Collected Works of Zane Grey, page 918
“Clint, there’re some short drives when the Old Trail starts uphill out yonder,” said Curtis, “which means we make camp early. Do you like to hunt?”
“Yes, but fishin’ comes first.”
“Me, too. But a feller has to get fresh meat. Have you got a rifle?”
“Yes. It’s an old buffalo gun.”
“Wal, thet’ll do fer buffs, but you need a lighter gun hate redskins, an’ raise the ha’r of every darn one they can. After thet we throwed the Injuns in the hole an’ covered them up. Cap Couch strung all the scalps on a buckskin thong an’ hung the bloodin’ things up on his wagon.”
“Did we lose any — men?” asked Clint, curiously thrilled despite his stunned condition.
“Nope. But two got hurt. Jim Thorn has a bullet in his laig, an’ Tom Allen has a bad cut on his arm. But thet’s all.”
Clint climbed to his seat and waited for the wagon ahead of him to pull out. The horses were skittish. Clint had all he could do to control them. Soon the caravan was in motion. Clint felt a rending in his breast. He was leaving his dear mother here on this lonely prairie. He sobbed aloud. As he drove past her grave, marked by a rude cross of wood, his eyes were dim. He fought the weakness that threatened to prostrate him. He had been trusted with all his father’s belongings and his best horses. The winding road shone in the sunrise like a yellow thread across the prairie.
It was well Clint had a hard team to drive that day.’ The effort sustained him. He had to attend to a job which was not a slight one even for a man. The road had bad places. The pace-makers had been ordered to move as fast as possible. Clint’s father was behind, and sometimes on down grades the big freight wagon rolled alarmingly close. When the caravan halted Clint was amazed to find they had reached Council Grove, the first stage-coach post on the line. The wounded men were left there to be taken back to Independence.
Next morning Clint was astonished to learn that the Bells were going to remain at Council Grove for the fer deer an’ turkey. An’ say, there shore are plenty of them when we begin climbin’ the divide. Fer thet matter you’ll see deer all the way now, an’ a mess of buffalo. How about buyin’ a rifle? An’ you’ll shore want a knife. What’d you scalp your first redskin with?”
“I — I won’t scalp him.”
“Haw! Haw! Wal, then, what’ll you skin your first buffalo with — or deer?”
“I’ve got a penknife.”
“Clint, you’re on the frontier now. You want a blade thet’ll go clean through a redskin’s gizzard an’ stick out far enough to hang your hat on. Come, we’ll go in Tillt’s store an’ I’ll pick out a gun, a knife, an’ I reckon a buckskin shirt.”
“But, Mr. Curtis, I — I haven’t any money,” replied Clint. “Paw’s got my wages.”
“Wal, you can get what I spend an’ give it to me. An’ I’ll shore tell yore paw somethin’.”
When Clint emerged from that crowded store he felt that it would take only a puff of wind to blow him sky high. He simply could not walk naturally. And when he and Curtis reached Clint’s camp it was no wonder that Jim Belmet stared a moment and then burst out, “For the land’s sake!”
“Paw, this is my — my friend Dick Curtis,” said Clint, loftily.
“Howdy, Belmet!” greeted the trapper, extending a brawny hand. “Reckon you be’n neglectin’ this youngster. He’s shore the Kit Carson stripe an’ there ain’t no sense in holdin’ him down.”
The caravan, still under escort of Captain Payne, took what was called the Dry Trail. It cut off about two present. He was too full of grief to feel the loss of little May, yet the way she cried at parting touched him.
“Don’t — forget — my — promise,” she whispered, and Clint assured her he would not, and indeed he believed he would always remember her tear-wet eyes.
The Couch caravan went on, strengthened by more wagons joining at Council Grove. That day passed. Again Clint slept the deep slumber of weariness. Then days and nights swept by as swiftly as the rolling of the wheels. He had his work and it was all but too much for him. Yet he held on, and while he grew stronger, more accustomed to his arduous task, the dread misery in his breast gradually softened to sorrow.
