 6 The Platte and the Desert We were now arrived at the close of our solitary journeyings along the St. Joseph's Trail. On the evening of the twenty-third of May we encamp near its junction with the old legitimate trail of the Oregon emigrants. We had ridden long that afternoon, trying in vain to find wood and water, until at length we saw the sunset sky reflected from a pool encircled by bushes and a rock or two. The water lay in the bottom of a hollow, the smooth prairie gracefully rising and ocean-like swells on every side. We pitched our tents by it, not however before the keen eye of Henry Shadilon had discerned some unusual object upon the faintly defined outline of the distant swell. But in the moist hazy atmosphere of the evening nothing could be clearly distinguished. As we lay around the fire after supper, a low and distant sound, strange enough amid the loneliness of the prairie, reached our ears, peals of laughter, and the faint voices of men and women. For eight days we had not encountered a human being, and this singular warning of their vicinity had in effect extremely wild and impressive. Dark, a sallow-faced fellow descended the hill on horseback, and splashing through the pool rode up to the tents. He was enveloped in a huge cloak, and his broad-felt hat was weeping about his ears with the drizzling moisture of the evening. Another followed, a stout, square-built, intelligent-looking man, who announced himself as leader of an emigrant party and camped a mile in advance of us. About twenty wagons, he said, were with him. The rest of his party were on the other side of the big blue, waiting for a woman who was in the pains of childbirth, and quarreling meanwhile among themselves. These were the first emigrants that we had overtaken, although we had found abundant and melancholy traces of their progress throughout the whole course of the journey. Sometimes we passed the grave of one who had sickened and died on the way. The earth was usually torn up and covered thickly with wolf-tracks. Some had escaped this violation. One morning a piece of plank standing upright on the summit of a grassy hill attracted our notice, and riding up to it we found the following words very roughly traced upon it, apparently by a red-hot piece of iron. Mary Ellis died May 7, 1845, aged two months. Such tokens were of common occurrence, nothing could speak more for the hardy-hood or rather infatuation of the adventurers or the sufferings that await them upon the journey. We were late in breaking up our camp on the following morning, and scarcely had we ridden a mile when we saw a far in advance of us, drawn against the horizon, a line of objects stretching at regular intervals along the level edge of the prairie. An intervening swell soon hid them from sight, until, ascending it a quarter of an hour after, we saw close before us the emigrant caravan, with its heavy white wagons creeping on in their slow procession, and a large drove of cattle following behind. Half a dozen yellow visage to Missourians, mounted on horseback, were cursing and shouting among them, their lank angular proportions enveloped in brown homespun, evidently cut and adjusted by the hands of a domestic female teller. As we approached, they greeted us with a polished salutation. How are you, boys? Are you for Oregon or California? As we pushed rapidly past the wagons, children's faces were thrust out from the white coverings to look at us, while the care-worn, thin-featured matron or the buxom girl seated in front suspended the knitting on which most of them were engaged to stare at us with wondering curiosity. By the side of each wagon stalked the proprietor, urging on his patient oxen, who shouldered heavily along inch by inch on their interminable journey. It was easy to see that fear and dissension prevailed among them. Some of the men, but these, with one exception, were bachelors, looked wistfully upon us as we rode lightly and swiftly past, and then impatiently at their own lumbering wagons and heavy-gated oxen. Others were unwilling to advance at all until the party they had left behind should have rejoined them. Many were murmuring against the leader they had chosen and wished to depose him, and this discontent was fermented by some ambitious spirits who had hopes of succeeding in his place. The women were divided between regrets for the homes they had left, and apprehension of the deserts and the savages before them. We soon left them far behind, and fondly hoped that we had taken a final leave. But unluckily our companion's wagon stuck so long in a deep muddy ditch that, before it was extricated, the van of the emigrant caravan appeared again, descending a ridge close at hand. Wagon after wagon plunged through the mud, and as it was nearly noon, and the place promised shade and water, we saw with much gratification that they were resolved to encamp. Soon the wagons were wheeled into a circle, the cattle were grazing over the meadow, and the men, with sour, sullen faces, were looking about for wood and water. They seemed to meet with but a different success. As we left the ground, I saw a tall, slouching fellow with a nasal accent of down-east, contemplating the contents of his tin cup which he had just filled with water. Look here you, he said. It's chock full of animals! The cup, as he held it out, exhibited, in fact, an extraordinary variety and profusion of animal and vegetable life. Writing up the little hill and looking back on the meadow, we could easily see that all was not right in the camp of the emigrants. The men were crowded together, and an angry discussion seemed to be going forward. The car was missing from his wanted place in the line, and the captain told us that he had remained behind to get his horse shot by a black smith who was attached to the emigrant party. Something whispered in our ears that Mischief was on foot. We kept on, however, and coming soon to a stream of tolerable water we stopped to rest and dine. Still the absentee lingered behind. At last, at the distance of a mile, he and his horse suddenly appeared, sharply defined against the sky on the summit of the hill, and close behind, a huge white object rose slowly into view. What is that blockhead bringing with him now? A moment dispelled the mystery. Slowly and solemnly, one behind the other, four long trains of oxen and four emigrant wagons rolled over the crest of the declivity and gravely descended, while our rode in state in the van. It seems that, during the process of shooing the horse, the smothered dissensions among the emigrants suddenly broke into open rupture. Some insisted on pushing forward, some on remaining where they were, and some on going back. Cursely their captain threw up his command and discussed. And now, boys, said he, if any of you are for going ahead, just you come along with me. Four wagons, with ten men, one woman and one small child, made up the force of the go-ahead faction, and are, with his usual proclivity toward mischief, invited them to join our party. Fear of the Indians, for I can conceive of no other motive, must have induced him to court so burdensome an alliance. As may well be conceived, these repeated instances of high-handed dealing sufficiently exasperated us. In this case, indeed, the men who joined us were all that could be desired, rude indeed in manner, but frank, manly and intelligent. To tell them we could not travel with them was, of course, out of the question. I merely reminded Cursely that if his oxen could not keep up with our mules, he must expect to be left behind, as we could not consent to be further delayed on the journey. But he immediately replied that his oxen should keep up, and if they couldn't, why he allowed that he'd find out how to make them? Having availed myself of what satisfaction could be derived from giving R to understand my opinion of his conduct, I returned to our side of the camp. On the next day, as it chanced, our English companions broke the axel tree of their wagon, and down came the whole cumbersome machine lumbering into the bed of a brook. Here was a day's work cut out for us. Meanwhile our emigrant associates kept on their way, and so vigorously did they urge forward their powerful oxen that, with the broken axel tree and other calamities, it was full a week before we overtook them. When at length we discovered them, one afternoon, crawling quietly along the sandy brink of the plat. But meanwhile various incidents occurred to ourselves. It was probable that at this stage of our journey the ponies would attempt to rob us. We began therefore to stand guard in turn, dividing the night into three watches and appointing two men for each. Deloria and I held guard together. We did not march with military precision to and fro before the tents. Our discipline was by no means so stringent and rigid. We wrapped ourselves in our blankets and sat down by the fire, and Deloria, combining his culinary functions with his duties as sentinel, employed himself in boiling the head of an antelope for our mornings were past. Yet we were models of vigilance in comparison with some of the party, for the ordinary practice of the guard was to establish himself in the most comfortable posture he could, lay his rifle on the ground, and, enveloping his nose in the blanket, meditate on his mistress, or whatever subject best pleased him. This is all well enough when among Indians who do not habitually proceed further in their hostility than robbing travelers of their horses and mules, though indeed, upon these forbearance is not always to be trusted. But in certain regions farther to the west the guard must be where how he exposes his person to the light of the fire, lest perchance some keen-eyed, skulking marksman should let fly a bullet or an arrow from amid the darkness. Among various tales that circulated around our campfire was a rather curious one told by Boisvert and not inappropriate here. Boisvert was trapping with several companions on the skirts of the Blackfoot country. The man on guard, well-knowing that it behoved him to put forth his utmost precaution, kept aloof from the firelight, and sat watching intently on all sides. At length he was aware of a dark, crouching figure stealing noiselessly into the circle of the light. He hastily cocked his rifle, but the sharp click of the lock caught the ear of Blackfoot, whose senses were all on the alert. Raising his arrow already fitted to the string, he shot