the Thundering Herd (1984) (12 page)

It was barren of animals. The rich colors of the afterglow were fading. Was that a level purple-gray bank of cloud along the horizon or a range of upland hills?

A clip-clop of trotting horse made her start sharply. Wheeling, she espied a rider close upon her. He had come from round a corner of the wooded slope.

Milly took backward steps, meaning to slip out of sight. But the rider had seen her. Coming on so quickly, while she was slow in moving, he rode right upon her, and uttering an exclamation of surprise, he leaped from the horse.

Sight of him down on the ground where Milly could see him better gave her a galvanizing shock. Was this tall young man the image of her dreams? She stared. He took a step forward, his ruddy face lighting. He seemed strange somehow, yet she knew him. His eyes pierced her, and she suddenly shook with a sure recognition of them.

"Milly!" he cried, incredulously. His tone held the same wonderful thing that was in his look.

"Oh--it is you!" burst out Milly, all at once beside herself. She ran straight to meet him.

"Milly! Say--what luck!--I'd given up ever seeing you again," he said, trying to hold her hands.

"Tom--Doan!" she ejaculated in realization, She felt the hot blood flame in her face. Shamed and frightened, yet tingling with a joy nothing could check, she backed falteringly away. His glad eyes held her gaze, though she strove to avert it. Had he changed? His face was thinner, darker, a red bronze where it had been clear tan.

"Sure it's Tom Doan," he replied in delight. "So you remembered me?"

"Remembered--you?" faltered Milly. "I--I--"

A loud halloo from the wooded slope below interrupted her. It was Jett's voice, calling her back to camp.

"That's Jett," she whispered, hurriedly. "He must not see you."

"Go back. You've time. He's far off," replied Doan.

"Oh yes--I must go."

"Listen--just a second," he whispered, following her, taking her hand. He seemed intense. "Hudnall's camp is only a few miles up the river. I'm with him, you know. Meet me here to-night when the moon comes up. That'll be early."

"Here--at night?" murmured Milly, tremulously. The idea was startling.

"Yes. At moonrise. Promise!" he entreated.

"I'll come."

"Don't be afraid. I'll be waiting for you--right here. . . . Go back to camp now. Don't give yourself away."

Then he shot her a bright, intent look and strode noiselessly away, leading his horse into the grass.

Milly wheeled to run down into the woods, almost coming to disaster in her excitement. It was farther to camp than she thought and some parts of the trail necessitated care in the gathering twilight. Jett did not appear to be coming after her. In a few moments she recovered from her breathless headlong precipitation.

The flicker of a camp fire shone through the woods, and that would have guided her had she lost the plain trail. Thoughts and emotions relative to the meeting with Tom Doan were held in abeyance. She must hurry back to camp and allay Jett's suspicions or fears concerning her. Dusk had fallen when she reached camp, which she approached leisurely. She saw Jett and all his outfit grouped round the camp fire.

"Where've you been?" he asked, gruffly.

"Walking under the trees," she replied, easily.

"Why didn't you answer me?"

"Do I have to yell because you do?" she returned.

"Haw! Haw! Haw!" roared Follonsbee, and he gave Pruitt a dig in the ribs.

"Wal," continued Jett, evidently satisfied, "when it gets dark that's your bedtime. Jane can set up all night if she likes."

"Because I've no need of sleep, eh?" demanded the woman, sarcastically.

"Why, you're a handsome jade," responded Jett.

Milly found in the situation a development of her own resourcefulness. She did not want this hour after supper to appear different from any other; so she stood a moment back of the circle of light, watching the camp fire, and then going to where the water pail stood she took a drink. Leisurely then she moved away to her tent. How fortunate now that it stood apart from the others!

Milly crawled inside to flop down on her bed. For a moment the self-restraint under which she had been taut lingered by reason of its very intensity. Then suddenly it broke. In the darkness of her tent she was safe. Thought of Jett and his outfit flashed into oblivion.

"Oh--what has happened? What have I done? What am I going to do?" she whispered to herself.

It all rushed back, strong and sweet and bewildering. She had to fight feeling in order to think. Some incredibly good instinct had prompted her to stray away from camp. Tom Doan! She had met him.

In all that wide vast wilderness the one and only person she had met was the one she yearned for. She had spoken to him; she had promised to meet him later when the moon rose.

Tremendous as was the import of these facts, it did not seem all.

What had happened? With mounting pulse she forced herself to recall everything, from the moment she had heard the horse. How she strung out the sensations of that meeting! Had she felt them all then? No--some of them, the deeper ones, were an augmenting of those which had been thoughtless. Could she ever gather into one comprehensive actuality the wildness of amaze, joy, and hope that had constituted her recognition of Tom Doan? What had gone on in her mind all these endless days? Futile to try to understand why!

She had almost run straight into his arms.

"Oh, I--I had no time to think!" she whispered, with her burning face buried in the blankets.

Night and darkness and silence and loneliness could not help Milly now. She was in the throes of bursting love. Unawares it had stolen insidiously into all her waking and perhaps sleeping hours-- and then, in an unguarded moment, when chance threw Tom Doan again into her presence, it had brazenly surprised her into betrayal.

She knew now. And she lay there suffering, thrilling, miserable, and rapturous by turns. It was a trying hour. But it passed and there followed another mood, one wanting only proof, assurance of her wild dream, to border on exquisite happiness. She forgot herself and thought of Tom.

She saw him as clearly as if she had been gazing at him in the light of the sun. Older, thinner, graver, harder his face came back to her. There were lines he had not had, and a short fuzzy beard, as fair as his hair. There had been about him the same breath of the open plain and the buffalo and gunpowder and sweating brown that characterized Jett and his men. This could account for the hardness, perhaps for every change in him.

