Last Year's Signs Of
Them Were Provokingly Abundant; And Wood Being Extremely Scarce, We
Found An Admirable Substitute In Bois De Vache, Which Burns Exactly
Like Peat, Producing No Unpleasant Effects.
The wagons one morning
had left the camp; Shaw and I were already on horseback, but Henry
Chatillon still sat cross-legged by the dead embers of the fire,
playing pensively with the lock of his rifle, while his sturdy
Wyandotte pony stood quietly behind him, looking over his head.
At
last he got up, patted the neck of the pony (whom, from an
exaggerated appreciation of his merits, he had christened "Five
Hundred Dollar"), and then mounted with a melancholy air.
"What is it, Henry?"
"Ah, I feel lonesome; I never been here before; but I see away yonder
over the buttes, and down there on the prairie, black - all black with
buffalo!"
In the afternoon he and I left the party in search of an antelope;
until at the distance of a mile or two on the right, the tall white
wagons and the little black specks of horsemen were just visible, so
slowly advancing that they seemed motionless; and far on the left
rose the broken line of scorched, desolate sand-hills. The vast
plain waved with tall rank grass that swept our horses' bellies; it
swayed to and fro in billows with the light breeze, and far and near
antelope and wolves were moving through it, the hairy backs of the
latter alternately appearing and disappearing as they bounded
awkwardly along; while the antelope, with the simple curiosity
peculiar to them, would often approach as closely, their little horns
and white throats just visible above the grass tops, as they gazed
eagerly at us with their round black eyes.
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