in the direction of the sound. So sure was his aim that he drove it through the throat of the unfortunate guard, and then with a loud yell bounded from the camp. As I looked at the partner of my watch puffing and blowing over his fire, it occurred to me that he might not prove the most efficient auxiliary in time of trouble. DeLaurier said, I, would you run away if the ponies should fire at us? Ah, we, we, miss you, he replied very decisively. I did not doubt the fact, but was a little surprised at the frankness of the confession. At this instant a most whimsical variety of voices, barks, howls, yelps, and whines, all mingled as it were together, sounded from the prairie not far off, as if a whole conclave of wolves of every age and sex were assembled there. DeLaurier looked up from his work with a laugh, and began to imitate this curious medley of sounds with the most ludicrous accuracy. At this they were repeated with redoubled emphasis, the musician being apparently indignant at the successful efforts of a rival. They all proceeded from the throat of one little wolf, not larger than a spaniel, seated by himself at some distance. He was of the species called the prairie wolf, a grim-visaged but harmless little brute whose worst propensity is creeping among horses and gnawing the ropes of rawhide by which they are picketed around the camp. But other beasts roam the prairies, far more formidable in aspect and character. These are the large white and gray wolves whose deep howl we heard at intervals from far and near. And last I fell into a dose, and awakening from it found DeLaurier fast asleep. Scandalized by this breach of discipline I was about to stimulate his vigilance by stirring him with the stock of my rifle, but, compassion prevailing, I determined to let him sleep awhile and then to arouse him, and administer a suitable reproof for such a forgetfulness of duty. Now and then I walked the rounds among the silent horses to see that all was right. The night was chill, damp and dark, the dank grass bending under the icy dew drops. At the distance of a rod or two the tents were invisible, and nothing could be seen but the obscure figures of the horses deeply breathing and restlessly starting as they slept, or still slowly chomping the grass. Far off beyond the black outline of the prairie there was a runny light, gradually increasing, like the glow of a conflagration, until it lengthed the broad disc of the moon, blood red and vastly magnified by the vapors, rose slowly upon the darkness, flecked by one or two little clouds, and as the light poured over the gloomy plain, a fierce and stern howl close at hand seemed to greet it as an unwelcome intruder. There was something impressive and awful in the place in the hour, for I and the beasts were all that had consciousness for many a league around. Some days elapsed and brought us near the plat. Two men on horseback approached us one morning, and we watched them with the curiosity and interest that upon the solitude of the plain such an encounter always excites. They were evidently whites from their mode of riding, though contrary to the usage of that region neither of them carried a rifle. Fools, remarked Henry Chateaulein, to ride that way on the prairie. Pawnee find them, then they catch it. Pawnee had found them, and they had come very near catching it. Indeed, nothing saved them from trouble but the approach of our party. Shaw and I knew one of them, a man named Turner, whom we had seen at Westport. He and his companion belonged to an emigrant party and camped a few miles in advance, and had returned to look for some stray oxen, leaving their rifles with characteristic rashness or ignorance behind them. Their neglect had nearly cost them dear. For just before we came up, half a dozen Indians approached, and seeing them apparently defenseless, one of the rascals seized the bridle of Turner's fine horse and ordered him to dismount. Turner was wholly unarmed, but the other jerked a little revolving pistol out of his pocket at which the Pawnee recoiled, and just then, some of our men appearing in the distance, the whole party whipped their rugged little horses and made off. In no way daunted, Turner foolishly persisted in going forward. Long after leaving him, and late this afternoon, in the midst of a gloomy and barren prairie, we came suddenly upon the great Pawnee trail, leading from their villages on the plat to their war and hunting grounds to the southward. After every summer passed the motley concourse, thousands of savages, men, women, and children, horses, and mules laden with their weapons and implements, and an innumerable multitude of unruly wolfish dogs who have not acquired the civilized accomplishment of marking, but howl like their wild cousins of the prairie. The permanent winter villages of the Pawnee stand on the lower plat, but throughout the summer the greater part of the inhabitants are wandering over the plains, a treacherous, cowardly banditie, who by a thousand acts of pillage and murder have deserved summary chastisement at the hands of government. Last year a Dakota warrior performed a signal exploit at one of these villages. He approached it alone in the middle of a dark night, and clambering up the outside of one of the lodges, which are in the form of a half-sphere, he looked in at the round hole made at the top for the escape of smoke. The dusky light from the smoldering embers showed him the forms of the sleeping inmates, and dropping lightly through the opening, he unsheathed his knife, and, stirring the fire, coolly selected his victims. One by one he stabbed and scalped them, when a child suddenly awoke and screamed. He rushed from the lodge, yelled a sue war cry, shouted his name in triumph and defiance, and in a moment had darted out upon the dark prairie, leaving the whole village behind him in a tumult with the howling and baying of dogs, the screams of women, and the yells of the enraged warriors. Our friend Kersley, as we learned on rejoining him, signalized himself by a less bloody achievement. He and his men were good woodsmen, and well skilled in the use of the rifle, but found themselves wholly out of their element on the prairie. None of them had ever seen a buffalo, and they had very vague conceptions of his nature and appearance. On the day after they reached the plat, looking toward a distant swell, they beheld a multitude of little black specks in motion upon its surface. "'Take your rifles, boys,' said Kersley, and we'll have fresh meat for supper.' This inducement was quite sufficient. The ten men left their wagons and set out in hot haste, some on horseback and some on foot, in pursuit of the supposed buffalo. Meanwhile, a high grassy ridge shut the game from view. But mounting it after half an hour's running and riding, they found themselves suddenly confronted by about thirty mounted ponies. The amazement and consternation were mutual. Having nothing but their bows and arrows, the Indians thought their hour was come, and the faith that they were no doubt conscious of richly deserving about to overtake them. So they began, one and all, to shout forth the most cordial salutations of friendship, running up with extreme earnestness to shake hands with the Missourians, who were as much rejoiced as they were to escape the expected conflict. A low undulating line of sand-hills bounded the horizon before us. That day we rode ten consecutive hours, and it was dusk before we entered the hollows and gorges of these gloomy little hills. In length we gained the summit, and the long expected valley of the Platte lay before us. We all drew rain, and, gathering in a knot on the crest of the hill, sat joyfully looking down upon the prospect. It was right welcome, strange too, and striking to the imagination, and yet it had not one picturesque or beautiful feature, nor had it any of the features of grandeur other than its vast extent, its solitude, and its wilderness. For league after league, a plain as level as a frozen lake was outspread beneath us. Here and there the Platte, divided into a dozen thread-like sluices, was traversing it, and an occasional clump of wood, rising in the midst like a shadowy island, relieved the monotony of the waste. No living thing was moving throughout the vast landscape, except the lizards that darted over the sand, and threw the ranked grass and prickly pear just at our feet. And yet stern and wild associations gave a singular interest to the view, for here each man lives by the strength of his arm and the valor of his heart. Here society is reduced to its original elements, the whole fabric of art and conventionality is struck rudely to pieces, and men find themselves suddenly brought back to the wants and resources of their original natures. We had passed the more toilsome and monotonous part of the valley, but four hundred miles still intervened between us and Fort Laramie, and to reach that point cost us the travel of three additional weeks. During the whole of this time we were passing up the center of a long, narrow, sandy plain, reaching like an outstretched belt nearly to the Rocky Mountains. Two lines of sandhills, broken often into the wildest and most fantastic forms, flanked the valley at the distance of a mile or two on the right and left, while beyond them lay a barren trackless waste, the great American desert, extending for hundreds of miles to the Arkansas on the one side and the Missouri on the other. Before us and behind us, the level monotony of the plain was unbroken as far as the eye could reach. Sometimes it glared in the sun, an expanse of hot, bare sand. Sometimes it was veiled by long coarse grass. Large skulls and whitening bones of buffalo were scattered everywhere. The ground was tracked by myriads of them, and often covered with the circular indentations where the bulls had wallowed in hot weather. From every gorge and ravine, opening from the hills, descended deep well-worn paths, where the buffalo issue twice a day in regular procession down to drink in the plant. The river itself runs through the midst, a thin sheet of rapid turbid water half a mile wide, and scares two feet deep. Its low banks, for the most part without a bush or a tree, are of loose sand, with which the stream is so charged that it grates on the teeth in drinking. The naked landscape is of itself dreary and monotonous enough, and yet the wild beasts and wild men that frequent the valley of the plant make