I can hear the wash of the surf on the beach and the melancholy chirp of the crickets. The night seems dark, cold, lonely. I have just finished The Thundering Herd, after writing all day and up to now. I am tired. My arm aches. My head boils. My feet are cold. But I am not aware of any weakness.

I do not feel that I have done well in the writing of this romance of the buffalo. Always I have that feeling at the end of work. I seem to have failed in the great epic strife I set out to picture. But the story went on of itself and was not what I planned. And now it must stand or fall.

This was the first time Dolly was not there to go over his manuscript and edit it for him. It is probable that Dolly felt that Doc, as she called her husband, should let that task to Milly Smith and see what happened.

The manuscript, after being typed, was sent to Barton Currie, editor of The Ladies’ Home Journal. Currie had problems with the story as written. For example, in the battle between the buffalo hunters and the Comanches, the narrative reached a point where Tom Doan, the youthful hero, had ventured back toward the horses to fetch canteens for the fighting men and the wounded, only to be shot at from ambush by a Comanche warrior. Doan sees the Comanche rise up before him. At this point the narrative stops and resumes with the story of Molly Fayre, who is again captive of Randall Jett. When Grey does go back to the battle with the Comanches, it is as a narrative being told by Tom Doan to some young and eager listeners. Grey often resorted to this narrative device. After all, and certainly in this case, it was how he himself had first heard of so many events of the great buffalo hunt from Buffalo Jones, about whom he wrote a book, The Last of the Plainsmen, published in 1908, and who was a character he included in this novel. Currie’s point was that Grey should carry on the battle to its end and not rely on a back-telling device later on in the story. He also had numerous other objections, calling for revisions, not the least Grey’s tone in some of the scenes.

Grey rewrote his narrative accordingly. He had no choice, if he wanted The Ladies’ Home Journal to purchase it. Here is how he originally ended the battle with the Comanches, as told by Tom Doan:

“The horses were brought, and the dead men were hung over their saddles. Miller died unconscious. It was a strange sad procession that reached camp. I was too sick to get up, once I fell off my horse. Our wounds were washed and dressed. Next morning, we buried our dead and broke camp, the worst of the cripples riding on the wagons. That night we were down off the Staked Plains.