BUFFALO LAND:

AN



Authentic Account



OF THE



Discoveries, Adventures, and Mishaps of a Scientific

and Sporting Party

IN THE WILD WEST;

WITH



GRAPHIC DESCRIPTIONS OF THE COUNTRY; THE RED MAN, SAVAGE

AND CIVILIZED; HUNTING THE BUFFALO, ANTELOPE,

ELK, AND WILD TURKEY; ETC., ETC.



REPLETE WITH INFORMATION, WIT, AND HUMOR.



The Appendix Comprising a Complete Guide for Sportsmen and Emigrants.

BY

W. E. WEBB,

OF TOPEKA, KANSAS.

Profusely Illustrated



FROM ACTUAL PHOTOGRAPHS, AND ORIGINAL DRAWINGS BY HENRY WORRALL.

CINCINNATI and CHICAGO:



E HANNAFORD & COMPANY.



SAN FRANCISCO: F. DEWING & CO.

1872.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1872, by



E. HANNAFORD & CO.,



In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington, D. C.



STEREOTYPED AT THE FRANKLIN TYPE FOUNDRY, CINCINNATI.

TO



The Primeval Man,



The Original Westerner, and First Buffalo Hunter,



This Work is Dedicated,



With Profound Regard,



BY THE AUTHOR.

[vii]

BUFFALO LAND.

BY OUR TAMMANY SACHEM.

There's a wonderful land far out in the West,

Well worthy a visit, my friend;

There, Puritans thought, as the sun went to rest,

Creation itself had an end.

'T is a wild, weird spot on the continent's face,

A wound which is ghastly and red,

Where the savages write the deeds of their race

In blood that they constantly shed.

The graves of the dead the fair prairies deface,

And stamp it the kingdom of dread.



The emigrant trail is a skeleton path;

You measure its miles by the bones;

There savages struck, in their merciless wrath,

And now, after sunset, the moans,

When tempests are out, fill the shuddering air,

And ghosts flit the wagons beside,

And point to the skulls lying grinning and bare

And beg of the teamsters a ride;

Sometimes 't is a father with snow on his hair,

Again, 't is a youth and his bride.



What visions of horror each valley could tell,

If Providence gave it a tongue!

How often its Eden was changed to a hell,

In which a whole train had been flung;

[viii]How death cry and battle-shout frightened the birds,

And prayers were as thick as the leaves,

And no one to catch the poor dying one's words

But Death, as he gathered his sheaves:

You see the bones bleaching among the wild herds,

In shrouds that the field spider weaves.



That era is passing—another one comes,

The era of steam and the plow,

With clangor of commerce and factory hums,

Where only the wigwam is now.

Like mist of the morning before the bright sun,

The cloud from the land disappears;

The Spirit of Murder his circle has run

And fled from the march of the years;

The click of machine drowns the click of the gun,

And day hides the night time of tears.

[ix]

PREFACE.

The purpose of this work is to make the reader
better acquainted with that wild land which he has
known from childhood, as the home of the Indian
and the buffalo. The Rocky Mountain chain, distorted
and rugged, has been aptly called the colossal
vertebræ of our continent's broad back, and from
thence, as a line, the plains, weird and wonderful,
stretch eastward through Colorado, and embrace
the entire western half of Kansas.

Fortune, not long since, threw in my way an invitation,
which I gladly accepted, to join a semi-scientific
party, since somewhat known to fame
through various articles in the newspaper press, in
a sojourn of several months on the great plains.
At a meeting held with due solemnity on the eve
of starting, the Professor (to whom the reader will
be introduced in the proper connection) was chosen
leader of the expedition, while to my lot fell the[x]
office of editor of the future record, or rather Grand
Scribe of what we were pleased to call our "Log
Book." The latter now lies before me, in all its
glory of shabby covers and dirty pages. Its soiled
face is as honorable as that of the laborer who
comes from his task in a well harvested field. Out
of the sheaves gathered during our journey, I shall
try and take such portions as may best supply the
mental cravings of the countless thousands who
hunger for the life and the lore of the far West.

I have given the mistakes as well as triumphs of
our expedition, and the members of the party will
readily recognize their familiar camp names. The
disguise will probably be pleasant, as few like to see
their failures on public parade, preferring rather to
leave these in barracks, and let their successes only
appear at review.

The plains have a face, a people, and a brute
creation, peculiarly their own, and to these our
party devoted earnest study. The expedition presented
a rare opportunity of becoming acquainted
with the game of the country; and, in writing the
present volume, my aim has been to make it so far
a text-book for amateur hunters that they may
become at once conversant with the habits of the
game, and the best manner of killing it. The time
is not far distant, when the plains and the Rocky[xi]
Mountains will be sought by thousands annually, as
a favorite field for sport and recreation.

Another and still larger class, it is hoped, will
find much of interest and value in the following
pages. From every state in the Union, people are
constantly passing westward. We found emigrant
wagons on spots from which the Indians had just
removed their wigwams. Multitudes more are now
on the way, with the earnest purpose of founding
homes and, if possible, of finding fortunes. In
order to aid this class, as well as the sportsman, I
have gathered in an appendix such additional information
as may be useful to both.

The scientific details of our trip will probably be
published in proper form and time, by the savans
interested. In regard to these, my object has been
simply to chronicle such matters as made an impression
upon my own mind, being content with
what cream might be gathered by an amateur's
skimming, while the more bulky milk should be
saved in capacious scientific buckets.

Professor Cope, the well known naturalist, of the
Academy of Sciences, Philadelphia, received for examination
and classification the most valuable
fossils we obtained, and to him I am indebted for
a large amount of most interesting and valuable[xii]
scientific matter, which will be found embodied in
chapters twenty-third and twenty-fourth.

The illustrations of men and brutes in this work
are studies from life. Whenever it was possible,
we had photographs taken.

The plains, it must be said, are a tract with
which Romance has had much more to do than
History. Red men, brave and chivalrous, and unnatural
buffalo, with the habits of lions, exist only
in imagination. In these pages, my earnest endeavor,
when dealing with actualities, has been to
"hold the mirror up to Nature," and to describe
men, manners, and things as they are in real life
upon the frontiers, and beyond, to-day.

W. E. W.

Topeka, Kansas, May, 1872.

[xiii]

CONTENTS.

[xx]

CONTENTS OF APPENDIX.

[xxi]

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

From Original Drawings by Henry Worrall, and Actual Photographs.

The Engraving by the Bureau of Illustration, Buffalo, N. Y.

[25]

BUFFALO LAND.

CHAPTER I.

THE OBJECT OF OUR EXPEDITION—A GLIMPSE OF ALASKA THROUGH CAPTAIN WALRUS'
GLASS—WE ARE TEMPTED BY OUR RECENT PURCHASE—ALASKAN GAME OF "OLD
SLEDGE"—THE EARLY STRUGGLES OF KANSAS—THE SMOKY HILL TRAIL—INDIAN
HIGH ART—THE "BORDER-RUFFIAN," PAST AND PRESENT—TOPEKA—HOW IT RECEIVED
ITS NAME—WAUKARUSA AND ITS LEGEND.

The great plains—the region of country in which
our expedition sojourned for so many months—is
wilder, and by far more interesting, than those solitudes
over which the Egyptian Sphynx looks out.
The latter are barren and desolate, while the former
teem with their savage races and scarcely more savage
beasts. The very soil which these tread is written all
over with a history of the past, even its surface giving
to science wonderful and countless fossils of those ages
when the world was young and man not yet born.

At first, it was rather unsettled which way the
steps of our party would turn; between unexplored
territory and that newly acquired, there were several
fields open which promised much of interest. Originally,
our company numbered a dozen; but Alaska
tempted a portion of our savans, and to the fishy and
frigid maiden they yielded, drawn by a strange predilection
for train-oil and seal meat toward the land of[26]
furs. For the remainder of our party, however, life
under the Alaskan's tent-pole had no charms. Our
decision may have been influenced somewhat by the
seafaring man with whom our friends were to sail.
The real name of this son of Neptune was Samuels,
but our party called him, as it savored more of salt
water, Captain Walrus, of the bark Harpoon. This
worthy, according to his own statement, had been
born on a whaler, weaned among the Esquimeaux,
and, moreover, had frozen off eight toes "trying to
winter it at our recent purchase." He evidently disliked
to have scientific men aboard, intent on studying
eclipses and seals. "A heathenish and strange people
are the Alaskans," Walrus was wont to say. "What
is not Indian is Russian, and a compound of the latter
and aboriginal is a mixture most villainous. One portion
of the partnership anatomy takes to brandy, while
the other absorbs train-oil, and so a half-breed Alaskan
heathen is always prepared for spontaneous combustion,
and if rubbed the wrong way, flames up instantly.
He is always hot for murder, and if you throw cold
water on his designs, his oily nature sheds it."

And many a yarn did the captain spin concerning
their strange customs. Sealing a marriage contract
consisted in the warrior leaving a fat seal at the hole
of the hut, where his intended crawled in to her
home privileges of smoke and fish. Their favorite
game was "old sledge," played with prisoners to
shorten their captivity.

 [27]

ALASKAN LOVERS—SEALING THE CONTRACT.

ALASKAN GAME OF OLD SLEDGE.

All this, and much more, probably equally true, we
had picked up of Alaskan history, and at one time
our chests had been packed for a voyage on the Harpoon;
but at the final council the west carried it[29]
against the north, and our steps were directed toward
the setting sun, instead of the polar star.

The expedition afforded unexcelled facilities for
seeing Buffalo Land. It was composed of good material,
and pursued its chosen path successfully,
though under difficulties which would have turned
back a less determined party.

None of our company, I trust, will consider it an
unwarrantable license which recounts to others the
personal peculiarities and mistakes about which we
joked so freely while in camp. It was generally understood,
before we parted, that the adventures should
be common stock for our children and children's
children. Why should not the great public share in
it also?

Let the reader place before him a checker-board,
and allow it to represent Kansas, whose shape and
outline it much resembles; the half nearest him will
stand for the eastern or settled portion of the State,
of which the other half is embraced in Buffalo Land
proper. It is with the latter that we have first to do,
as with it we first became acquainted.

Our party entered the State at Kansas City, and
took the cars for Topeka, its capital. During our
morning ride through the valley of the Kaw, memory
went backward to the years when "Bleeding Kansas"
was the signal-cry of emancipation. When gray
old Time, a decade and a half ago, was writing the history
of those bright children of Freedom, the united
sisterhood, a virgin arm reached over his shoulder,
and a fair young hand, stained with its own life-blood,[30]
wrote on the page toward which all the world
was gazing, "I am Kansas, latest-born of America.
I would be free, yet they would make me a slave.
Save me, my sisters!" The great heart of our nation
was sorely distressed. Conscience pointed to one
path—Policy, that rank hypocrite, to another.

And so it was that the young queen, with her
grand domain in the West, struggled forward to lay
her fealty at the feet of our great mother, Liberty.
She made a body-guard of her own sons, and their
number was quickly swelled by brave hearts from the
north, east, and west. The new territory, begging
admission as a State, became a battle-ground.
Slavery had reached forth its hand to grasp the new
State and fresh soil, but the mutilated member was
drawn back with wounds which soon reached, corrupted
and destroyed the body. In this land of the
Far West a nation of young giants had been suddenly
developed, and Kansas was forever won for freedom.

But there was yet another enemy and another danger.
Westward, toward Colorado, the savage's tomahawk
and knife glittered, and struck among the
affrighted settlements. Ad Astra per Aspera, "to the
stars through difficulties," the State exclaims on the
seal, and to the stars, through blood, its course has
been.

Those old pages of history are too bloody to be
brought to light in the bright present, and we purpose
turning them only enough to gather what will be
now of practical use. Kansas suffered cruelly, and
brooded over her wrongs, but she has long since struck
hands with her bitterer foe. Most of the "Border[31]
Ruffians" ripened on gallows trees, or fell by the
sword, years ago. A few, however, are yet spared,
to cheer their old age by riding around in desolate
woods at midnight, wrapped in damp nightgowns,
and masked in grinning death-heads. Although the
mists of shadow-land are chilling their hearts, yet
those organs, at the cry of blood, beat quick again,
like regimental drums, for action.

The Kaw or the Kansas River, the valley of which
we were traversing, is the principal stream of the
State—in length to the mouth of the Republican one
hundred and fifty miles, and above that, under the
name of Smoky Hill, three hundred miles more.

The "Smoky Hill trail" is a familiar name in
many an American home. It was the great California
path, and many a time the demons of the plain
gloated over fair hair, yet fresh from a mother's touch
and blessing. And many a faint and thirsty traveler
has flung himself with a burst of gratitude on
the sandy bed of the desolate river, and thanked the
Great Giver of all good for the concealed life found
under the sand, and with the strength thus sucked
from the bosom of our much-abused mother, he has
pushed onward until at length the grand mountains
and great parks of Colorado burst upon his delighted
vision.

About noon we arrived at Topeka, the capital,
well situated on the south bank of the river, having
a comfortable, well-to-do air, which suggests the quiet
satisfaction of an honest burgher after a morning of
toil. The slavery billow of agitation rolled even thus
far from beyond the border of the state. Armed men[32]
rode over the beautiful prairies, some east, some
west—one band to transplant slavery from the tainted
soil of Missouri, another to pluck it up.

A small party of Free State men settled upon this
beautiful prairie. South flowed the Waukarusa,
south and east the Shunganunga, and west and north
the Kaw or Kansas. Here thrived a bulbous root,
much loved by the red man, and here lazy Pottawatomies
gathered in the fall to dig it. In size and
somewhat in shape, it resembled a goose egg, and had
a hard, reddish brown shell, and an interior like
damaged dough. The Indian gourmands ate it
greedily and called it "Topeka." From the two or
three families of refugee Free State men the town
grew up, and from the Indian root it took its
name. Its christening took place in the first cabin
erected, and it is reported that a now prominent
banker of the town stood sponsor, with his back
against the door, refusing any egress until the name
of his choice was accepted. It is even affirmed that
one opposing city founder was pulled back by his
coat-tail from an attempted escape up the wide
chimney.