it a scene of interest and excitement to the traveler. Of those who have journeyed there, scarce one perhaps fails to look back with fond regret to his horse and his rifle. Early in the morning after we reached the plant, a long procession of squalid savages approached our camp. Each was on foot, leading his horse by a rope of bull-hide. His attire consisted merely of a scanty-sincture and an old buffalo robe tattered and begrimed by use which hung over his shoulders. His head was close-shaven, except a ridge of hair reaching over the crown from the center of the forehead, very much like the long bristles on the back of a hyena, and he carried his bow and arrows in his hand while his meager little horse was laden with dried buffalo meat the produce of his hunting. Such were the first specimens that we met, and very indifferent ones they were, of the genuine savages of the prairie. They were the Pawnees whom Cursely had encountered the day before, and belonged to a large hunting-party known to be ranging the prairie in the vicinity. They strode rapidly past within a furlong of our tents, not pausing or looking toward us after the manner of Indians when meditating mischief or conscious of ill-desert. I went out and met them, and had an amicable conference with the chief, presenting him with half a pound of tobacco, at which unmerited bounty he expressed much gratification. These fellows, or some of their companions, had committed a dastardly outrage upon an emigrant party in advance of us. Two men out on horseback at a distance were seized by them, but lashing their horses they broke loose and fled. 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 for 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 equitable 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 in camp 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 capots 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 Kersley's wagons and bent forward for a week or two we were fellow travellers. 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 turn of duty. CHAPTER 7 THE BUFFALO Four days on the plat 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 Châtellon still sat cross-legged by the dead embers of the fire, playing pensively with a 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 a way 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 horse's bellies. It swayed to and fro in billows with a light breeze, and far 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. We entered it, and galloping up in a moment were surrounded by the bleak sand hills. Half of their steep sides were bare, the rest were scantily clothed with clumps of grass and various uncouth plants, conspicuous among which appeared the reptile-like prickly pear. They were gashed with numberless ravines, and as the sky had suddenly darkened and a cold gusty wind arisen, the strange shrubs in the dreary hills looked doubly wild and desolate. But Henry's face was all eagerness. He tore off a little hair from the piece of buffalo robe under his saddle and threw it up to show the course of the wind. It blew directly before us. The game were therefore to windward, and it was necessary to make our best speed to get around them. We scrambled from this ravine, and galloping away through the hollows soon found another winding like a snake among the hills, and so deep that it completely concealed us. We rode up the bottom of it, glancing through the shrubbery at its edge till Henry abruptly jerked his rein and slid out of his saddle. Full a quarter of a mile distant on the outline of the farthest hill, a long procession of buffalo were walking in Indian file with the utmost gravity and deliberation. Then more appeared, clampering from a hollow not far off, and ascending, one behind the other, the grassy slope of another hill. Then a shaggy head and a pair of short broken horns appeared, issuing out of a ravine close at hand, and with a slow, stately step, one by one, the enormous brutes came into view, taking their way across the valley, wholly unconscious of an enemy. In a moment Henry was worming his way, lying flat on the ground through grass and prickly pears toward his unsuspecting victims. He had with him both my rifle and his own. He was soon out of sight, and still the buffalo kept issuing into the valley. For a long time all was silent. I sat holding his horse and wondering what he was about, when suddenly, in rapid succession, came the sharp reports of the two rifles, and the whole line of buffalo quickening their pace into a clumsy trot gradually disappeared over the ridge of the hill. Henry rose to his feet and stood looking after them. You have missed them, said I. Yes, said Henry, let us go. He descended into the ravine, loaded the rifles, and mounted his horse. We rode up the hill after the buffalo. The herd was out of sight when we reached the top, but lying on the grass not far off was one quite lifeless and another violently struggling in the death agony. You see, I miss him, remarked Henry. He had fired from a distance of more than a hundred and fifty yards, and both balls had passed through the lungs, the true mark in shooting buffalo. The darkness increased, and a driving storm came on. Tying our horses to the horns of the victims, Henry began the bloody work of dissection, slashing away with the science of a connoisseur, while I vainly endeavored to imitate him. Old Hendrick recoiled with horror and indignation when I endeavored to tie the meat to the strings of rawhide always carried for this purpose, dangling at the back of the saddle. After some difficulty we overcame his scruples, and heavily burdened with the more eligible portions of the buffalo we set out on our return. Scarcely had we emerged from the labyrinth of gorges and ravines, and issued upon the open prairie, when the pricking sleet came driving gust upon gust directly in our faces. It was strangely dark, though wanting still an hour of sunset. The freezing storm soon penetrated to the skin, but the uneasy trot of our heavy-gated horses kept us warm enough as we forced them unwillingly in the teeth of the sleet and rain by the powerful swasion of our Indian whips. The prairie in this place was hard and level. A flourishing colony of prairie dogs had borrowed into it in every direction, and the little mounds of fresh earth around their holes were about as numerous as the hills in a cornfield. But not a yelp was to be heard. Not the nose of a single citizen was visible. All had retired to the depths of their boroughs, and we envied them their dry and comfortable habitations. An hour's hard riding showed us our tent dimly looming through the storm, one side puffed out by the force of the wind, and the other collapsed in proportion, while the disconsolate horses stood shivering close around, and the wind kept up a dismal whistling in the boughs of the three old half-dead trees above. Shaw, like a patriarch, sat on his saddle in the entrance, with a pipe in his mouth and his arms folded, contemplating with cool satisfaction the piles of meat that we flung on the ground before him. A dark and dreary night succeeded, but the sun rose with heat so sultry and languid that the captain excused himself on that account from way-laying an old buffalo bull who, with stupid gravity, was walking over the prairie to drink at the river. So much for the climate of the Platte. But it was not the weather alone that had produced this sudden abatement to the sportsman-like zeal which the captain had always professed. He had been out on the afternoon before, together with several members of his party, but their hunting was attended with no other result than the loss of one of their best horses, severely injured by Sorel, in vainly chasing a wounded bull. The captain, whose ideas of hard riding were all derived from transatlantic sources, expressed the utmost amazement at the feats of Sorel, who went leaping ravines and dashing at full speed up and down the sides of precipitous hills, lashing his horse with the recklessness of a rocky mountain rider. Unfortunately for the poor animal, he was the property of R, against whom Sorel entertained an unbounded aversion. The captain himself, it seemed, had also attempted to run a buffalo, but though a good and practiced horseman, he had soon given over the attempt, being astonished and utterly disgusted at the nature of the ground he was required to ride over. Nothing unusual occurred on that day, but on the following morning Henry Châtalon, looking over the ocean-like expanse, saw near the foot of the distant hills something that looked like a band of buffalo. He was not sure, he said, but at all events, if they were buffalo, there was a fine chance for a race. Shaw and I had once determined to try the speed of our horses. Come, captain, we'll see which can ride hardest, a Yankee or an Irishman. But the captain maintained a grave and austere countenance. He mounted his lead horse, however, though very slowly, and we set out at a trot. The game appeared about three miles distant. As we proceeded, the captain made various remarks of doubt and indecision, and at length declared he would have nothing to do with such a breakneck business, protesting that he had ridden plenty of steeple-chases in his day, but he never knew what riding was till he found himself behind a band of buffalo day before yesterday. I am convinced, said the captain, that running is out of the question. Footnote The method of hunting called running consists in attacking the buffalo on horseback and shooting him with bullets or arrows when at full speed. In approaching, the hunter conceals himself and crawls on the ground toward the game, or lies in wait to kill them. End of footnote Take my advice now and don't attempt it. It's dangerous and of no use at all. Then why did you come out with us? What do you mean to do? I shall approach, replied the captain. You don't mean to approach with your pistols, do you? We have all of us left our rifles in the wagons. The captain seemed staggered at the suggestion. In his characteristic indecision at setting out, pistols, rifles, running and approaching were mingled in an inextricable medley in his brain. He trotted on in silence between us for a while, but at length he dropped behind and slowly walked his horse back to rejoin the party. Draw and I kept on, when low as we advanced, the band of buffalo were transformed into certain clumps of tall bushes, dotting the