The Last of the Plainsmen
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Zane Grey >> The Last of the Plainsmen
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THE LAST OF THE PLAINSMEN
by
ZANE GREY
PREFATORY NOTE
Buffalo Jones needs no introduction to American sportsmen, but to
these of my readers who are unacquainted with him a few words may
not be amiss.
He was born sixty-two years ago on the Illinois prairie, and he
has devoted practically all of his life to the pursuit of wild
animals. It has been a pursuit which owed its unflagging energy
and indomitable purpose to a singular passion, almost an
obsession, to capture alive, not to kill. He has caught and
broken the will of every well-known wild beast native to western
North America. Killing was repulsive to him. He even disliked the
sight of a sporting rifle, though for years necessity compelled
him to earn his livelihood by supplying the meat of buffalo to
the caravans crossing the plains. At last, seeing that the
extinction of the noble beasts was inevitable, he smashed his
rifle over a wagon wheel and vowed to save the species. For ten
years he labored, pursuing, capturing and taming buffalo, for
which the West gave him fame, and the name Preserver of the
American Bison.
As civilization encroached upon the plains Buffalo Jones ranged
slowly westward; and to-day an isolated desert-bound plateau on
the north rim of the Grand Canyon of Arizona is his home. There
his buffalo browse with the mustang and deer, and are as free as
ever they were on the rolling plains.
In the spring of 1907 I was the fortunate companion of the old
plainsman on a trip across the desert, and a hunt in that
wonderful country of yellow crags, deep canyons and giant pines.
I want to tell about it. I want to show the color and beauty of
those painted cliffs and the long, brown-matted bluebell-dotted
aisles in the grand forests; I want to give a suggestion of the
tang of the dry, cool air; and particularly I want to throw a
little light upon the life and nature of that strange character
and remarkable man, Buffalo Jones.
Happily in remembrance a writer can live over his experiences,
and see once more the moonblanched silver mountain peaks against
the dark blue sky; hear the lonely sough of the night wind
through the pines; feel the dance of wild expectation in the
quivering pulse; the stir, the thrill, the joy of hard action in
perilous moments; the mystery of man's yearning for the
unattainable.
As a boy I read of Boone with a throbbing heart, and the silent
moccasined, vengeful Wetzel I loved.
I pored over the deeds of later men--Custer and Carson, those
heroes of the plains. And as a man I came to see the wonder, the
tragedy of their lives, and to write about them. It has been my
destiny--what a happy fulfillment of my dreams of border
spirit!--to live for a while in the fast-fading wild environment
which produced these great men with the last of the great
plainsmen.
ZANE GREY.
CONTENTS
1. THE ARIZONA DESERT
2 THE RANGE
3. THE LAST HERD
4. THE TRAIL
5. OAK SPRING
6. THE WHITE MUSTANG
7. SNAKE GULCH
8. NAZA! NAZA! NAZA!
9. THE LAND OF THE MUSK-OX
10. SUCCESS AND FAILURE
11. ON TO THE SIWASH
12. OLD TOM
13. SINGING CLIFFS
14. ALL HEROES BUT ONE
15. JONES ON COUGARS
16. KITTY
17. CONCLUSION
CHAPTER 1. THE ARIZONA DESERT
One afternoon, far out on the sun-baked waste of sage, we made
camp near a clump of withered pinyon trees. The cold desert wind
came down upon us with the sudden darkness. Even the Mormons, who
were finding the trail for us across the drifting sands, forgot
to sing and pray at sundown. We huddled round the campfire, a
tired and silent little group. When out of the lonely, melancholy
night some wandering Navajos stole like shadows to our fire, we
hailed their advent with delight. They were good-natured Indians,
willing to barter a blanket or bracelet; and one of them, a tall,
gaunt fellow, with the bearing of a chief, could speak a little
English.
"How," said he, in a deep chest voice.
"Hello, Noddlecoddy," greeted Jim Emmett, the Mormon guide.
"Ugh!" answered the Indian.
"Big paleface--Buffalo Jones---big chief--buffalo man,"
introduced Emmett, indicating Jones.
"How." The Navajo spoke with dignity, and extended a friendly
hand.
"Jones big white chief--rope buffalo--tie up tight," continued
Emmett, making motions with his arm, as if he were whirling a
lasso.
"No big--heap small buffalo," said the Indian, holding his hand
level with his knee, and smiling broadly.
Jones, erect, rugged, brawny, stood in the full light of the
campfire. He had a dark, bronzed, inscrutable face; a stern mouth
and square jaw, keen eyes, half-closed from years of searching
the wide plains; and deep furrows wrinkling his cheeks. A strange
stillness enfolded his feature the tranquility earned from a long
life of adventure.
