There simply was nothing else like that scent on the wind. Whether it was the tons of dung they dropped in their grazings and wanderings, or the sweetish-sour stench of the dusty, sweated, tick-and-flea-infested beast itself … there was nothing else like the smell of buffalo.
He vowed he’d have himself a talk to his imagination one day real soon. For it to make his mouth water just thinking about chomping down into a thick pink slab of tenderloin was one thing. But for his imagination to actually make him smell the creatures was something altogether too damn much to take—
And upon opening his eyes his breath clutched in his chest. Finding it hard to swallow as his heart rose with anticipation, Bass whispered, “Hannah, you brung me here a’purpose—didn’t you?”
She gave no answer as he continued to stare at the widening valley ahead of them as they emerged from a neck into the great, grassy bottomland. On either side arose low hills. And from east to west, slope to slope across the bottom, the entire scene was blotted with the black coagulate of grazing buffalo.
Surely this was a dream, he told himself as the mule continued him toward the center of this hallucination. At that moment he heard the first faraway bawl of one of the beasts. Could it be that his ears were tricking him too?
Barely raising his head there beneath the red wool blanket, he stared as she carried him closer and closer to a large, slowly meandering knot of the beasts. Closing his eyes momentarily, Bass drank in their scent, deeply. Then reached out with his right arm to reassure himself the rifle was still there beneath the pack ropes. As tight and sore as was his shoulder and arm, at least it no longer caused him hot flushes of agony to move them.
How would he ever get the rifle butt pressed against that wounded shoulder? And to fear what pain shooting the weapon would cause him … why, he knew he’d flinch and miss his shot. Off would go his one chance at a buffalo, stampeding away into the distance.
But—was there a chance that he could fire his right-handed rifle from his left shoulder? It was about all the shot he would have at it.
His ears perked up at the same instant Hannah’s stiffened. The breeze coming into their faces brought the distant sound again. That was a rifle shot. A few harrowing moments later he heard two more shots.
Clearly, more than one gun. Several. Perhaps many. The first had come from farthest away. The second seeming a bit closer. And that third round of shots closer still. A fourth shot, this one solitary, reached his ears as they pounded with the galloping race of his heart. Then, however, the dying of the rifle shot was drowned out, overwhelmed by the distant, steady hammer.
Hannah sidestepped in a lurch, as if frightened by the quaking of the ground beneath her hooves.
The hammer drew every bit closer. As it did, Bass grew more certain of it. The gunfire—that approaching thunder. Whoever was hunting these buffalo had gone and set them stampeding. Just as plain was the fact that they were coming downwind, straight for him and the mule. Blindly. Stupid beasts that they were, the buffalo would continue until they hit a river, or spilled over a cliff, or—more times than not—simply ran out of steam.
He realized he had to get the mule out of the herd’s way, and now.
Already the far northern horizon at the end of the narrow valley was smudged with a thin layer of dust. They were coming, and he had to get Hannah to carry him to safety.
Lifting himself on his elbows, he grabbed for a more secure hold on the lead rope, holding it tightly there just behind her withers as he gazed off to the left. Then to the right. Finally back to the western slope once more. It seemed to offer more of a chance for escape.
“Git—git, girl!” he urged her with a croaking, little-used voice.
Tugging on the short lead, Bass managed to start her moving off at an angle.
“Hup, hup!” he ordered her, watching the dust cloud grow, seeing how those creatures near him were just beginning to turn, to listen, to pay heed to all that noisy thunder upvalley.
Stretched out along Hannah’s spine, he tried to hammer her with his feet as best he could, hoping to urge more speed from the mule. Weary as she was, Hannah nonetheless gave her master all she. had as the blackened knots nearby suddenly burst into a flurry of motion and sound.
Standing there grazing one moment, then raising their hairy, oversize heads to look back to the north the next moment … and suddenly exploding into action without delay or the slightest hesitation. Those creatures closest to him were now compelled to flee, their dull brains ordering them to join in the mindless flight.