prairie for a considerable distance. At this ludicrous termination of our chase, we followed the example of our late ally and turned back toward the party. We were skirting the brink of a deep ravine when we saw Henry in the broad-chested pony coming toward us at a gallop. Here's old Pepin and Frederick down from Fort Laramie shouted Henry, long before he came up. We had for some days expected this encounter. Papa was the bourgeois of Fort Laramie. He had come down the river with the buffalo robes in the beaver, the produce of the last winter's trading. I had among our baggage a letter which I wished to commit to their hands, so, requesting Henry to detain the boats if he could until my return, I set out after the wagons. They were about four miles in advance. In half an hour I overtook them, got the letter, trotted back upon the trail, and, looking carefully as I rode, saw a patch of broken storm-blasted trees and moving near them some little black specks like men and horses. Arriving at the place, I found a strange assembly. The boats, eleven in number, deep laden with the skins, hugged close to the shore, to escape being borne down by the swift current. The rowers, swarthy, ignoble Mexicans, turned their brutish faces upward to look as I reached the bank. Papa sat in the middle of one of the boats upon the canvas covering that protected the robes. He was a stout, robust fellow with a little gray eye that had a peculiarly sly twinkle. Frederick also stretched his tall raw bone proportions close by the bourgeois, and mountain men completed the group, some lounging in the boat, some strolling on shore, some attired and gaily painted buffalo robes like Indian dandies, some with hair saturated with red paint, and be plastered with glue to their temples, and one bedobbed with vermilion upon his forehead in each cheek. They were a mongrel race, yet the French blood seemed to predominate. In a few indeed might be seen the black, snaky eye of the Indian half-breed, and one in all they seemed to aim at assimilating themselves to their savage associates. I shook hands with the bourgeois and delivered the letter. Then the boats swung round into the stream and floated away. They had reason for haste, for already the voyage from Fort Laramie had occupied a full month, and the river was growing deadly more shallow. Fifty times a day the boats had been aground, indeed, those who navigate the plat invariably spent half their time upon sandbars. Two of these boats, the property of private traders and afterwards separating from the rest, got hopelessly involved in the shallows, not very far from the Pawnee villages, and were soon surrounded by a swarm of the inhabitants. They carried off everything that they considered valuable, including most of the robes, and amused themselves by tying up the men left on guard and soundly whipping them with sticks. We encamped that night upon the bank of the river. Among the emigrants there was an overgrown boy some eighteen years old, with a head as round and about as large as a pumpkin, and fever and agu-fits had died his face of a corresponding color. He wore an old white hat tied under his chin with a handkerchief. His body was short and stout, with his legs of disproportioned and appalling length. I observed him at sunset, breasting the hill with gigantic strides, and standing against the sky on the summit like a colossal pair of tongs. In a moment after we heard him screaming frantically behind the ridge, and nothing doubting that he was in the clutches of Indians or grizzly bears, some of the party caught up their rifles and ran to the rescue. His outcries, however, proved but an ebullition of joyous excitement. He had chased two little wolfpups to their borough, and he was on his knees, grubbing away like a dog at the mouth of the hole to get at them. Before morning he caused more serious disquiet in the camp. It was his turn to hold the middle guard, but no sooner was he called up than he coolly arranged a pair of saddlebags under a wagon, laid his head upon them, closed his eyes, opened his mouth, and fell asleep. The guard on our side of the camp, thinking at no part of his duty to look after the cattle of the emigrants, contented himself with watching our own horses and mules. The wolves, he said, were unusually noisy, but still no mischief was anticipated, until the sun rose and not a hoof or horn was in sight. The cattle were gone. While Tom was quietly slumbering, the wolves had driven them away. Then we reaped the fruits of ours precious plan of traveling in company with the emigrants. To leave them in their distress was not to be thought of, and we felt bound to wait until the cattle could be searched for, and if possible recovered. But the reader may be curious to know what punishment awaited the faithless Tom. By the wholesome law of the prairie, he who falls asleep on guard is condemned to walk all day leading his horse by the bridle, and we found much fault with our companions for not enforcing such a sentence on the offender. Nevertheless, had he been of our party, I have no doubt he would in like manner have escaped scot-free. But the emigrants went farther than mere forbearance. They decreed that since Tom couldn't stand guard without falling asleep, he shouldn't stand guard at all, and henceforward his slumbers were unbroken. Establishing such a premium on drowsiness could have no very beneficial effect upon the vigilance of our sentinels, for it is far from agreeable, after riding from sunrise to sunset, to feel your slumbers interrupted by the butt of a rifle nudging your side, and a sleepy voice growling in your ear that you must get up to shiver and freeze for three weary hours at midnight. BUFFALO! BUFFALO! It was but a grim old bull roaming the prairie by himself in misanthropic seclusion, but there might be more behind the hills. Dreading the monotony and languor of the camp, Shaw and I saddled our horses, buckled our holsters in their places, and set out with Henry Shatalon in search of the game. Henry, not intending to take part in the chase, but merely conducting us, carried his rifle with him, while we left ours behind as encumbrances. We rode for some five or six miles, and saw no living thing but wolves, snakes, and prairie dogs. This won't do at all, said Shaw. What won't do? There's no wood about here to make a litter for the wounded man. I have an idea that one of us will need something of the sort before the day is over. There was some foundation for such an apprehension, for the ground was none of the best for a race, and grew worse continually as we proceeded. Indeed it soon became desperately bad, consisting of abrupt hills and deep hollows cut by frequent ravines not easy to pass. At length, a mile in advance, we saw a band of bulls. Some were scattered, grazing over a green declivity, while the rest were crowded more densely together in the wide hollow below. Making a circuit to keep out of sight, we rode toward them until we ascended a hill within a furlong of them, on which nothing intervened that could possibly screen us from their view. We dismounted behind the ridge just out of sight, drew our saddle girths, examined our pistols, and, mounting again, rode over the hill and descended at a canter toward them, bending close to our horse's necks. Instantly they took the alarm. Those on the hill descended, those below gathered into a mass, and the whole got in motion, shouldering each other along at a clumsy gallop. We followed, spurring our horses to full speed, and as the herd rushed, crowding and trampling in terror through an opening in the hills, we were close at their heels, half suffocated by the clouds of dust. But as we drew near, their alarm and speed increased. Our horses showed signs of the utmost fear, bounding violently aside as we approached, and refusing to enter among the herd. The buffalo now broke into several small bodies, tempering over the hills in different directions, and I lost sight of Shaw. Neither of us knew where the other had gone. Old Pontiac ran like a frantic elephant, uphill and downhill, his ponderous hoof striking the prairie like sledgehammers. He showed a curious mixture of eagerness and terror, straining to overtake the panic-stricken herd, but constantly recoiling in dismay as we drew near. The fugitives indeed offered no very attractive spectacle, with their enormous size and weight, their shaggy manes, and the tattered remnants of their last winter's hair covering their backs in irregular shreds and patches and flying off in the wind as they ran. At length I urged my horse close behind a bull, and after trying in vain by blows and spurring to bring him alongside, I shot a bullet into the buffalo from this disadvantageous position. At the report Pontiac swerved so much that I was again thrown a little behind the game. The bullet entering too much in the rear failed to disable the bull, for a buffalo requires to be shot at particular points, or he will certainly escape. The herd ran up a hill, and I followed in pursuit. As Pontiac rushed headlong down on the other side, I saw Shaw and Henry descending the hollow on the right at a leisurely gallop, and in front the buffalo were just disappearing behind the crest of the next hill, their short tails erect, and their hooves twinkling through a cloud of dust. At that moment I heard Shaw and Henry shouting to me, but the muscles of a stronger arm than mine could not have checked at once the furious course of Pontiac, whose mouth was as insensible as leather. Added to this I rode him that morning with a common snaffle, having the day before for the benefit of my other horse unbuckled from my bridal the curb which I ordinarily used. A stronger and hardier brute never trod the prairie, but the novel sight of the buffalo filled him with terror, and when at full speed he was almost incontrollable. Gaining the top of the ridge, I saw nothing of the buffalo, they had all vanished amid the intricacies of the hills and hollows. Reloading my pistols in the best way I could, I galloped on until I saw them again scuttling along at the base of the hill, their panic somewhat abated. One went old Pontiac among them, scattering them to the right and left, and then we had another long chase. About a dozen bulls were before us, scouring over the hills, rushing down the declivities with tremendous weight and impetuosity, and then laboring with a weary gallop upward. Still Pontiac, in spite of