CHAPTER XXVI

THE INDIAN NATIONS

NO blue smoke rose against the far horizon of the wild paradise through which these pioneers of a new industry were passing. Civilized, semi-civilized, even savage mankind lacked then in the Nations. The country was unsettled and unknown. The men of Del Sol neither followed nor intersected any trail of hoof or wheel. Only the deep paths of the buffalo, immemorial, marked the green carpet of unbroken sod. There never had been hoof of any domestic creature here. The bands of horses that swept away were wild horses. Wild deer, wild antelope made their only neighbors. There was not a weed. There was not a bee. The white man had not come.

Of them all, not one Del Sol man had any idea of the country ahead. They were only holding to the easiest way, the ridges that separated the heads of divergent streams.

Nabours held his silence as long as he could, but at length spurred up to the morose and solitary man who rode without a word regarding the herd, himself or his own plans.

“Mr. McMasters,” said he, “I don’t know where we are right now. I don’t know where we’re going. We haven’t got no map. I don’t know when Rudabaugh may jump us. It’s time you and me got plumb serious.”

“Yes, I think so.”

“For instance, we ain’t on no Chisholm Trail?”

“No, that’s over in east, if it can be called a trail. Fort Sill—that’s what they call the camp where the soldiers stop, in west toward the Wichita Mountains—is the nearest white settlement. It’s only a camp; there is no actual Army post there yet.”

“My notion, soldiers mostly ride around and don’t do nothing much.”

“They’d do more if they were let alone by the Indian Department. Those men are doing what Captain Marcy advised fifteen years ago—figuring on an Army post north of the Red, to watch the Comanches.

“The worst Comanches, as you know, are the Quahrada bands—that’s old Yellow Hand. Their right range is north of the Buffalo Gap and west into the Staked Plains; that’s their big buffalo country. But I think word has gone out for some kind of a council between them and the Kiowas, and that’s what has brought Yellow Hand in here.

“The policy of the Indian Department now, as you may know,” he went on explaining, “is to round up all these Indian tribes and get them on reservations. That’s going to mean war, next year probably. This whole country in here is just as like as not to be on foot right now. The best hope we’ve got is that none of them get together with Rudabaugh.”

“That’s fine, ain’t it? And you done told me that Rudabaugh was heading in ahead to meet us.”

“He doesn’t know where we are any more than we know where he is. If we keep on north and he keeps on up the Washita we’d naturally intersect at the crossing of the Washita, two or three days’ drive north of here. I don’t know which will get there first. He travels light.”

“What d’you think I’d ought to do?” demanded Nabours, after a time.

“There is not much you can do. When you go into camp every night set your wagon tongue so that it points toward the North Star. Line out on that course the next morning. Keep on going north for a month. What comes, comes. But keep your herd closed up.”

“Well, I done sont my cook cart on ahead a ways,” admitted Nabours. “I told Sam to kill a buffalo and pick out a good camping place, if it looked anything like a bed ground.”

“What comes, comes,” said McMasters once more.

They separated, since he would talk no more. He rode apart from the herd, would accept no duties, no friendships, never cast a glance toward the closed cart where Taisie had taken refuge.

* * * * *

Nabours hardly had resumed his place at the head of the column before he found cause enough for actual alarm. On ahead there was coming toward him the white top of the cook cart, its oxen lashed to a gallop by the negro driver. Buck made no attempt to stop his vehicle, but thundered by with the evident intention of getting as far to the rear as possible. The shrieks of Milly, who had gone on in the cart, rose continuously. Nabours was obliged to ride ahead to bring the cart to a halt.

“What in hell do you mean by this?” demanded he of the frightened negro.

“Fo’ Gawd, Massa Jim, don’t go up dah! Dey’s five thousand Injuns right up dah! Dey’s a million buffaloes not two mile ahead, beyant the woods, and them Injuns is a cuttin’ and a chargin’!”

“Go on down to the other cart and pull up close!” commanded the trail boss. “Hurry, now!” He spurred off to the point of the herd.

