girl, not forgetting Aunt Lucy, an act which singularly impressed that late inhabitant of a different land, and made him her fast friend for life.

"Well, so long," he said to them all in general as he turned away, "and good luck to you. You ain't makin' no mistake in settlin' here.

Good-bye till I see you all again."

He stepped into the buckboard and clucked to his little team, the dust again rising from under the wheels. The eyes of those remaining followed him already yearningly. In a half hour there had been determined the location of a home, there had been suggested a means of livelihood, and there had been offered and received a friends.h.i.+p.

Here, in the middle of the great gray Plains, where no sign of any habitation was visible far as the eye could reach, these two white men had met and shaken hands. In a half hour this thing had become matter of compact. They had taken the oath. They had pledged themselves to become members of society, working together--working, as they thought, each for himself, but working also, as perhaps they did not dream, at the hest of some destiny governing plans greater than their own. As Buford turned he stumbled and kicked aside a bleached buffalo skull, which lay half hidden in the red gra.s.s at his feet.

CHAPTER X

THE CHASE

The summer flamed up into sudden heat, and seared all the gra.s.ses, and cut down the timid flowers. Then gradually there came the time of shorter days and cooler nights. The gra.s.s curled tight down to the ground. The air carried a suspicion of frost upon some steel-clear mornings. The golden-backed plover had pa.s.sed to the south in long, waving lines, which showed dark against the deep blue sky. Great flocks of grouse now and then rocked by at morning or evening. On the sand bars along the infrequent streams thousands of geese gathered, pausing in their flight to warmer lands. On the flats of the Rattlesnake, a pond-lined stream, myriads of ducks, cranes, swans, and all manner of wild fowl daily made mingled and discordant chorus.

Obviously all the earth was preparing for the winter time.

It became not less needful for mankind to take thought for the morrow.

Winter on the Plains was a season of severity for the early settlers, whose resources alike in fuel and food were not too extensive.

Franklin's forethought had provided the houses of himself and Battersleigh with proper fuel, and he was quite ready to listen to Curly when the latter suggested that it might be a good thing for them to follow the usual custom and go out on a hunt for the buffalo herd, in order to supply themselves with their winter's meat.

Before the oncoming white men these great animals were now rapidly pa.s.sing away, from month to month withdrawing farther back from the settlements. Reports from the returning skin-hunters set the distance of the main herd at three to five days' journey. The flesh of the buffalo was now a marketable commodity at any point along the railway; but the settler who owned a team and a rifle was much more apt to go out and kill his own meat than to buy it of another. There were many wagons which went out that fall from Ellisville besides those of the party with which Franklin, Battersleigh, and Curly set out. These three had a wagon and riding horses, and they were accompanied by a second wagon, owned by Sam, the liveryman, who took with him Curly's _mozo_, the giant Mexican, Juan. The latter drove the team, a task which Curly scornfully refused when it was offered him, his cowboy creed rating any conveyance other than the saddle as far beneath his station.

"Juan can drive all right," he said. "He druv a cook wagon all the way from the Red River up here. Let him and Sam drive, and us three fellers'll ride."

The task of the drivers was for the most part simple, as the flat floor of the prairies stretched away evenly mile after mile, the horses jogging along dejectedly but steadily over the unbroken short gray gra.s.s, ignorant and careless of any road or trail.

At night they slept beneath the stars, uncovered by any tent, and saluted constantly by the whining coyotes, whose vocalization was betimes broken by the hoa.r.s.er, roaring note of the great gray buffalo wolf. At morn they awoke to an air surcharged with some keen elixir which gave delight in sense of living. The subtle fragrance of the plains, born of no fruit or flower, but begotten of the sheer cleanliness of the thrice-pure air, came to their nostrils as they actually snuffed the day. So came the sun himself, with heralds of pink and royal purple, with banners of flaming red and gold. At this the coyotes saluted yet more shrilly and generally. The lone gray wolf, sentinel on some neighbouring ridge, looked down, contemptuous in his wisdom. Perhaps a band of antelope tarried at some crest. Afar upon the morning air came the melodious trumpeting of wild fowl, rising from some far-off unknown roosting place and setting forth upon errand of their own. All around lay a new world, a wild world, a virgin sphere not yet acquaint with man. Phoenicians of the earthy seas, these travellers daily fared on into regions absolutely new.

Early upon the morning of the fourth day of their journey the travellers noted that the plain began to rise and sink in longer waves.

Presently they found themselves approaching a series of rude and wild-looking hills of sand, among which they wound deviously as they might, confronted often by forbidding b.u.t.tes and lofty dunes whose only sign of vegetation was displayed in a ragged fringe of gra.s.s which waved like a scalp lock here and there upon the summits. For many miles they travelled through this difficult and cheerless region, the horses soon showing signs of distress and all the party feeling need of water, of which the supply had been exhausted. It was nearly noon while they were still involved in this perplexing region, and as none of the party had ever seen the country before, none could tell how long it might be before they would emerge from it. They pushed on in silence, intent upon what might be ahead, so that when there came an exclamation from the half-witted Mexican, whose stolid silence under most circ.u.mstances had become a proverb among them, each face was at once turned toward him.

"Eh, what's that, Juan?" said Curly--"Say, boys, he says we're about out of the sand hills. Prairie pretty soon now, he says."

"And will ye tell me, now," said Battersleigh, "how the haythen knows a bit more of it than we oursilves? He's never been here before. I'm thinkin' it's pure guess he's givin' us, me boy."

"No, sir," said Curly, positively. "If Juan says a thing like that, he knows. I don't know how he knows it, but he sh.o.r.e does, and I'll gamble on him every time. You see, he ain't hardly like folks, that feller. He's more like a critter. He knows a heap of things that you and me don't."

