That They Might Move More Rapidly
Toward Their Proposed Hunting-Grounds, The Indians Determined To
Leave At This Place Their Stock Of Dried Meat And Other Superfluous
Articles.
Some left even their lodges, and contented themselves with
carrying a few hides to make a shelter from the sun and rain.
Half
the inhabitants set out in the afternoon, with loaded pack horses,
toward the mountains. Here they suspended the dried meat upon trees,
where the wolves and grizzly bears could not get at it. All returned
at evening. Some of the young men declared that they had heard the
reports of guns among the mountains to the eastward, and many
surmises were thrown out as to the origin of these sounds. For my
part, I was in hopes that Shaw and Henry Chatillon were coming to
join us. I would have welcomed them cordially, for I had no other
companions than two brutish white men and five hundred savages. I
little suspected that at that very moment my unlucky comrade was
lying on a buffalo robe at Fort Laramie, fevered with ivy poison, and
solacing his woes with tobacco and Shakespeare.
As we moved over the plains on the next morning, several young men
were riding about the country as scouts; and at length we began to
see them occasionally on the tops of the hills, shaking their robes
as a signal that they saw buffalo. Soon after, some bulls came in
sight. Horsemen darted away in pursuit, and we could see from the
distance that one or two of the buffalo were killed.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 260 of 486
Words from 69114 to 69377
of 129303