In the space of a few seconds the beastly wall of death was coming their way beneath that long, low cloud of dust.
As Hannah reached the base of the long, gradual slope, the thunder of approaching hooves, the bawling and bellows, grew deafening. Just then it felt as if his heart stopped beating: seized with terror in his chest that refused to breathe.
When Hannah faltered on the slope, he sputtered the words, “Hup, girl!”
She heaved and with a bound lurched two more leaps, her back shuddering—shaking the packs and him with them. He began to slip off her hindquarters.
Gripping the tie ropes fiercely, Scratch dragged himself another half foot onto her back. Then a little more, and now he could come close to wrapping his arms down her neck. Bass clutched her, his cheek laid against her withers, crying out to her, the spill of his voice lost in the hammering of the hooves around them. Dragging himself closer to her ears, Bass gave her encouragement, calling out to her urgently, trying to will her up the slope and out of the way of the approaching mass of death.
There beneath the bottom fringe of the dusty cloud, just after the first buffalo appeared—riders emerged, bobbing figures atop their small ponies. He could see how distinct they were from the small-humped cows and their brick-red, yellowish-red, and brownish-hued calves, every last one of the beasts caught up in the single-minded rhythm of the stampede, their heads bobbing up and down in their rolling gait.
Distant riders raced beside the herd like tiny stick figures of mankind painted on hide lodges and winter-count robes.
“Hup! Hup, girl!” he shouted as Hannah faltered, a hoof slipping, her load suddenly shifting.
The thunder reached the ground below them in the next instant. Bass turned his head to look behind at those first cows and summer’s young calves racing by at the head of the stampede—
Then as she stumbled sideways he was sliding off her rear haunches, fingers digging frantically for a grip on something, anything, as the mule went down on her back legs, shuddered with fatigue, then trembled when she attempted to rise beneath her burden. Arms flailing, Scratch tumbled off a flank to the ground on his belly, landing with a crash, then rolling in the tall, dusty, summer-burned grass with a groan, crying out in a yelp that was swallowed by the passing of the herd below him.
Slipping sideways on the steep slope as she regained her balance and got back to her legs, Hannah shifted, stretching the lead rope out to its limit, tugging on Scratch’s belt where he had tied it.
“Dammit!” he screeched in pain as she jerked him to the side, torment shooting through him as she pitched him onto the wounded shoulder.
Spitting dust and brittle grass out of his mouth, rubbing dirt from his eyes with a grimy hand, Bass lunged to snatch hold of the lead rope that had him connected to the mule—and he yanked back.
“C’mere!”
He dared not have her drag him any farther. Feverishly working at the knot with his right hand, while he pulled back on the rope with his left for some slack, Scratch was already well past scared. Frightened, and even terrified, that she would suddenly bolt, dragging him mindlessly along the slope, even down among those thousands of slashing hooves.
But she came to him, prancing, unsure—eyes wide and nostrils flaring, wet. Lather had soaked her pack harness. As she stopped over him, Hannah shuddered, wagging her head slowly while he finished fighting the knot at his belt. When he was free, Bass wrapped the end of the rope around his left wrist and gripped it as he collapsed back in the grass. Closing his eyes still filled with grit, rubbing them savagely as he caught his breath and swallowed down the excruciating torture in his shoulder she had just spilled him on.
Closer came the pop of guns that punctuated the throbbing echo of the stampede, reverberating from one side of the valley to the other. They had guns—these Indians did. Seized with sudden resolve, Bass knew he had to get his. Had to grab the rifle and prepare to sell his life dearly if these were Arapaho.
Chances were good that was just what these buffalo hunters were. After all, he told himself as his tearing eyes watered more as he fought to rub them free of dust, he had no idea where he was west of Park Kyack … except that the tall range of mountains was no longer off to his right. It was somewhere back to the southeast now.
