The Boy Settlers Part 13

"And there's another,--and another! Why, he's covered all over with 'em!" exclaimed Oscar.

Sure enough, the lad's legs, if not exactly covered, were well sprinkled with the things.

"Sc.r.a.pe 'em off with your knife!" cried Sandy.

Oscar usually carried a sheath-knife at his belt, "more for the style of the thing, than use," he explained; so with this he quickly took off the repulsive creatures, which, loosening their hold, dropped to the ground limp and shapeless.

"Leeches," said Charlie, briefly, as he poked one of them over with a stick. The mystery was explained, and wherever one of them had been attached to the boy's tender skin, blood flowed freely for a few minutes, and then ceased. Even on one or two of the birds they found a leech adhering to the feathers where the poor thing's blood had followed the shot. Picking up the game, the two boys escorted the elated Sandy to the cabin, where his unexpected adventures made him the hero of the day.

"Couldn't we catch some of those leeches and sell them to the doctors?" asked the practical Oscar.

His father shook his head. "American wild leeches like those are not good for much, my son. I don't know why not; but I have been told that only the imported leeches are used by medical men."

"Well," said Sandy, tenderly rubbing his wounded legs, "if imported leeches can bite any more furiously than these Kansas ones do, I don't want any of them to tackle me! I suppose these were hungry, though, not having had a taste of a fresh Illinois boy lately. But they didn't make much out of me, after all."

Very happy were those three boys that evening, as, filled with roast wild duck, they sat by and heard their elders discuss with Younkins the details of the grand buffalo hunt that was now to be organized.

Younkins had seen Mr. Fuller, who had agreed to make one of the party.

So there would be four men and the three boys to compose the expedition. They were to take two horses, Fuller's and Younkins's, to serve as pack-animals, for the way to the hunting-ground might be long; but the hunting was to be done on foot. Younkins was very sure that they would have no difficulty in getting near enough to shoot; the animals had not been hunted much in those parts at that time, and the Indians killed them on foot very often. If Indians could do that, why could not white men?

The next two days were occupied in preparations for the expedition, to the great delight of the boys, who recalled with amus.e.m.e.nt something of a similar feeling that they had when they were preparing for their trip to Kansas, long ago, away back in Dixon. How far off that all seemed now! Now they were in the promised land, and were going out to hunt for big game--buffalo! It seemed too good to be true.

Bread was made and baked; smoked side-meat, and pepper and salt packed; a few potatoes taken, as a luxury in camp-life; blankets, guns, and ammunition prepared; and above all, plenty of coffee, already browned and ground, was packed for use. It was a merry and a buoyant company that started out in the early dawn of a September morning, having s.n.a.t.c.hed a hasty breakfast, of which the excited boys had scarcely time to taste. Buffalo beef, they confidently said, was their favorite meat. They would dine on buffalo hump that very day.

Oscar, more cautious than the others, asked Younkins if they were sure to see buffalo soon.

"Surely," replied he; "I was out to the bend of the Fork just above the bluffs, last night, and the plains were just full of 'em, just simply black-like, as it were."

"What?" exclaimed all three boys, in a breath. "Plains full of them, and you didn't even mention it! What a funny man you are."

Mr. Howell reminded them that Mr. Younkins had been accustomed to see buffalo for so long that he did not think it anything worth mentioning that he had seen vast numbers of the creatures already. So, as they pressed on, the boys strained their eyes in the distance, looking for buffalo. But no animals greeted their sight, as they pa.s.sed over the long green swales of the prairie, mile after mile, now rising to the top of a little eminence, and now sinking into a shallow valley; but occasionally a sneaking, stealthy coyote would noiselessly trot into view, and then, after cautiously surveying them from a distance, disappear, as Sandy said, "as if he had sunk into a hole in the ground." It was in vain that they attempted to get near enough to one of these wary animals to warrant a shot. It is only by great good luck that anybody ever shoots a coyote, although in countries where they abound every man's hand is against them; they are such arrant thieves, as well as cowards.

