For Half A Mile Before Us And Half A Mile Behind, The Prairie
Was Covered Far And Wide With The Moving Throng Of Savages.
The
barren, broken plain stretched away to the right and left, and far in
front rose the gloomy precipitous ridge of the Black Hills.
We
pushed forward to the head of the scattered column, passing the
burdened travaux, the heavily laden pack horses, the gaunt old women
on foot, the gay young squaws on horseback, the restless children
running among the crowd, old men striding along in their white
buffalo robes, and groups of young warriors mounted on their best
horses. Henry Chatillon, looking backward over the distant prairie,
exclaimed suddenly that a horseman was approaching, and in truth we
could just discern a small black speck slowly moving over the face of
a distant swell, like a fly creeping on a wall. It rapidly grew
larger as it approached.
"White man, I b'lieve," said Henry; "look how he ride! Indian never
ride that way. Yes; he got rifle on the saddle before him."
The horseman disappeared in a hollow of the prairie, but we soon saw
him again, and as he came riding at a gallop toward us through the
crowd of Indians, his long hair streaming in the wind behind him, we
recognized the ruddy face and old buckskin frock of Jean Gras the
trapper. He was just arrived from Fort Laramie, where he had been on
a visit, and said he had a message for us.
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