“Throw ’em off the trail, men!” he called out. “Make the herd right here! Injuns! Get your rifles out!”

In ten minutes the strip of prairie was covered a half mile deep with a mass of cattle, and the remuda was closed up at the rear. The men made a rude laager of the bed rolls in front of the carts and ordered the women to keep hid. So far as might be, they were ready for what must come.

It came soon. The cattle shuffled as they stood, turned, raised their heads. A thunder of countless hoofs grew loud, louder. And now became visible, close at hand, one of the wild spectacles of the tribesmen’s country. A vast black mass of running buffalo appeared, strung out in little clumps as far as the eye could reach. Heads down, their beards sweeping the grass tops, they ran, an endless series of black, rolling forms, in a tremendous momentum that shook the very sod—the wildest picture of a wild world.

The men who immemorially owned that world were here. Naked horsemen clung on the flank of the herd. It was the Comanches, at the savage trade which the Comanches most loved and best practiced—that of lancing the wild buffalo.

A half hundred, perhaps a hundred riders, stretched out in a long line—in fact a line two miles or more in length. The savages, stripped to the waist, rode their bareback horses alongside and into the detached masses of black which stretched west and north out as far as the horizon. Even in the distance and in the dust they might have been known to be Comanches, since they thus were at work with the lance. That was always the favorite Comanche weapon in the buffalo hunt.

Nothing imaginable could be more cruel or more efficient than their trade as these wild riders now were practicing it. Each spearman rode even with his chosen quarry. It was not his purpose to strike it in the vitals, but only to disable it. A hunter leaned sideways suddenly, plunging, both his arms raised. A lunge, a heave backward to wrench the point clear, and the great beast fell, cut through the loins; not killed at once, but sure to fall; which was enough for the savage workman. The old men or squaws following after with their bows and arrows would finish what the long lances had begun. To the rear a mile-long line of black struggling blots lay on the grass. But the blood lust of the riders had not yet been glutted.

Their chase was now to end. Their attention, rapt as they had been in the pursuit they loved above all others, could not now escape the sudden sound which broke upon their ears even over the hoof roar of the buffalo.

In a vast rush of crackling hoofs and rattling horns the entire Del Sol herd was now off in the wildest stampede any of the men had ever seen. Worst of all, they were not undertaking to evade but to join the stampede of the buffalo.

Always there was a sort of affiliation between the wild and the domestic cattle of the Plains; and all old plainsmen knew how difficult it was to separate the two, once they were commingled. This commingling of wild and half wild, with the attendant rumbling and trembling under the hoofs of all these thousands of running creatures, made a swift climax to the scene. The black mass, lengthened and strung out by the impact of the line of hunters, now was joined by a vast influx of lighter colored animals, coming in at an angle. Red men might take toll of this. White men could not control it. No men could stop it now.

The savages had ridden long. There was an endless line of black blots rising and falling on the prairies back of them. The stampede of the Del Sol herd was sufficient to break the trance of slaughter.

Spears in hand, naked, their arms red to the shoulders, their bodies red to the waist, a group of the riders broke away from their chase and came up, grinning and shouting, to where they saw the white men huddled. They had taken their time. The Comanches entertained but little fear of the whites. They were insolent lords of the far Southwest, raiding the feeble Mexicans as they liked and even imperiously telling the Anglo-Saxon frontiersman when he must cease advancing or even pull back his frontier lines. They always had held the best of the cattle range as well as the best of the buffalo range of Texas, and had kept the cowman out.

These had no fear now of the whites. They carried with them proof of that. Repeating their own tribal history of grim sense of humor, at some sutler’s store looted far to the west they had practiced one of the jests they had been known to employ in early border times. They had gathered bolts of flannel, bales of gaudy calico, from which they had liberally taken decorations for their horses. Not one of the latter that did not have attached to his mane and tail such strips of calico as long and rough riding had left him. It was the pleasant Comanche practice to tie one end of a bolt of cloth or calico to the tail of a horse and then to ride off, leaving the fabric to unwind as it listed and the horse to run as it chose. These wild decorations, unknown of origin, still clung in colored fragments to the blood-stained ponies which they rode. The ends of the prints fluttered in the prairie wind, mocking the flowers in their own remaining hues.