[33]

"WAUKARUSA."

"TOASTS HIS MOCCASINED FEET BY THE FIRE."

The old Indian love of commemorating events by
significant names is well illustrated in Kansas. One
example may be given here. Waukarusa once opposed
its swollen tide to an exploring band of red
men. Now, from time beyond ken, the noble savage
has been illustrious for the ingenuity with which he
lays all disagreeable duties upon the shoulders of the
patient squaw. He may ride to their death, in free
wild sport, the bison multitudes; but their skins[35]
must be converted into marketable robes, and the
flesh into jerked meat, by the ugly and over-worked
partner of his bosom. While she pins the raw hide
to earth, and bends patiently over, fleshing it with
horn hatchet for weary hours, the stronger vessel, his
abdominal recesses wadded with buffalo meat, toasts
his moccasined feet by the fire, fills his lungs with
smoke from villainous killikinick, and muses soothingly
of white scalps and happy hunting grounds.

Ox-like maiden, happy "big injun!" you both belong
to an age and a history well nigh past, and let us
rejoice that it is so.

But to return to the band long since gathered into
aboriginal dust whom we left pausing on the banks
of the Waukarusa. "Deep water, bad bottom!"
grunted the braves, and, nothing doubting it, one loving
warrior pushed his wife and her pony over the
bank to test the matter. From the middle of the
tide the squaw called back, "Waukarusa" (thigh
deep), and soon had gained the opposite bank in
safety. Then and there the creek received its name,
"Waukarusa."

We procured a remarkable sketch, in the well
known Indian style of high art, commemorative of
this event. It has always struck us that the savage
order of drawing resembles very much that of the
ancient Egyptian—except in the matter of drawing
at sight, with bow or rifle, on the white man.

[36]

CHAPTER II.

A CHAPTER OF INTRODUCTIONS—PROFESSOR PALEOZOIC—TAMMANY SACHEM—DOCTOR
PYTHAGORAS—GENUINE MUGGS—COLON AND SEMI-COLON—SHAMUS DOBEEN—TENACIOUS
GRIPE—BUGS AND PHILOSOPHY—HOW GRIPE BECAME A REPUBLICAN.

When permission was given me to draw upon
the journal of our trip for such material as I
might desire, it was stipulated that the camp-names
should be adhered to. A company on the plains is
no respecter of persons, and titles which might have
caused offense before starting were received in good
part, and worn gracefully thenceforward.

Our leader, Professor Paleozoic, ordinarily existed
in a sort of transition state between the primary
and tertiary formations. He could tell cheese from
chalk under the microscope, and show that one was
full of the fossil and the other of the living evidences
of animal life. A worthy man, vastly more troubled
with rocks on the brain than "rocks" in the pocket.

Learning had once come near making him mad,
but from this sad fate he was happily saved by a
somewhat Pickwickian blunder. While in Kansas,
some years since, he penetrated a remote portion of
the wilderness, where, as he was happy in believing,
none but the native savage, or, possibly, the primeval
man, could ever have tarried long enough to leave
any sign behind. Imagine his astonishment and[37]
delight, therefore, when from the tangled grass he
drew an upright stone, with lines chiseled on three
sides and on the fourth a rude figure resembling
more than any thing else one of those odd fictions
which geologists call restored specimens. On a ledge
near were huge depressions like foot-prints. They
were foot-prints of birds, no doubt, and quite as perfect
as those found in more favored localities, and
from which whole skeletons had been constructed by
learned men.

Both specimens were forwarded to, and at the
expense of, noted savans of the East. Our professor
called the pillar from the tangled grass an altar
raised by early races to the winds. The short lines,
he suggested, designated the different points of the
compass, while the rude figure was intended for
Boreas. Our scientists toward the rising sun met
the boxes at the depot, paid charges, and careful
draymen bore them to the expectant museum.

One hour after, seven wise men might have been
seen wending their way sorrowfully homeward, with
hands crossed meditatively under their coat-tails, and
pocket vacuums where lately were modern coins.
Government clearly had a case against our professor.
Science decided that he had removed a stone telling
in surveyors' signs just what section and township
it was on. The figure which he had imagined a
heathen idea of Boreas was the fancy of some surveyor's
idle moment—a shocking sketch of an impossible
buffalo. Whether the bird-tracks had a
common origin, or were hewn by the hatchets of the
red man, is a point still under discussion.

[38]A worthy man, as before remarked, was the professor,
full of knowledge, genial in camp, and, having
rubbed his eye-tooth on a section stone, geological
authority of the highest order. When the professor
said a particular rock belonged to the cretaceous formation,
one might safely conclude that no modern
influences had been at work either on that rock or
in that vicinity. That question was settled.

Next came Tammany Sachem, our heavy weight
and our mystery. Before joining our party, he had
been a New York alderman, noted for prowess in
annual aldermanic clam-bakes at Coney Island. He
was wont to exhibit a medal, the prize of such a
tournament, on which several immense clams were
racing to the griddle, for the honor of being devoured
by the city fathers.

A green-ribbed hunting coat traversed his rotundity,
which had the generous swell of a puncheon.
His face was reddish, and his nose like a beacon-light
against a sunset sky. When you thought him
awake, he was half asleep; when you thought him
asleep, he was wide awake. A look of extreme
happiness always beamed on his face when misfortunes
impended. Per contra, successes made him
suspicious and morose. New York aldermen have
always been a puzzle to the nation at large. Perhaps
our friend's facial contradictions, put on originally
as one of the tricks of the trade, had become
chronic from long usage. We have since learned
that the sachems of Tammany laugh the loudest
and joke the most freely when under affliction.

[39]

THE PROFESSOR—A REMARKABLE STONE.

TAMMANY SACHEM—PROSPECTIVE AND RETROSPECTIVE.

When I was appointed editor, the Sachem volunteered[41]
as local reporter. Many of the items he
gathered are entered in our log-book in rhyme, and
to these pages some of them are transferred verbatim.
In wooing the muses, our alderman certainly
acted out of character. The ideal poet is thin instead
of obese, and he is a reckless innovator who
lays claim to any measure of the divine afflatus
without possessing either a pale face, thin form, or
a garret.

As to what drove a New York alderman to the
society of buffaloes, we had but one explanation,
and that was Sachem's own. We knew that he disliked
women in every form, Sorosis and Anti-Sorosis,
bitter and sweet alike. According to his statement,
made to us in good faith, and which I chronicle in
the same, Cupid had once essayed to drive a dart
into Sachem's heart, but, in doing so, the barb also
struck and wounded his liver. As his love increased,
his health failed. His liver became affected in the
same ratio as his heart. This was touching our
alderman in a tender spot. Imagine a New York
city father without digestion; what a subject of scorn
he would become to his constituency! Our alderman
fled from Cupid, clams, and his beloved Gotham, and
sought health and buffalo on the plains of Kansas.
As he remarked to us pathetically: "A good liver
makes a good husband. Indigestion frightens connubial
bliss out of the window. Pills, my boy, pills
is the quietus of love. If you wish Cupid to leave,
give him a dose of 'em. The liver, instead of the
heart, is at the bottom of half the suicides."

Doctor Pythagoras in years was fifty, and in stature[42]
short. His favorite theory was "development," and
this he carried to depths which would have astonished
Darwin himself. How humble he used to make us
feel by digging at the roots of the family tree until its
uttermost fiber lay between an oyster and a sponge!
(Rumor charged him with waiting so long for diseases
to develop, that his patients developed into spirits.)
While he indorsed Darwin, however, he also admired
Pythagoras. The latter's doctrine of metempsychosis
he Darwinized. In their transmigration from one
body to another, souls developed, taking a higher order
of being with each change, until finally fitted to
enter the land of spirits. The soul of a jack-of-all-trades
was one which developed slowly, and picked
up a new craft with each new body. Like Pythagoras,
he remembered several previous bodies which
his soul had animated, among others that of the original
Rarey, who existed in Egypt some centuries before
the modern usurper was born. If souls proved
entirely unworthy during the probationary or human
period, they were cast back into the brute creation to
try it over again. To this class belonged prize-fighters,
Congressmen, and the like. With them the past
was a blank—an unsuccessful problem washed from
the slate. The doctor had a hobby that a vicious
horse was only a vicious man entered into a lower order
of being. To demonstrate this he had traveled,
and still persisted in traveling, on eccentric horses,
for the purpose of reasoning with them. But his
Egyptian lore had been lost in transmission, and his
falls, kicks, and bites became as many as the moons
which had passed over his head.

[43]

COLON AND SEMI-COLON.

DAVID PYTHAGORAS, M. D.

[45]Genuine Muggs was an Englishman. The antipodes
of Tammany Sachem, who would not believe
any thing, Muggs swallowed every thing. He had
already absorbed so much in this way that he knew
all about the United States before visiting it. Given
half a chance, he would undoubtedly have told the
savage more about the latter's habits than the aborigine
himself knew. It was positively impossible
for him to learn any thing. His round British body
was so full of indisputable facts that another one
would have burst it. In the Presidential alphabet,
from Alpha Washington to Omega Grant, he knew
all of our rulers' tricks and trades, and understood
better the crooked ways of the White House than our
own talented Jenkins.

British phlegm incased his soul, and British
leather his feet. From heel to crown he was completely
a Briton. His mutton-chop whiskers came
just so far, and the h's dropped in and out of his utterings
in a perfectly natural way. In the Briton's
alphabet, Sachem used to remark, the I is so big that
it is no wonder the H is often crowded out.

Muggs was a fair representative of the average
Englishman who has traveled somewhat. The eye-teeth
of these persons are generally cut with a slash,
and they are forever after sore-mouthed. For a
maiden effort they never suck knowledge gently in,
but attempt a gulp which strangles. The consequence
of this hasty acquiring is a bloated condition.
The partly-traveled Briton seems, at first acquaintance,
full and swollen with knowledge; but should[46]
the student of learning apply the prick, the result obtained
will generally prove to be—gas.

Over our great country, some of the family of
Muggs meet one at every turn. Often they scurry
along solitarily, but occasionally in groups. In the
former case they are unsocial to every body—in the
latter to every body except their own party. The
bliss which comes from ignorance must be of a thoroughly
enjoyable nature, for the Muggses certainly
do enjoy themselves. They will pass through a country,
remaining completely uncommunicative and self-wrapped,
and know less of it after six months' traveling
than an American in two. The professor says he has
met them in the lonely parks of the Rocky Mountains
and in the fishing and hunting solitudes of the
Canadas. If they have been an unusually long time
without seeing a human being, they may possibly
catch at an eye-glass and fling themselves abruptly
into a few remarks. But it is in a tone which says,
plainer than words, "No use in your going any
further, man; I have absorbed all the beauties and
knowledge of this locality."

[47]

ONE OF THE MUGGSES.

It is a rare treat to see a coach delivered of Muggs
at a country inn. "Hi, porter, look hout for my luggage,
you know. Tell the publican some chops, rare,
and lively now, and a mug of hale, and, if I can 'ave
it, a room to myself." If the latter request is
granted, and you are inquisitive enough to take a
peep, you may see Muggs sturdily surveying himself
in the glass, and giving certain satisfied pats to his
cravat and waistcoat, as if to satisfy them that they
covered a Briton. Could the mirror which reflects[49]
his face also reflect his thoughts, they would read
about as follows: "Muggs, you are a Briton, and this
hotel must be made aware of the fact. Whatever
you do, be guilty of no un-English act while in this
outlandish land. Your skin is now full of knowledge,
and let not other travelers, like so many mosquitoes,
suck it from you. Your forefathers blessed
their eyes and dropped their h's, and so must you."
And perhaps by this time, if the chops have arrived,
he dines in seclusion and, by so doing, loses a fund of
information which his fellow-travelers have obtained
by common exchange.

Again on the way, Muggs nestles in a corner of
the coach and acts strictly on the defensive, indignantly
withdrawing his square-toed, thick-soled English
shoes, should neighboring feet attempt to hobnob
with them. On a trip through Buffalo Land,
however, it is difficult for one of her Britannic Majesty's
subjects to maintain the national dignity. But
this fact Genuine Muggs—our Muggs—evidently did
not know. Had he known it, he would never have
gone with us in the world.

Another of our party rejoiced in the appellation of
"Colon." He obtained this title because his eccentric
specialities of character several times came very
near putting if not a full stop, at least the next thing
to it, upon the particular page of history which our
party was making. Longitudinally, Mr. Colon was
all of five feet eleven; in circumference, perhaps a
score or so of inches. He possessed a fair share of
oddities, and what is better an equally fair one of dollars.
The hemispheres of his philanthropic brain[50]
seemed equally pre-empted by philosophy and bugs.
Engaging in some immense work for the amelioration
of mankind, he would pursue it with ardor, dwell
upon it with unction, and then suddenly leave it, half
finished, to capture a rare spider. Philosophy and
Entomology had constant combat for Colon, and victory
tarried with neither long enough for the seat
of war to be cultivated and blossom with any luxuriance.
At the time he joined our party one of his
grandest charitable projects had lately died in a very
early period of infancy, entirely supplanted in his
affections for the time being by the prospect of a
chase after Brazilian insects. During our journey it
was no uncommon thing for us to see his thin form
all covered with bugs and reptiles, which had crawled
out of the collecting boxes carried in his pockets.
If this meets our friend's eye, let him bear no malice,
but reflect, in the language of his own invariable
answer to our remonstrances, "It can't be helped."
Should the public parade of his faults be disagreeable,
he can suffer no more from them now than we did
in the past, and may perhaps call them into closer
quarters for the future.