spurring and beating, would not close with them. One bullet length fell a little behind the rest, and by dint of much effort I urged my horse within six or eight yards of his side. His back was darkened with sweat. He was panting heavily while his tongue lulled out a foot from his jaws. Gradually I came up abreast of him, urging Pontiac with leg and rein nearer to his side. Then suddenly he did what buffalo in such circumstances will always do. He slackened his gallop, and turning toward us with an aspect of mingled rage and distress, lowered his huge shaggy head for a charge. Back with a snort, leapt aside in terror, nearly throwing me to the ground, as I was wholly unprepared for such an evolution. I raised my pistol in a passion to strike him on the head. But thinking better of it fired the bullet after the bull, who had resumed his flight, then drew rein and determined to rejoin my companions. It was high time. The breath blew hard from Pontiac's nostrils, and the sweat rolled in big drops down his sides. I myself felt as if drenched in warm water. Pledging myself, and I redeemed the pledge to take my revenge at a future opportunity, I looked round for some indications to show me where I was and what course I ought to pursue. I might as well have looked for landmarks in the midst of the ocean. How many miles I had run or in what direction I had no idea. And around me the prairie was rolling in steep swells and pitches, without a single distinctive feature to guide me. I had a little compass hung at my neck, and ignorant that the plat at this point diverged considerably from its easterly course, I thought that by keeping to the northward I should certainly reach it. So I turned and rode about two hours in that direction. The prairie changed as I advanced, softening away into easier undulations, but nothing like the plat appeared, nor any sign of a human being. The same wild endless expanse lay around me still, and to all appearance I was as far from my object as ever. I began now to consider myself in danger of being lost, and therefore raining in my horse summoned the scanty share of woodcraft that I possessed, if that term be applicable upon the prairie, to extricate me. Looking round, it occurred to me that the buffalo might prove my best guides. I soon found one of the paths made by them in their passage to the river. It ran nearly at right angles to my course, but turning my horse's head in the direction it indicated, his freer gait and erected ears assured me that I was right. But in the meantime my ride had been by no means a solitary one. The whole face of the country was dotted far and wide with countless hundreds of buffalo. They trooped along in files and columns, bulls, cows, and calves on the green faces of the declivities in front. They scrambled away over the hills to the right and left, and far off the pale blue swells in the extreme distance were dotted with innumerable specks. Sometimes I surprised shaggy old bulls grazing alone or sleeping behind the ridges I ascended. They would leap up at my approach, stare stupidly at me through their tangled mains, and then gallop heavily away. The antelope were very numerous, and as they are always bold when in the neighborhood of Buffalo, they would approach quite near to look at me, gazing intently with their great round eyes, then suddenly leap aside and stretch lightly away over the prairie as swiftly as a racehorse. Squalid, ruffian-like wolves sneaked through the hollows and sandy ravines. Several times I passed through villages of prairie dogs who sat each at the mouth of his burrow, holding his paws before him in a supplicating attitude, and yelping away most vehemently, energetically whisking his little tail with every squeaking cry he uttered. Prairie dogs are not fastidious in their choice of companions. Various long-checkered snakes were sunning themselves in the midst of the village, and demure little gray owls with a large white ring around each eye were perched side by side with the rightful inhabitants. The prairie teamed with life. Again and again I looked toward the crowded hill sides and was sure I saw horsemen, and riding near with a mixture of hope and dread for Indians were abroad, I found them transformed into a group of buffalo. There was nothing in human shape amid all this vast congregation of brute forms. When I turned down the buffalo path the prairie seemed changed. Only a wolf or two glided past at intervals like conscious felons never looking to the right or left. Being now free from anxiety I was at leisure to observe minutely the objects around me, and here for the first time I noticed insects wholly different from any of the varieties found farther to the eastward. Gaudy butterflies fluttered about my horse's head. Strangely formed beetles glittering with metallic luster were crawling upon plants that I had never seen before. Multitudes of lizards, too, were darting like lightning over the sand. I had run to a great distance from the river. It cost me a long ride on the buffalo path before I saw from the ridge of a sand hill the pale surface of the plat glistening in the midst of its desert valleys and the faint outline of the hills beyond waving along the sky. From where I stood, not a tree nor a bush nor a living thing was visible throughout the whole extent of the sunscorched landscape. In half an hour I came upon the trail not far from the river, and seeing that the party had not yet passed I turned eastward to meet them, old Pontiac's long-swinging trot again assuring me that I was right in doing so. Having been slightly ill on leaving camp in the morning, six or seven hours of rough riding had fatigued me extremely. I soon stopped, therefore, flung my saddle on the ground, and with my head resting on it and my horse's trail rope tied loosely to my arm lay waiting the arrival of the party, speculating meanwhile on the extent of the injuries Pontiac had received. At length the white wagon coverings rose from the verge of the plane. By a singular coincidence almost at the same moment two horsemen appeared coming down from the hills. They were Shaw and Henry, who had searched for me a while in the morning, but well-knowing the futility of the attempt in such broken country had placed themselves on the top of the highest hill they could find, and picketing their horses near them as a signal to me had laid down and fallen asleep. The stray cattle had been recovered as the emigrants told us about noon. Before sunset we pushed forward eight miles farther. June 7th, 1846. Four men are missing, are Sorel and two emigrants. They set out this morning after Buffalo and have not yet made their appearance, whether killed or lost we cannot tell. I find the above in my notebook, and well remember the council held on the occasion. Our fire was the scene of it, or the palpable superiority of Henry Shatalon's experience and skill made him the resort of the whole camp upon every question of difficulty. He was molding bullets at the fire when the captain drew near with a perturbed and care-worn expression of countenance faithfully reflected on the heavy features of Jack who followed close behind. Then emigrants came straggling from their wagons toward the common center. Various suggestions were made to account for the absence of the four men, and one or two of the emigrants declared that when out after the cattle they had seen Indians dogging them and crawling like wolves along the ridges of the hills. At this time the captain slowly shook his head with double gravity and solemnly remarked, It's a serious thing to be traveling through this cursed wilderness, an opinion in which Jack immediately expressed a thorough coincidence. Henry would not commit himself by declaring any positive opinion. Maybe he only followed the buffalo too far, maybe Indian kill him, maybe he got lost, I cannot tell. With this the auditors were obliged to rest content. The emigrants, not in the least alarmed, though curious to know what had become of their comrades, walked back to their wagons, and the captain betook himself pensively to his tent. Shaw and I followed his example. It will be a bad thing for our plan, said he as we entered, if these fellows don't get back safe. The captain is as helpless on the prairie as a child. We shall have to take him and his brother in tow. They will hang on us like lead. The prairie is a strange place, said I. A month ago I should have thought it rather a startling affair to have an acquaintance ride out in the morning and lose his scalp before night, but here it seems the most natural thing in the world. Not that I believe that R has lost his yet. If a man is constitutionally liable to nervous apprehensions, a tour on the distant prairies would prove the best prescription, for though when in the neighborhood of the Rocky Mountains he may at times find himself placed in circumstances of some danger, I believe that few ever breathe that reckless atmosphere without becoming almost indifferent to any evil chance that may be fall themselves or their friends. Shaw had a propensity for luxurious indulgence. He spread his blanket with the utmost accuracy on the ground, picked up the sticks and stones that he thought might interfere with his comfort, adjusted his saddle to serve as a pillow, and composed himself for his night's rest. I had the first guard that evening, so taking my rifle I went out of the tent. It was perfectly dark. A brisk wind blew down from the hills and the sparks from the fire were streaming over the prairie. One of the emigrants named Morton was my companion, and laying our rifles on the grass we sat down together by the fire. Morton was a Kentuckian, an athletic fellow with a fine intelligent face, and in his manners and conversation he showed the essential characteristics of a gentleman. Our conversation turned on the pioneers of his gallant native state. The three hours of our watch dragged away at last, and we went to call up the relief. Ours guard succeeded mine. He was absent, but the captain, anxious lest the camp should be left defenseless, had volunteered to stand in his place, so I went to wake him up. There was no occasion for it, for the captain had been awake since nightfall. A fire was blazing outside of the tent, and by the light which struck through the canvas I saw him and Jack lying on their backs with their eyes wide open. The captain responded instantly to my call. He jumped up, seized the double-barreled