Fierce savages, restlessly wandering through summer and winter, alone
invade them. "Their hand is against every man, and every man's hand
against them."
On the day after, we had left the mountains at some distance. A
black cloud descended upon them, and a tremendous explosion of
thunder followed, reverberating among the precipices. In a few
moments everything grew black and the rain poured down like a
cataract. We got under an old cotton-wood tree which stood by the
side of a stream, and waited there till the rage of the torrent had
passed.
The clouds opened at the point where they first had gathered, and the
whole sublime congregation of mountains was bathed at once in warm
sunshine. They seemed more like some luxurious vision of Eastern
romance than like a reality of that wilderness; all were melted
together into a soft delicious blue, as voluptuous as the sky of
Naples or the transparent sea that washes the sunny cliffs of Capri.
On the left the whole sky was still of an inky blackness; but two
concentric rainbows stood in brilliant relief against it, while far
in front the ragged cloud still streamed before the wind, and the
retreating thunder muttered angrily.
Through that afternoon and the next morning we were passing down the
banks of the stream called La Fontaine qui Bouille, from the boiling
spring whose waters flow into it. When we stopped at noon, we were
within six or eight miles of the Pueblo. Setting out again, we found
by the fresh tracks that a horseman had just been out to reconnoiter
us; he had circled half round the camp, and then galloped back full
speed for the Pueblo. What made him so shy of us we could not
conceive. After an hour's ride we reached the edge of a hill, from
which a welcome sight greeted us. The Arkansas ran along the valley
below, among woods and groves, and closely nestled in the midst of
wide cornfields and green meadows where cattle were grazing rose the
low mud walls of the Pueblo.
CHAPTER XXI
THE PUEBLO AND BENT'S FORT
We approached the gate of the Pueblo. It was a wretched species of
fort of most primitive construction, being nothing more than a large
square inclosure, surrounded by a wall of mud, miserably cracked and
dilapidated. The slender pickets that surmounted it were half broken
down, and the gate dangled on its wooden hinges so loosely, that to
open or shut it seemed likely to fling it down altogether. Two or
three squalid Mexicans, with their broad hats, and their vile faces
overgrown with hair, were lounging about the bank of the river in
front of it. They disappeared as they saw us approach; and as we
rode up to the gate a light active little figure came out to meet us.
It was our old friend Richard.
