Raw Gold: A Novel

  CHAPTER XIX.

  THE BISON.

  When we reached high ground again the twilight was fading to asemicircle of bloodshot gray in the northwest. The wind still blewsquarely in our faces. Down in the coulee we had not noticed it so much,but now every breath was rank with the smell of grass-smoke, and eachmile we traversed the stink of it grew stronger.

  "We'll be blamed lucky if we don't run into a prairie-fire beforemornin'," Piegan grumbled. "If that wind don't let up, she'll comea-whoopin'. It'll be a sure enough smoky one, too, with this mixture uhdry grass an' the new growth springin' up. It didn't rain so hard downin this country, I notice. Ain't that a lalla of a smell?"

  Neither of us answered, and Piegan said no more. It grew dark--dark inthe full sense of the word. The smoke-burdened atmosphere was imperviousto the radiance of the stars. Only by Smith's instinctive sense ofdirection did we make any headway toward the mouth of Sage Creek. EvenMacRae owned himself somewhat at fault, once we came among the buffalo.They barred our path in dimly-seen masses that neither halted,scattered, nor turned aside when we galloped upon them in the gloom. Wewere the ones who gave the road, riding now before, now behind theindistinct bulk of a herd, according as we judged the shorter way.

  More dense became the brute mass. Whirled this way and that, as Pieganled, I knew neither east, west, north or south from one moment toanother. Betimes we found a stretch of open country, and gave our horsesthe steel, but always to bring up suddenly against the bison plodding ingroups, in ranks, in endless files. They were ubiquitous; stolidobstructions that we could neither avoid nor ride down. Our progressbecame monotonous, a succession of fruitless attempts to advance;hopeless, like wandering in a subtle maze. Bison to the right of us,bison to the left of us, an uncounted swarm behind us, and as manybefore--but they neither bellowed nor thundered; they passed likephantoms in the night, soundlessly save for the muffled trampling ofcloven hoofs, and here and there upon occasion hoarse coughings thatwere strangled by the wind.

  And we rode as silently as the bison marched. For each one of us hadseen that one-minded pilgrimage of the brown cattle take place in moonsgone by. I recalled a time when a trail-herd lay on the Platte and thebuffalo barred their passing for two days--even made fourteen riders andthree thousand Texas steers give ground. Is it not history that the St.Louis-Benton river-boats backed water when the bison crossed theMissouri in the spring and fall? Remembering these, and other times thatthe herds had gathered and swept over the plains, a plague of monstrouslocusts, pushing aside men and freight-trains, I knew what would happenshould the buffalo close their ranks, marshal the scattered groups intocloser formation, quicken the pace of the multitude that poured downfrom the north. And presently it happened.

  Insensibly the number of moving bodies increased. The consolidation wasimperceptible in the murk, but nevertheless it took place. We ceased tofind clear spaces where we could gallop; a trot became impossible. Wewere hemmed in. A rank animal odor mingled with the taint of smoke.Gradually the muffled beat of hoofs grew more pronounced, a shufflingmonotone that filled the night. We were mere atoms in a vast wave ofhorn and bone and flesh that bore us onward as the tide floatsdriftwood.

  The belated moon stole up from its lair, hovered above the sky-line, agaudy orange sphere in the haze of smoke. It shed a tenuous glimmer onthe sea of bison that had engulfed us; and at the half-revealed sightMacRae lifted his clenched hands above his head and cursed thecircumstance that had brought us to such extremity. That was the firstand only time I knew him to lose his poise, his natural repression.Still water runs deep, they say; and a glacial cap may concealsubterranean fires. Trite similes, I grant you--but, ah, how true. Thegood Lord help those phlegmatics who can stand by unmoved when aself-contained man reveals the anguish of his soul in one passionateoutburst. Could the fury that quivered in his voice have wreaked itselfon the bison and the men we followed, the stench of their blastedcarcasses would have reached high heaven. But the bison surrounded usimpassively, bore us on as before; somewhere, miles beyond, Lessardpursued the evil tenor of his way; and MacRae's futile passion, like awave that has battered itself to foam against a sullen cliff, subsidedand died. Later, while we three cast-aways drifted with the bovine tide,he spoke to Piegan Smith.

  "How are we going to get through?"

  "Dunno. But we _will_ get through, yuh c'n gamble on that." Optimismrampant was the dominating element in Piegan's philosophy of life.

  As if to prove that he was a true prophet, the herd split against arocky pinnacle, and on this we stranded. So much, at least, we hadgained--we were no longer being carried willy-nilly out of our way.

  "If they'd only scatter a little," MacRae muttered.

  But for a long two hours the bison streamed by our island, dividingbefore and closing behind the insensate peak that alone had power tobreak their close-packed ranks. Then came an opening, a falling apart;slight as it was, we plunged into it with joy. Thereafter we werebuffeted like chips in the swirling maw of a whirlpool; we fought ourway rod by rod. Here an opening, and we shot through; there a solid wallof flesh for whose passing we halted, lashing out with quirts andspurring desperately to hold our own--a war for the open road against anenemy whose only weapon was his unswerving bulk. And we won. We pushed,twisted, spurred our way through the ranks of a hundred thousand bison.Jostling, cursing the brute swarm, we crowded our horses against thepress, and lo! of a sudden we reined up on open ground--the bison, likea nightmare, were gone. Off in the gloom to one side of us a myriad ofhoofs beat the earth, the hoarse coughings continued, the animal odorexhaled--but it was no longer a force to be reckoned with. We were free.We had outflanked the herd.

  A WAR FOR THE OPEN ROAD AGAINST AN ENEMY WHOSE ONLYWEAPON WAS HIS UNSWERVING BULK.

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