rifle, and came out of the tent with an air of solemn determination, as if about to devote himself to the safety of the party. I went and lay down, not doubting that for the next three hours our slumbers would be guarded with sufficient vigilance. On the eighth of June, at eleven o'clock, we reached the south fork of the Platte, at the usual fording place. For league upon league the desert uniformity of the prospect was almost unbroken. The hills were dotted with little tufts of shriveled grass, but betwixt these the white sand was glaring in the sun, and the channel of the river almost on level with the plain was but one great sand bed, about half a mile wide. It was covered with water, but so scantily that the bottom was scarcely hidden. For wide as it is, the average depth of the Platte does not at this point exceed a foot and a half. Stopping near its bank we gathered bois de vache, and made a meal of buffalo meat. Far off on the other side was a green meadow where we could see the white tents and wagons of an emigrant camp, and just opposite to us we could discern a group of men and animals at the water's edge. Four or five horsemen soon entered the river, and in ten minutes had waded across and clambered up the loose sandbank. They were ill-looking fellows, thin and swarthy, with careworn anxious faces and lips rigidly compressed. They had good cause for anxiety. It was three days since they first encamped here, and on the night of their arrival they had lost a hundred and twenty-three of their best cattle driven off by the wolves through the neglect of the man on guard. This discouraging and alarming calamity was not the first that had overtaken them. Since leaving the settlements they had met with nothing but misfortune. Some of their party had died. One man had been killed by the ponies, and about a week before they had been plundered by the decoders of all their best horses, the wretched animals on which our visitors were mounted being the only ones that were left. They had encamped, they told us, near sunset by the side of the plat, and their oxen were scattered over the meadow, while the band of horses were feeding a little farther off. Suddenly the ridges of the hills were alive with a swarm of mounted Indians, at least six hundred in number, who with a tremendous yell came pouring down toward the camp, rushing up within a few rods to the great terror of the emigrants. But suddenly, wheeling, they swept around the band of horses, and in five minutes had disappeared with their prey through the openings of the hills. As these emigrants were telling their story, we saw four other men approaching. They proved to be R. and his companions, who had encountered no mischance of any kind, but had only wandered too far in pursuit of the game. They said they had seen no Indians, but only millions of buffalo, and both R. and Sorel had meat dangling behind their saddles. The emigrants recrossed the river, and we prepared to follow. First the heavy ox wagons plunged down the bank and dragged slowly over the sand beds. Sometimes the hoofs of the oxen were scarcely wetted by the thin sheet of water, and the next moment the river would be boiling against their sides and eddying fiercely around the wheels. Inch by inch they receded from the shore, dwindling every moment, until at length they seemed to be floating far in the very middle of the river. A more critical experiment awaited us, for our little mule cart was but ill-fitted for the passage of so swift a stream. We watched it with anxiety till it seemed to be a little motionless white speck in the midst of the waters, and it was motionless, for it had stuck fast in a quicksand. The little mules were losing their footing, the wheels were sinking deeper and deeper, and the water began to rise through the bottom and drenched the goods within. All of us who had remained on the hither bank galloped to the rescue, the men jumped into the water, adding their strength to that of the mules, until by much effort the cart was extricated and conveyed in safety across. As we gained the other bank, a rough group of men surrounded us. They were not robust nor large a frame, yet they had an aspect of hardy endurance. Finding at home no scope for their fiery energies, they had be taken themselves to the prairie, and in them seemed to be revived with redoubled force, that fierce spirit which impelled their ancestors scarce more lawless than themselves from the German forests, to inundate Europe and break to pieces the Roman Empire. A fortnight afterward this unfortunate party passed Fort Laramie while we were there. Not one of their missing oxen had been recovered, though they had remained encamped a week in search of them, and they had been compelled to abandon a great part of their baggage and provisions and yoke cows and heifers to their wagons to carry them forward upon their journey, the most toilsome and hazardous part of which lay still before them. It is worth noticing that on the plat one may sometimes see the shattered wrecks of ancient claw-footed tables well waxed and rubbed, or massive bureaus of carved oak. These, many of them no doubt the relics of ancestral prosperity in the colonial time, must have encountered strange vicissitudes, imported perhaps originally from England, then with declining fortunes of their owners born across the Alleghenies to the remote wilderness of Ohio or Kentucky, then to Illinois or Missouri, and now at last fondly stowed away in the family wagon for the interminable journey to Oregon. But the stern privations of the way are little anticipated. The cherished relic is soon flung out to scorch and crack upon the hot prairie. We resumed our journey, but we had gone scarcely a mile when R. called out from the rear, "'Wheel camp here! Why do you want a camp? Look at the sun. It's not three o'clock yet. Wheel camp here!' This was the only reply vouchsafed. DeLaurier was in advance with his cart. Seeing the mule wagon wheeling from the track, he began to turn his own team in the same direction. "'Go on, DeLaurier!' and the little cart advanced again. As we rode on, we soon heard the wagon of our Confederates creaking and jolting on behind us, and the driver, right, discharging a furious volley of oaths against his mules, no doubt venting upon them, the wrath which he dared not direct against a more appropriate object. Something of this sort had frequently occurred. Our English friend was by no means partial to us, and we thought we discovered in his conduct a deliberate intention to thwart and annoy us, especially by retarding the movements of the party, which he knew that we, being Yankees, were anxious to quicken. Therefore he would insist on encamping at all unseasonable hours, saying that fifteen miles was a sufficient day's journey. Finding our wishes systematically disregarded, we took the direction of affairs into our own hands. Keeping always in advance to the inexpressible indignation of our, we encamped at what time and place we thought proper, not much caring whether the rest chose to follow or not. They always did so, however, pitching their tents near hours with sullen and wrathful countenances. Travelling together on these agreeable terms did not suit our tastes, for some time we had meditated a separation. The connection with this party had cost us various delays and inconveniences, and the glaring want of courtesy and good sense displayed by their virtual leader did not dispose us to bear these annoyances with much patience. We resolved to leave camp early in the morning, and pushed forward as rapidly as possible for Fort Laramie, which we hoped to reach by hard traveling in four or five days. The captain soon trotted up between us, and we explained our intentions. A very extraordinary proceeding upon my word, he remarked, then he began to enlarge upon the enormity of the design. The most prominent impression in his mind, evidently, was that we were acting a base and treacherous part in deserting his party in what he considered a very dangerous stage of the journey. To palliate the atrocity of our conduct, we ventured to suggest that we were only four in number, while his party still included sixteen men, and as moreover, we were to go forward and they were to follow, at least a full proportion of the perils he apprehended would fall upon us. But the austerity of the captain's features would not relax. A very extraordinary proceeding, gentlemen, and repeating this, he rode off to confer with his principal. By good luck we found a meadow of fresh grass and a large pool of rainwater in the midst of it. We encamped here at sunset. Plenty of buffalo skulls were lying around, bleaching in the sun, and sprinkled thickly among the grass was a great variety of strange flowers. I had nothing else to do, and so gathering a handful I sat down on a buffalo skull to study them. Although the offspring of a wilderness, their texture was frail and delicate, and their colors extremely rich, pure white, dark blue, and a transparent crimson. One traveling in this country seldom has leisure to think of anything but the stern features of the scenery and its accompaniments or the practical details of each day's journey. Like them he and his thoughts grow hard and rough. But now these flowers suddenly awakened a train of associations as alien to the rude scene around me as they were themselves, and for the moment my thoughts went back to New England. A throng of fair and well-remembered faces rose vividly as life before me. There are good things, thought I, in the savage life, but what can it offer to replace those powerful and ennobling influences that can reach unimpaired over more than three thousand miles of mountains, forests, and deserts? Before sunrise on the next morning our tent was down. We harnessed our best horses to the cart and left the camp. But first we shook hands with our friends, the immigrants, who sincerely wished us a safe journey, though some others of the party might easily have been consoled had we encountered an Indian war-party on the way. The captain and his brother were standing on the top of a hill wrapped in their plaids, like spirits of the mist, keeping an anxious eye on the band of horses below. We waved adieu to them as we rode off the ground. The captain replied with a salutation of the utmost dignity, which Jack tried to imitate, but being little practiced in the gestures of polite society, his effort was not a very successful