Mr. Colon's son, of two years less than a score, we
dubbed Semi-colon, as being a smaller edition, or to
be exact, precisely one-half of what the senior Colon
was. So perfect was the concord of the two that the
junior had fallen into a chronic and to us amusing
habit of answering "Ditto" to the senior's expressions
of opinion. Divide the father's conversation by two,
add an assent to every thing, and the result, socially
considered, would be the son. It may readily be seen,[51]
therefore, why the professor for short should call him,
as he nearly always did, "Semi."

Shamus Dobeen, our cook and body-servant, according
to his own account, was the child of an impoverished
but noble Irish family. Indeed, we doubt if
any Irishman was ever promoted from shovel laborer
to body-servant without suddenly remembering that
he was "descinded" from a line of kings. At the
time Shamus was added to the population of Ireland,
the patrimonial estate had dwindled down to a peat
bog. As this soon "petered out," Shamus went
from the exhausted moor into the cold world. He
had been by turns expelled patriot, dirt disturber on
new railroads, gunner on a Confederate cruiser, and
high private in a Union regiment. The position of
gunner he lost by touching off a piece before the
muzzle had been run out, in consequence of which
part of the vessel's side went off suddenly with the
gun. Captured, he readily became a Union soldier,
and could, without doubt, have transformed himself
into a Cheyenne, or a Patagonian, had occasion for
either ever required.

While in Topeka, our party made the acquaintance
of Tenacious Gripe, a well-known Kansas politician,
and who attached himself to us for the trip. Every
person in the State knew him, had known him in
territorial times, and would know him until either
the State or he ceased to be.

Flung headlong from somewhere into Kansas during
the "border ruffian" period, he would probably
have passed as rapidly out of it had he been allowed
to do so peaceably. But as the slavery party endeavored[52]
to push him, he concluded to stick. At
that particular time, he was a moderate Democrat or
conservative Republican, and consequently had no
particular principles. But the slavery party supposed
he had, and to them accordingly he became
an object of suspicion. They assumed the aggressive,
and he at once resolved into a staunch Republican.
Had the latter first struck him, he would
have been as staunch a Democrat. And Gripe has
never known how near he came to being the latter.
The Republicans had just decided to order him out
of the state as a border ruffian spy, when the Democrats
took action and did so for his not being one.
Those were troublous times. He went to the front
at once in the antislavery ranks, and has stayed there
ever since. Sore-headed men are apt to become
famous. There were those in our late war who were
kicked by adversity into the very arms of Fame.

Our friend had been in both the upper and lower
houses of the State Legislature, and had rolled Congressional
logs, moreover, until he was hardly happy
without having his hands on one.

[53]

SHAMUS DOBEEN—HIS CARD.

HON. T. GRIPE (BEATIFIED).

[55]

CHAPTER III.

THE TOPEKA AUCTIONEER—MUGGS GETS A BARGAIN—CYNOCEPHALUS—INDIAN SUMMER
IN KANSAS—HUNTING PRAIRIE CHICKENS—OUR FIRST DAY'S SPORT.

We had three or four days to spend in Topeka,
as it was there that we were to purchase our
outfit for the buffalo region. With the latter purpose
in view, we were wandering along Kansas Avenue
the next morning, when a horseman came furiously
down the street, shouting, at the top of his
lungs, "Sell um as he wars har!" Semi hastily retreated
behind Mr. Colon, thinking it might be a
Jayhawker, while the professor adjusted his glasses.

Muggs said the individual reminded him of the
famous charge at Balaklava. Muggs had never seen
Balaklava, but other Englishmen had, which answered
the same purpose.

The equestrian proved to be a well-known auctioneer
of Topeka, who may be discovered at almost
any time tearing through the streets on some spavined
or bow-legged old cob, auctioneering it off as he goes.
His favorite expression is, "I'll sell um as he wars
har." What particular selling charm lies concealed
in this announcement even Gripe could not tell.
Sachem thought that possibly he had been brought
up at some exposed frontier post, where, on account
of Indian prejudices, wearing hair is a rare luxury.[56]
To say there that a man was still able to comb his
own scalp-lock denoted an extraordinary state of
physical perfection. Expressions of praise for humans
are often applied to horses, and so, perhaps,
the one in question. "I have heard," quoth our
alderman, in support of this assertion, "Fitz say of
a belle, at a charity ball, what a 'bootiful cweature;'
and I have heard him, the day after, in his stable,
say the same thing of his horse."

That horse-auction was a sight worth seeing. The
crowd collected most thickly on the corner of Kansas
Avenue and Sixth Street, and before it the cob came
to a stand. And it was a stand—as stiff and painful
as that of a retired veteran put on dress parade.
The limbs would have had full duty to perform in
supporting the carcass alone, which had evidently
been in light marching order for years past. The
additional weight of the auctioneer must certainly
have proved altogether too much, had not the
horse heard, for the first time, of the wonderful
qualities with which he was still endowed.

Seeing a whole corner, with gaping mouths, swallowing
the statement that he was only six years old,
reduced by hard work, and could, after three months
grass, pull a ton of coal, he would have been a thankless
horse indeed, which could not strain a point, or
all his points, for such a rider.

[57]

"SPERIT, GENTLEMEN!"

And so, when the spurs suddenly rattled against
his ribs, the old skin full of bones gave a snort of
pain, which the auctioneer called "Sperit, gentlemen!"
and away up the broad avenue he rolled, at a speed
which threatened to break the rider's neck, and his[59]
own legs as well. His tail having been cut short in
youth, and retrimmed in old age, the outfit made but
a sorry figure going up the street. The Professor
said it suggested the idea of some fossil vertabra, with
a paint brush attached to its end, running away with
a geological student.

After the return and cries for more bids, Muggs
must have winked at the auctioneer—possibly, to
slyly telegraph him the fact that in "Hengland"
they were up to such games. At least the auctioneer
so declared, and advancing the price one dollar in
accordance therewith, finally knocked the brute down
to him. Then the British wrath bubbled and boiled.
The auctioneer was inexorable. Muggs had winked,
and that was an advanced bid, according to commercial
custom the land over. Articles were often
sold simply by the vibration of an eyelash, and not
a word uttered.

The Professor remarked that in law winks would
doubtless be accepted as evidence. It was a recognized
principle of the statutes that he who winked at
a matter acquiesced in it, and indeed such signals
were often more expressive than words. Sachem
sustained this point, and added further that he had
known many a man's head broken on account of an
injudicious wink.

The crowd, with almost unanimous voice, pronounced
the auctioneer right and Muggs wrong.

"Me take the brute!" exclaimed the indignant
Briton; "why he can 'ardly stand up long enough to
be knocked down. Except in France, he could be
put to no earthly use whatever. 'Is knees knock together[60]
in an ague quartette, and 'is tail—look at it!
It's hincapable of knocking a fly off; looks more like
flying off hitself!" Muggs further declared the sale
was an attempt on the owner's part to evade the
health officer, who would have been around, in a
couple of days, to have the carcass removed.

The auctioneer waxed belligerent, the crowd noisy,
and Muggs, like a true Englishman, secured peace
at the price of British gold. The horse was on his
hands, having barely escaped being on the town,
and an enthusiastic crowd of urchins escorted the
purchase to a livery stable. Muggs christened the
animal Cynocephalus, and soon afterward sold him to
Mr. Colon, who was of an economical turn, for the
use of his son Semi.

"I have heard," said the thoughtful father, "that
the buffalo grass of the plains is very nourishing.
All that the poor steed needs is care and fat pastures.
Semi can give him the former, and over the latter
our future journey lies. I have also learned that
what is especially needed in a hunting horse is
steadiness, and this quality the animal certainly
possesses."

From some months' acquaintance with the purchase,
we can say that Cynocephalus was steady to a
remarkable degree. We are firmly persuaded that a
heavy battery might have fired a salute over his back
without moving him, unless, possibly, the concussion
knocked him down.

Our first hunting morning, the second day preceding
our hegira westward, came to us with a clear
sky, the sun shedding a mellow warmth, and the air[61]
full of those exhilarating qualities which our lungs
afterward drank in so freely on the plains. Indian
summer, delightful anywhere, is especially so in
Kansas.

From the advance guard of the winter king not a
single chilling zephyr steals forward among the tarrying
ones of summer. Soothing and gentle as when
laden with spicy fragrance south, they here shower
the whole land with sunbeams. Earth no longer
seems a heavy, inert mass, but floats in that smoky,
fleecy atmosphere with which artists delight so much
to wrap their angels. It is as if the warmer, lighter
clouds of sunny weather were nestling close to earth,
frightened from the skies, like a flock of white swans,
at the October howls of winter. But I never could
agree with those writers who call this season dreamy.
If such it be, it is surely a dream of motion. All nature
appears quickened. The inhabitants of the air
have commenced their southern pilgrimage, and the
oldest and leading ganders may be heard croaking,
day-time and night-time, to their wedge-shaped flocks
their narrative of summer experiences at the Arctic
circle, and their commands for the present journey.

Sachem, I find, has recorded as a discovery in natural
history that geese form their flocks in wedge
shape that they may easier "make a split" for the
south when Nature, with her north pole, stirs up
their feeding and breeding-grounds in November
gales, and changes their fields of operation into fields
of ice. Sachem was sadly addicted to slang phrases.

All game, I may remark, is wilder at this season
of the year than earlier. If the earth is dreaming,[62]
its wild inhabitants certainly are not. Men, too, have
thrown off the summer lethargy, and shave their
neighbors as closely as ever. If any one thinks it a
dreamy season of the year, let him test the matter
practically by being a day or two behindhand with a
payment.

In reply to a question, the professor told us that
the smoky condition of the atmosphere was probably
caused by the exhalation of phosphorus from decaying
vegetation. Sachem remarked that out of twenty
different objects which he had submitted for examination,
and as many questions that he had asked,
nine-tenths of the results contained phosphorus in
some shape. It was becoming monotonous and dangerous.

While the party thus mused and speculated, we had
come out into the open country, south-west of town,
and were now approaching Webster's Mound, a cone-shaped
hill from which we afterward obtained some
excellent views. For the trip we had been supplied
with two dogs, one a setter, belonging to the private
secretary of the Governor, and the other a pointer,
the property of a real estate dealer. The former was
an ancient and venerable animal. The rheumatism
was seized of his backbone and held high revel upon
the juices which should have lubricated the joints.
Even his tail wagged with a jerk, inclining the body
to whichever side it had last swung. He was so full
of rheumatism that whenever he scented a chicken
the pain evoked by the excitement caused him to
howl with anguish. The pointer, per contra, was
hale and swift, but had lost one eye; and a shot from[63]
the same charge which destroyed that organ, rattled
also on his left ear-drum, and that membrane no
longer responded to the shouts of the hunter. On
one side he could see, and not hear—on the other,
hear, but not see. Nevertheless, with gestures for
the left view, and shouts on the right, fair work
might still be obtained. Both dogs rejoiced in the
uncommon name of Rover, and both possessed that
most excellent of all points in such animals, a steady
point.

If any of my readers are fond of field-sports, and
have not yet shot prairie-chickens over a dog, let
them take their guns and hie to the West, and taste
for themselves of this rare sport. With the wide
prairie around him, keeping the bird in full view during
its passage through the air, one can choose his
distance for firing and witness the full effect of his
shot. I think the brief instant when the flight of the
bird is checked and it drops head-foremost to earth, is
the sweetest moment of all to the hunter.

[64]

CHAPTER IV.

CHICKEN-SHOOTING CONTINUED—A SCIENTIFIC PARTY TAKE THE BIRDS ON THE
WING—EVILS OF FAST FIRING—AN OLD-FASHIONED "SLOW SHOT"—THE
HABITS OF THE PRAIRIE-CHICKEN—ITS PROSPECTIVE EXTINCTION—MODE OF
HUNTING IT—THE GOPHER SCALP LAW.

We had left the road and were now driving over
the fine prairie skirting Webster's Mound, the
grass being about a foot high and affording excellent
cover. Taking advantage of its being matted so
closely from the early frosts, the old cocks hid under
the thick tufts and called for close work on the part
of our dogs.

Back and forth across our path these intelligent
animals ranged, the one fifty yards or so to our right,
the other as many to our left, crossing and re-crossing,
with open mouths drinking in eagerly the tainted
breeze. This latter was in our favor, and both dogs
suddenly joined company and worked up into it, with
outstretched noses pointing to game that was evidently
close ahead.

The pointer crawled cautiously, like a tiger, his
spotted belly sweeping the earth, and his tail, which
had been lashing rapidly an instant before, gradually
stiffening. He would open his mouth suddenly,
drink in a quick, deep draught of air, and, closing
the jaws again, hold it until obliged to take another[65]
respiration. He seemed as loath to let the scent of
the chicken pass from his nostrils as a hungry newsboy
is to quit the savory precincts of Delmonico's
kitchen window. The setter's old bones appeared to
renew their youth under the excitement, and he was
as active as a retired war-horse suddenly plunged
into battle.

Both dogs came simultaneously to a point—tails
curved up and rigid, each body motionless as if cut
in marble and one forepaw lifted. No wonder so
many men are wild with a passion for hunting. Kind
Providence smiles upon the legitimate sport from
conception to close, and gives us a posé to start with
fascinating to any lover of the beautiful, whether
hunter or not. But one must not pause to moralize
while dogs are on the point, or he will have more
philosophy than chickens.

