The Lady Was Blue, And In Great
Pain From Cramp, And The Poor Unweaned Infant Was Roaring For The
Nourishment Which Had Failed.
I vainly tried to get hot water
and mustard for a poultice, and though I offered a Negro a dollar
to go for the medicine, he looked at it superciliously, hummed a
tune, and said he must wait for the Pacific train, which was not
due for an hour.
Equally in vain I hunted through Cheyenne for a
feeding bottle. Not a maternal heart softened to the helpless
mother and starving child, and my last resource was to dip a
piece of sponge in some milk and water, and try to pacify the
creature. I applied Rigollot's leaves, went for the medicine,
saw the popular host - a bachelor - who mentioned a girl who, after
much difficulty, consented to take charge of the baby for two
dollars a day and attend to the mother, and having remained till
she began to amend, I took the cars for Greeley, a settlement on
the Plains, which I had been recommended to make my starting
point for the mountains.
FORT COLLINS, September 10.
It gave me a strange sensation to embark upon the Plains.
Plains, plains everywhere, plains generally level, but elsewhere
rolling in long undulations, like the waves of a sea which had
fallen asleep. They are covered thinly with buff grass, the
withered stalks of flowers, Spanish bayonet, and a small
beehive-shaped cactus. One could gallop all over them.
They are peopled with large villages of what are called prairie
dogs, because they utter a short, sharp bark, but the dogs are,
in reality, marmots. We passed numbers of villages, which are
composed of raised circular orifices, about eighteen inches in
diameter, with sloping passages leading downwards for five or six
feet. Hundreds of these burrows are placed together. On nearly
every rim a small furry reddish-buff beast sat on his hind legs,
looking, so far as head went, much like a young seal. These
creatures were acting as sentinels, and sunning themselves. As
we passed, each gave a warning yelp, shook its tail, and, with a
ludicrous flourish of its hind legs, dived into its hole. The
appearance of hundreds of these creatures, each eighteen inches
long, sitting like dogs begging, with their paws down and all
turned sunwards, is most grotesque. The Wish-ton-Wish has few
enemies, and is a most prolific animal. From its enormous
increase and the energy and extent of its burrowing operations,
one can fancy that in the course of years the prairies will be
seriously injured, as it honeycombs the ground, and renders it
unsafe for horses. The burrows seem usually to be shared by
owls, and many of the people insist that a rattlesnake is also an
inmate, but I hope for the sake of the harmless, cheery little
prairie dog, that this unwelcome fellowship is a myth.
After running on a down grade for some time, five distinct ranges
of mountains, one above another, a lurid blue against a lurid
sky, upheaved themselves above the prairie sea.
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