But at noon, while the little party was taking a luncheon in the shade of a solitary birch that grew by the side of a little creek, or runlet, Sandy, the irrepressible, with his bread and meat in his hand, darted off to the next roll of the prairie, a high and swelling hill, in fact, "to see what he could see." As soon as the lad had reached the highest part of the swale, he turned around and swung his arms excitedly, too far off to make his voice heard. He jumped up and down, whirled his arms, and acted altogether like a young lunatic.

"The boy sees buffalo," said Younkins, with a smile of calm amus.e.m.e.nt.

He could hardly understand why anybody should be excited over so commonplace a matter. But the other two lads were off like a shot in Sandy's direction. Reaching their comrade, they found him in a state of great agitation. "Oh, look at 'em! Look at 'em! Millions on millions! Did anybody ever see the like?"

Perhaps Sandy's estimate of the numbers was a little exaggerated, but it really was a wonderful sight. The rolls of the prairie, four or five miles away, were dark with the vast and slow-moving herds that were pa.s.sing over, their general direction being toward the spot on which the boys were standing. Now and again, some animals strayed off in broken parties, but for the most part the phalanx seemed to be solid, so solid that the green of the earth was completely hidden by the dense herd.

The boys stood rooted to the spot with the intensity of their wonder and delight. If there were not millions in that vast army of buffalo, there were certainly hundreds of thousands. What would happen if that great mob should suddenly take a notion to gallop furiously in their direction?

"You needn't whisper so," said Charlie, noticing the awe-struck tones of the youngsters. "They can't hear you, away off there. Why, the very nearest of the herd cannot be less than five miles off; and they would run from us, rather than toward us, if they were to see and hear us."

"I asked Younkins if he ever had any trouble with a buffalo when he was hunting, and what do you suppose he said?" asked Oscar, who had recovered his voice. "Well, he said that once he was out on horseback, and had cornered a young buffalo bull in among some limestone ledges up there on the Upper Fork, and 'the critter turned on him and made a nasty noise with his mouth-like,' so that he was glad to turn and run.

'Nasty noise with his mouth,' I suppose was a sort of a snort--a snort-like, as Younkins would say. There come the rest of the folks.

My! won't daddy be provoked that we didn't go back and help hitch up!"

But the elders of the party had not forgotten that they were once boys themselves, and when they reached the point on which the lads stood surveying the sight, they also were stirred to enthusiasm. The great herd was still moving on, the dark folds of the moving ma.s.s undulating like the waves of a sea, as the buffalo rose and fell upon the surface of the rolling prairie.

As if the leaders had spied the hunters, the main herd now swung away more to the right, or northward, only a few detached parties coming toward the little group of hunters that still watched them silently from its elevated point of observation.

Younkins surveyed the movement critically and then announced it as his opinion that the herd was bound for the waters of the Republican Fork, to the right and somewhat to the northward of the party. The best course for them to take now would be to try and cut off the animals before they could reach the river. There was a steep and bluffy bank at the point for which the buffalo seemed to be aiming; that would divert them further up stream, and if the hunters could only creep along in the low gullies of the prairie, out of the sight of the herd, they might reach the place where the buffalo would cross before they could get there; for the herd moved slowly; an expert walker could far out-travel them in a direct line.

"One of you boys will have to stay here by the stuff; the rest of us will press on in the direction of the river as fast as may be," said Uncle Aleck. The boys looked at each other in dismay. Who would be willing to be left behind in a chase so exciting as this? Sandy bravely solved the puzzle.

"Here, you take my shot-gun, Charlie," he said. "It carries farther than yours; I'll stay by the stuff and the horses; I'm pretty tired, anyhow." His father smiled approvingly, but said nothing. He knew how great a sacrifice the boy was making for the others.