On the twenty-ninth of June the caravan reached Fort Lamed, where a stop of a week was to be made. Clint and his father camped with most of the freighters outside the fort. It was a wonderful place, quite different from Independence. Despite his sadness, Clint could not help the curiosity and interest of youth.
Fort Larned bustled with activity. There was one large store, where eight clerks had all they could do to wait on the many customers. Clint’s father told him there were nearly a hundred white hunters and trappers there to sell their winter catch of furs, and fully a thousand Indians of different tribes. Clint could see the different costumes of the Indians, but did not soon learn to distinguish one tribe from another. As for the hunters and trappers, they resembled one another closely. They wore buckskin, and Clint liked the look of them, strong, soft-stepping, lithe men, a few young, but mostly matured and grizzled, and never without their weapons.
“What’s up?” queried Clint.
“Buffalo, an’ if we hustle we’ll git a shot before any of these fellars.... No, don’t fetch the army rifle. Grab thet old buffalo gun.... Good! She’s loaded. Now follow me.”
Following Dick Curtis was easier said than done, Clint soon discovered. The plainsman started off at a lope, led down into a swale under a hill, and soon placed the camp out of sight and sound. When he slowed to a walk it was none too soon for the panting Clint. His breast was throbbing, hot and wet. The old buffalo gun weighed a hundred pounds. Presently Clint glanced up from the hunter’s heels to observe that he was making way up a grassy draw, warm and fragrant. They jumped rabbits, coyotes, and once a heavier beast which made a commotion in the grass.
Finally Curtis began to crawl, motioning Clint to do the same. The plainsman was not very communicative while on a stalk. Clint had to bite his tongue to keep from asking what it was all about. He would have preferred a little preparation. Curtis was too sudden. Clint had little confidence in his own marksmanship, and it seemed likely that he would be directed to shoot at something presently.
Curtis ceased crawling and looked back, his face shiny with sweat.
“Don’t blow so hard,” he whispered. “An’ you move as noisy as a cow.... Boy, we’re huntin’, an’ there’s some buffalo less ‘n a hundred feet.”
“Oh — no!” gasped Clint, suddenly limp.
“Shore are. Can’t you hear them nippin’ grass? Git your breath now. They haven’t winded us.”
Clint had more to get than his breath. Was not this The saloons did a thriving business, and every saloon was, as well, a gambling den. Clint’s father took him into them. From that time dated Clint’s aversion to gamblers. He preferred to walk the street, or go to the fort, where there were stationed four troops of dragoons and two companies of infantry, with Colonel Clark in command. Clint liked to mingle with them, and especially with the hunters and trappers. All the time he touched elbows with Indians. He avoided them as much as possible, hated them, yet always had an eye for their picturesque appearance in their tight-fitting deerskins and beaded moccasins. Some wore hats, some had eagle feathers in their black hair, some went bareheaded, and they all had buffalo robes.
Several days after Clint’s arrival at the fort he was accosted in front of the store by two scouts. These men he had noted before.
“Howdy, boy! What’s your name?” asked the more striking one of the two. He had wonderful piercing eyes that looked right through Clint, and he had long curling hair which fell on his broad buckskin-shirted shoulders.
“Clint Belmet,” replied Clint.
“You’re the lad we heard drove a freighter from Independence?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Shake.... My name’s Carson,” said the scout, and he squeezed Clint’s hand, which was sore from driving, so hard he had to suppress a yell.
“Put her thar. I’m Dick Curtis,” said the other scout, and he repeated the hand-shaking performance.
“Lost your mother on the way?” asked Carson, his hand going to Clint’s shoulder.
“Yes — sir,” replied Clint, his lip trembling.
“Clint, I know how you feel,” went on the scout, and there was something very winning about him. “It’s hard.... The West needs such lads as you. Go on as you’ve begun. You’ve an eye in your head. Don’t ever take to drink an’ cards. An’ learn that the only good Injun is a dead one.”
The other scout, Curtis, patted Clint on the head, and then they passed on.
Belmet, standing at the entrance of the store with others, had been an interested spectator of this little incident. He put both hands on Clint’s shoulders and looked down at him.
