Then It Stopped Again, Looked Curiously Behind It, And
Trotted Up As Before; But Not So Boldly, For It Soon Paused And Stood
Gazing At Me.
I fired; it leaped upward and fell upon its tracks.
Measuring the distance, I found it 204 paces. When I stood by his
side, the antelope turned his expiring eye upward. It was like a
beautiful woman's, dark and rich. "Fortunate that I am in a hurry,"
thought I; "I might be troubled with remorse, if I had time for it."
Cutting the animal up, not in the most skilled manner, I hung the
meat at the back of my saddle, and rode on again. The hills (I could
not remember one of them) closed around me. "It is too late,"
thought I, "to go forward. I will stay here to-night, and look for
the path in the morning." As a last effort, however, I ascended a
high hill, from which, to my great satisfaction, I could see Laramie
Creek stretching before me, twisting from side to side amid ragged
patches of timber; and far off, close beneath the shadows of the
trees, the ruins of the old trading fort were visible. I reached
them at twilight. It was far from pleasant, in that uncertain light,
to be pushing through the dense trees and shrubbery of the grove
beyond. I listened anxiously for the footfall of man or beast.
Nothing was stirring but one harmless brown bird, chirping among the
branches. I was glad when I gained the open prairie once more, where
I could see if anything approached. When I came to the mouth of
Chugwater, it was totally dark. Slackening the reins, I let my horse
take his own course. He trotted on with unerring instinct, and by
nine o'clock was scrambling down the steep ascent into the meadows
where we were encamped. While I was looking in vain for the light of
the fire, Hendrick, with keener perceptions, gave a loud neigh, which
was immediately answered in a shrill note from the distance. In a
moment I was hailed from the darkness by the voice of Reynal, who had
come out, rifle in hand, to see who was approaching.
He, with his squaw, the two Canadians and the Indian boys, were the
sole inmates of the camp, Shaw and Henry Chatillon being still
absent. At noon of the following day they came back, their horses
looking none the better for the journey. Henry seemed dejected. The
woman was dead, and his children must henceforward be exposed,
without a protector, to the hardships and vicissitudes of Indian
life. Even in the midst of his grief he had not forgotten his
attachment to his bourgeois, for he had procured among his Indian
relatives two beautifully ornamented buffalo robes, which he spread
on the ground as a present to us.
Shaw lighted his pipe, and told me in a few words the history of his
journey. When I went to the fort they left me, as I mentioned, at
the mouth of Chugwater. They followed the course of the little
stream all day, traversing a desolate and barren country. Several
times they came upon the fresh traces of a large war party - the same,
no doubt, from whom we had so narrowly escaped an attack. At an hour
before sunset, without encountering a human being by the way, they
came upon the lodges of the squaw and her brothers, who, in
compliance with Henry's message, had left the Indian village in order
to join us at our camp. The lodges were already pitched, five in
number, by the side of the stream. The woman lay in one of them,
reduced to a mere skeleton. For some time she had been unable to
move or speak. Indeed, nothing had kept her alive but the hope of
seeing Henry, to whom she was strongly and faithfully attached. No
sooner did he enter the lodge than she revived, and conversed with
him the greater part of the night. Early in the morning she was
lifted into a travail, and the whole party set out toward our camp.
There were but five warriors; the rest were women and children. The
whole were in great alarm at the proximity of the Crow war party, who
would certainly have destroyed them without mercy had they met. They
had advanced only a mile or two, when they discerned a horseman, far
off, on the edge of the horizon. They all stopped, gathering
together in the greatest anxiety, from which they did not recover
until long after the horseman disappeared; then they set out again.
Henry was riding with Shaw a few rods in advance of the Indians, when
Mahto-Tatonka, a younger brother of the woman, hastily called after
them. Turning back, they found all the Indians crowded around the
travail in which the woman was lying. They reached her just in time
to hear the death-rattle in her throat. In a moment she lay dead in
the basket of the vehicle. A complete stillness succeeded; then the
Indians raised in concert their cries of lamentation over the corpse,
and among them Shaw clearly distinguished those strange sounds
resembling the word "Halleluyah," which together with some other
accidental coincidences has given rise to the absurd theory that the
Indians are descended from the ten lost tribes of Israel.
The Indian usage required that Henry, as well as the other relatives
of the woman, should make valuable presents, to be placed by the side
of the body at its last resting place. Leaving the Indians, he and
Shaw set out for the camp and reached it, as we have seen, by hard
pushing, at about noon. Having obtained the necessary articles, they
immediately returned. It was very late and quite dark when they
again reached the lodges. They were all placed in a deep hollow
among the dreary hills. Four of them were just visible through the
gloom, but the fifth and largest was illuminated by the ruddy blaze
of a fire within, glowing through the half-transparent covering of
raw hides.
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