The Complete Western Stories of Elmore Leonard - Elmore Leonard [103]
“You can’t hunt buffalo from a saddle… they’ll run as soon as they smell horse! What the hell’s the matter with him!”
HE WATCHED the boy, growing smaller with distance, move out past the herd. Then suddenly the horse wheeled, and it was going at a dead run toward the herd. A yell drifted up to the ridge and then a heavy rifle shot followed by two reports that were weaker. Horse and rider cut into the herd, and the buffalo broke in confusion.
They ran crazily, bellowing, bunching in panic to escape the horse and man smell and the screaming that suddenly hit them with the wind. A herd of buffalo will run for hours if the panic stabs them sharp enough, and they will stay together, bunching their thunder, tons of bulk, massive bellowing heads, horns, and thrashing hooves. Nothing will stop them. Some go down, and the herd passes over, beating them into the ground.
They ran directly away from the smell and the noises that were now far behind, downwind they came and in less than a minute were thundering through the short valley. Dust rose after them, billowing up to the old man, who covered his mouth, coughing, watching the rumbling dark mass erupt from the valley out onto the plain. They moved in an unwavering line toward the Salt Fork, rolling over everything, before swerving at the river—even the two canvas squares that had been brilliant white in the morning sun. And soon they were only a deep hum in the distance.
Will Gordon was out on the flats, approaching the place where the wagons had stood, riding slowly now in the settling dust.
But the dust was still in the air, heavy enough to make Leo Cleary sneeze as he brought the wagon out from the pines toward the river.
He saw the hide buyers’ wagons smashed to scrap wood and shredded canvas dragged among the strewn buffalo hides. Many of the bales were still intact, spilling from the wagon wrecks; some were buried under the debris.
Three men stood waist deep in the shallows of the river, and beyond them, upstream, were the horses they had saved. Some had not been cut from the pickets in time, and they lay shapeless in blood at one end of the camp.
Will Gordon stood on the bank with the revolving pistol cocked, pointed at Clyde Foss. He glanced aside as the old man brought up the team.
“He wants to sell back, Leo. How much, you think?”
The old man only looked at him, because he could not speak.
“I think two barrels of whiskey,” Will Gordon said. He stepped suddenly into the water and brought the long pistol barrel sweeping against Clyde’s head, cutting the temple.
“Two barrels?”
Clyde Foss staggered and came to his feet slowly.
“Come here, Clyde.” The boy leveled the pistol at him and waited as Clyde Foss came hesitantly out of the water, hunching his shoulders. The boy swung the pistol back, and, as Clyde ducked, he brought his left fist up, smashing hard against the man’s jaw.
“Or three barrels?”
The hide buyer floundered in the shallow water, then crawled to the bank, and lay on his stomach, gasping for breath.
“We’ll give him three, Leo. Since he’s been nice about it.”
Later, after Clyde and his two men had loaded their wagon with four hundred and eighty hides, the old man and the boy rode off through the valley to the great plain.
Once the old man said, “Where we going now, Will?”
And when the boy said, “We’re still going hunting, Leo,” the old man shrugged wearily and just nodded his head.
12
Long Night
Zane Grey’s Western, May 1953
NEAR THE CREST of the hill, where the road climbed into the timber, he raised from the saddle wearily and turned to look back toward the small, flickering pinpoints of light.
The lights were people, and his mind gathered faces. A few he had seen less than a half hour before; but now, to Dave Boland, all of the faces were expressionless and as cold as the lights. They seemed wide- eyed and innocently, stupidly vacant.
He rode on through the timber with what was left of a hot anger, and