No herd of cattle could have withstood the sight of this wild phantasmagoria. The men who owned these felt that their own time had come. Without command, each man dropped low behind his bed roll, his rifle resting above his bent arm.

“Don’t let than in, men—but don’t shoot yet! They’ve got nothing but spears!”

It was the voice of Dan McMasters which arose. He alone of them all was standing, rifle in hand. He threw up his hand in the command to halt as the Red men came on in, slapping his rifle stock.

The Comanches paid little attention to any command, but made no immediate motion of hostility. Their leader was a great-chested man with wide chin and mouth and narrow eyes. Jabbering in his own tongue, two-thirds Spanish, he grinned as he came on close up to the rifles which covered him and his men. At length he threw up his own hand carelessly, indifferently, curiously, as though he now would see what was to be found hereabouts.

“How, _amigo_! How, _amigo_!” called out McMasters. No one had chosen him as leader, but none now denied him the place. “_Usted_ Yellow Hand?”

The leader rode out carelessly.

“_Si_,” said he. “Me Yellow Han’. _Habla Español?_”

“_Si_,” replied McMasters, and went on in that tongue.

After a few moments of rapid talk he turned.

“He says they are Quahradas, but are riding through, going home. Says he wants some spotted buffaloes. Says they are on Indian land and we have got to get out. Says we will have to give him half our horses and all our tobacco. Says he knows we have got something in the wagons because we keep the covers tight. Says we can’t go on through, but have got to go back.”

“You tell him to go to hell!” broke out Jim Nabours. “Tell him I know who he is. Yellow Hand has got no right in here. Tell him the soldiers will be after him for chasing the Chickasaws’ buffalo. Flour—beef—tobacco? Tell him we won’t give him a damned thing! Tell him if he rides ten feet further in we’ll open fire and clean ’em out—our rifles shoot a week and we don’t have to load.”

He patted the stock of the rifle which he held up before him in defiance—one of the Henry repeating rifles, first of repeating arms seen in the Southwest after the Civil War; and already the Comanches knew what these repeating rifles meant. Old Yellow Hand also knew that his men had nothing but their spears. He traded Comanche lives as dear as possible always. No doubt it occurred to him that he could get all the beef he wanted by following the stampede. Perhaps he figured that night time would be a better hour for an attack—when all his warriors were on hand.

“Heap shoot!” called out Jim Nabours, again slapping the side of his rifle. Yellow Hand grinned pleasantly.

“How! How! Heap _amigo_,” said he. He advanced a foot or so, his hand outstretched. “What you got in _carreta_? _Que tienez?_”

He motioned toward the closed fronts of the cart covers, pointing with his spear. McMasters’ rifle barrel struck up the spear shaft. Yellow Hand could see the hammers of the rifles lying down like the heads of so many rattlesnakes. He could see the light shining on the brass plates of these Henry rifles. Comanches on the Concho had told him that a rifle which had this yellow spot on it would keep on shooting forever without any need for loading again.

“_Si, seguro!_” he now said calmly. “Heap shoot!” He waved a hand towards the rifles. “_Muy grande escopetas._ Heap swap. _Uno caballo por uno escopeta_!” He meant he would trade a horse for a repeating rifle.

“_Nada_, damn your soul!” broke out Jim Nabours: “You vamose pretty damn _pronto_! I’m sorry I ever learned your damned language, but you hear me now. _A doondey usted_—where’d you come from here?”

“_Nos vamenos, si._” said Yellow Hand ingratiatingly. “_Poco tiempo._ Swap?”

“You’ve got a gall,” rejoined Nabours, whose blood now was up as he began to think of what had happened to his herd. “Git on out or I’ll kill you for luck!”

The chieftain turned towards McMasters, whom he again addressed in Spanish. McMasters replied quietly, evenly, evidently arguing and pointing out certain facts which ought to be observed; which facts had to do with spears as against repeating rifles; with buffalo as against beef.