All the party had got safely to ground and were
behind the dogs, with guns ready and eyes eagerly
fastened on the thick grass which concealed its treasure
as completely as if it had been a thousand miles
below its roots, or on the opposite side of this mundane
sphere in China. Not a thing was visible within
fifty yards of our noses save two dogs standing motionless,
with stiffened tails and eyes fixed on, and
nozzles pointed toward, a spot in the sea of brown,
withered grass, not ten feet away.

The Professor took out his lens, Mr. Colon let
down the hammers of his gun and cocked them again,
to be sure all was right, while Sachem wore a puzzled
expression as if undecided whether the attitude of
the dogs indicated any thing particular or not. The[66]
grass nodded and rustled in the light wind, but
not a blade moved to indicate the presence of any
living thing beneath it, while the dogs remained as
if petrified.

The Professor said it was very remarkable, and
wondered what had better be done next. Mr. Colon
thought that the dogs were tired, and we might as
well get into the wagon. Another suggested at random
that we should set the dogs on, and Muggs,
who had probably heard the expression somewhere,
cried, "Hi, boys, on bloods!" At the words the
dogs made a few quick steps forward, and on the
instant the grass seemed alive with feathered forms,
popping into air like bobs in shuttlecock. Such a
fluttering and flying I have never seen since, when
a boy, I ventured into a dove cote, and was knocked
over by the rush of the alarmed inmates. From under
our very feet, almost brushing our faces, the
beautiful pinnated grouse of the prairies left their
cover, and us also.

Every gun had gone off on the instant, and we
doubt if one was raised an inch higher than it happened
to be when the covey started. The Professor
afterward extracted some stray shot from the legs of
his boots, and the setter, which was next to Muggs, gave
a cry of pain for which there was evidently other
cause than rheumatism, as was demonstrated by his
retirement to the rear, from which he refused to
budge until we all got into the wagon, and to which
he invariably retreated whenever we got out.

[67]



OUR FIRST BIRD-SHOOTING.

From the midst of the birds which were soaring
away, one was seen to rise suddenly a few feet above[69]
his comrades, and then fall straight as a plummet,
and head first, to earth. It had caught some stray
shot from the bombardment—Muggs claimed from
his gun, but this statement the setter, could he have
spoken, would certainly have disputed.

Semi-Colon brought in the game, which proved to
be a fine male, with whiskers and full plumage, which
must have made sad havoc among the hearts of the
hens, when the old fellow was on annual dress parade
in the spring. At that season of the year the
cocks seek some knoll of the prairie, where the grass
has been burnt or cut off, and strut up and down with
ruffled feathers, uttering meanwhile a booming sound,
which can be heard in a clear morning for miles.
The flabby pink skin that at other seasons hangs in
loose folds on his neck is then distended like a bagpipe,
and he is a very different bird from the same
individual in his Quaker gray and respectable summer
and fall habits.

Ensconced again in the wagon, our party moved
forward, the dogs, as before, examining the prairie.
The professor was comparing the birds of the present
and the past ages, when Muggs suddenly blasted his
eyes and declared the beasts were at it again. And
so they were, the setter making a good stand at some
game in the grass, and the other dog, a short distance
off, pointing his companion. During the remainder
of the day we found many large flocks of birds, and
fired away until two or three swelled noses testified
how dirty our guns were.

"Fast shooting," said the professor, as we were on
our way home, "is as bad as that too slow. Although[70]
I am no sportsman from practice, I love and
have studied the principles of it. In my father's day
the rule was, when a bird rose, for a hunter to take
out his snuff-box, take snuff, replace the box, aim, and
fire. You may find the advice yet in some works.
The shot then has distance in which to spread. With
close shooting they are all together, and you might as
well fire a bullet. When you have given the bird
time, act quickly. The first sight is the best.
Again, the first moment of flight, with most birds, is
very irregular, as it is upward, instead of from you."

Dobeen begged leave to inform our "honors" that
in Ireland, after a bird rose, the rule was, instead of
taking snuff, to take off the boots before firing. The
professor thought that such a habit related to outrunning
the gamekeeper, and was intended to procure
distance for the poacher rather than the bird.

Sachem stated that he had known a slow hunter
once. He was a revolutionary veteran, used a revolutionary
musket, and believed in revolutionary powder.
He refused to do any thing different from what
his fathers did, and abhorred double-barreled shotguns
and percussion-caps as inventions of the devil.
It was constantly, "General Washington did this,"
and "Our army did that," and his old head shook
sadly at the innovations Young America was making.
His ghost, with the revolutionary musket on its
shoulder, had since been known to chase hunters,
with breech-loaders, who were caught on his favorite
ground after dark. "Old 1776" was great on wing-shooting,
and could be seen at almost any time hobbling
over the moor, firing away at snipe and water-fowl.[71]
He was one of those slow, deliberate cases, always
taking snuff after the bird rose. There would
be a glitter of fluttering wings as the game shot into
air. Down would come the long musket, out would
come the snuff-box, and the old soldier would go
through the present, make ready, take snuff, take
aim, and fire, all as coolly as if on parade. The old
musket often hung fire from five to ten seconds, and
the premonitory flash could be seen as the shaky
flint clattered down on the pan. The veteran always
patiently covered the bird until the charge got out.
The recoil was tremendous, and the old man often
went down before the bird; but such positions, he asserted,
were taken voluntarily, as ones of rest. Some
said that the gun had been known to kick him again
after he was down.

Sachem's narration was here cut short by the dogs
again pointing. This was followed by the usual bombardment,
which over, the bag showed the magnificent
aggregate of two chickens for the entire
day's sport.

The prairie-chicken is now extinct in many of the
Western States where it was once well known.
Usually, during the first few years of settlement, it
increases rapidly, and is often a nuisance to pioneer
farmers. Perhaps, when the latter first settle in a
country, a few covies may be seen; under the favorable
influences of wheat and corn-fields, the dozens increase
to thousands and cover the land. But with
denser settlement come more guns, and, what is a far
more destructive agent, trained dogs also. Under
the first order of things, the farmer, with his musket,[72]
might kill enough for the home table. With double-barreled
gun and keen-scented pointer, the sportsman
and pot-hunter think nothing of fifty or sixty birds
for a day's work. It seems almost impossible, under
such a combination, for a covey to escape total annihilation.

We may suppose a couple of fair shots hunting
over a dog in August, when the chickens lie close,
and the year's broods are in their most delicate condition
for the table. The pointer makes a stand before
a fine covey hidden in the thick grass before him.
The ready guns ask no delay, and, at the word, he
flushes the chickens immediately under his nose.
Each hunter takes those which rise before him, or on
his side, and if four or less left cover at the first
alarm, that number of gray-speckled forms the next
moment are down in the grass, not to leave it again.
If more rose, they are "marked," which means that
their place of alighting is carefully noted, and, as the
chicken has but a short flight, this task is easy.
Meanwhile, the guns have been reloaded, the dog
flushes others of the hiding birds, and so the sport
goes on. The birds that get away are "marked
down," and again found and flushed by the dog.
Without this useful animal the chickens would multiply,
despite any number of hunters. I have often
seen covies go down in the grass but a few hundred
yards away, yet have tramped through the spot dozens
of times without raising a single bird. In
twenty years this delicious game will probably be as
much a thing of the past as is the Dodo of the Isle
de France. At the period of our visit they were[73]
already gathering into their fall flocks, which sometimes
number a hundred or more. In these they
remain until St. Valentine recommends a separation.
During the colder weather of winter they seek the
protection of the timber, and may be seen of mornings
on the trees and fences. They never roost there,
however, but pass the night hidden in the adjacent
grass.

The prairie-chicken's admirers are numerous, other
animals beside man being willing to dine on its plump
breast. We had an illustration of this in our first
day's shooting. Sometimes when we fired, the report
would attract to our vicinity wandering hawks, and
we found that either instinct or previous experience
teaches these fierce hunters of the air that in the
vicinity of their fellow-hunter, man, wounded birds
may be found. One wounded chicken, which fell
near us, was seized by a hawk immediately.

As we passed one or two fields, indications of
gophers appeared, their small mounds of earth covering
the ground. In some counties these animals
formerly destroyed crops to such an extent that the
celebrated "Gopher Act" was passed. This gave a
bounty of two dollars for each scalp, and under it
many farms yielded more to the acre than ever before
or since. One of these animals which we secured resembled
in size and shape the Norway rat, and, in the
softness and color of its coat, was not unlike a mole.
The oddest thing was its earth-pouches—two open
sacks, one on either side of its head, and capable of
containing each a tablespoonful or more. These the
gopher employs, in his subterranean researches, for[74]
the same purpose that his enemy, man, does a wheelbarrow.
Packing them with dirt, the little fellow
trudges gayly to the surface, and there cleverly
dumps his load.

We reached town again, well pleased with our
day's ride, and over our evening pipes discussed the
results. Muggs thought our shot were too small.
Sachem thought the birds were.

Colon was delighted with the new State, but believed
that wing-shooting was not his forte. He
would be more apt to hit a bird on the wing if he
could only catch it roosting somewhere.

Gripe, at the other end of the room, was piling Republican
doctrines upon a bearded Democratic heathen
from the Western border.

[75]

CHAPTER V.

A TRIAL BY JUDGE LYNCH—HUNG FOR CONTEMPT OF COURT—QUAIL SHOOTING—HABITS
OF THE BIRDS, AND MODE OF KILLING THEM—A RING OF QUAILS—THE
EFFECTS OF A SEVERE WINTER—THE SNOW GOOSE.

A short time after supper, Tenacious Gripe
appeared with the mayor of the city, who
wished to make the acquaintance of the Professor.
The two august personages bowed to each other. It
was the happiest moment in their respective lives,
they declared. An invitation was extended us to
delay our departure another day and try quail shooting.
The citizens said the birds were unusually
abundant, the previous winter having been mild
and the summer long enough for two separate broods
to be hatched, and the brush and river banks were
swarming with them. As we were about to abandon
the birds of the West and seek an acquaintance with
its beasts, we decided, after a brief consultation, to
accept the invitation and remain another day.

Among the persons present in the crowded office
of the hotel, was a man from the southwestern part
of the state who had lately been interested in a trial
before the celebrated Judge Lynch. Sachem interviewed
him, and reports his statement of the occurrence
in the log book, as follows:

[76]
A stranger played me fur a fool,

An' threw the high, low, jack,

An' sold me the wuss piece of mule

That ever humped a back.



But that wer fair; I don't complain,

That I got beat in trade;

I don't sour on a fellow's gain,

When sich is honest made.



But wust wer this, he stole the mule,

An' I were bilked complete;

Such thieves, we hossmen makes a rule

To lift 'em from their feet.



We started arter that 'ere pup,

An' took the judge along,

For fear, with all our dander up,

We might do somethin' wrong.



We caught him under twenty miles,

An tried him under trees;

The judge he passed around the "smiles,"

As sort o' jury fees.



"Pris'ner," says judge, "now say your say,

An' make it short an' sweet,

An', while yer at it, kneel and pray,

For Death yer can not cheat.



No man shall hang, by this 'ere court,

Exceptin' on the square;

There's time fur speech, if so it's short,

But none to chew or swear."

[77]

JUDGE LYNCH—HIS COURT.


JUDGE AND JURY. SHERIFF. ATTORNEY. LOAFER. CLERK. DEPUTY SHERIFF.

[79]

An' then the thievin' rascal cursed,

An' threw his life away,

He said, "Just pony out your worst,

Your best would be foul play."



Then judge he frowned an awful frown,

An' snapped this sentence short,

"Jones, twitch the rope, an' write this down,

Hung for contempt of court!"

Sharp 8 next morning saw us on the road leading
east of town, the two dogs with us, and a young one
additional, the property of a resident sportsman.
Our last acquisition joined us on the run, and kept
on it all day, going over the ground with the speed
of a greyhound, his fine nose, however, giving him
better success than his reckless pace would have
indicated.

Three miles from town, or half way between it
and Tecumseh, our party left the wagon, with direction
for it to follow the road, while we scouted along
on a parallel, following the river bank.

The Kaw stretched eastward, broad and shallow,
with numerous sand bars, and along its edges grew
the scarlet sumach and some stunted bushes, and
between these and the corn a high, coarse bottom
grass, with intervals at every hundred yards or so
apart of a shorter variety, like that on a poor prairie.
Among the bushes, there was no grass whatever,
and yet the birds seemed indifferently to frequent
one spot equally with another.

In less than ten minutes after leaving the wagon,
all the dogs were pointing on a barren looking spot,[80]
thinly sprinkled with scrubby bushes not larger than
jimson-weeds. They were several yards apart, so
that each animal was clearly acting on his own
responsibility.

If it puzzled us the day before to discover any
signs of game under their noses, it certainly did so
now. There was apparently no place of concealment
for any object larger than a field-mouse. The bushes
were wide apart, and the soil between was a loose
sand. Around the roots of the scrubs, it is true, a
few thin, wiry spears of grass struggled into existence,
but these covered a space not larger than a man's
hand, and it seemed preposterous to imagine that
they could be capable of affording cover. That three
dogs were pointing straight at three bushes was
apparent, but we could see nothing in or about the
latter calling for such attention.

Shamus, who had accompanied us, wished to know
if the twigs were witch hazels, because, if so, three
invisible old beldames might be taking a nap under
them, after a midnight ride. "But, then," said Dobeen,
"the dog's hairs don't stand on end as they
always do in Ireland when they see ghosts and
witches." We believe that our worthy cook was
really disappointed in not discovering any stray
broomsticks lying around. These, he afterward informed
us, could not be made invisible, though their
owners should take on airy shapes unrecognizable by
mortal eyes.

Muggs had suggested urging the dogs in, but the
party, wiser from yesterday's experience, desired a
ground shot, if it could be secured. The Professor[81]
adjusted his lens, and decided to make a personal
inspection around the roots of the bush immediately
in front of him.