one. In five minutes we had gained the foot of the hills, but here we came to a stop. Old Hendrick was in the shafts, and being the very incarnation of perverse and brutish obstinacy, he utterly refused to move. DeLaurier lashed and swore till he was tired. But Hendrick stood like a rock, grumbling to himself and looking as scant at his enemy until he saw a favorable opportunity to take his revenge. When he struck out under the shaft with such cool malignity of intention that DeLaurier only escaped the blow by a sudden skip into the air, such as no one but a Frenchman could achieve. Sean, he then joined forces and lashed on both sides at once. The brute stood still for a while till he could bear it no longer. When all at once he began to kick and plunge till he threatened the utter demolition of the cart and harness. We glanced back at the camp which was in full sight. Our companions, inspired by emulation, were leveling their tents and driving in their cattle and horses. Take the horse out, said I. I took the saddle from Pontiac and put it upon Hendrick. The former was harnessed to the cart in an instant. Avance, non, cried DeLaurier. Pontiac strode up the hill, twitching the little cart after him as if it were a feather's weight, and though as we gained the top we saw the wagons of our deserted comrades just getting into motion, we had little fear that they could overtake us. Leaving the trail, we struck directly across the country and took the shortest cut to reach the mainstream of the plat. A deep ravine suddenly intercepted us. We skirted its side until we found them less abrupt and then plunged through the best way we could. Passing behind the sandy ravines called Ash Hollow, we stopped for a short nooning at the side of a pool of rainwater, but soon resumed our journey, and some hours before sunset were descending the ravines and gorges opening downward upon the plat to the west of Ash Hollow. Our horses waded to the fetlock in sand, the sun scorched like fire and the air swarmed with sandflies and mosquitoes. At last we gained the plat. Following it for about five miles we saw, just as the sun was sinking, a great meadow dotted with hundreds of cattle and beyond them an emigrant encampment. A party of about a dozen came out to meet us, looking upon us at first with cold and suspicious faces. Seeing four men, different in appearance and equipment from themselves emerging from the hills, they had taken us for the van of the much-dreaded Mormons, whom they were very apprehensive of encountering. We made known our true character, and then they greeted us gorgelly. They expressed much surprise that so small a party should venture to traverse that region, though in fact such attempts are not unfrequently made by trappers and Indian traders. We rode with them to their camp. The wagons, some fifty in number, with here and there a tent intervening, were arranged, as usual, in a circle. In the area within the best horses were picketed, and the whole circumference was glowing with a dusky light of the fires, displaying the forms of the women and children who were crowded around them. This patriarchal scene was curious and striking enough, that we made our escape from the place with all possible dispatch being tormented by the intrusive curiosity of the men who crowded around us. Yankee curiosity was nothing to theirs. They demanded our names, where we came from, where we were going, and what was our business. The last query was particularly embarrassing, since traveling in that country or indeed anywhere from any other motive than gain was an idea of which they took no cognizance. But they were fine-looking fellows, with an air of frankness, generosity, and even courtesy, having come from one of the least barbarous of the frontier counties. We passed about a mile beyond them and encamped. Being too few in number to stand guard without excessive fatigue, we extinguished our fire, lest it should attract the notice of wandering Indians, and picketing our horses close around us, slept undisturbed till morning. For three days we traveled without interruption, and on the evening of the third encamped by the well-known spring on Scott's bluff. Henry Shatlon and I rode out in the morning, and descending the western side of the bluff were crossing the plain beyond. Something that seemed to me a file of buffalo came into view, descending the hill several miles before us, but Henry reigned in his horse, and keenly peering across the prairie with a better and more practiced eye soon discovered its real nature. As he said, Old Smokes Lodges, I believe, Come, let us go! Wah! Get up! Now! Five hundred dollar! And laying on the lash with good will, he galloped forward, and I rode by his side. Not long after a black speck became visible on the prairie full two miles off, it grew larger and larger, it assumed the form of a man and horse, and soon we could discern a naked Indian careering at full gallop toward us. And within a furlong he wheeled his horse in a wide circle and made him describe various mystic figures upon the prairie, and Henry immediately compelled five hundred dollar to execute similar evolutions. It is Old Smokes Village, said he, interpreting these signals. Didn't I say so? As the Indian approached we stopped to wait for him, when suddenly he vanished sinking as it wore into the earth. He had come upon one of the deep ravines that everywhere intersect these prairies. In an instant the rough head of his horse stretched upward from the edge, and the rider and steed came scrambling out, and bounded up to us, a sudden jerk of the rain brought the wild panting horse to a full stop. Then followed the needful formality of shaking hands. I forget our visitor's name. He was a young fellow of no note in his nation, yet in his person and equipments he was a good specimen of a Dakota warrior in his ordinary traveling dress. Like most of his people he was nearly six feet high, lifefully and gracefully, yet strongly proportioned, and with a skin singularly clear and delicate. He wore no paint. His head was bare, and his long hair was gathered in a clump behind, to the top of which was attached transversely, both by way of ornament and of talisman, the mystic whistle made of the wing bone of the war eagle, and endowed with various magic virtues. From the back of his head descended a line of glittering brass plates tapering from the sides of a doubloon to that of a half dime, a cumbrous ornament in high vogue among the Dakotas, and for which they pay the traders a most extravagant price. His chest and arms were naked. The buffalo robe worn over them when at rest had fallen about his waist and was confined there by a belt. This with the gay moccasins on his feet completed his attire. For arms he carried a quiver of dog-skin at his back, and a rude but powerful bow in his hand. His horse had no bridle. A quart of hair lashed around his jaw served in place of one. The saddle was of most singular construction. It was made of wood covered with rawhide, and both pommel and cantile rose perpendicularly full eighteen inches so that the warrior was wedged firmly in his seat whence nothing could dislodge him but the bursting of the girths. Advancing with our new companion we found more of his people seated in a circle on the top of a hill, while a rude procession came straggling down the neighbouring hollow men, women, and children, with horses dragging lodge-polls behind them. All that morning as we moved forward, tall savages were stalking silently about us. At noon we reached Horse Creek, and as we waded through the shallow water we saw a wild and striking scene. The main body of the Indians had arrived before us. On the farther banks stood a large and strong man, nearly naked, holding a white horse by a long cord, and eyeing us as we approached. This was the chief whom Henry called old smoke. Just behind him his youngest and favourite squaw sat a stride of a fine mule. It was covered with comparisons of whitened skins, garnished with blue and white beads, and fringed with little ornaments of metal that tinkled with every movement of the animal. The girl had a light, clear complexion, enlivened by a spot of vermilion on each cheek. She smiled, not to say, grinned upon us, showing two gleaming rows of white teeth. In her hand she carried the tall lance of her unshivalrous lord, fluttering with feathers. His round white shield hung at the side of her mule, and his pipe was slung at her back. Her dress was a tunic of deerskin, made beautifully white by means of a species of clay found on the prairie, and ornamented with beads arrayed in figures more gay than tasteful, and with long fringes at all the seams. Not far from the chief stood a group of stately figures, their white buffalo robes thrown over their shoulders, gazing coldly upon us. And in the rear, for several acres, the ground was covered with a temporary encampment. Men, women, and children swarmed like bees. Hundreds of dogs of all sizes and colors ran restlessly about, and close at hand the wide shallow stream was alive, with boys, girls, and young squaws, splashing, screaming, and laughing in the water. At the same time, a long train of emigrant wagons were crossing the creek, and dragging on in their slow, heavy procession, past the encampment of the people whom they and their descendants in the space of a century are to sweep from the face of the earth. The encampment itself was merely a temporary one during the heat of the day. None of the lodges were erected, but their heavy leather coverings and long poles used to support them were scattered everywhere around, among weapons, domestic utensils, and the rude harness of mules and horses. The squaws of each lazy warrior had made him a shelter from the sun by stretching a few buffalo robes, or the corner of a lodge covering upon poles, and here he sat in the shade, with a favorite young squaw, perhaps, at his side, glittering with all imaginable trinkets. Before him stood the insignia of his rank as a warrior, his white shield of bull hide, his medicine bag, his bow and quiver, his lance and his pipe, raised aloft on a tripod of three poles. Except the dogs, the most active and noisy tenants of the camp were the old women, ugly as Macbeth's witches with their hair streaming loose in the wind, and nothing but the tattered fragment of an old buffalo robe to hide their shriveled wiry limbs. The day of their favoritism passed two generations