At This The Pawnees Raised The Yell And Shot At Them, Transfixing The
Hindermost Through The Back With Several Arrows, While His Companion
Galloped Away And Brought In The News To His Party.
The panic-
stricken emigrants remained for several days in camp, not daring even
to send out in quest of the dead body.
The reader will recollect Turner, the man whose narrow escape was
mentioned not long since. We heard that the men, whom the entreaties
of his wife induced to go in search of him, found him leisurely
driving along his recovered oxen, and whistling in utter contempt of
the Pawnee nation. His party was encamped within two miles of us;
but we passed them that morning, while the men were driving in the
oxen, and the women packing their domestic utensils and their
numerous offspring in the spacious patriarchal wagons. As we looked
back we saw their caravan dragging its slow length along the plain;
wearily toiling on its way, to found new empires in the West.
Our New England climate is mild and equable compared with that of the
Platte. This very morning, for instance, was close and sultry, the
sun rising with a faint oppressive heat; when suddenly darkness
gathered in the west, and a furious blast of sleet and hail drove
full in our faces, icy cold, and urged with such demoniac vehemence
that it felt like a storm of needles. It was curious to see the
horses; they faced about in extreme displeasure, holding their tails
like whipped dogs, and shivering as the angry gusts, howling louder
than a concert of wolves, swept over us. Wright's long train of
mules came sweeping round before the storm like a flight of brown
snowbirds driven by a winter tempest. Thus we all remained
stationary for some minutes, crouching close to our horses' necks,
much too surly to speak, though once the captain looked up from
between the collars of his coat, his face blood-red, and the muscles
of his mouth contracted by the cold into a most ludicrous grin of
agony. He grumbled something that sounded like a curse, directed as
we believed, against the unhappy hour when he had first thought of
leaving home. The thing was too good to last long; and the instant
the puffs of wind subsided we erected our tents, and remained in camp
for the rest of a gloomy and lowering day. The emigrants also
encamped near at hand. We, being first on the ground, had
appropriated all the wood within reach; so that our fire alone blazed
cheerfully. Around it soon gathered a group of uncouth figures,
shivering in the drizzling rain. Conspicuous among them were two or
three of the half-savage men who spend their reckless lives in
trapping among the Rocky Mountains, or in trading for the Fur Company
in the Indian villages. They were all of Canadian extraction; their
hard, weather-beaten faces and bushy mustaches looked out from
beneath the hoods of their white capotes with a bad and brutish
expression, as if their owner might be the willing agent of any
villainy. And such in fact is the character of many of these men.
On the day following we overtook Kearsley's wagons, and
thenceforward, for a week or two, we were fellow-travelers. One good
effect, at least, resulted from the alliance; it materially
diminished the serious fatigue of standing guard; for the party being
now more numerous, there were longer intervals between each man's
turns of duty.
CHAPTER VII
THE BUFFALO
Four days on the Platte, and yet no buffalo! Last year's signs of
them were provokingly abundant; and wood being extremely scarce, we
found an admirable substitute in bois de vache, which burns exactly
like peat, producing no unpleasant effects. The wagons one morning
had left the camp; Shaw and I were already on horseback, but Henry
Chatillon still sat cross-legged by the dead embers of the fire,
playing pensively with the lock of his rifle, while his sturdy
Wyandotte pony stood quietly behind him, looking over his head. At
last he got up, patted the neck of the pony (whom, from an
exaggerated appreciation of his merits, he had christened "Five
Hundred Dollar"), and then mounted with a melancholy air.
"What is it, Henry?"
"Ah, I feel lonesome; I never been here before; but I see away yonder
over the buttes, and down there on the prairie, black - all black with
buffalo!"
In the afternoon he and I left the party in search of an antelope;
until at the distance of a mile or two on the right, the tall white
wagons and the little black specks of horsemen were just visible, so
slowly advancing that they seemed motionless; and far on the left
rose the broken line of scorched, desolate sand-hills. The vast
plain waved with tall rank grass that swept our horses' bellies; it
swayed to and fro in billows with the light breeze, and far and near
antelope and wolves were moving through it, the hairy backs of the
latter alternately appearing and disappearing as they bounded
awkwardly along; while the antelope, with the simple curiosity
peculiar to them, would often approach as closely, their little horns
and white throats just visible above the grass tops, as they gazed
eagerly at us with their round black eyes.
I dismounted, and amused myself with firing at the wolves. Henry
attentively scrutinized the surrounding landscape; at length he gave
a shout, and called on me to mount again, pointing in the direction
of the sand-hills. A mile and a half from us, two minute black
specks slowly traversed the face of one of the bare glaring
declivities, and disappeared behind the summit. "Let us go!" cried
Henry, belaboring the sides of Five Hundred Dollar; and I following
in his wake, we galloped rapidly through the rank grass toward the
base of the hills.
From one of their openings descended a deep ravine, widening as it
issued on the prairie.
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