He folded up the offerings
and withdrew to his lodge.
Several days passed and we and the Indians remained encamped side by
side. They could not decide whether or not to go to war. Toward
evening, scores of them would surround our tent, a picturesque group.
Late one afternoon a party of them mounted on horseback came suddenly
in sight from behind some clumps of bushes that lined the bank of the
stream, leading with them a mule, on whose back was a wretched negro,
only sustained in his seat by the high pommel and cantle of the
Indian saddle. His cheeks were withered and shrunken in the hollow
of his jaws; his eyes were unnaturally dilated, and his lips seemed
shriveled and drawn back from his teeth like those of a corpse. When
they brought him up before our tent, and lifted him from the saddle,
he could not walk or stand, but he crawled a short distance, and with
a look of utter misery sat down on the grass. All the children and
women came pouring out of the lodges round us, and with screams and
cries made a close circle about him, while he sat supporting himself
with his hands, and looking from side to side with a vacant stare.
The wretch was starving to death! For thirty-three days he had
wandered alone on the prairie, without weapon of any kind; without
shoes, moccasins, or any other clothing than an old jacket and
pantaloons; without intelligence and skill to guide his course, or
any knowledge of the productions of the prairie. All this time he
had subsisted on crickets and lizards, wild onions, and three eggs
which he found in the nest of a prairie dove. He had not seen a
human being. Utterly bewildered in the boundless, hopeless desert
that stretched around him, offering to his inexperienced eye no mark
by which to direct his course, he had walked on in despair till he
could walk no longer, and then crawled on his knees until the bone
was laid bare. He chose the night for his traveling, lying down by
day to sleep in the glaring sun, always dreaming, as he said, of the
broth and corn cake he used to eat under his old master's shed in
Missouri. Every man in the camp, both white and red, was astonished
at his wonderful escape not only from starvation but from the grizzly
bears which abound in that neighborhood, and the wolves which howled
around him every night.
Reynal recognized him the moment the Indians brought him in. He had
run away from his master about a year before and joined the party of
M. Richard, who was then leaving the frontier for the mountains. He
had lived with Richard ever since, until in the end of May he with
Reynal and several other men went out in search of some stray horses,
when he got separated from the rest in a storm, and had never been
heard of up to this time.
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