“Son, what did those scouts say to you?”
Clint told him, whereupon he swayed back impressively.
“Have you any idea who they are?”
“They told me. The short man was Curtis — Dick Curtis, he said. The tall one with the sharp eyes — he called himself Carson.”
“Wal, I reckon. Carson.... Kit Carson! He is the greatest Indian fighter an’ plainsman in the West.”
“Kit Carson!” ejaculated Clint, incredulously. “I’ve read about him.... An’ to think he shook hands with me! Gee! he nearly broke my fingers!... Paw, I’m right proud of what he said.”
“So you should be. You see what this frontier life is like. Wal, a young man who takes to drink an’ cards doesn’t last long. So I hope you’ll pay some heed to Kit Carson’s advice. Reckon it was a great compliment to you.”
“I’ll take his advice, paw. I’ll never drink an’ gamble,” rejoined Clint. genial frontiersman taking too much for granted? Clint drew in deeper and deeper breaths, expanding his lungs until he thought he would burst; and he fought with all his might the threatened collapse of what seemed to be his whole interior being.
Curtis touched him and crawled on. Very softly Clint followed, keeping his rifle off the ground and his head beneath the crest of the tall grass — no slight tasks. But he had almost recaptured his breath. The hunter wormed his way flat, like a snake, and made no more noise than a snake. Clint believed he was doing better when suddenly he reached Curtis’s side.
“Look,” whispered his guide, parting the grass.
They had come out on the brow of the slope. Clint’s startled gaze took in what seemed a mountain of black woolly fur right before him. He shook like a leaf and his heart gave a great bound, then seemed to stop. The black thing was an enormous bull buffalo, standing almost broadside, with his huge head up. He had heard or scented them.
“Aim behind his shoulder,” whispered Curtis. “Low down... lower. There! Freeze on him.... Now!”
Clint knew he could hit the beast, but what would happen then? As one in a dream he leveled the heavy rifle, rested on his knee, strained with his last ounce of will to stiffen, covered the hairy space indicated — and pulled trigger. BOOM! The tremendous kick knocked Clint flat and the gun fell in front of him. He heard a rumbling. Then he scrambled up, ready to run. The scout was laughing uproariously.
“Aw! I missed him!” cried Clint, in despair.
“Nary miss,” replied Curtis, giving Clint a slap on “Son, shake hands on that,” said Belmet, with emotion.
They did not leave the fort until July 8th, when the freighters who had unloaded, of whom Belmet was one, joined a caravan returning across the plains to Missouri. It was a larger caravan, escorted by troops. Clint drove every day, and they arrived at Westport, later called Kansas City, on the 10th of August.
The largest commissary stores were located at Westport, and all incoming supplies had to be unloaded there. Belmet obtained a government contract, over which he was much elated. On August 20th he and Clint drove out with over seventy other freighters on the long eighteen-hundred-mile journey to Santa Fé. They were given an escort of ninety soldiers under Captain Payne. This government caravan had to haul supplies to every fort along the trail.
Belmet had disposed of the prairie schooner. He kept the horses, and purchased another freight wagon, a new one, painted green and red, which Clint drove. After a few days out, every man in the caravan had a cheery word for the boy and his dog, perched high on the seat, and even Captain Payne noticed him.
“Lad, I see you have a buffalo gun on the seat there,” he said, quizzically.
“Yes, sir, but it’s not there for buffalo,” replied Clint, significantly.
On the afternoon of the sixth day the freighters camped at Cow Creek. It was a pretty spot, in the big bend of the Arkansas River. The green grove of cottonwoods and the shining water appealed strongly to Clint, but he had no time to indulge in his favorite the shoulder. “You hit plumb center. He walked off a few steps, gave a heave an’ a groan, an’ keeled over. The rest of the bunch ran off the other way, which was dam lucky fer us.... But I thought you’d shot thet buffalo gun?”
“I had. Only now I forgot to hold it tight.... I’ll betcha I’ll never forget again.”
