The sight was a
most disheartening one, and I observed to Raymond that the Indians
might still be fifty or sixty miles before us. But he shook his
head, and replied that they dared not go so far for fear of their
enemies, the Snakes.
Soon after this we lost the trail again, and ascended a neighboring
ridge, totally at a loss. Before us lay a plain perfectly flat,
spreading on the right and left, without apparent limit, and bounded
in front by a long broken line of hills, ten or twelve miles distant.
All was open and exposed to view, yet not a buffalo nor an Indian was
visible.
"Do you see that?" said Raymond; "Now we had better turn round."
But as Raymond's bourgeois thought otherwise, we descended the hill
and began to cross the plain. We had come so far that I knew
perfectly well neither Pauline's limbs nor my own could carry me back
to Fort Laramie. I considered that the lines of expediency and
inclination tallied exactly, and that the most prudent course was to
keep forward. The ground immediately around us was thickly strewn
with the skulls and bones of buffalo, for here a year or two before
the Indians had made a "surround"; yet no living game presented
itself.