Carefully the sage bent over the suspicious spot,
and almost fell backward as, with a whiz and a dart,
half a dozen quails flew out, brushing his very nose.
Instantly every bush sent forth its fugitives. A flash
of feathered balls, and they were all gone. Such
whizzing and whirring! it was as if those scraggy
bushes were mitrailleuses, in quick succession discharging
their loads.

Only one gun had gone off, but that so loudly that
our ears rung for several seconds. Mr. Colon had
accidentally rammed at least two, perhaps half a
dozen, loads into one barrel, and the gun discharged
with an aim of its own, the butt very low down.
Two birds fell dead. But alas for our Nimrod!
Colon stood with one hand on his stomach undecided
whether that organ remained or not. On this point,
however, he was fully re-assured at the supper-table
that night, and in all our after experience, we never
knew that gun to have the least opportunity for
going off, except when at its owner's shoulder, and he
perfectly ready for it.

The two birds were now submitted to the party for
inspection. They were fine specimens of the American
quail, more properly called by those versed in
quailology, the Bob White. This bird is very plentiful
throughout Kansas, and just before the shooting
season commences, in September, will even frequent
the gardens and alight on the houses of Topeka.
They "lay close" before a dog, take flight[82]
into air with a quick, whirring dart, and their shooting
deservedly ranks high. They are very rapid in
their movements upon the ground, often running
fifty or seventy-five yards before hiding. When this
takes place, so closely do they huddle that it is seldom
more than the upper bird that can be seen.
"Green hunters" sometimes pause, trying to discover
the rest of the covey before firing, and experience
a great and sudden disgust when the single bird
which they have disdained suddenly develops into a
dozen flying ones.

We had an eventful days' sport, expending more
ammunition than when among the chickens, and with
more satisfactory results, as we brought in over two
dozen birds. More than half of these were taken by
Sachem at one lucky discharge. He saw a covey in
the grass, huddled together as they generally are
when not running. At these times they form a circle
about as large in diameter as the hoop of a nail keg,
with tails to the center and heads toward the outside.
Fifteen quails would thus be a circle of fifteen heads,
and a pail, could it be dropped over the covey,
would cover them all. Not only is this an economy
of warmth, there being no outsiders half of whose
bodies must get chilled, but there is no blind side on
which they can be approached, every portion of the
circle having its full quota of eyes. Let skunk or
fox, or other roamer through the grass, creep ever so
stealthily, he will be seen and avoided by flight.
Sachem aiming at the midst of such a ring, broke it
up as effectually as Boutwell's discharge of bullion
did that on Wall Street.

[83]We have since found the frozen bodies of whole
covies, which had gone to roost in a circle and been
buried under such a heavy fall of snow that the
birds could not force their way upward. Their habit
is to remain in imprisonment, apparently waiting for
the snow to melt before even making an effort for
deliverance. Oftentimes it is then too late, a crust
having formed above. A severe winter will sometimes
completely exterminate the birds in certain localities.

During this first day of quail-shooting, we also saw
for the first time flocks of the snow-goose. The Professor
counted fifty birds on one sand bar. This
variety, in its flight across the continent, apparently
passes through but a narrow belt of country, being
found, to the best of my knowledge, in but few of the
states outside of Kansas.

Our return to the hotel was without accident, and
our supper such as hungry hunters might well enjoy.
After it was disposed of, we gathered around the
ample stove in the hotel office, and lived over again
the events of the day.

[84]

CHAPTER VI.

OFF FOR BUFFALO LAND—THE NAVIGATION OF THE KAW—FORT RILEY—THE CENTER-POST
OF THE UNITED STATES—OUR PURCHASE OF HORSES—"LO" AS A
SAVAGE AND AS A CITIZEN—GRIPE UNFOLDS THE INDIAN QUESTION—A BALLAD
BY SACHEM, PRESENTING ANOTHER VIEW.

Next morning we said good-by to hospitable Topeka,
and took up our westward way over the
Pacific Railroad. An ever-repeated succession of
valley and prairie stretched away on either hand.
To the left the Kaw came down with far swifter current
than it has in its course below, from its far-away
source in Colorado. It might properly be called one
of the eaves or water-spouts of the great Rocky
Mountain water-shed. With a pitch of over five
feet to the mile, its pace is here necessarily a rapid
one, and when at freshet height the stream is like a
mill-race for foam and fury.

At the junction of the Big Blue we found the old
yet pretty town of Manhattan. To this point, in
early times, water transit was once attempted. A
boat of exceedingly light draught, one of those built
to run on a heavy dew, being procured, freight was
advertised for, and the navigation of the Kaw commenced.
The one hundred miles or more to Manhattan
was accomplished principally by means of the
capstan, the boat being "warped" over the numberless
shallows. This proved easier, of course—a trifle[85]
easier—than if she had made the trip on macadamized
roads. If her stern had a comfortable depth of
water it was seldom indeed, except when her bow
was in the air in the process of pulling the boat over
a sand bar. The scared catfish were obliged to retreat
up stream, or hug close under the banks, to
avoid obstructing navigation, and it is even hinted
that more than one patriarch of the finny tribe had to
be pried out of the way to make room for his new
rival to pass.

Once at Manhattan, the steamboat line was suspended
for the season, its captain and crew deciding
they would rather walk back to the Missouri River
than drag the vessel there. Soon afterward, the
steamer was burned at her landing, and the Kaw has
remained closed to commerce ever since.

About the same time, an enterprising Yankee advocated
in the papers the straightening of the river,
and providing it with a series of locks, making it a
canal. As he had no money of his own with which
to develop his ideas into results, and could command
nobody's else for that purpose, the project failed in
its very inception.

Fort Riley, four miles below Junction City, is
claimed as the geographical center of the United
States, the exact spot being marked by a post.
What a rallying point that stick of wood will be for
future generations! When the corner-stone of the
National Capitol shall there be laid, the orator of the
day can mount that post and exclaim, with eloquent
significance, elsewhere impossible, "No north, no
south, no east, no west!" and enthusiastic multitudes,[86]
there gathered from the four quarters of the
continent, will hail the words as the key-note of the
republic.

That spot of ground and that post are valuable.
I hope a national subscription will be started to buy it.
It is the only place on our continent which can ever
be entirely free from local jealousies. There would
be no possible argument for ever removing the capital.
The Kaw could be converted into a magnificent canal,
winding among picturesque hills past the base of the
Capitol; and then, in case of war, should any hostile
fleet ever ascend the rapid Missouri, it would be but
necessary for our legislators to grasp the canal locks,
and let the water out, to insure their perfect safety.
Imagine the humiliation of a foreign naval hero arriving
with his iron-clads opposite a muddy ditch, and
finding it the only means of access to our capital!

A painful rumor has of late obtained circulation that
a band of St. Louis ku-klux, yclept capital movers,
intend stealing the pole and obliterating the hole.
Let us hope, however, that it is without foundation.

Before leaving Topeka, the party had purchased
horses for the trip, and consigned the precious load
to a car, sending a note to General Anderson, superintendent,
asking that they might be promptly and
carefully forwarded to Hays City, our present objective
point upon the plains.

The professor, bringing previous experience into
requisition, selected a stout mustang—probably as
tractable as those brutes ever become. He was warranted
by the seller never to tire, and he never did,
keeping the philosopher constantly on the alert to[87]
save neck and knees. It is the simple truth that,
in all our acquaintance with him, that mustang never
appeared in the least fatigued. After backing and
shying all day, he would spend the night in kicking
and stealing from the other horses.

Mr. Colon, by rare good fortune, obtained a beautiful
animal, formerly known in Leavenworth as Iron
Billy—a dark bay, with head and hair fine as a
pointer's, limbs cut sharp, and joints of elastic.
After carrying Mr. C. bravely for months, never
tripping or failing, he was sold on our return to the
then Secretary of State, who still owns him. More
than once did Billy make his rider's arm ache from
pulling at the curb, when the other horses were all
knocked up by the rough day's riding. It was interesting
to see him in pursuit of buffalo. He would
often smell them when they were hidden in ravines,
and we wholly unaware of their vicinity. Head and
ears were erect in an instant, and, with nostrils expanded,
forward he went, keeping eagerly in front at
a peculiar prancing step which we called tiptoeing.
Once in sight of the game, and the rider became a
person of quite secondary importance. Billy said, as
plainly as a horse could say any thing, "I am going
to manage this thing; you stick on." And manage
it he did. Not many moments, at the most, before
he was at the quarters of the fleeing monsters, and
nipping them mischievously with his teeth. I could
always imagine him giving a downright horse-laugh,
his big bright eyes sparkled so when the frightened
bison, at the touch, gave a switch of his tail and a
swerve of alarm, and plunged more wildly forward.[88]
If the rider wished to shoot, he could do so; if not,
content himself, as Mr. Colon usually did, with clinging
to the saddle, and uttering numberless expostulatory
but fruitless "whoa's."

Once on our trip Billy was loaned for the day to a
gentleman who wished to examine a prospective coal
mine. When barely out of sight of camp, Billy discovered
a herd of buffalo, and, despite the vehement
remonstrances of his rider, straightway charged it.
The mine-seeker was no hunter, but a wise and thoroughly
timid devotee of science in search of coal
measures. A few moments, and the poor, frightened
gentleman found himself in the midst of a surging
mass of buffalo, his knees brushing their hairy sides,
and their black horns glittering close around him,
like an array of serried spears. He drew his knees
into the saddle, and there, clinging like a monkey,
lost his hat, his map of the mine, and his spectacles.
He returned Billy as soon as he could get him back
to camp, with expressions of gratitude that he had
been allowed to escape with life, and never manifested
the least desire to mount him again.

Sachem's purchase was a horse which had run
unaccountably to legs. He was sixteen hands high,
a trifle knock-kneed, and with a way of flinging the
limbs out when put to his speed which, though it
seemed awkward enough, yet got over the ground
remarkably well. With the shambling gait of a
camel, he had also the good qualities of one, and did
his owner honest service.

Muggs bought a mule, partly because advised to
do so by a plainsman, and partly because the rest of[89]
us took horses. With true British obstinacy he paid
no attention to our expostulations, and the creature
he obtained was as obstinate as himself. Poor
Muggs! A mule may be good property in the hands
of a plainsman, but was never intended to carry a
Briton.

Semi-Colon had the auction purchase, and Dobeen
selected a Mexican donkey, one of the toughest little
animals that ever pulled a bit. He could excel a
trained mule in the feat of dislodging his rider, and
had a remarkable penchant for running over persons
who by chance might be looking the other way. It
seemed to be his constant study to take unexpected
positions, or, as Sachem phrased it, to "strike an
attitude."

My mount was a stout-built old mare, recommended
to me as a solid beast, on the strength of which, and
wishing to avoid experiments, I made purchase at
once. I found her solid indeed. When on the gallop
her feet came down with a shock which made my
head vibrate, as if I had accidentally taken two steps
instead of one, in descending a staircase.

Could the good people of Topeka have gotten us
to ride out of their town upon our several animals,
it would have given them a fair idea of a mardi gras
cavalcade in New Orleans.

And so, our camp equipage and live stock following
by freight, the express rolled us forward toward
the great plains. So far along our route we had seen
but few Indians, and those civilized specimens, such
as straggle occasionally through the streets of Topeka.
The Indian reservations in Kansas are at some distance[90]
apart, and their inhabitants frequently exchange
visits. The few whom we had seen consisted
of Osages, Kaws, Pottawatomies, and Sioux, all
equally dirty, but the last affecting clothes more than
the others, and eschewing paint. The members of
this tribe, generally speaking, have good farms and
are worth a handsome average per head. At the
time of our visit they were expecting a half million
dollars or so from Washington, and were soon to become
American citizens. One privilege of this citizenship
struck us as very peculiar. By the State
law, as long as an Indian is simply an Indian, he
can buy no whisky, and is thus cruelly debarred
from the privilege of getting drunk, but once a voter,
he can luxuriate in corn-juice and the calaboose, as
well as his white brother. What a travesty upon
American civilization and politics!

Muggs was prejudiced against the Osages, having
been induced by one of them to invest in a bow and
arrows, "for the Hinglish Museum, you know." On
pulling for a trial shot, one end of the bow went
further than the arrow, and the cord, warranted to
be buffalo sinew, proved to be an oiled string.

Sachem declared that he had found Muggs returning
the wreck to the Indian with the following speech:
"O-sage, little was your wisdom to court thus the
wrath of a Briton. Take with the two pieces this
piece of my mind. That your noble form may be removed
soon to the 'appy 'unting ground, where bow
trades are not allowed, is the prayer of your patron,
Muggs."

[91]



UNNATURALIZED.

NATURALIZED.

Mr. Colon asked Tenacious Gripe to explain the
[93]condition of the Native Americans in Kansas. The
orator kindly consented and thereupon discoursed as
follows:

"The Indians of Kansas are divided into the wild
and the tame. Both alike cover their nakedness
with bright handkerchiefs, old shirts, military coats,
and many-hued ribbons. The principal difference
in point of dress is in the method of procuring it.
Among those tribes which are at peace with the
government, the white man robs the Indian; among
the wild tribes the conditions are reversed—the
Indian robs the white man. In the one case the
contractors and agents carry off their half million
dollars or thereabouts; in the other the savage bears
away a quantity of old clothes and fresh scalps. As
he finds it difficult to procure sufficient of the white
man's justice to satisfy the cravings of his nature,
he feeds it with what he can and whenever he can
of revenge. Wise men tell us, gentlemen, that revenge
is sweet and justice a dry morsel. All Indians
beg when they get an opportunity. The tame ones,
if they find it fruitless, divert themselves by selling
worthless pieces of wood with strings attached, as
bows. The wild ones, in a like predicament, relieve
their tedium by whacking away at our ribs with
bows that amount to something. The principles
actuating both classes are alike. It is simply the
application which causes difficulty—in the one case
an appeal with bow and arrows to our pockets, in
the other to our bodies.

