In three days we reached the Pease River camps, to spread the news and get ready for another campaign against the Comanches.”
Here is how Grey had to revise it. Pilchuck, the scout leading the buffalo hunters, is the speaker:
“Boys,” he said, “I never expected any of us to get out of that fight alive. When those yellin’ devils charged us I thought the game was up. We did well, but we were mighty lucky. It’s sad about our comrades. But some of us had to go an’ we were all ready. Now the great good truth is that this victory will rouse the buffalo-hunters. I’ll go after more men. We’ll shore chase the Comanches an’ Kiowas off the Staked Plain, an’ that will leave us free to hunt buffalo. What’s more important, it will make Texas safe for settlers. So you can all feel proud, as I do. The buffalo-hunters will go down in history as havin’ made Texas habitable.”
Grey was furious about what he had to do, but he did it. There was no second Grey serial in The Ladies’ Home Journal in 1924. It was only when Dolly Grey, after her return from Europe, smoothed matters over at the magazine that “The Bee Hunter” was serialized in 1925, but that also proved to be the last serial that Grey would write for The Ladies’ Home Journal.
There is no triumphalism in Buffalo Stampede as Zane Grey wrote it. As he had intended, it is the story of the passing of the buffalo, powerfully moving and in a way saddening. Grey’s first draft reflects what he felt and with all its narrative devices, so unsuited to magazine serialization, and its tone, again believed to be unsuitable for the readers of The Ladies’ Home Journal, it tells a far more poignant and dramatic story. In order to distinguish this book from The Thundering Herd (Harper, 1925) as it was originally published, the title is taken from the title given to the film, The Thundering Herd (Paramount, 1933), when it went into syndication on television. In so many ways Buffalo Stampede with its double-entendre is actually more apt for the story Zane Grey wanted to tell.
Jon Tuska
Contents
Foreword
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
About the Author
Chapter One
Autumn winds had long waved the grass in the vast upland valley and the breath of the north had tinged the meandering lines of trees along the river bottoms. Gold and purple and a flame of fire shone brightly in the morning sunlight.
Birds and beasts of that wild open northland felt stir in them the instinct to move toward the south. The honk of wild geese floated down upon the solitudes and swift flocks of these heralds of winter sped by, sharply outlined against the blue sky.
High upon the western rampart of that valley perched an eagle, watching from his lonely crag. His telescopic eye ranged far. Beneath him on the endless slope and boundless floor of the valley, moved a black mass, creeping with snail-like slowness toward the south. It seemed as long as the valley and as wide. It reached to the dim purple distances and disappeared there. The densest part covered the center of the valley, from which ran wide straggling arms, like rivers narrowing toward their sources in the hills. Patches of gray grass, dotted with gold, shone here and there against the black background. Always the dark moving streams and blots seemed encroaching upon these patches of grass. They spread over them and covered them. Then other open spaces appeared at different points. How slow the change! Yet there was a definite movement.
This black mass was alive.
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