Now And Then I Walked The Rounds Among
The Silent Horses, To See That All Was Right.
The night was chill,
damp, and dark, the dank grass bending under the icy dewdrops.
At
the distance of a rod or two the tents were invisible, and nothing
could be seen but the obscure figures of the horses, deeply
breathing, and restlessly starting as they slept, or still slowly
champing the grass. Far off, beyond the black outline of the
prairie, there was a ruddy light, gradually increasing, like the glow
of a conflagration; until at length the broad disk of the moon,
blood-red, and vastly magnified by the vapors, rose slowly upon the
darkness, flecked by one or two little clouds, and as the light
poured over the gloomy plain, a fierce and stern howl, close at hand,
seemed to greet it as an unwelcome intruder. There was something
impressive and awful in the place and the hour; for I and the beasts
were all that had consciousness for many a league around.
Some days elapsed, and brought us near the Platte. Two men on
horseback approached us one morning, and we watched them with the
curiosity and interest that, upon the solitude of the plains, such an
encounter always excites. They were evidently whites, from their
mode of riding, though, contrary to the usage of that region, neither
of them carried a rifle.
"Fools!" remarked Henry Chatillon, "to ride that way on the prairie;
Pawnee find them - then they catch it!"
Pawnee HAD found them, and they had come very near "catching it";
indeed, nothing saved them from trouble but the approach of our
party.
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