“Wal, lad, you didn’t disappoint me,” returned Curtis, with satisfaction. “An’ Kit Carson will shore be tickled when I tell him. Come now an’ take a look at your first buff.”
When he rose, Clint observed the bull lying prone scarcely a hundred feet distant. He had gone only a few steps. Other buffalo showed a quarter of a mile off, ambling away. Clint ran forward with a sensation of mingled awe, delight, and regret. The eyes of the buffalo were glazing over, his tongue stuck out, and blood was streaming into the dry ground. Round and round the dead beast Clint walked, looking again and again at the great black head with its short shiny dark horns, the shaggy shoulders and breast, the tufts of hair down the forelegs. It was far larger than any ox in the caravan. It had an unpleasant odor, somehow raw and wild, wholly unlike that of domestic animals. Clint stared with gaping mouth until the practical Curtis called him to action:
“Wal, you can break in your new knife. We’ll skin him. I’ll pack the hide back to camp an’ you can pack a hunk of rump beef. We’ll sure have rump steak fer supper. My mouth is waterin’ now.”
Clint was to learn the arduous difficulties of skinning a tough old buffalo bull. But the two of them accomplished it before sunset and, heavily burdened, they labored back to camp by a short cut over the ridge.
The two heavy guns and the generous cut of buffalo meat were about all Clint could carry, and Curtis staggered along under the roll of hide. Upon reaching the line of campers they were hailed vociferously. Before they got far there was a string of hungry freighters making a bee line in the direction of the dead buffalo. Clint received a strong impression of the savory nature of rump steak.
When they arrived at Clint’s camp Curtis threw the huge hide down with a thud.
“Thar! It shore was a ‘tarnal load!”
Belmet and his contingent crowded around, to stare at Clint and the scout, and to ask questions in unison.
“Nope. It was Clint who shot him. I only packed in the hide,” replied Curtis.
“Say! You mean to tell us that boy killed this buffalo?” demanded Belmet, incredulously.
“Shore he did. Made a slick job of it.”
“Aw, go wan,” retored an Irish teamster, derisively.
“Dick, we all know you’re given to tricks,” said another man.
“Why, thet lad might lift a buffalo gun to his shoulder, but if he shot it he’d be knocked into a cocked hat.”
“Well, I was,” laughed Clint, speaking for himself.
“Fellars, he made a clean shot — plugged the old bull right through the middle; but he forgot to freeze on the gun, an’, wal, I thought he was goin’ clear down the hill.”
“Haw! Haw! Haw!” they roared. sport. The wagons, as usual, were driven in a circle, the pole of one under the rear end of another, with three wagons left out to form a gateway for the stock to get in and out of the corral.
Horses and oxen were outside, feeding on the thick grass, under a heavy guard. Presently they were observed to be moving fast. The guards were hurrying the stock back to camp, and one rider came ahead shouting, “Indians! Indians!”
Captain Payne ordered his soldiers to mount, and the freighters to stand ready to repel attack. Then he climbed on top of a wagon with his field-glass. He took a long look.
“Nothin’ to worry us,” he announced, presently. “Pawnees an’ Comanches fightin’ each other.”
“Wal, we shore hope they assassinate each other,” remarked an old soldier.
“Johnny, come up an’ have a look,” called the captain to Clint. “It’s a sight worth seein’. An’ it doesn’t happen often.”
Clint climbed up with alacrity and eagerly accepted the field-glass. With naked eye he could see the running horses, the flying manes, the flash of color, of smoke and fire. But the distance was too great to hear guns. When he got the glass focused upon the battling tribes he stood transfixed, with nerves and veins tingling.
On a hillside over a mile away several hundred Indians were engaged in a terrific running fight. It was plain that a larger party was pursuing a smaller, in the direction away from the camp. Naked red bodies, plumes and spears, flames of red and puffs of white, the level racing of wild mustangs, the plunging of horses together, the rearing of two with their riders fiercely fighting, the falling of Indians to the grass and the galloping away of riderless ponies — all these the glass brought vividly to Clint’s rapt eyes, and held him trembling and unnerved until the warriors passed over the hill out of sight.