"All our wars with these people, gentlemen, are a
result of their political economy. They believe that[94]
the Great Spirit provided buffalo and other game
for his red children. When the white man drives
these away, they understand that he takes their place
as a means of sustenance, and as they have lived
upon the one, so they intend to do upon the other.
If the buffalo attempts to evade his duty in the premises,
they kill him and take his meat; if the white
man, they kill him and take his hair."

Sachem produced a roll of dirty brown paper and
said that he had studied the Indian question and
found two sides to it. One he could give us in a nutshell,
believing that the meat of the nut had often
excited the spirit of war.

Where waters sung above the sand,

And torrent forced its way,

Stretched out, disgusted with the land,

A bearded miner lay,

Prepared to strike, with willing hand,

Whatever lead would pay.



Echo of hoof on beaten ground

Rung on the desert air,

Ringing a tune of gladsome sound

To miner, watching there;

A paying lead, at last, he'd found—

The vein a "man of hair."



An instant more, and at the ford

A savage chief appeared;

The miner saw his goodly hoard,

And tore his own good beard.

(You'll always find an ox is gored

When sheep are to be sheared.)

[96]

Dog Town—The Happy Family at Home.

"You've riled that Brook"—An old Fable modernized.

[97]
And these the words the miner said:

"You've spoilt my drink, old fellow;

You've riled the brook, my brother red,

And, by your cheek so yellow,

To-night above your sandy bed

The prairie gale shall bellow.



"No relatives of mine are dead,

At least by Injun cunnin',

But many other hearts have bled,

And many eyes are runnin';

For blood and tears alike are shed,

When you go out a gunnin'.



"Some slumbrin' peaceful, first they knew,

They heard your horrid din—

Women as well as men you slew,

You bloody son of sin;

I mourn 'em all, revenge 'em too,

Through Adam they were kin."



This having said, the miner smart,

Drew bead upon the red man:

They're fond of beads—it touched his heart,

And Lo, behold, a dead man;

Upon Life's stage he'd played his part,

A gory sort of head man!



Two packs of goods lay on the ground;

Quoth miner, "Lawful spoil!

My lucky star at last has found

As good as gold and oil;

I kinder felt that fate was bound

To bless my honest toil.



[98]"Such heathen have no lawful heirs—

I'll be the Probate Judge,

For though they kinder go in pairs,

Their love is all a fudge;

I'll 'ministrate on what he wears,

And leave his squaw my grudge."

[99]

CHAPTER VII.

GRIPE'S VIEWS OF INDIAN CHARACTER—THE DELAWARES' THE ISHMAELITES OF
THE PLAINS—THE TERRITORY OF THE "LONG HORNS"—TEXANS AND THEIR
CHARACTERISTICS—MUSHROOM ROCK—A VALUABLE DISCOVERY—FOOTPRINTS IN
THE ROCK—THE PRIMEVAL PAUL AND VIRGINIA.

We noticed many fine rivers rolling from the
northward into the Kaw, which stream we
found was known by that name only after receiving
the Republican, at Junction City. Above that point,
under the name of the Smoky Hill, it stretches far
out across the plains, and into the eastern portion
of Colorado. Along its desolate banks we afterward
saw the sun rise and set upon many a weary and
many a gorgeous day.

All the large tributaries of the Kansas river, consisting
of the Big Blue, Republican, Solomon, and
Saline, came in on our right. Upon our left, toward
the South, only small creeks joined waters with the
Kaw, the pitch of the great "divides" there being
towards the Arkansas and its feeders, the Cottonwood
and Neosho.

We had now fairly entered on the great Smoky
Hill trail. Here Fremont marked out his path towards
the Rocky Mountains and the Pacific, and on
many of the high buttes we discovered the pillars of[100]
stone which he had set up as guides for emigrant
trains, looking wonderfully like sentinels standing
guard over the valleys beneath. Indeed we did at
first take them for solitary herders, watching their
cattle in some choice pasture out of sight.

Most of our party had expected to find Indians
in promiscuous abundance over the entire State,
and we were therefore surprised to see the country,
after passing St. Mary's Mission, entirely free of
them. Muggs asked Gripe if the American Indian
was hostile to all nationalities alike, or simply to
those who robbed him of his hunting-grounds. The
orator replied as follows:

"Sir, the aborigine of the western plains cares
not what color or flavor the fruit possesses which
hangs from his roof tree. The cue of the Chinaman
is equally as acceptable as hairs from the mane of
the English lion. A red lock is as welcome as a
black one, and disputes as to ownership usually
result in a dead-lock. His abhorrence is a wig, which
he considers a contrivance of the devil to cheat honest
Indian industry. I would advise geologists on the
plains to carry, along with their picks for breaking
stones, a bottle of patent hair restorative. It is
handy to have in one's pocket when his scalp is far
on its way towards some Cheyenne war-pole. The
scalping process, gentlemen, is the way in which
savages levy and collect their poll-tax. Any person
in search of romantic wigwams can have his wig
warmed very thoroughly on the Arkansas or Texas
borders. On the plains along the western border of
Kansas, however, geologists can find a rich and comparatively[101]
safe field for exploration. It is doubtful
if the savages ever wander there again.

"Of the Indian warrior on the plains we may well
say, requiescat in pace, and may his pace be rapid
towards either civilization or the happy hunting
ground. History shows that his reaching the first
has generally given him quick transit to the second.
The white man's country has proved a spirit-land to
Lo, whose noble soul seems to sink when the scalping-knife
gathers any other rust than that of blood,
and whose prophetic spirit takes flight at the prospect
of exchanging boiled puppies and dirt for the
white brother's pork and beans. Very often, however,
it must be said, Lo's soul is gathered to his
fathers by reason of its tabernacle being smitten too
sorely by corn lightning."

As Gripe paused, the Professor took up the subject
in a somewhat different strain:

"We have here in this State," remarked he, "a
tribe which may well be called the Indian Ishmael.
Its hand is and ever has been, since history took
record of it, against its brethren, and its brethren's
against it. I refer to the pitiful remnant of the once
great Delawares. From the shores of the Atlantic
they have steadily retreated before civilization,
marking their path westward by constant conflicts
with other races of red men. The nation in its
eastern forests once numbered thousands of warriors.
Now, three hundred miserable survivors are hastening
to extinction by way of their Kansas reservation.

"A number of their best warriors have been employed
as scouts by the government, when administering[102]
well merited chastisement to other murdering
bands. The Delawares, I have often thought, are
like blood-hounds on the track of the savages of the
plains. They take fierce delight in scanning the
ground for trails and the lines of the streams for
camps. There is something strangely unnatural in
the wild eyes of these Ishmaelites, as they lead the
destroyers against their race, and assist in blotting
it from the face of the continent. Themselves so
nearly joined to the nations known only in history, it
is like a plague-stricken man pressing eagerly forward
to carry the curse, before he dies, to the remainder
of his people."

The valleys of the Saline, Solomon, and Smoky
Hill, as we passed them in rapid succession, seemed
very rich and were already thickly dotted with houses.
This is one of the best cattle regions of the state,
and vast herds of the long-horned Texan breed covered
the prairies. We were informed that they often
graze throughout the entire winter. As early in
the spring as the grass starts sufficiently along the
trail from Texas to Kansas, the stock dealers of the
former State commence moving their immense herds
over it. The cattle are driven slowly forward, feeding
as they come, and reach the vicinity of the Kansas
railroads when the grass is in good condition for their
summer fattening. As many as five hundred thousand
head of these long horns have been brought into
the State in a single season. Some are sold on arrival
and others kept until fall, when the choicest beeves
are shipped East for packing purposes, or into Illinois
for corn feeding. The latter is the case when they[103]
are destined eventually for consumption in Eastern
markets, grass-fed beef lacking the solid fatness of
the corn-fed, and suffering more by long transportation.

This very important trade in cattle, when fully developed,
will probably be about equally divided between
southern and central Kansas, each of which
possesses its peculiar advantages for the business.
While the valley of the Arkansas has longer grass,
and more of it, the dealers in the Kaw region claim
that their "feed" is the most nutritious. My own
opinion, carefully formed, is that both sections are
about equally good, and that the whole of western
Kansas, with Colorado, will yet become the greatest
stock-raising region of the world. The climate is peculiarly
favorable. Two seasons out of three, on an
average, cattle and sheep can graze during the winter,
without any other cover than that of the ravines and
the timber along the creeks.

The herders who manage these large bodies of cattle
are a distinctive and peculiar class. We saw
numbers of them scurrying along over the country
on their wild, lean mustangs, in appearance a species
of centaur, half horse, half man, with immense rattling
spurs, tanned skin, and dare-devil, almost ferocious
faces. After an extensive acquaintance with
the genus Texan, and with all due allowance for the
better portion of it, I must say, as my deliberate
judgment, that it embraces a larger number of murderers
and desperadoes than can be found elsewhere
in any civilized nation. A majority of these herders
would think no more of snuffing out a life than of[104]
snuffing out a candle. Texas, in her rude solitude,
formerly stretched protecting arms to the evil doers
from other states, and to her these classes flocked.
She offered them not a city but a whole empire of
refuge.

Just beyond Brookville, two hundred miles from
the eastern border of Kansas, our road commenced
ascending the Harker Bluffs, a series of sandstone
ridges bordering on the plains.

On our left, Mushroom Rock was pointed out to
us, a huge table of stone poised on a solitary pillar,
and strangely resembling the plant from which it
is named. As the professor informed us, we were
on the eastern shore of a once vast inland ocean,
the bed of which now forms the plains. Sachem
thought the rock might be a petrified toad-stool, on
a scale with the gigantic toads which hopped around
in the mud of that age of monsters. The professor
thought it was fashioned by the waters, in their
eddyings and washings.

Subsequent examinations showed this entire region
to be one of remarkable interest to the geologist.
A few miles east of Mushroom Rock, near Bavaria,
as we learned from the conductor, human foot-prints
had been discovered in the sandstone. The professor,
who had long ascribed to man an earlier existence
upon earth than that given him by geology,
was greatly excited, and at his earnest request, when
the down train was met, we returned upon it to Bavaria.

[105]


MUSHROOM ROCK,


On Alum Creek, near Kansas Pacific R. R.—From a Photograph.

INDIAN ROCK, on Smoky Hill River, Kansas—From a Photograph.

That place we found to consist of two buildings,
each serving the double purpose of house and store,[107]
the track running between them. Two sandstone
blocks, each weighing several hundred pounds, lay
in front of one of the stores, and there, sure enough,
impressed clearly and deeply upon their surface were
the tracks of human feet. They had been discovered
by a Mr. J. B. Hamilton on the adjacent bluffs.

There was something weird and startling in this
voice from those long-forgotten ages—ages no less
remote than when the ridge we were standing upon
was a portion of a lake shore. The man who trod
those sands, the professor informed us, perished from
the face of the earth countless ages before the oldest
mummy was laid away in the caves of Egypt; and
yet people looked at the shriveled Egyptian, and
thought that they were holding converse with one who
lived close upon the time of the oldest inhabitant.
They wrested secrets from his tomb, and called them
very ancient. And now this dweller beside the great
lakes had lifted his feet out of the sand to kick the
mummy from his pedestal of honor in the museum, as
but a being of yesterday, in comparison with himself.

This discovery was soon afterward extensively
noticed in the newspapers, and the specimens are
now in the collection made by our party at Topeka.
It is but fair to say that a difference of opinion exists
in regard to these imprints. Many scientific men,
among whom is Professor Cope, affirm that they
must be the work of Indians long ago, as the age
of the rock puts it beyond the era of man, while
others attribute them to some lower order of animal,
with a foot resembling the human one. For my own
part, after careful examination, I accept our professor's[108]
theory, that the imprints are those of human
feet. The surface of the stone has been decided by
experts to be bent down, not chiseled out. Science
not long ago ridiculed the primitive man, which it
now accepts. It is not strange, therefore, that
science should protest against its oldest inhabitant
stepping out from ages in which it had hitherto forbidden
him existence.

We also found on the rocks fine impressions of
leaves, resembling those of the magnolia, and gathered
a bushel of petrified walnuts and butternuts. There
were no other indications whatever of trees, the
whole country, as far as we could see, being a desolate
prairie.

"Gentlemen," said the professor, "as surely as you
stand on the shore of a great lake, which passed
away in comparatively modern times, science stands
on the brink of important revelations. We have
here the evidence of the rocks that man existed on
this earth when the vast level upon which you are
about to enter was covered by its mass of water.
The waves lapped against the Rocky Mountains on
the west, and against the ridges on which you are
standing, upon the east. From previous explorations,
I can assure you that the buffalo now feed over a surface
strewn with the remains of those monsters
which inhabited the waters of the primitive world,
and the grasses suck nutriment from the shells of
centuries. Geology has held that man did not exist
during the time of the great lakes. I assert that he
did, gentlemen, and now an inhabitant of that period
steps forward to confirm my position. This man[109]
walked barefooted, and yet the contour of one of
the feet, so different in shape from that of any wild
people's of the present day, shows that it had been
confined by some stiff material, like our leather shoes.
The appearance of the big toe is especially confirmatory
of this. I would call your attention, gentlemen,
to the block which contains companion impressions
of the right and left foot. The latter is deep, and
well defined, every toe being separate and perfect.
The former is shallow, and spread out, with bulged-up
ridges of stone between each toe. These are exactly
the impressions your own feet would make, on
such a shore to-day, were the sand under the right
one to be of such a yielding nature that in moving
you withdrew it quickly, and rested more heavily on
the other, the material under which was firmer.
Your right track would spread, the mud bulging up
between the toes, and forcing them out of position,
and the material nearly regaining its level, with a
misshapen impression upon its surface.