"That's curious," said Franklin. "How do you account for it?"

"Kin savvy," said Curly. "I don't try to account for it, me. I only know it's so. You see if it ain't."

And so it was. The wall of the sand hills was for a time apparently as endless and impervious as ever, and they still travelled on in silence, the Mexican making no further sign of interest. Yet presently the procession of the sand dunes began to show gaps and open places. The hills grew less tall and more regular of outline. Finally they shrank and fell away, giving place again to the long roll of the prairie, across which, and near at hand to the edge of the sand hills, there cut the open and flat bed of a water way, now apparently quite dry.

"We're all right for water now," said Sam. "See that little pile of rocks, 'bout as high as your head, off to the right down the creek?

That's water there, sure."

"Yep," said Curly. "She's there, sure. Or you could git it by diggin'

anywheres in here in the creek bed, inside of four or five feet at most."

Franklin again felt constrained to ask somewhat of the means by which these two felt so confident of their knowledge. "Well, now, Curly," he said, "it isn't instinct this time, surely, for Juan didn't say anything about it to you. I would like to know how you know there is water ahead."

"Why," said Curly, "that's the sign for water on the plains. If you ever see one of them little piles of stones standin' up, you can depend you can git water there. Sometimes it marks a place where you can git down through the breaks to the creek bed, and sometimes it means that if you dig in the bed there you can find water, 'lowin' the creek's dry."

"But who built up the rock piles to make these signs?" asked Franklin.

"O Lord! now you've got me," said Curly. "I don't know no more about that than you do. Injuns done it, maybe. Some says the first wild-horse hunters put 'em up. They was always there, all over the dry country, far back as ever I heard. You ask Juan if there ain't water not far off. See what he says.--_Oye, Juan! Tengo agua, poco tiempo_?"

The giant did not even lift his head, but answered listlessly, "_Agua?

Si_," as though that were a matter of which all present must have equal knowledge.

"That settles it," said Curly. "I never did know Juan to miss it on locatin' water yet, not onct. I kin fairly taste it now. But you see, Juan, he don't seem to go by no rock-pile signs. He just seems to smell water, like a horse or a steer."

They now rode on more rapidly, bearing off toward the cairn which made the water sign. All at once Juan lifted his head, listened for a moment, and then said, with more show of animation than he had yet displayed and with positiveness in his voice: "_Vacas_!" ("cows; cattle").

Curly straightened up in his saddle as though electrified. "_Vacas?

Onde, Juan_?--where's any cows?" He knew well enough that no hoof of domestic cattle had ever trod this country. Yet trust as he did the dictum of the giant's strange extra sense, he could not see, anywhere upon the wide country round about them, any signs of the buffalo to which he was sure the Mexican meant to call his attention.

"_Vacas! muchas_," repeated Juan carelessly.

"Lots of 'em, eh? Well, I'd like to know where they are, my lily of the valley," said Curly, for once almost incredulous. And then he stopped and listened.--"Hold on, boys, listen," he said. "Look out--look out! Here they come!"

Every ear caught the faint distant pattering, which grew into a rapid and insistent rumble. "Cavalry, b'gad!" cried Battersleigh.

Franklin's eyes shone. He spurred forward fast as he could go, jerking loose the thong which held his rifle fast in the scabbard under his leg.

The tumultuous roaring rumble came on steadily, the more apparent by a widening and climbing cloud of dust, which betokened that a body of large animals was coming up through the "breaks" from the bed of the stream to the prairie on which the wagons stood. Presently there appeared at the brink, looming through the white dust cloud, a mingling ma.s.s of tangled, surging brown, a surface of tossing, hairy backs, spotted with darker fronts, over all and around all the pounding and clacking of many hoofs. It was the stampede of the buffalo which had been disturbed at their watering place below, and which had headed up to the level that they might the better make their escape in flight.

Head into the wind, as the buffalo alone of wild animals runs, the herd paid no heed to the danger which they sought to escape, but upon which they were now coming in full front. The horses of the hunters, terrified at this horrid apparition of waving horned heads and s.h.a.ggy manes, plunged and snorted in terror, seeing which the first rank of the buffalo in turn fell smitten of panic, and braced back to avoid the evil at their front. Overturned by the crush behind them, these none the less served to turn the course of the remainder of the herd, which now broke away to the right, paralleling the course of the stream and leaving the wagons of the hunters behind them and at their left. The herd carried now upon its flank three figures which clung alongside and poured sharp blue jets of smoke into the swirling cloud of ashy dust.

It was neck and neck for the three. The cowboy, Curly, had slightly the advance of the others, but needed to spur hard to keep even with Battersleigh, the old cavalryman, who rode with weight back and hands low, as though it were cross country in old Ireland. Franklin challenged both in the run up, riding with the confidence of the man who learned the saddle young in life. They swerved slightly apart as they struck the flank of the herd and began to fire. At such range it was out of the question to miss. Franklin and Battersleigh killed two buffaloes each, losing other head by reason of delivering their fire too high up in the body, a common fault with the beginner on bison.

Curly ran alongside a good cow, and at the third shot was able to see the great creature stumble and fall. Yet another he killed before his revolver was empty. The butchery was sudden and all too complete. As they turned back from the chase they saw that even Sam, back at the wagon, where he had been unable to get saddle upon one of the wagon horses in time for the run, had been able to kill his share. Seeing the horses plunging, Juan calmly went to their heads and held them quiet by main strength, one in each hand, while Sam sprang from the wagon and by a long shot from his heavy rifle knocked down a good fat cow. The hunters looked at the vast bodies lying prostrate along the ground before them, and felt remorse at their intemperance.