Finding
themselves unable to drink the whole, they had sold the residue to
these Indians, and it needed no prophet to foretell the results; a
spark dropped into a powder magazine would not have produced a
quicker effect. Instantly the old jealousies and rivalries and
smothered feuds that exist in an Indian village broke out into
furious quarrels. They forgot the warlike enterprise that had
already brought them three hundred miles. They seemed like
ungoverned children inflamed with the fiercest passions of men.
Several of them were stabbed in the drunken tumult; and in the
morning they scattered and moved back toward the Missouri in small
parties. I feared that, after all, the long-projected meeting and
the ceremonies that were to attend it might never take place, and I
should lose so admirable an opportunity of seeing the Indian under
his most fearful and characteristic aspect; however, in foregoing
this, I should avoid a very fair probability of being plundered and
stripped, and, it might be, stabbed or shot into the bargain.
Consoling myself with this reflection, I prepared to carry the news,
such as it was, to the camp.
I caught my horse, and to my vexation found he had lost a shoe and
broken his tender white hoof against the rocks. Horses are shod at
Fort Laramie at the moderate rate of three dollars a foot; so I tied
Hendrick to a beam in the corral, and summoned Roubidou, the
blacksmith. Roubidou, with the hoof between his knees, was at work
with hammer and file, and I was inspecting the process, when a
strange voice addressed me.
Two more gone under! Well, there is more of us left yet. Here's
Jean Gars and me off to the mountains to-morrow. Our turn will come
next, I suppose. It's a hard life, anyhow!"
I looked up and saw a little man, not much more than five feet high,
but of very square and strong proportions. In appearance he was
particularly dingy; for his old buckskin frock was black and polished
with time and grease, and his belt, knife, pouch, and powder-horn
appeared to have seen the roughest service. The first joint of each
foot was entirely gone, having been frozen off several winters
before, and his moccasins were curtailed in proportion. His whole
appearance and equipment bespoke the "free trapper." He had a round
ruddy face, animated with a spirit of carelessness and gayety not at
all in accordance with the words he had just spoken.
"Two more gone," said I; "what do you mean by that?"
"Oh," said he, "the Arapahoes have just killed two of us in the
mountains. Old Bull-Tail has come to tell us. They stabbed one
behind his back, and shot the other with his own rifle. That's the
way we live here! I mean to give up trapping after this year. My
squaw says she wants a pacing horse and some red ribbons; I'll make
enough beaver to get them for her, and then I'm done! I'll go below
and live on a farm."
"Your bones will dry on the prairie, Rouleau!" said another trapper,
who was standing by; a strong, brutal-looking fellow, with a face as
surly as a bull-dog's.
Rouleau only laughed, and began to hum a tune and shuffle a dance on
his stumps of feet.
"You'll see us, before long, passing up our way," said the other man.
"Well," said I, "stop and take a cup of coffee with us"; and as it
was quite late in the afternoon, I prepared to leave the fort at
once.
As I rode out, a train of emigrant wagons was passing across the
stream. "Whar are ye goin' stranger?" Thus I was saluted by two or
three voices at once.
"About eighteen miles up the creek."
"It's mighty late to be going that far! Make haste, ye'd better, and
keep a bright lookout for Indians!"
I thought the advice too good to be neglected. Fording the stream, I
passed at a round trot over the plains beyond. But "the more haste,
the worse speed." I proved the truth in the proverb by the time I
reached the hills three miles from the fort. The trail was faintly
marked, and riding forward with more rapidity than caution, I lost
sight of it. I kept on in a direct line, guided by Laramie Creek,
which I could see at intervals darkly glistening in the evening sun,
at the bottom of the woody gulf on my right. Half an hour before
sunset I came upon its banks. There was something exciting in the
wild solitude of the place. An antelope sprang suddenly from the
sagebushes before me. As he leaped gracefully not thirty yards
before my horse, I fired, and instantly he spun round and fell.
Quite sure of him, I walked my horse toward him, leisurely reloading
my rifle, when to my surprise he sprang up and trotted rapidly away
on three legs into the dark recesses of the hills, whither I had no
time to follow. Ten minutes after, I was passing along the bottom of
a deep valley, and chancing to look behind me, I saw in the dim light
that something was following. Supposing it to be wolf, I slid from
my seat and sat down behind my horse to shoot it; but as it came up,
I saw by its motions that it was another antelope. It approached
within a hundred yards, arched its graceful neck, and gazed intently.
I leveled at the white spot on its chest, and was about to fire when
it started off, ran first to one side and then to the other, like a
vessel tacking against a wind, and at last stretched away at full
speed.