He held up both muscular hands to the Navajo, and spread out his
fingers.
"Rope buffalo--heap big buffalo--heap many--one sun."
The Indian straightened up, but kept his friendly smile.
"Me big chief," went on Jones, "me go far north--Land of Little
Sticks--Naza! Naza! rope musk-ox; rope White Manitou of Great
Slave Naza! Naza!"
"Naza!" replied the Navajo, pointing to the North Star; "no--no."
"Yes me big paleface--me come long way toward setting sun--go
cross Big Water--go Buckskin--Siwash--chase cougar."
The cougar, or mountain lion, is a Navajo god and the Navajos
hold him in as much fear and reverence as do the Great Slave
Indians the musk-ox.
"No kill cougar," continued Jones, as the Indian's bold features
hardened. "Run cougar horseback--run long way--dogs chase cougar
long time--chase cougar up tree! Me big chief--me climb
tree--climb high up--lasso cougar--rope cougar--tie cougar all
tight."
The Navajo's solemn face relaxed
"White man heap fun. No."
"Yes," cried Jones, extending his great arms. "Me strong; me rope
cougar--me tie cougar; ride off wigwam, keep cougar alive."
"No," replied the savage vehemently.
"Yes," protested Jones, nodding earnestly.
"No," answered the Navajo, louder, raising his dark head.
"Yes!" shouted Jones.
"BIG LIE!" the Indian thundered.
Jones joined good-naturedly in the laugh at his expense. The
Indian had crudely voiced a skepticism I had heard more
delicately hinted in New York, and singularly enough, which had
strengthened on our way West, as we met ranchers, prospectors and
cowboys. But those few men I had fortunately met, who really knew
Jones, more than overbalanced the doubt and ridicule cast upon
him. I recalled a scarred old veteran of the plains, who had
talked to me in true Western bluntness:
"Say, young feller, I heerd yer couldn't git acrost the Canyon
fer the deep snow on the north rim. Wal, ye're lucky. Now, yer
hit the trail fer New York, an' keep goint! Don't ever tackle the
desert, 'specially with them Mormons. They've got water on the
brain, wusser 'n religion. It's two hundred an' fifty miles from
Flagstaff to Jones range, an' only two drinks on the trail. I
know this hyar Buffalo Jones. I knowed him way back in the
seventies, when he was doin' them ropin' stunts thet made him
famous as the preserver of the American bison. I know about that
crazy trip of his'n to the Barren Lands, after musk-ox. An' I
reckon I kin guess what he'll do over there in the Siwash. He'll
rope cougars--sure he will--an' watch 'em jump. Jones would rope
the devil, an' tie him down if the lasso didn't burn. Oh! he's
hell on ropin' things. An' he's wusser 'n hell on men, an'
hosses, an' dogs."
All that my well-meaning friend suggested made me, of course,
only the more eager to go with Jones. Where I had once been
interested in the old buffalo hunter, I was now fascinated. And
now I was with him in the desert and seeing him as he was, a
simple, quiet man, who fitted the mountains and the silences, and
the long reaches of distance.
"It does seem hard to believe--all this about Jones," remarked
Judd, one of Emmett's men.
"How could a man have the strength and the nerve? And isn't it
cruel to keep wild animals in captivity? it against God's word?"
Quick as speech could flow, Jones quoted: "And God said, 'Let us
make man in our image, and give him dominion over the fish of the
sea, the fowls of the air, over all the cattle, and over every
creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth'!"
"Dominion--over all the beasts of the field!" repeated Jones, his
big voice rolling out. He clenched his huge fists, and spread
wide his long arms. "Dominion! That was God's word!" The power
and intensity of him could be felt. Then he relaxed, dropped his
arms, and once more grew calm. But he had shown a glimpse of the
great, strange and absorbing passion of his life. Once he had
told me how, when a mere child, he had hazarded limb and neck to
capture a fox squirrel, how he had held on to the vicious little
animal, though it bit his hand through; how he had never learned
to play the games of boyhood; that when the youths of the little
Illinois village were at play, he roamed the prairies, or the
rolling, wooded hills, or watched a gopher hole. That boy was
father of the man: for sixty years an enduring passion for
dominion over wild animals had possessed him, and made his life
an endless pursuit.
Our guests, the Navajos, departed early, and vanished silently in
the gloom of the desert. We settled down again into a quiet that
was broken only by the low chant-like song of a praying Mormon.
Suddenly the hounds bristled, and old Moze, a surly and
aggressive dog, rose and barked at some real or imaginary desert
prowler. A sharp command from Jones made Moze crouch down, and
the other hounds cowered close together.