"You will also perceive that the sand was already
hardening into rock when our ancient friends walked
over it. I use the plural because, if I may venture
an opinion from this hasty examination, I should say
the two tracks were those of a female, the single one
that of a man. From the position of the blocks they
were probably walking near each other at that precise
time when the new rock was soft enough to receive
an impression and hard enough to retain it.
You will perceive that the surface of the stone is bent
down into the cavities, as that of a loaf of half-raised
bread would be should you press your hand into it."

[110]Sachem thought that the couple might have been
an ancient Paul and Virginia telling their love on the
shores of the old-time lake.

The Professor continued: "You notice close beside
the two imprints an oval, rather deep hole in the
rock, precisely like that a boy often makes by whirling
on one heel in the sand."

Sachem again interrupted: "Perhaps the maiden
went through the fascinating evolution of revolving
her body while her mind revolved the 'yes' or 'no'
to her swain's question. It might be a refined way
of telling her lover that she was well 'heeled,' and
asking if he was."

The Professor very gravely replied: "In those
days the world had not run to slang. If one of Noah's
children had dared to address him with the
modern salutation of 'governor,' the venerable patriarch
would have flung his child overboard from the
ark. Taking your view of the case, Mr. Sachem, the
whirl in the sand, which gave the lover his answer,
is telling us to-day that same old story. And the
coquette of that remote period caused the tell-tale
walk upon the sand, which has proved the greatest
geological discovery of modern times. I believe that
it will be followed up and sustained by others equally
as important, all tending to date man's birth thousands
of years anterior to the time geology has hitherto
assigned him an existence upon earth."

We spent many hours of the night in getting the
rocks to the depot for shipment to Topeka, the few
inhabitants of Bavaria assisting us. Soon after a[111]
westward train came along, and we were again in
motion toward the home of the buffalo.

Before we slept the Professor gave us the following
information: The vast plateau lying east of the Rocky
Mountains, and which we were now approaching, was
once covered by a series of great fresh-water lakes.
At an early period these must have been connected
with the sea, their waters then being quite salty,
as is abundantly demonstrated by the remains of
marine shells. During the time of the continental
elevation these lakes were raised above the sea level,
and their size very much diminished. Over the new
land thus created, and surrounding these beautiful
sheets of water, spread a vegetation at once so beautiful
and so rich in growth that earth has now absolutely
nothing with which to compare it. Amid these
lovely pastures roved large herds of elephants, with
the mastodon, rhinoceros, horse, and elk, while the
streams and lakes abounded with fish. But the
drainage toward the distant ocean continued, the
water area diminished, the hot winds of the dry land
drank up what remained of the lakes, and, in process
of time, lo! the great grass-covered plains that we
wander over delightedly to-day. What folly to suppose
that such a land, so peculiarly fitted for man's
enjoyment, should remain, through a long period of
time, tenanted simply by brutes, and be given up to
the human race only after its delightful characteristics
had been entirely removed.

[112]

CHAPTER VIII.

THE "GREAT AMERICAN DESERT"—ITS FOSSIL WEALTH—AN ILLUSION DISPELLED—FIRES
ACCORDING TO NOVELS AND ACCORDING TO FACT—SENSATIONAL HEROES
AND HEROINES—PRAIRIE DOGS AND THEIR HABITS—HAWK AND DOG AND HAWK
AND CAT.

Next morning, as the first gray darts of dawn
fell against our windows, Mr. Colon lifted up a
sleepy head and gazed out. Then came that quick
jerk into an upright position which one assumes when
startled suddenly from a drowsy state to one of intense
interest. The motion caused a similar one on
the part of each of us, as if a sort of jumping-jack
set of string nerves ran up our backs, and a man
under the cars had pulled them all simultaneously.

We were on the great earth-ocean; upon either
side, until striking against the shores of the horizon,
the billows of buffalo-grass rolled away. It seemed
as if the Mighty Ruler had looked upon these waters
when the world was young, and said to them, "Ye
waves, teeming with life, be ye earth, and remain
in form as now, until the planet which bears you dissolves!"
And so, frozen into stillness at the instant,
what were then billows of water now stretch away
billows of land into what seems to the traveler infinite
distance, with the same long roll lapping against
and upon distant buttes that the Atlantic has to-day[113]
in lashing its rock-ribbed coasts; and whenever man's
busy industry cleaves asunder the surface, the depths,
like those of ocean, give back their monsters and
rare shells. Huge saurians, locked for a thousand
centuries in their vice-like prison, rise up, not as of
old to bask lazily in the sun, but to gape with huge
jaws at the demons of lightning and steam rushing
past, and to crack the stiff backs of savans with their
forty feet of tail.

To the south of us, and distant several miles, was
the line, scarcely visible, of the Smoky Hill, treeless
and desolate; on the north, the upper Saline, equally
barren. As difficult to distinguish as two brown
threads dividing a brown carpet, they might have
been easily overlooked, had we not known the streams
were there, and, with the aid of our glasses, sought
for their ill-defined banks.

A curve in the road brought us suddenly and
sharply face to face with the sun, just rising in the
far-away east, and flashing its ruddy light over the
vast plain around us. Its bright red rim first appeared,
followed almost immediately by its round
face, for all the world like a jolly old jack tar, with
his broad brim coming above deck. It reminded me
on the instant of our brackish friend, Captain Walrus;
and in imagination I dreamily pictured, as coming
after him, with the broadening daylight, a troop
of Alaskans, their sleds laden with blubber.

The air was singularly clear and bracing, producing
an effect upon a pair of healthy lungs like that
felt on first reaching the sea-beach from a residence[114]
inland. An illusion which had followed many of us
from boyhood was utterly dissipated by the early
dawn in this strange land. This was not the fact
that the "great American desert" of our school-days
is not a desert at all, for this we had known for
years; it related to those floods of flame and stifling
smoke with which sensational writers of western
novels are wont to sweep, as with a besom of destruction,
the whole of prairie-land once at least in
every story. Young America, wasting uncounted
gallons of midnight oil in the perusal of peppery
tales of border life, little suspects how slight the
foundation upon which his favorite author has reared
the whole vast superstructure of thrilling adventure.

The scene of these heart-rending narratives is usually
laid in a boundless plain covered with tall
grass, and the dramatis personæ are an indefinite
number of buffalo and Indians, a painfully definite
one of emigrants, two persons unhappy enough to
possess a beautiful daughter, and a lover still more
unhappy in endeavoring to acquire title, a rascally
half-breed burning to prevent the latter feat, and a
rare old plainsman specially brought into existence to
"sarcumvent" him.

[115]

FIRE ON THE PLAINS, ACCORDING TO NOVELS.

FIRE ON THE PLAINS, AS IT IS.

At the most critical juncture the "waving sea of
grass" usually takes fire, in an unaccountable manner—perhaps
from the hot condition of the combatants,
or the quantities of burning love and revenge
which are recklessly scattered about. Multitudes
of frightened buffalo and gay gazelles make the
ground shake in getting out of the way, and the
flames go to licking the clouds, while the emigrants[117]
go to licking the Indians. Although the fire can not
be put out, one or the other, or possibly both, of the
combatants are "put out" in short order.

Should the miserable parents succeed in getting
their daughter safely through this peril, it is only because
she is reserved for a further laceration of our
feelings. The half-breed soon gets her, and the lover
and rare old plainsman get on his track immediately
afterward. And so on ad libitum.

We beg pardon for condensing into our sunrise reflections
the material for a novel, such as has often
run well through three hundred pages, and furnished
with competencies half as many bill-posters. It is
unpleasant to have one's traditionary heroes and
heroines all knocked into pi before breakfast. It
makes one crusty. Possibly, it may be their proper
desert, but, if so, could be better digested after dinner.

The whole story would fail if the fire did, as novelists
never like to have their heroines left out in the
cold. But it is as impossible for flames as it is for
human beings to exist on air alone. It is scarcely
less so for them to feed, as they are supposed to do,
on such scanty grass. The truth is, that what the
bison, with his close-cropping teeth, is enabled to
grow fat on, makes but poor material for a first-class
conflagration.

The grass which covers the great plains of the
Far West is more like brown moss than what its
name implies. Perhaps as good an idea of it as is
possible to any one who has never seen it, may be
obtained by imagining a great buffalo robe covering[118]
the ground. The hair would be about the color and
nearly the length of the grass, at the season in question.
In the spring the plains are fresh and green,
but the grass cures rapidly on the stalk, and before
the end of July is brown and ripe. It will then burn
readily, but the fire is like that eating along a carpet,
and by no means terrifying to either man or brute.
The only occasion when it could possibly prove dangerous
is when it reaches, as it sometimes does, some
of the narrow valleys where the tall grass of the
bottom grows; but even then, a run of a hundred
yards will take one to buffalo grass and safety. This
latter fact we learned from actual experience, later on
our trip.

What a wild land we were in! A few puffs of a
locomotive had transferred us from civilization to
solitude itself. This was the "great American
desert" which so caught our boyish eyes, in the days
of our school geography and the long ago. A mysterious
land with its wonderful record of savages and
scouts, battles and hunts. We had a vague idea
then that a sphynx and half a score of pyramids were
located somewhere upon it, the sand covering its
whole surface, when not engaged in some sort of simoon
performance above. No trains of camels, with
wonderful patience and marvelous internal reservoirs
of water, dragged their weary way along, it was
true; yet that animal's first cousin, the American
mule, was there in numbers, as hardy and as useful
as the other. Many an eastern mother, in the days
of the gold fever, took down her boys discarded atlas,
and finding the space on the continent marked "Great[119]
American Desert," followed with tearful eyes the
course of the emigrant trains, and tried to fix the
spot where the dear bones of her first-born lay
bleaching.

As a people, we are better acquainted with the
wastes of Egypt than with some parts of our own land.
The plains have been considered the abode of hunger,
thirst, and violence, and most of our party expected
to meet these geniuses on the threshold of
their domain, and, while Shamus should fight the
first two with his skillet and camp-kettles to war
against the third with rifle and hunting-knife.

But in the scene around us there was nothing terrifying
in the least degree. The sun had risen with
a clear highway before him, and no clouds to entangle
his chariot wheels. He was mellow at this early
hour, and scattered down his light and warmth liberally.
Wherever the soil was turned up by the
track, we discovered it to be strong and deep, and
capable of producing abundant crops of resin weeds
and sunflowers, which with farmers is a written certificate,
in the "language of flowers," of good character.

We thundered through many thriving cities of
prairie dogs, the inhabitants of which seemed all out
of doors, and engaged in tail-bearing from house to
house. The principal occupations of this animal appears
to be two; first, barking like a squirrel, and
second, jerking the caudal appendage, which operations
synchronize with remarkable exactitude. One
single cord seems to operate both extremities of the
little body at once. It could no more open its mouth[120]
without twitching its tail, than a single-thread Jack
could bow its head without lifting its legs. Those
nearest would look pertly at us for a moment, and
then dive head foremost into their holes. The tail
would hardly disappear before the head would take
its place and, peering out, scrutinize us with twinkling
eyes, and chatter away in concert with its neighbors,
with an effect which reminded me of a forest
of monkeys suddenly disturbed.

Sachem declared that they must all be females, for
no sooner had one been frightened into the house
than it poked its head out again to see what was the
matter. "That sex would risk life at any time to
know what was up."

The professor, with a more practical turn, told us
some of the quaint little animal's habits. "Why
it is called a dog," said he, "I do not know. Neither
in bark, form, or life, is there any resemblance. It
is carnivorous, herbivorous, and abstemious from
water, requiring no other fluids than those obtained
by eating roots. Its villages are often far removed
from water, and when tamed it never seems to desire
the latter, though it may acquire a taste for milk.
It partakes of meats and vegetables with apparently
equal relish. It is easily captured by pouring two or
three buckets of water down the hole, when it
emerges looking somewhat like a half-drowned rat.
The prairie dog is the head of the original 'happy
family.' It was formerly affirmed, even in works of
natural history, that a miniature evidence of the
millennium existed in the home of this little animal.
There the rattlesnake, the owl, and the dog were[121]
supposed to lie down together, and such is still the
general belief. It was known that the bird and the
reptile lived in these villages with the dog, and
science set them down as honored guests, instead of
robbers and murderers, as they really are."

On our trip we frequently killed snakes in these
villages which were distended with dogs recently
swallowed. The owls feed on the younger members
of the household, and the old dogs, except when lingering
for love of their young, are not long in abandoning
a habitation when snakes and owls take
possession of it. The latter having two votes, and
the owner but one (female suffrage not being acknowledged
among the brutes), it is a "happy family,"
on democratic principles of the strictest sort.

We have also repeatedly noticed the dogs busily
engaged in filling up a hole quite to the mouth with
dirt, and have been led to believe that in this manner
they occasionally revenge themselves upon their enemies,
perhaps when the latter are gorged with tender
puppies, by burying them alive. An old scout
once told us that this filling up process occurred
whenever one of their community was dead in his
house, but as the statement was only conjectural, we
prefer the other theory.