Left alone on the hill-top, for the rest of the party moved silently and swiftly away to the northward, Sandy felt the bitterness of disappointment as well as of loneliness while he sat on the gra.s.s watching with absorbed attention the motions of the great herds. All trace of his companions was soon lost as they pa.s.sed down into the gullies and ravines that broke the ground adjacent to the Fork to the westward of the stream. Once, indeed, he saw the figures of the hunters, painted dark against the sky, rise over a distant swell and disappear just as one of them turned and waved a signal in dumb show to the solitary watcher on the hill.

"If those buffalo should get stampeded," mused Sandy, "and make a break in this way, it would be 'all day' with those horses and the camp stuff. I guess I had better make all fast, for there may be a gale of wind, or a gale of buffalo, which is the same thing." So saying, the thoughtful lad led the animals down into the gully where the noon luncheon had been taken, removed their packs, tethered them to the tree, and then ran back to the hill-top and resumed his watch.

There was no change in the situation except that there were, if possible, more buffalo moving over the distant slopes of the rolling prairie. The boy stood entranced at the sight. More, more, and yet more of the herds were slowly moving into sight and then disappearing in the gullies below. The dark brown folds seemed to envelop the face of the earth. Sandy wondered where so many creatures could find pasturage. Their bodies appeared to cover the hills and valleys, so that there could not be room left for grazing. "They've got such big feet," he soliloquized aloud, "that I should think that the ground would be all pawed up where they have travelled." In the ecstasy of his admiration, he walked to and fro on the hill-top, talking to himself, as was his wont.

"I wonder if the other fellows can see them as I do?" he asked. "I don't believe, after all, that it is one-half so entertaining for them as it is for me. Oh, I just wish the folks at home could be here now, and see this sight. It beats all nature, as Father Dixon used to say.

And to think that there are thousands of people in big cities who don't have meat enough to eat. And all this buffalo-meat running wild!" The boy laughed to himself at the comicality of the thought.

"Fresh beef running wild!"

The faint report of a gun fired afar off now reached his ear and he saw a blue puff of smoke rising from the crest of a timber-bordered hill far away. The herd in that direction seemed to swerve somewhat and scatter, but, to his intense surprise, there was no hurry in their movements; the brown and black folds of the great ma.s.s of animals still slowly and sluggishly spread out and flowed like the tides of the sea, enveloping everything. Suddenly there was another report, then another, and another. Three shots in quick succession.

"Now they are getting in their work!" shouted the boy, fairly dancing up and down in his excitement. "Oh, I wish I was there instead of here looking on!"

Now the herds wavered for a moment, then their general direction was changed from the northward to the eastward. Then there was a swift and sudden movement of the whole ma.s.s, and the vast dark stream flowed in a direction parallel with the Fork instead of toward it, as heretofore.

"They are coming this way!" shouted Sandy, to the empty, silent air around him. "I'll get a shot at 'em yet!" Then, suddenly recollecting that his gun had been exchanged for his brother's, he added, "And Charlie's gun is no good!"

In truth, the herd was now bound straight for the hill on which the boy maintained his solitary watch. Swiftly running down to the gully in which the horses were tethered, Sandy got out his brother's gun and carefully examined the caps and the load. They had run some heavy slugs of lead in a rude mould which they had made, the slug being just the size of the barrel of the shot-gun. One barrel was loaded with a heavy charge of buckshot, and the other with a slug. The latter was an experiment, and a big slug like that could not be expected to carry very far; it might, however, do much damage at short range.

Running up to the head of the gully, which was in the nature of a shallow ravine draining the hill above, Sandy emerged on the highest point of land, a few hundred feet to the right and north of his former post of observation. The herd was in full drive directly toward him.

Suppose they should come driving down over the hills where he was!

They would sweep down into the gully, stampede the horses, and trample all the camp stuff into bits! The boy fairly shook with excitement as the idea struck him. On they came, the solid ground shaking under their thundering tread.

"I must try to head 'em off," said the boy to himself. "The least I can do is to scare them a good bit, and then they'll split in two and the herd will divide right here. But I must get a shot at one, or the other fellows will laugh at me."