"Better tie up the dogs," suggested Jones. "Like as not coyotes
run down here from the hills."
The hounds were my especial delight. But Jones regarded them with
considerable contempt. When all was said, this was no small
wonder, for that quintet of long-eared canines would have tried
the patience of a saint. Old Moze was a Missouri hound that Jones
had procured in that State of uncertain qualities; and the dog
had grown old over coon-trails. He was black and white, grizzled
and battlescarred; and if ever a dog had an evil eye, Moze was
that dog. He had a way of wagging his tail--an indeterminate,
equivocal sort of wag, as if he realized his ugliness and knew he
stood little chance of making friends, but was still hopeful and
willing. As for me, the first time he manifested this evidence of
a good heart under a rough coat, he won me forever.
To tell of Moze's derelictions up to that time would take more
space than would a history of the whole trip; but the enumeration
of several incidents will at once stamp him as a dog of
character, and will establish the fact that even if his
progenitors had never taken any blue ribbons, they had at least
bequeathed him fighting blood. At Flagstaff we chained him in the
yard of a livery stable. Next morning we found him hanging by his
chain on the other side of an eight-foot fence. We took him down,
expecting to have the sorrowful duty of burying him; but Moze
shook himself, wagged his tail and then pitched into the livery
stable dog. As a matter of fact, fighting was his forte. He
whipped all of the dogs in Flagstaff; and when our blood hounds
came on from California, he put three of them hors de combat at
once, and subdued the pup with a savage growl. His crowning feat,
however, made even the stoical Jones open his mouth in amaze. We
had taken Moze to the El Tovar at the Grand Canyon, and finding
it impossible to get over to the north rim, we left him with one
of Jones's men, called Rust, who was working on the Canyon trail.
Rust's instructions were to bring Moze to Flagstaff in two weeks.
He brought the dog a little ahead time, and roared his
appreciation of the relief it to get the responsibility off his
hands. And he related many strange things. most striking of which
was how Moze had broken his chain and plunged into the raging
Colorado River, and tried to swim it just above the terrible
Sockdolager Rapids. Rust and his fellow-workmen watched the dog
disappear in the yellow, wrestling, turbulent whirl of waters,
and had heard his knell in the booming roar of the falls. Nothing
but a fish could live in that current; nothing but a bird could
scale those perpendicular marble walls. That night, however, when
the men crossed on the tramway, Moze met them with a wag of his
tail. He had crossed the river, and he had come back!
To the four reddish-brown, high-framed bloodhounds I had given
the names of Don, Tige, Jude and Ranger; and by dint of
persuasion, had succeeded in establishing some kind of family
relation between them and Moze. This night I tied up the
bloodhounds, after bathing and salving their sore feet; and I
left Moze free, for he grew fretful and surly under restraint.
The Mormons, prone, dark, blanketed figures, lay on the sand.
Jones was crawling into his bed. I walked a little way from the
dying fire, and faced the north, where the desert stretched,
mysterious and illimitable. How solemn and still it was! I drew
in a great breath of the cold air, and thrilled with a nameless
sensation. Something was there, away to the northward; it called
to me from out of the dark and gloom; I was going to meet it.
I lay down to sleep with the great blue expanse open to my eyes.
The stars were very large, and wonderfully bright, yet they
seemed so much farther off than I had ever seen them. The wind
softly sifted the sand. I hearkened to the tinkle of the cowbells
on the hobbled horses. The last thing I remembered was old Moze
creeping close to my side, seeking the warmth of my body.
When I awakened, a long, pale line showed out of the dun-colored
clouds in the east. It slowly lengthened, and tinged to red. Then
the morning broke, and the slopes of snow on the San Francisco
peaks behind us glowed a delicate pink. The Mormons were up and
doing with the dawn. They were stalwart men, rather silent, and
all workers. It was interesting to see them pack for the day's
journey. They traveled with wagons and mules, in the most
primitive way, which Jones assured me was exactly as their
fathers had crossed the plains fifty years before, on the trail
to Utah.
All morning we made good time, and as we descended into the
desert, the air became warmer, the scrubby cedar growth began to
fail, and the bunches of sage were few and far between. I turned
often to gaze back at the San Francisco peaks. The snowcapped
tips glistened and grew higher, and stood out in startling
relief. Some one said they could be seen two hundred miles across
the desert, and were a landmark and a fascination to all
travelers thitherward.