After a time Yellow Hand turned back to his followers, who had sat their horses impatiently. He spoke a few words in explanation. Then, without paying any more attention whatever to the whites, they all turned and rode away.

For the time safe, the white men arose and looked at one another, still almost too much strained for speech.

“Look yonder!” said Nabours at length.

Off to the west and north other Indians were appearing, group after group, evidently the followers who did the butchering of the fallen buffalo. With spears and bows and arrows they were finishing the work which had been begun. Obviously there must be some considerable village not far away, for many or most of these advancing figures were those of squaws engaged in the butchering work.

“They are in no hurry,” said McMasters after a time. “They are willing to wait. Bows and arrows. They don’t seem to have any guns.”

The Del Sol men looked around them for the horses which they had picketed, broke the front before the carts, where now could be heard women’s lamentations. The boy, Cinquo Centavos, was disclosed sitting with his back against the cart front of his mistress, a Sharpe rifle across his knees. Tears were running down his cheeks—not tears of fear.

“My horses is all gone!” said he, sobbing.

“Hell, the cows is gone, too!” commented Dalhart. “It’s lucky we ain’t!”

McMasters, once banished, had now without election been received back into the ranks of the Del Sol men. Indeed, he was now their leader. Before the stripped trail drovers made any move they held council.

“Yellow Hand knows he don’t have to swap,” said McMasters. “He knows he can choose between dead buffalo and dead cattle. Our horses—they know what we’ve got in that line. They know all they want to know, except what’s in there.” He nodded toward the carts. “They’ll come back to find that out.”

The men all looked at him in silence. He spoke again, to Nabours.

“There’s only one good thing about this whole thing,” he said. “Rudabaugh has not seen these men. They haven’t heard of the killing of those two Comanche women. If they had they’d have rushed us long ago. The women must have been in a visiting village, over toward the Arbuckle hills.”

Nabours was silent for a moment.

“The jig’s up. We’d just as well leave the herd,” said he at length. “We can’t spare men to send after them. It looks like our only hope is to push on ahead with the carts and find a place to fight for what we’ve got left.”

McMasters nodded.

“I think that’s best. They know they’ve got only bows and arrows against our repeating rifles. Horses they like more than anything else. Maybe they’ll be contented with rounding up our remuda if we slip away. Maybe we can come back again and pick up what they leave us. At least, they don’t yet know what we have in there.”

Once more he nodded toward the close-drawn flaps of the carts, to which not a man had yet ventured. They did not want the women to know. “We’d better be on our way before anything worse happens.”

Nabours nodded. The broken cavalcade closed in and soon was moving north once more, now convoying nothing but the shrouded carts, around which they formed a cordon.

Unencumbered with the herd, they made a dozen miles in their hurried march, and finally chose a camping place upon a little eminence crowned with a few straggling trees, which gave them good sight of the surrounding country. They made their camp with the carts inside the circle of guards; hobbled and picketed their remaining saddle horses and put up such barricade as they could. They now had done the last that remained within their power. Nabours told the women to come to the men’s camp. A fire was built, but was kept low.

Taisie Lockhart joined her men, her face exceedingly pale.

“It’s the Comanches!” she broke out at last. “I have brought you into this!”

“Ma’am,” said Nabours at length, “that’s hardly a fair way of speaking. It’s us has brought you. We all throwed in together in this.”

“I told you I was broke and couldn’t pay you,” sobbed the girl, “and you wouldn’t quit. Oh, if you only had!”

She missed one figure in the gathering of rough-clad hard-bitten men. A trifle apart, McMasters paid no attention either to her or any one else. Nabours caught the direction of her glance and nodded.

“We done taken him on the herd, full, now,” said he. “We need men that can shoot. Go on back to sleep.”

But Taisie Lockhart no more slept than did the others. There was no shoulder against which she could lean. The voice of the cricket was no more. In its stead came the raucous roar of the gray wolves scenting blood.