The rushing herd was headed right for the spot where Sandy stood, spreading out to the left and right, but with the centre of the phalanx steering in a bee-line for the lad. Thoroughly alarmed now, Sandy looked around, and perceiving a sharp outcropping of the underlying stratum of limestone at the head of the little ravine, he resolved to shelter himself behind that, in case the buffalo should continue to come that way. Notwithstanding his excitement, the lad did not fail to note two discharges, one after the other, in the distance, showing that his friends were still keeping up a fusillade against the flying herds.

At the second shot, Sandy thought that the ma.s.ses in the rear swung off more to the southward, as if panic-stricken by the firing, but the advance guard still maintained a straight line for him. There was no escape from it now, and Sandy looked down at the two horses tethered in the ravine below, peacefully grazing the short, thick gra.s.s, unconscious of the flood of buffalo undulating over the prairie above them, and soon to swoop down over the hill-side where they were. In another instant the lad could see the tossing, s.h.a.ggy manes of the leaders of the herd, and could even distinguish the redness of their eyes as they swept up the incline, at the head of which he stood. He hastily dodged behind the crag of rock; it was a small affair, hardly higher than his head, but wide enough, he thought, to divide the herd when they came to it. So he ducked behind it and waited for coming events.

Sandy was right. Just beyond the rock behind which he was crouched, the ground fell off rapidly and left a stiff slope, up which even a stampeded buffalo would hardly climb. The ground trembled as the vast army of living creatures came tumbling and thundering over the prairie. Sandy, stooping behind the outcropping, also trembled, partly with excitement and partly with fear. If the buffalo were to plunge over the very small barrier between him and them, his fate was sealed.

For an instant his heart stood still. It was but for an instant, for, before he could draw a long breath, the herd parted on the two sides of the little crag. The divided stream poured down on both sides of him, a tumultuous, broken, and disorderly torrent of animals, making no sound except for the ceaseless beat of their tremendous hoofs.

Sandy's eyes swam with the bewildering motion of the living stream.

For a brief s.p.a.ce he saw nothing but a confused ma.s.s of heads, backs, and horns, hundreds of thousands flowing tumultuously past. Gradually his sense of security came back to him, and, exulting in his safety, he raised his gun, and muttering under his breath, "Right behind the fore-shoulder-like, Younkins said," he took steady aim and fired. A young buffalo bull tumbled headlong down the ravine. In their mad haste, a number of the animals fell over him, pell-mell, but, recovering themselves with incredible swiftness, they skipped to their feet, and were speedily on their way down the hill. Sandy watched, with a beating heart, the young bull as he fell heels over head two or three times before he could rally; the poor creature got upon his feet, fell again, and while the tender-hearted boy hesitated whether to fire the second barrel or not, finally fell over on his side helpless.

Meanwhile the ranks of buffalo coming behind swerved from the fallen animal to the left and right, as if by instinct, leaving an open s.p.a.ce all around the point where the boy stood gazing at his fallen game. He fired, almost at random, at the nearest of the flying buffalo; but the buckshot whistled hurtlessly among the herd, and Sandy thought to himself that it was downright cruelty to shoot among them, for the scattering shot would only wound without killing the animals.

It was safe now for Sandy to emerge from his place of concealment, and, standing on the rocky point behind which he had been hidden, he gazed to the west and north. The tumbling ma.s.ses of buffalo were scattered far apart. Here and there he could see wide stretches of prairie, no longer green, but trampled into a dull brown by the tread of myriads of hurrying feet; and far to the north the land was clear, as if the main herd had pa.s.sed down to the southward. Scattered bands still hurried along above him, here and there, nearer to the Fork, but the main herd had gone on in the general direction of the settlers'

home.

"What if they have gone down to our cabin?" he muttered aloud. "It's all up with any corn-field that they run across. But, then, they must have kept too far to the south to get anywhere near our claim." And the lad consoled himself with this reflection.

But his game was more engrossing of his attention just now than anything else. He had been taught that an animal should not bleed to death through a gunshot wound. His big leaden slug had gone directly through the buffalo's vitals somewhere, for it was now quite dead.