I never raised my eyes to the north that I did not draw my breath
quickly and grow chill with awe and bewilderment with the marvel
of the desert. The scaly red ground descended gradually; bare red
knolls, like waves, rolled away northward; black buttes reared
their flat heads; long ranges of sand flowed between them like
streams, and all sloped away to merge into gray, shadowy
obscurity, into wild and desolate, dreamy and misty nothingness.
"Do you see those white sand dunes there, more to the left?"
asked Emmett. "The Little Colorado runs in there. How far does it
look to you?"
"Thirty miles, perhaps," I replied, adding ten miles to my
estimate.
"It's seventy-five. We'll get there day after to-morrow. If the
snow in the mountains has begun to melt, we'll have a time
getting across."
That afternoon, a hot wind blew in my face, carrying fine sand
that cut and blinded. It filled my throat, sending me to the
water cask till I was ashamed. When I fell into my bed at night,
I never turned. The next day was hotter; the wind blew harder;
the sand stung sharper.
About noon the following day, the horses whinnied, and the mules
roused out of their tardy gait. "They smell water," said Emmett.
And despite the heat, and the sand in my nostrils, I smelled it,
too. The dogs, poor foot-sore fellows, trotted on ahead down the
trail. A few more miles of hot sand and gravel and red stone
brought us around a low mesa to the Little Colorado.
It was a wide stream of swiftly running, reddish-muddy water. In
the channel, cut by floods, little streams trickled and meandered
in all directions. The main part of the river ran in close to the
bank we were on. The dogs lolled in the water; the horses and
mules tried to run in, but were restrained; the men drank, and
bathed their faces. According to my Flagstaff adviser, this was
one of the two drinks I would get on the desert, so I availed
myself heartily of the opportunity. The water was full of sand,
but cold and gratefully thirst-quenching.
The Little Colorado seemed no more to me than a shallow creek; I
heard nothing sullen or menacing in its musical flow.
"Doesn't look bad, eh?" queried Emmett, who read my thought.
"You'd be surprised to learn how many men and Indians, horses,
sheep and wagons are buried under that quicksand."
The secret was out, and I wondered no more. At once the stream
and wet bars of sand took on a different color. I removed my
boots, and waded out to a little bar. The sand seemed quite firm,
but water oozed out around my feet; and when I stepped, the whole
bar shook like jelly. I pushed my foot through the crust, and the
cold, wet sand took hold, and tried to suck me down.
"How can you ford this stream with horses?" I asked Emmett.
"We must take our chances," replied he. "We'll hitch two teams to
one wagon, and run the horses. I've forded here at worse stages
than this. Once a team got stuck, and I had to leave it; another
time the water was high, and washed me downstream.
Emmett sent his son into the stream on a mule. The rider lashed
his mount, and plunging, splashing, crossed at a pace near a
gallop. He returned in the same manner, and reported one bad
place near the other side.
Jones and I got on the first wagon and tried to coax up the dogs,
but they would not come. Emmett had to lash the four horses to
start them; and other Mormons riding alongside, yelled at them,
and used their whips. The wagon bowled into the water with a
tremendous splash. We were wet through before we had gone twenty
feet. The plunging horses were lost in yellow spray; the stream
rushed through the wheels; the Mormons yelled. I wanted to see,
but was lost in a veil of yellow mist. Jones yelled in my ear,
but I could not hear what he said. Once the wagon wheels struck a
stone or log, almost lurching us overboard. A muddy splash
blinded me. I cried out in my excitement, and punched Jones in
the back. Next moment, the keen exhilaration of the ride gave way
to horror. We seemed to drag, and almost stop. Some one roared:
"Horse down!" One instant of painful suspense, in which
imagination pictured another tragedy added to the record of this
deceitful river--a moment filled with intense feeling, and
sensation of splash, and yell, and fury of action; then the three
able horses dragged their comrade out of the quicksand. He
regained his feet, and plunged on. Spurred by fear, the horses
increased their efforts, and amid clouds of spray, galloped the
remaining distance to the other side.
Jones looked disgusted. Like all plainsmen, he hated water.
Emmett and his men calmly unhitched. No trace of alarm, or even
of excitement showed in their bronzed faces.
"We made that fine and easy," remarked Emmett.
So I sat down and wondered what Jones and Emmett, and these men
would consider really hazardous. I began to have a feeling that I
would find out; that experience for me was but in its infancy;
that far across the desert the something which had called me
would show hard, keen, perilous life. And I began to think of
reserve powers of fortitude and endurance.
The other wagons were brought across without mishap; but the dogs
did not come with them. Jones called and called. The dogs howled
and howled. Finally I waded out over the wet bars and little
streams to a point several hundred yards nearer the dogs. Moze
was lying down, but the others were whining and howling in a
state of great perturbation. I called and called. They answered,
and even ran into the water, but did not start across.