Only his eyes and the tone of his voice had seemed the same. And in recalling them there flooded over her a consciousness of the joy he had expressed at meeting her again. He had been as happy as she. It was impossible to doubt that. Without thought of himself or of what he was doing he had answered as naturally to the meeting as she had. Friendlessness, loneliness always had engendered a terrible need for love; and this raw life in the buffalo-fields, in the company of hard men and a woman who hated her, had but added a yearning for protection. Milly could understand; she could excuse herself. Yet that did not help much. It was all so sudden.

Absorbed in her new-born emotions, Milly had no cognizance of the passing of the hours. But when the gloom inside of her tent lightened and the canvas showed shadows of leaves moving and waving, she realized that the moon had risen. Trembling all over, she listened. The camp was silent. When had the men gone to bed?

Only the murmur of insects and soft rustle of wind kept the silence from being dead. She peeped out. Low down through the trees a silvery radiance told of a rising moon. As Milly watched, with a growing palpitation in her breast, a white disk appeared and almost imperceptibly moved upward, until half the great beautiful moon sailed into her sight, crossed by black branches of trees.

"It's time to go," she whispered, and felt a cold thrill. She realized her danger, yet had no fear. If discovered in the act of meeting a lover she would surely be severely beaten, perhaps killed. But nothing could have kept Milly from keeping that tryst.

Cautiously she crawled out on hands and knees, and then away from the tent, keeping in the shadow. A log on the camp fire flickered brightly. She saw the pale gleam of the tents and her keen ear caught heavy breathing of one of the tired sleepers. At length she rose to her feet and, moving away silently, she lost sight of all round the camp except the fire. Then she circled in the direction of the trail that led up the slope.

Her nervous dread of being caught passed away, leaving only excitement. She did not know where to look for the trail, except that it started somewhere at the base of the slope behind the camp.

She would find it. How big and black the elms! Shadows lay thick.

Only here and there showed the blanched patches of moonlight. A stealthy step, a rustling, halted her and gave a different tingle to her pulse. Some soft-footed animal stole away into the obscurity. Relieved, she moved slowly to and fro, peering in the grass at her feet, searching for the trail. She remembered that it had led down to the spring and not to Jett's camp. As the spring lay east she worked that way. At last she stepped into the trail and then her heart throbbed faster. He would be waiting. What should she say?

As she climbed with swift steps the shadows under the trees grew less dense. Then she faced a long aisle where her own shadow preceded her. Beyond that she passed into thicker timber where it was dark, and she had to go slowly to hold to the trail. An incautious step resulted in the sharp cracking of a twig. It startled her. How lonely and wild the woods!

Milly reached level ground, and there not far was the end of the trees, now standing out clear and black against a wide moonlit plain. She glided faster, drawn in spite of herself, hurrying to meet him. Vague were her conjectures: sweet were her fears. She ran the last few yards.

As she entered the zone of moonlight and stood expectantly, peering everywhere, she felt the terrible importance of that moment. He was her only friend. Where was he? Had she come too early? If he had not . . . Then a tall dark form glided out into the moonlight.

"Milly!" came the low, eager voice. He hurried to her, drew her back into the shadow.

Milly's strained eagerness and the intensity of purpose that had brought her there suddenly succumbed to weakness. His presence, his voice, his touch changed her incomprehensibly. In desperation she tried to cling to her resolve not to be like she had been at that first meeting there.

"I thought you'd never come," he said.

"Am I--late?" she whispered.

"It's no matter, now you're here," he replied, and took her into his arms.

"Oh--you mustn't," she entreated pushing back from him.

"Why, what's wrong?" he queried, in sudden concern.

In a silence fraught with exquisite torture for Milly she stood there, quivering against him. He put a hand under her chin and forced her head up, so that he could see her face.

"Girl, look at me," he ordered, and it was certain that he shook her a little. "Don't you know what I mean?"

Milly felt that she must drop then. Almost the last of her strength and courage had vanished. Yet she was impelled to look up at him, and even in the shadow of the trees she saw the fire in his eyes.

"How could I know--when you've never told--me?" she whispered, haltingly.

"I love you--that's what," he flung at her. "Do you have to be told in words?"

How imperative that was he could never have understood. It quite robbed her of will. She swayed to him with her head on his breast.

"Milly, did I take you in the wrong way?" he asked, bending over her.

"How--did you take--me?"

"That you must care for me." Fear and anxiety vied with a happy masterfulness in his voice.

"Do YOU have to be told in words?"

"No," he answered, low, and bent to her lips. "But tell me both ways."

Milly might have yielded to his importunity had his ardor left her any force. But she could only lean against him and cling to him with weak hands, in happiness that was pain. For a while then he held her in silence.

"What's your name?" he asked, suddenly.

"Mildred Fayre," she found voice to reply.

"How old are you?"

"Seventeen--nearly eighteen."

"Did you ever love any other man before me?"

"Oh no!"

"Ah, then you do?" he queried, bending to kiss her cheek.

"Don't you know that I do?"

"Will you be my wife?" he flashed.

"Yes," she whispered.

"When?"

"The very day I am of age--if you want me so soon."

"Want you!--I've wanted you so badly I've been sick, miserable. It was not so terrible at first. It grew on me. But I loved you from the moment I said I might never see you again. Do you remember?"

"Yes, Tom Doan, I remember as well as you."

"Oh, you do? Well, when did you love me? I'm curious. It's too good to be true. Tell me when."

"Since the instant I looked over that horse to see you standing there."