ago. Now the heaviest labors of the camp devolved upon them. They were to harness the horses, pitch the lodges, dress the buffalo robes, and bring in meat for the hunters. With the cracked voices of these hags, the clamor of dogs, the shouting and laughing of children and girls, and the listless tranquility of the warriors, the whole scene had in effect too lively and picturesque ever to be forgotten. We stopped not far from the Indian camp, and having invited some of the chiefs and warriors to dinner, placed before them a sumptuous repast of biscuit and coffee. Squatted in a half-circle on the ground, they soon disposed of it. As we rode forward on the afternoon journey, several of our late guests accompanied us. Among the rest was a huge bloated savage of more than three hundred pounds' weight, christened Le Couchon in consideration of his preposterous dimensions and certain corresponding traits of his character. The hog, bestowed a little white pony, scarce able to bear up under the enormous burden, though by way of keeping up the necessary stimulus the rider kept both feet in constant motion, playing alternately against his ribs. The old man was not a chief. He never had ambition enough to become one. He was not a warrior nor a hunter, for he was too fat and lazy, but he was the richest man in the whole village. Riches among the Dakotas consist in horses, and of these the hog had accumulated more than thirty. He had already ten times as many as he wanted, yet still his appetite for horses was insatiable. Trotting up to me he shook me by the hand and gave me to understand that he was a very devoted friend, and then he began a series of most earnest signs and gesticulations, his oily countenance radiant with smiles and his little eyes peeping out with a cunning twinkle from between the masses of flesh that almost obscured them. Knowing nothing at that time of the sign language of the Indians, I could only guess at his meaning, so I called on Henry to explain it. The hog, it seems, was anxious to conclude a matrimonial bargain. He said he had a very pretty daughter in his lodge whom he would give me if I would give him my horse. These flattering overtures I chose to reject, at which the hog, still laughing with undiminished good humor, gathered his robe about his shoulders and rode away. Where we encamped that night an arm of the plat ran between high bluffs. It was turbid and swift as here to fore, but trees were growing on its crumbling banks, and there was a nook of grass between the water and the hill. Just before entering this place we saw the emigrants and camping at two or three miles distance on the right, while the whole Indian rabble were pouring down the neighboring hill in hope of the same sort of entertainment which they had experienced from us. In the savage landscape before our camp nothing but the rushing of the plat broke the silence. Through the ragged boughs of the trees, dilapidated and half dead, we saw the sun setting in crimson behind the peaks of the black hills. The restless bosom of the river was suffused with red, our white tent was tinged with it, and the sterile bluffs up to the rocks that crowned them partook of the same fiery hue. It soon passed away. No light remained but that from our fire blazing high among the dusky trees and bushes. We lay around it wrapped in our blankets, smoking and conversing until a late hour, and then withdrew to our tent. We crossed a sunscorched plain on the next morning, the line of old cottonwood trees that fringed the bank of the plat, forming its extreme verge. Nestled apparently close beneath them, we could discern in the distance something like a building. As we came nearer, it assumed form and dimensions, and proved to be a rough structure of logs. It was a little trading fort belonging to two private traders, and originally intended like all the forts of the country to form a hollow square with rooms for lodging and storage opening upon the area within. Only two sides of it had been completed. The place was now as ill-fitted for the purposes of defense as any of those little log houses, which upon our constantly shifting frontier have been so often successfully maintained against overwhelming odds of Indians. Two lodges were pitched close to the fort. The sunbeats scorching upon the logs, no living thing was stirring except one old squaw who thrust her round head from the opening of the nearest lodge, and three or four stout young pups who were peeping with looks of eager inquiry from under the covering. In a moment a door opened, and a little swarthy black-eyed Frenchman came out. His dress was rather singular. His black curling hair was parted in the middle of his head and fell below his shoulders. He wore a tight frock of smoked nearskin very gaily ornamented, with figures worked and dyed porcupine quills. His moccasins and leggings were also gauntly adorned in the same manner, and the latter had in addition a line of long fringes reaching down the seams. The small frame of Richard, for by this name Henry made him known to us, was in the highest degree athletic and vigorous. There was no superfluity, and indeed there seldom is among the active white men of this country, but every limb was compact and hard, every sinew had its full tone and elasticity, and the whole man wore an air of mingled hardy-hood and buoyancy. Richard committed our horses to a Navajo slave, a mean-looking fellow taken prisoner on the Mexican frontier, and relieving us of our rifles with ready politeness led the way into the principal apartment of his establishment. This was a room ten feet square. The walls and floor were of black mud, and the roof of rough timber. There was a huge fireplace made of four flat rocks picked up on the prairie, an Indian bow and otterskin quiver, several gaudy articles of rocky mountain finery, an Indian medicine bag and a pipe and tobacco pouch, garnished the walls and rifles rested in a corner. There was no furniture except a sort of rough settle covered with buffalo robes, upon which lolled a tall half-breed with his hair glued in masses upon each temple and saturated with vermilion. Two or three more mountain men sat cross-legged on the floor. Their attire was not unlike that of Richard himself, but the most striking figure of the group was a naked Indian boy of sixteen, with a handsome face and light act of proportions, who sat in an easy posture in the corner near the door. Not one of his limbs moved the breath of a hair. His eye was fixed immovably, not on any person present, but as it appeared on the projecting corner of the fireplace opposite to him. On these prairies the custom of smoking with friends is seldom omitted, whether among Indians or whites. The pipe, therefore, was taken from the wall, and its great red bowl crammed with the tobacco and shang-sasha mixed in suitable proportions. Then it passed round the circle, each man inhaling a few whiffs and handing it to his neighbor. Having spent half an hour here we took our leave, first inviting our new friends to drink a cup of coffee with us at our camp a mile farther up the river. By this time, as the reader may conceive, we had grown rather shabby. Our clothes had burst into rags and tatters, and what was worse, we had very little means of renovation. Fort Laramie was but seven miles before us, being totally averse to appearing in such plight among any society that could boast an approximation to the civilized. We soon stopped by the river to make our toilet in the best way we could. We hung up small-looking glasses against the trees and shaved, an operation neglected for six weeks. We performed our ablutions in the plat, though the utility of such a proceeding was questionable, the water looking exactly like a cup of chocolate and the banks consisting of the softest and richest yellow mud, so that we were obliged as a preliminary to build a causeway of stout branches and twigs. Having also put on radiant moccasins procured from a squaw of Richard's establishment, and made what other improvements our narrow circumstances allowed, we took our seats on the grass with a feeling of greatly increased respectability to wait the arrival of our guests. They came, the banquet was concluded, and the pipe smoked. Seeing them at you, we turned our horses' heads toward the fort. An hour elapsed. The barren hills closed across our front and we could see no farther. Until having surmounted them, a rapid stream appeared at the foot of the descent running into the plat. Beyond was a green meadow dotted with bushes, and in the midst of these at the point where the two rivers joined were the low clay walls of a fort. This was not Fort Laramie, but another post of less recent date, which having sunk before its successful competitor was now deserted and ruinous. A moment after, the hills seeming to draw apart as we advanced disclosed Fort Laramie itself, its high bastions and perpendicular walls of clay crowning in eminence on the left beyond the stream, while behind stretched a line of arid and desolate ridges, and behind these again, towering the loft seven thousand feet, arose the grim black hills. We tried to Fort Laramie Creek at a point nearly opposite the fort, but the stream swollen with the rains and the mountains was too rapid. We passed up along its bank to find a better crossing-place. Men gathered on the wall to look at us. There's Bordeaux, called Henry, his face brightening as he recognized his acquaintance. Him there with a spike-glass, and there's Old Vasquez and Tucker and May, and by George there's Simonot. This Simonot was Henry's fast friend, and the only man in the country who could rival him in hunting. We soon found a fort. Henry led the way, the pony approaching the bank with a countenance of cool indifference, bracing his feet and sliding into the stream with the most unmoved composure. At the first plunge the horse sunk low, and the water broke, or the saddle-bow. We followed. The water boiled against our saddles, but our horses bore us easily through. The unfortunate little mules came near going down with the current cart and all, and we watched them with some solicitude scrambling over the loose-round stones at the bottom and bracing stoutly against the stream. All landed safely at last. We crossed a little plain, descended a hollow, and riding up a steep bank found ourselves before the gateway of Fort Laramie under the impending blockhouse erected above it to defend the entrance.