The Boy Settlers: A Story of Early Times in Kansas

by Noah Brooks

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 168 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 mass 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 169 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 grass watching with absorbed attention the motions of the great herds. All trace of his companions was soon lost as they passed 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 170 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.