That all changed when Dooley Thomas’s horse was spooked by a rattler. The horse whinnied loudly, then reared up on its back legs. The cows nearest the snake-spooked horse started running, and that spread through the rest of the herd. Then, like a wild prairie fire before a wind, it took only seconds for the entire herd to be out of control.
“Stampede! Stampede!” Billy shouted from the front, and his cry was carried in relay until everyone knew about it.
“Stampede!”
There was obvious fright in the voices that shouted the warning, but there was grim determination as well, for every man knew what was at stake, and moved quickly to do what he could to stop the stampede.
Smoke was riding on the left flank and, fortunately for him, when the stampede started, the herd veered away from him, toward the right, a living tidal wave of thundering hoofbeats, a million aggregate pounds of muscle and bone, horn and hair, red eyes, dry tongues, and running noses. Although the herd consisted of three thousand individual animals, they were moving as one entity, huge and ferocious. Their pounding hooves churned up a huge cloud of dust to hang in the air, leaving the air so thick that within moments Smoke could see nothing. It was as if he were caught in the thickest fog one could imagine, but this fog was brown, and it burned the eyes and clogged the nostrils and stung his face with its fury. And it was filled with thousands of pounding hooves and clacking, slashing horns.
Leaning forward in his saddle, Smoke urged his horse to its top speed, allowing him to overtake the herd. Then he rode on their right in a desperate attempt to turn them back into the proper direction. He, like the others, was shouting and whistling and waving his hat at the herd, trying to get them to respond.
Then, to Smoke’s horror, he saw Dooley fall from his horse. The stampeding cows adjusted their direction toward the helpless rider, almost as if they were intentionally trying to do him harm. Dooley regained his feet, but without a horse, all he could do was try to outrun them on foot. It quickly became clear that he was going to lose the race. Smoke watched the young ex-soldier go down.
Smoke raced to Dooley, but even before he dismounted, he knew the young man was dead. The entire herd had passed over him, their slashing and pounding hooves leaving his body lying in the dirt behind them, battered and torn.
Looking up toward the herd, Smoke saw that the cattle had slowed their run to a brisk trot, and as they did, the rest of the wranglers were able to turn them back in the direction they were supposed to be going. The stampede had at last come to an end, brought under control by the courage and will of the young men who had been pushing the herd.
With the herd once more under control, Andy and Pearlie came riding back to where Smoke was standing.
“Dooley! Dooley!” Andy shouted anxiously as he rode up. He leaped from his saddle and knelt on the ground beside his friend. “Dooley,” he repeated, then shook his head as tears began streaming down his cheeks.
Smoke reached down to put his hand on Andy’s shoulder.
“I’m sorry,” Smoke said.
“Me’n Dooley was together from the time we come into the army at Jefferson Barracks back in St. Louis,” Andy explained. “We mucked stalls together, walked guard together, put up with sergeants that was the scum of the earth, and fought the Indians in a dozen or more campaigns, all with nary a scratch between us. And now this.”
Cal came back then, leading Dooley’s horse.
“Get him on the horse,” Smoke said. “We’ll bury him tonight.”
Cal nodded, then got down and reached for Dooley.
“I’ll put ’im up,” Andy said. “He was my friend.”
“He was a friend to us all,” Cal said.
Andy nodded, then stepped back to allow Cal to help him. They put Dooley belly-down across his saddle.
Within another hour, the herd caught the scent of water as they approached the Eagle River. They began running again, not stampeding, but moving toward the water at a gait that brought them quickly to the water’s edge.
The lead cows moved out into the river and for a moment, Smoke was afraid that the cows coming up from behind would push the front ranks into deep water where they would drown. Fortunately, the herd had approached the river where a huge sandbar formed a natural ford, and the cattle were able to spread out enough that all could drink their fill. Although they had only come twenty miles today, it had been an unusually rapid twenty miles, so rapid in fact that they had overtaken, then outpaced the chuck wagon. Smoke called a halt to the drive, declaring that they would spend the next twenty-four hours right there.
Ordinarily, arriving at water after such a long, dry spell would be cause for a celebration. But though everyone was thankful for the water, no one felt like celebrating.
As Cal came riding toward the chuck wagon, Sally recognized him by the way he sat his horse, even before she could make out his features. She smiled at him.
“I saw the herd go by,” she said. “I expect they’ve all drunk their fill by now.”
“Yes’m, I reckon so,” Cal said. Something in the tone of his voice alerted Sally.
“Cal, what is it? What’s wrong?” Sally asked. She felt a quick stab of fear go through her.
“We had an accident,” Cal said.
“Oh, my God, no!” Sally gasped. “It’s not Smoke?”
“No, no, Miz Sally!” Cal shouted quickly, holding up his hand. “It ain’t Smoke, he’s fine. I didn’t mean to scare you like that. It was Dooley.”
“Dooley,” Sally said with a sigh, thankful that it wasn’t Smoke.
“Yes’m. It was Dooley—and—the thing is, he got hisself kilt.”
“Oh!” Sally said, feeling guilty now over her sense of relief in learning that it had been Dooley and not
