Boys With
Miniature Bows And Arrows Were Wandering Over The Plains, Little
Naked Children Were Running Along On Foot, And Numberless Dogs Were
Scampering Among The Feet Of The Horses.
The young braves, gaudy
with paint and feathers, were riding in groups among the crowd, and
often galloping, two or three at once along the line, to try the
speed of their horses.
Here and there you might see a rank of sturdy
pedestrians stalking along in their white buffalo robes. These were
the dignitaries of the village, the old men and warriors, to whose
age and experience that wandering democracy yielded a silent
deference. With the rough prairie and the broken hills for its
background, the restless scene was striking and picturesque beyond
description. Days and weeks made me familiar with it, but never
impaired its effect upon my fancy.
As we moved on the broken column grew yet more scattered and
disorderly, until, as we approached the foot of a hill, I saw the old
men before mentioned seating themselves in a line upon the ground, in
advance of the whole. They lighted a pipe and sat smoking, laughing,
and telling stories, while the people, stopping as they successively
came up, were soon gathered in a crowd behind them. Then the old men
rose, drew their buffalo robes over their shoulders, and strode on as
before. Gaining the top of the hill, we found a very steep declivity
before us. There was not a minute's pause. The whole descended in a
mass, amid dust and confusion. The horses braced their feet as they
slid down, women and children were screaming, dogs yelping as they
were trodden upon, while stones and earth went rolling to the bottom.
In a few moments I could see the village from the summit, spreading
again far and wide over the plain below.
At our encampment that afternoon I was attacked anew by my old
disorder. In half an hour the strength that I had been gaining for a
week past had vanished again, and I became like a man in a dream.
But at sunset I lay down in the Big Crow's lodge and slept, totally
unconscious till the morning. The first thing that awakened me was a
hoarse flapping over my head, and a sudden light that poured in upon
me. The camp was breaking up, and the squaws were moving the
covering from the lodge. I arose and shook off my blanket with the
feeling of perfect health; but scarcely had I gained my feet when a
sense of my helpless condition was once more forced upon me, and I
found myself scarcely able to stand. Raymond had brought up Pauline
and the mule, and I stooped to raise my saddle from the ground. My
strength was quite inadequate to the task. "You must saddle her,"
said I to Raymond, as I sat down again on a pile of buffalo robes:
"Et hoec etiam fortasse meminisse juvabit."
I thought, while with a painful effort I raised myself into the
saddle. Half an hour after, even the expectation that Virgil's line
expressed seemed destined to disappointment. As we were passing over
a great plain, surrounded by long broken ridges, I rode slowly in
advance of the Indians, with thoughts that wandered far from the time
and from the place. Suddenly the sky darkened, and thunder began to
mutter. Clouds were rising over the hills, as dreary and dull as the
first forebodings of an approaching calamity; and in a moment all
around was wrapped in shadow. I looked behind. The Indians had
stopped to prepare for the approaching storm, and the dark, dense
mass of savages stretched far to the right and left. Since the first
attack of my disorder the effects of rain upon me had usually been
injurious in the extreme. I had no strength to spare, having at that
moment scarcely enough to keep my seat on horseback. Then, for the
first time, it pressed upon me as a strong probability that I might
never leave those deserts. "Well," thought I to myself, "a prairie
makes quick and sharp work. Better to die here, in the saddle to the
last, than to stifle in the hot air of a sick chamber, and a thousand
times better than to drag out life, as many have done, in the
helpless inaction of lingering disease." So, drawing the buffalo
robe on which I sat over my head, I waited till the storm should
come. It broke at last with a sudden burst of fury, and passing away
as rapidly as it came, left the sky clear again. My reflections
served me no other purpose than to look back upon as a piece of
curious experience; for the rain did not produce the ill effects that
I had expected. We encamped within an hour. Having no change of
clothes, I contrived to borrow a curious kind of substitute from
Reynal: and this done, I went home, that is, to the Big Crow's lodge
to make the entire transfer that was necessary. Half a dozen squaws
were in the lodge, and one of them taking my arm held it against her
own, while a general laugh and scream of admiration were raised at
the contrast in the color of the skin.
Our encampment that afternoon was not far distant from a spur of the
Black Hills, whose ridges, bristling with fir trees, rose from the
plains a mile or two on our right. That they might move more rapidly
toward their proposed hunting-grounds, the Indians determined to
leave at this place their stock of dried meat and other superfluous
articles. Some left even their lodges, and contented themselves with
carrying a few hides to make a shelter from the sun and rain. Half
the inhabitants set out in the afternoon, with loaded pack horses,
toward the mountains. Here they suspended the dried meat upon trees,
where the wolves and grizzly bears could not get at it.
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