Page 20
It did seem strange enough to see a town
again after what appeared to us such a long acquaintance with deep, still,
almost lifeless and houseless solitude! We tumbled out into the busy street
feeling like meteoric people crumbled off the corner of some other world,
and wakened up suddenly in this. For an hour we took as much interest in
Overland City as if we had never seen a town before. The reason we had an
hour to spare was because we had to change our stage (for a less sumptuous
affair, called a "mud-wagon") and transfer our freight of mails.
Presently we got under way again. We came
to the shallow, yellow, muddy South Platte, with its low banks and its
scattering flat sand-bars and pigmy islands - a melancholy stream straggling
through the centre of the enormous flat plain, and only saved from being
impossible to find with the naked eye by its sentinel rank of scattering
trees standing on either bank. The Platte was "up," they said - which made
me wish I could see it when it was down, if it could look any sicker and
sorrier. They said it was a dangerous stream to cross, now, because its
quicksands were liable to swallow up horses, coach and passengers if an
attempt was made to ford it. But the mails had to go, and we made the
attempt. Once or twice in midstream the wheels sunk into the yielding sands
so threateningly that we half believed we had dreaded and avoided the sea
all our lives to be shipwrecked in a "mud-wagon" in the middle of a desert
at last. But we dragged through and sped away toward the setting sun. Next
morning, just before dawn, when about five hundred and fifty miles from St.
Joseph, our mud-wagon broke down. We were to be delayed five or six hours,
and therefore we took horses, by invitation, and joined a party who were
just starting on a buffalo hunt. It was noble sport galloping over the plain
in the dewy freshness of the morning, but our part of the hunt ended in
disaster and disgrace, for a wounded buffalo bull chased the passenger Bemis
nearly two miles, and then he forsook his horse and took to a lone tree. He
was very sullen about the matter for some twenty-four hours, but at last he
began to soften little by little, and finally he said:
"Well, it was not funny, and there was no
sense in those gawks making themselves so facetious over it. I tell you I
was angry in earnest for awhile. I should have shot that long gangly lubber
they called Hank, if I could have done it without crippling six or seven
other people - but of course I couldn't, the old 'Allen's' so confounded
comprehensive. I wish those loafers had been up in the tree; they wouldn't
have wanted to laugh so. If I had had a horse worth a cent - but no, the
minute he saw that buffalo bull wheel on him and give a bellow, he raised
straight up in the air and stood on his heels. The saddle began to slip, and
I took him round the neck and laid close to him, and began to pray. Then he
came down and stood up on the other end awhile, and the bull actually
stopped pawing sand and bellowing to contemplate the inhuman spectacle.
"Then the bull made a pass at him and
uttered a bellow that sounded perfectly frightful, it was so close to me,
and that seemed to literally prostrate my horse's reason, and make a raving
distracted maniac of him, and I wish I may die if he didn't stand on his
head for a quarter of a minute and shed tears. He was absolutely out of his
mind - he was, as sure as truth itself, and he really didn't know what he
was doing. Then the bull came charging at us, and my horse dropped down on
all fours and took a fresh start - and then for the next ten minutes he
would actually throw one hand-spring after another so fast that the bull
began to get unsettled, too, and didn't know where to start in - and so he
stood there sneezing, and shovelling dust over his back, and bellowing every
now and then, and thinking he had got a fifteen-hundred dollar circus horse
for breakfast, certain. Well, I was first out on his neck - the horse's, not
the bull's - and then underneath, and next on his rump, and sometimes head
up, and sometimes heels - but I tell you it seemed solemn and awful to be
ripping and tearing and carrying on so in the presence of death, as you
might say. Pretty soon the bull made a snatch for us and brought away some
of my horse's tail (I suppose, but do not know, being pretty busy at the
time), but something made him hungry for solitude and suggested to him to
get up and hunt for it.
Page 21
"And then you ought to have seen that
spider legged old skeleton go! and you ought to have seen the bull cut out
after him, too, - head down, tongue out, tail up, bellowing like everything,
and actually mowing down the weeds, and tearing up the earth, and boosting
up the sand like a whirlwind! By George, it was a hot race! I and the saddle
were back on the rump, and I had the bridle in my teeth and holding on to
the pommel with both hands. First we left the dogs behind; then we passed a
jackass rabbit; then we overtook a cayote, and were gaining on an antelope
when the rotten girth let go and threw me about thirty yards off to the
left, and as the saddle went down over the horse's rump he gave it a lift
with his heels that sent it mote than four hundred yards up in the air, I
wish I may die in a minute if he didn't. I fell at the foot of the only
solitary tree there was in nine counties adjacent (as any creature could see
with the naked eye), and the next second I had hold of the bark with four
sets of nails and my teeth, and the next second after that I was astraddle
of the main limb and blaspheming my luck in a way that made my breath smell
of brimstone. I had the bull, now, if he did not think of one thing. But
that one thing I dreaded. I dreaded it very seriously. There was a
possibility that the bull might not think of it, but there greater chances
that he would. I made up my mind what I would do in case he did. It was a
little over forty feet to the ground from where I sat. I cautiously unwound
the lariat from the pommel of my saddle -"
"Your saddle? Did you take your saddle up
in the tree with you?"
"Take it up in the tree with me? Why, how
you talk. Of course I didn't. No man could do that. It fell in the tree when
it came down."
"Oh-exactly."
"Certainly. I unwound the lariat, and
fastened one end of it to the limb. It was the very best green raw-hide, and
capable of sustaining tons. I made a slip-noose in the other end, and then
hung it down to see the length. It reached down twenty-two feet - half way
to the ground. I then loaded every barrel of the Allen with a double charge.
I felt satisfied. I said to myself, if he never thinks of that one thing
that I dread, all right - but if he does, all right anyhow - I am fixed for
him. But don't you know that the very thing a man dreads is the thing that
always happens? Indeed it is so. I watched the bull, now with anxiety -
anxiety which no one can conceive of who has not been in such a situation
and felt that at any moment death might come. Presently a thought came into
the bull's eye. I knew it! said I - if my nerve falls now, I am lost. Sure
enough, it was just as I had dreaded, he started in to climb the tree----"
"What, the bull?"
"Of course - who else?"
"But a bull can't climb a tree."
"He can't, can't he? Since you know so
much about it, did you ever see a bull try?"
"No! I never dreamt of such a thing."
"Well, the, what is the use of your
talking that way, then? Because you never saw a thing done, is that any
reason why it can't be done?"
"Well, all right - go on. What did you
do?"
"The bull started up, and got along
well for about ten feet, then slipped and slid back. I breathed easier. He
tried it again - got up a little higher - slipped again. But he came at it
once more, and this time he was careful. He got gradually higher and higher,
and my spirits went down more and more. Up he came - an inch at a time -
with his eyes hot, and his tongue hanging out. Higher and higher - hitched
his foot over the stump of a limb, and looked up, as much as to say, 'You
are my meat, friend.' Up again - higher and higher, and getting more excited
the closer he got. He was within ten feet of me! I took a long breath, - and
then said I, 'It is now or never.' I had the coil of the lariat all ready; I
paid it out slowly, till it hung right over his head; all of a sudden I let
go of the slack, and the slipnoose fell fairly round his neck! Quicker than
lightning I out with the Allen and let him have it in the face. It was an
awful roar, and must have scared the bull out of his senses. When the smoke
cleared away, there he was, dangling in the air, twenty foot from the
ground, and going out of one convulsion into another faster than you could
count! I didn't stop to count, anyhow - I shinned down the tree and shot for
home."