"Hyah, Moze! hyah, you Indian!" I yelled, losing my patience.
"You've already swum the Big Colorado, and this is only a brook.
Come on!"
This appeal evidently touched Moze, for he barked, and plunged
in. He made the water fly, and when carried off his feet,
breasted the current with energy and power. He made shore almost
even with me, and wagged his tail. Not to be outdone, Jude, Tige
and Don followed suit, and first one and then another was swept
off his feet and carried downstream. They landed below me. This
left Ranger, the pup, alone on the other shore. Of all the
pitiful yelps ever uttered by a frightened and lonely puppy, his
were the most forlorn I had ever heard. Time after time he
plunged in, and with many bitter howls of distress, went back. I
kept calling, and at last, hoping to make him come by a show of
indifference, I started away. This broke his heart. Putting up
his head, he let out a long, melancholy wail, which for aught I
knew might have been a prayer, and then consigned himself to the
yellow current. Ranger swam like a boy learning. He seemed to be
afraid to get wet. His forefeet were continually pawing the air
in front of his nose. When he struck the swift place, he went
downstream like a flash, but still kept swimming valiantly. I
tried to follow along the sand-bar, but found it impossible. I
encouraged him by yelling. He drifted far below, stranded on an
island, crossed it, and plunged in again, to make shore almost
out of my sight. And when at last I got to dry sand, there was
Ranger, wet and disheveled, but consciously proud and happy.
After lunch we entered upon the seventy-mile stretch from the
Little to the Big Colorado.
Imagination had pictured the desert for me as a vast, sandy
plain, flat and monotonous. Reality showed me desolate mountains
gleaming bare in the sun, long lines of red bluffs, white sand
dunes, and hills of blue clay, areas of level ground--in all, a
many-hued, boundless world in itself, wonderful and beautiful,
fading all around into the purple haze of deceiving distance.
Thin, clear, sweet, dry, the desert air carried a languor, a
dreaminess, tidings of far-off things, and an enthralling
promise. The fragrance of flowers, the beauty and grace of women,
the sweetness of music, the mystery of life--all seemed to float
on that promise. It was the air breathed by the lotus-eaters,
when they dreamed, and wandered no more.
Beyond the Little Colorado, we began to climb again. The sand was
thick; the horses labored; the drivers shielded their faces. The
dogs began to limp and lag. Ranger had to be taken into a wagon;
and then, one by one, all of the other dogs except Moze. He
refused to ride, and trotted along with his head down.
Far to the front the pink cliffs, the ragged mesas, the dark,
volcanic spurs of the Big Colorado stood up and beckoned us
onward. But they were a far hundred miles across the shifting
sands, and baked day, and ragged rocks. Always in the rear rose
the San Francisco peaks, cold and pure, startlingly clear and
close in the rare atmosphere.
We camped near another water hole, located in a deep,
yellow-colored gorge, crumbling to pieces, a ruin of rock, and
silent as the grave. In the bottom of the canyon was a pool of
water, covered with green scum. My thirst was effectually
quenched by the mere sight of it. I slept poorly, and lay for
hours watching the great stars. The silence was painfully
oppressive. If Jones had not begun to give a respectable
imitation of the exhaust pipe on a steamboat, I should have been
compelled to shout aloud, or get up; but this snoring would have
dispelled anything. The morning came gray and cheerless. I got up
stiff and sore, with a tongue like a rope.
All day long we ran the gauntlet of the hot, flying sand. Night
came again, a cold, windy night. I slept well until a mule
stepped on my bed, which was conducive to restlessness. At dawn,
cold, gray clouds tried to blot out the rosy east. I could hardly
get up. My lips were cracked; my tongue swollen to twice its
natural size; my eyes smarted and burned. The barrels and kegs of
water were exhausted. Holes that had been dug in the dry sand of
a dry streambed the night before in the morning yielded a scant
supply of muddy alkali water, which went to the horses.
Only twice that day did I rouse to anything resembling
enthusiasm. We came to a stretch of country showing the wonderful
diversity of the desert land. A long range of beautifully rounded
clay stones bordered the trail. So symmetrical were they that I
imagined them works of sculptors. Light blue, dark blue, clay
blue, marine blue, cobalt blue--every shade of blue was there,
but no other color. The other time that I awoke to sensations
from without was when we came to the top of a ridge. We had been
passing through red-lands. Jones called the place a strong,
specific word which really was illustrative of the heat amid
those scaling red ridges. We came out where the red changed
abruptly to gray. I seemed always to see things first, and I
cried out: "Look! here are a red lake and trees!"
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