Bring Me His Ears by Clarence E. Mulford

Author:Clarence E. Mulford
Language: eng
Format: epub

CHAPTER XII

PAWNEES

At this Ash Creek camp before the wagoners had unhitched their teams there was a cordon around the corral made up of every man who could be spared, and the cannon crews stood silently around their freshly primed guns. The air of tenseness and expectancy pleased Woodson, for it was an assurance that there would be no laxity about this night's watch. With the animals staked as close to the wagons as practicable, which caused some encroachments and several fist fights between jealous wagoners, the fires soon were cooking supper for squads of men from the sentry line; and as soon as all had eaten and the camp was not distracted by too many duties, the cordon thinned until it was composed of a double watch. Before dusk the animals were driven inside, secured by side-line hobbles, which are much more effective than hobbling the forelegs, and all gaps were closed as tightly as possible.

The evening shadows darkened and ran into blackness; the night wind crept among the branches of the thin line of trees on both banks of the creek and made soft soughings in the tall, thick grass; overhead the sky first darkened and then grew lighter, shot with myriads of stars, which gleamed as only prairie stars can; and among them, luminous and bright, lay the Milky Way. The creek murmured in musical tones as it fretted at some slight obstruction and all nature seemed to be at peace. Then sounded the howl of a buffalo wolf, the gray killer of the plains, deep, throaty, full, and followed by a quick slide up the scale with a ringing note that the bluffs and mountains love to toss back and forth. Yet it was somehow different. Woodson and his trapper aides, seated together against a wagon, stirred and glanced sidewise at each other. Not one of them had felt the reflex answer of his spine and hair; not one of them had thrilled. A simple lack; but a most enlightening one.

Franklin bit into a plug of tobacco, pushed the mouthful into his cheek with deft tongue, and crossed his legs the other way. "Hell!" he growled. "Reckon we're in fer it."

"They jest can't git it all in, kin they?" commented Zeb Houghton, coming up.

"No," answered Tom Boyd. "They leave out th' best part o' it." He glanced in the direction of the nearest fringe of trees, noisy cottonwoods all, and shook his head. "We been havin' too fine a stretch o' weather. Hear them trees? In two hours it'll be blowin' hard; an' I kin feel th' rain already."

From the blackness of the creek there arose a series of short, sharp barks, faster and faster, higher and higher, the lost-soul howl climbing to a pitch that was sheer torture to some ears.

"Kiyote sassin' a gray," chuckled Zeb, ironically.

"'Upon what meat hath--'" began Tom, and checked the quotation. "He oughter be tuckin' his tail atween his laigs an' streakin' fer th' Platte; or mebby he missed somethin', too," he said.

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