His Plan Was To Strike The Trail Of Several
Companies Of Dragoons, Who Last Summer Had Made An Expedition Under
Colonel Kearny To Fort Laramie, And By This Means To Reach The Grand
Trail Of The Oregon Emigrants Up The Platte.
We rode for an hour or two when a familiar cluster of buildings
appeared on a little hill.
"Hallo!" shouted the Kickapoo trader from
over his fence. "Where are you going?" A few rather emphatic
exclamations might have been heard among us, when we found that we
had gone miles out of our way, and were not advanced an inch toward
the Rocky Mountains. So we turned in the direction the trader
indicated, and with the sun for a guide, began to trace a "bee line"
across the prairies. We struggled through copses and lines of wood;
we waded brooks and pools of water; we traversed prairies as green as
an emerald, expanding before us for mile after mile; wider and more
wild than the wastes Mazeppa rode over:
"Man nor brute,
Nor dint of hoof, nor print of foot,
Lay in the wild luxuriant soil;
No sign of travel; none of toil;
The very air was mute."
Riding in advance, we passed over one of these great plains; we
looked back and saw the line of scattered horsemen stretching for a
mile or more; and far in the rear against the horizon, the white
wagons creeping slowly along. "Here we are at last!" shouted the
captain. And in truth we had struck upon the traces of a large body
of horse.
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