He Went Gamboling About The Camp, Chattering Like Some
Frolicsome Ape; And Whatever He Was Doing At One Moment, The
Presumption Was A Sure One That He Would Not Be Doing It The Next.
His companion Troche sat silently on the grass, not speaking a word,
but keeping a vigilant eye on a very ugly little Utah squaw, of whom
he was extremely jealous.
On the next day we traveled farther, crossing the wide sterile basin
called Goche's Hole. Toward night we became involved among deep
ravines; and being also unable to find water, our journey was
protracted to a very late hour. On the next morning we had to pass a
long line of bluffs, whose raw sides, wrought upon by rains and
storms, were of a ghastly whiteness most oppressive to the sight. As
we ascended a gap in these hills, the way was marked by huge foot-
prints, like those of a human giant. They were the track of the
grizzly bear; and on the previous day also we had seen abundance of
them along the dry channels of the streams we had passed.
Immediately after this we were crossing a barren plain, spreading in
long and gentle undulations to the horizon. Though the sun was
bright, there was a light haze in the atmosphere. The distant hills
assumed strange, distorted forms, and the edge of the horizon was
continually changing its aspect. Shaw and I were riding together,
and Henry Chatillon was alone, a few rods before us; he stopped his
horse suddenly, and turning round with the peculiar eager and earnest
expression which he always wore when excited, he called to us to come
forward. We galloped to his side. Henry pointed toward a black
speck on the gray swell of the prairie, apparently about a mile off.
"It must be a bear," said he; "come, now, we shall all have some
sport. Better fun to fight him than to fight an old buffalo bull;
grizzly bear so strong and smart."
So we all galloped forward together, prepared for a hard fight; for
these bears, though clumsy in appearance and extremely large, are
incredibly fierce and active. The swell of the prairie concealed the
black object from our view. Immediately after it appeared again.
But now it seemed quite near to us; and as we looked at it in
astonishment, it suddenly separated into two parts, each of which
took wing and flew away. We stopped our horses and looked round at
Henry, whose face exhibited a curious mixture of mirth and
mortification. His hawk's eye had been so completely deceived by the
peculiar atmosphere that he had mistaken two large crows at the
distance of fifty rods for a grizzly bear a mile off. To the
journey's end Henry never heard the last of the grizzly bear with
wings.
In the afternoon we came to the foot of a considerable hill. As we
ascended it Rouville began to ask questions concerning our conditions
and prospects at home, and Shaw was edifying him with a minute
account of an imaginary wife and child, to which he listened with
implicit faith. Reaching the top of the hill we saw the windings of
Horse Creek on the plains below us, and a little on the left we could
distinguish the camp of Bisonette among the trees and copses along
the course of the stream. Rouville's face assumed just then a most
ludicrously blank expression. We inquired what was the matter, when
it appeared that Bisonette had sent him from this place to Fort
Laramie with the sole object of bringing back a supply of tobacco.
Our rattle-brain friend, from the time of his reaching the Fort up to
the present moment, had entirely forgotten the object of his journey,
and had ridden a dangerous hundred miles for nothing. Descending to
Horse Creek we forded it, and on the opposite bank a solitary Indian
sat on horseback under a tree. He said nothing, but turned and led
the way toward the camp. Bisonette had made choice of an admirable
position. The stream, with its thick growth of trees, inclosed on
three sides a wide green meadow, where about forty Dakota lodges were
pitched in a circle, and beyond them half a dozen lodges of the
friendly Cheyenne. Bisonette himself lived in the Indian manner.
Riding up to his lodge, we found him seated at the head of it,
surrounded by various appliances of comfort not common on the
prairie. His squaw was near him, and rosy children were scrambling
about in printed-calico gowns; Paul Dorion also, with his leathery
face and old white capote, was seated in the lodge, together with
Antoine Le Rouge, a half-breed Pawnee, Sibille, a trader, and several
other white men.
"It will do you no harm," said Bisonette, "to stay here with us for a
day or two, before you start for the Pueblo."
We accepted the invitation, and pitched our tent on a rising ground
above the camp and close to the edge of the trees. Bisonette soon
invited us to a feast, and we suffered abundance of the same sort of
attention from his Indian associates. The reader may possibly
recollect that when I joined the Indian village, beyond the Black
Hills, I found that a few families were absent, having declined to
pass the mountains along with the rest. The Indians in Bisonette's
camp consisted of these very families, and many of them came to me
that evening to inquire after their relatives and friends. They were
not a little mortified to learn that while they, from their own
timidity and indolence, were almost in a starving condition, the rest
of the village had provided their lodges for the next season, laid in
a great stock of provisions, and were living in abundance and luxury.
Bisonette's companions had been sustaining themselves for some time
on wild cherries, which the squaws pounded up, stones and all, and
spread on buffalo robes, to dry in the sun; they were then eaten
without further preparation, or used as an ingredient in various
delectable compounds.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 96 of 128
Words from 96587 to 97610
of 129303