While we were this day steaming through one village
an incident occurred showing that these animals
have yet another active enemy. Startled by the
cars, the dogs were scampering in all directions,
when a powerful chicken-hawk shot down among
them with such wonderful rapidity of flight that his
shadow, which fell like that from a flying fragment[122]
of cloud, scarcely seemed to reach the earth before
him. Some hundreds of the little brown fellows
were running for dear life, and plunging wildly into
their holes without any manifestations of their usual
curiosity. The hawk's shadow fell on one fat,
burgher-like dog, perhaps the mayor of the town,
and in an instant the robber of the air was over him
and the talons fastened in his back. Then the bird
of prey beat heavily with its pinions, rising a few
feet, but, finding the prize too heavy, came down.
He was evidently frightened at the noise of the cars
and we hoped the prisoner would escape. But the
bird, clutching firmly for an instant the animal in
its talons, drew back his head to give force to the
blow, and down clashed the hooked beak into one
of the victim's eyes. A sharp pull, and the eyeball
was plucked out. Back went the beak a second
time, and the remaining eye was torn from its socket,
and the sightless body was then left squirming on
the ground, while the hawk flew hastily away a short
distance, evidently to return when we had passed on.
It was pitiful to see the dog raise up on its haunches
and for an instant sit facing us with its empty sockets,
then make two or three short runs to find a path, in
its sudden darkness, to some hole of refuge, but
fruitlessly, of course.

A few days afterward, at Hays City, we witnessed
an affair in which the air-pirate got worsted. While
sitting before the office of the village doctor, a powerful
hawk pounced upon his favorite kitten, which
lay asleep on the grass, and started off with it. The
two had reached an elevation of fifty feet, when puss[123]
recovered from her surprise and went to work for
liberty. She had always been especially addicted to
dining on birds, and the sensation of being carried
off by one excited the feline mind to astonishment
and wrath. Twisting herself like a weasel her claws
came uppermost, and to our straining gaze there was
a sight presented very much as if a feather-bed had
been ripped open. The surprised hawk had evidently
received new light on the subject; it let go on the
instant, and went off with the appearance of a badly
plucked goose, while the cat came safely to earth and
sought the nearest way home.

[124]

CHAPTER IX.

WE SEE BUFFALO—ARRIVAL AT HAYS—GENERAL SHERIDAN AT THE FORT—INDIAN
MURDERS—BLOOD-CHRISTENING OF THE PACIFIC RAILROAD—SURPRISED BY A
BUFFALO HERD—A BUFFALO BULL IN A QUANDARY—GENTLE ZEPHYRS—HOW
A CIRCUS WENT OFF—BOLOGNA TO LEAN ON—A CALL UPON SHERIDAN.

As we passed out of the dog village, the engine
gave several short, sharp whistles, and numberless
heads were at once thrust out to ascertain the
cause. "Buffalo!" was the cry, and with this there
was a rush to the windows for a view of the noblest
of American game. Even sleepy elderly gentlemen
jostled rudely, and Sachem forgot his liver so far as to
crowd into a favorable position beside a young woman.

"There they go!" "Oh, my, what monsters!"
"What beards!" "What horns!" "Beats a steeplechase!"
"Uncanny beasts, lookin' and gangin' like
Nick!" "Sure, they're going home from a divil's
wake!" and similar ejaculations filled the car, as they
do a race-stand when the horses are off. Two huge
bulls had crossed just ahead of the engine, and one of
them, apparently deeming escape impossible, was
standing at bay close to the track, head down for a
charge. He was furious with terror, the hissing
steam and cow-catcher having been close at his heels
for a hundred yards. As we flew past he was immediately
under our windows, and we were obliged to[125]
look down to get a view of his immense body, with
the back curving up gradually from the tail into an
uncouth hump over the fore shoulders.

These two solitary old fellows were the only buffalo
we saw from the train, the herds at large having
not yet commenced their southern journey. At certain
seasons, however, they cover the plains on each
side of the road for fifty or sixty miles in countless
multitudes. These wild cattle of Uncle Samuel's, if
called upon, could supply the whole Yankee nation
with meat for an indefinite period.

About noon we arrived at Hays City, two hundred
and eighty miles from the eastern border of the State,
and eighty miles out upon the plains. A stream tolerably
well timbered, known as Big Creek, runs
along the southern edge of the town, and just across
it lies Fort Hays, town and fort being less than a
mile apart.

The post possessed considerable military importance,
being the base of operations for the Indian
country. We found Sheridan there, an officer who
won his fame gallantly and on the gallop. During
the summer our red brethren had been gathering a
harvest of scalps, and, in return, our army was now
preparing to gather in the gentle savage.

We had read accounts in the newspapers, some
time before, of the capture of Fort Wallace and of attacks
on military posts. Such stories were not only
untrue, but exceedingly ridiculous as well. Lo is not
sound on the assault question. His chivalrous soul
warms, however, when some forlorn Fenian, with
spade on shoulder and thoughts far off with Biddy[126]
in Erin's Isle, crosses his vision. Being satisfied
that Patrick has no arms, his only defense being utter
harmlessness, and well knowing that the sight of
a painted skin, rendered sleek by boiled dog's meat,
will make him frantic with terror, the soul of the noble
savage expands. No more shall the spade, held
so jauntily, throw Kansas soil on the bed of the Pacific
Railroad; and the scalp, yet tingling with the
boiling of incipient Fenian revolutions underneath, on
the pole of a distant wigwam will soon gladden the
eyes of the traditionally beautiful Indian bride, as
with dirty hands she throws tender puppies into the
pot for her warrior's feast. The savage hand, crimson
since childhood, descends with defiant ring upon
the tawny breast, and, with a cry of, "Me big Indian, ha,
whoop!" down sweeps Lo upon the defenseless Hibernian.
A startled stare, a shriek of wild agony, a hurried
prayer to "our Mary mother," and Erin's son
christens those far-off points of the Pacific Railroad
with his blood. A rapid circle of hunting-knife and
the scalp is lifted, a few twangs of the bow fills
the body with arrows, there is a rapid vault into the
saddle, and a mutilated corpse, with feathered tips,
like pins in a cushion, dotting its surface, alone remains
to tell the tale of horror.

[127]

"And Erin's son christens those far-off points of the Pacific Railroad with his blood."

Blood had been every-where on the railroad, which
reached across the plains like a steel serpent spotted
with red. There was now a cessation of hostilities,
and Indian agents were reported to be on the way
from Washington to pacify the tribes. As they had
been a long time in coming, the inference was irresistible
that the popping of champagne corks was a[129]
much more pleasant experience than that of Indian
guns would have been. The harvest of scalps had
reached high noon some time before. Far off, south
of the Arkansas, the savages had their home, and
from thence, like baleful will-o'-the-wisps, they would
suddenly flash out, and then flash back when pursued,
and be lost in those remote regions. Lately,
United States troops have been so placed that the
Indian villages may be struck, if necessary, and retaliation
had; and this, together with the pacificatory
efforts of the Quaker agents, is doing much to bring
about a condition of things which promises permanent
peace.

Here our party was at Hays, the objective point of
our journey, and our base of operations against the
treasures of the past and present, which alike covered
the country around. This little town is in the midst
of the great buffalo range. Away upon every side
of it stretch those vast plains where the short, crisp
grass curls to the ridges, like an African's kinky hair to
his skull. Bison and wild horse, antelope and wolf, for
weeks were now to be our neighbors, appearing and
vanishing over the great expanse like large and small
piratical crafts on an ocean. We were kindly received
at the Big Creek Land Company's office, on the outskirts
of the town, and there deposited our guns and
baggage. Our horses were expected on the morrow.

Twilight found us, after a busy afternoon, sitting
around the office door, with that tired feeling which a
traveler has when mind and body are equally exhausted.
Our very tongues were silent, those useful
members having wagged until even they were grateful[130]
for the rest. The hour of dusk, of all others, is
the time for musing, and almost involuntarily our
minds wandered back a twelve-month, when the
plains were a solitude. No railroad, no houses, no
tokens of civilization save only a few solitary posts,
garrisoned with corporal's guards, and surrounded by
red fiends thirsty for blood. Such was the picture
then; now, the clangor of a city echoed through Big
Creek Valley.

While wondering at the change, away on the hills
to our right there rose a thundering tread, like the
marching of a mighty multitude. Shamus, who sat
directly facing the hill, saw something which chilled
the Dobeen blood, and caused that noble Irishman to
plunge behind us. Mr. Colon, who had given a
startled turn of the head over his right shoulder, exclaimed,
"Bless me, what's that?" The glance of
Muggs froze that Briton so completely that he failed
to tell us of ever having seen a more "hextraordinary
thing in Hingland." I am in doubt whether
even our grave professor did not imagine for the moment
that the mammalian age was taking a tilt
at us.

Gathering twilight had magnified what in broad day
would have been an apparition sufficiently startling
to any new arrival in Buffalo Land. A long line of
black, shaggy forms was standing on the crest and
looking down upon us. It had come forward like the
rush of a hungry wave, and now remained as one
uplifted, dark and motionless. In bold relief against
the horizon stood an array of colossal figures, all
bristling with sharp points, which at first sight[131]
seemed lances, but at the second resolved into horns.
Then it dawned upon our minds that a herd of the
great American bison stood before us. What a
grateful reduction of lumps in more than one throat,
and how the air ran riot in lately congealed lungs!

Dobeen declared he thought the professor's "ghosts
of the centuries" had been looking down upon us.

One old fellow, evidently a leader in Buffalo Land,
with long patriarchial beard and shaggy forehead,
remained in front, his head upraised. His whole attitude
bespoke intense astonishment. For years this
had been their favorite path between Arkansas and
the Platte. Big Creek's green valley had given succulent
grasses to old and young of the bison tribe
from time immemorial. Every hollow had its traditions
of fierce wolf fights and Indian ambuscades,
and many a stout bull could remember the exact
spot where his charge had rescued a mother and her
young from the hungry teeth of starving timber
wolves. Every wallow, tree, and sheltering ravine
were sacred in the traditions of Buffalo Land. The
petrified bones of ancestors who fell to sleep there a
thousand years before testified to purity of bison
blood and pedigree.

Now all this was changed. Rushing toward their
loved valley, they found themselves in the suburbs of
a town. Yells of red man and wolf were never so horrible
as that of the demon flashing along the valley's
bed. A great iron path lay at their feet, barring
them back into the wilderness. Slowly the shaggy
monarch shook his head, as if in doubt whether this
were a vision or not; then whirling suddenly, perhaps[132]
indignantly, he turned away and disappeared
behind the ridge, and the bison multitude followed.

Our horses arrived the next morning all safe, excepting
a few skin bruises, the steed Cynocephalus,
however, being a trifle stiffer than usual, from the
motion of the cars. When they were trotted out
for inspection, by some hostlers whom we had hired
that morning for our trip, the inhabitants must have
considered the sight the next best thing to a circus.

Apropos of circuses, we learned that one had exhibited
for the first and only time on the plains a few
months before. In that country, dear reader, Æolus
has a habit of loafing around with some of his sacks
in which young whirlwinds are put up ready for use.
One of these is liable to be shaken out at any
moment, and the first intimation afforded you that
the spirit which feeds on trees and fences is loose, is
when it snatches your hat, and begins flinging dust
and pebbles in your eyes. But to return to our
circus performance. For awhile all passed off admirably.
The big tent swallowed the multitude, and
it in turn swallowed the jokes of the clown, older,
of course, than himself. In the customary little tent
the living skeleton embodied Sidney Smith's wish
and sat cooling in his bones, while the learned pig
and monkey danced to the melodious accompaniment
of the hand-organ.

[133]


GENTLE ZEPHYRS—"GOING OFF WITHOUT A DRAWBACK.

Suddenly there was a clatter of poles, and two
canvass clouds flew out of sight like balloons. The
living skeleton found himself on a distant ridge, with
the wind whistling among his ribs, while the monkey[135]
performed somersaults which would have astonished
the original Cynocephalus. The pig meanwhile
found refuge behind the organ, which the hurricane,
with a better ear for music than man, refused to
turn.

"Mademoiselle Zavenowski, the beautiful leading
equestrienne of the world," just preparing to jump
through a hoop, went through her own with a
whirl, and stood upon the plains feeding the hungry
storm with her charms. The graceful young rider,
lately perforating hearts with the kisses she flung at
them, in a trice had become a maiden of fifty, noticeably
the worse for wear.

An eye-witness, in describing the scene to us, said
the circus went off without a single drawback. It
was as if a ton of gunpowder had been fired under
the ring. Just as the clown was rubbing his leg, as
the result of calling the sensitive ring-master a fool
(a sham suffering, though for truth's sake), there
was a sharp crack, and the establishment dissolved.
High in air went hats and bonnets, like fragments
shot out of a volcano. The spirits of zephyr-land
carried off uncounted hundreds of tiles, both military
and civil, and we desire to place it upon record that
should a future missionary, in some remote northern
tribe, find traditions of a time when the sky rained
hats, they may all be accounted for on purely
scientific grounds.

Much property was lost, but no lives. The immediate
results were a bankrupt showman and a run
on liniments and sticking-plaster.

[136]Our first hunt was to be on the Saline, which
comes down from the west about fifteen miles north
of Hays City.

Before starting, we carefully overhauled our entire
outfit. For a long, busy day nothing was thought
of save the cleaning of guns, the oiling of straps, and
the examination of saddles, with sundry additions to
wardrobe and larder. Shamus became a mighty
man among grocery-keepers, and could scarcely have
been more popular had he been an Indian supply
agent. The inventory which he gave us of his purchases
comprised twelve cans of condensed milk, with
coffee, tea, and sugar, in proportion; several pounds
each of butter, bacon, and crackers; a few loaves of
bread, two sacks of flour, some pickles, and a sufficient
number of tin-plates, cups, and spoons. To these
he subsequently added a half-dozen hams and something
like fifty yards of Bologna sausage, which he
told us were for use when we should tire of fresh
meat. Sachem entered protest, declaring that sausage
and ham, in a country full of game, reflected
upon us.

[137]



"LOOKED LIKE THE END OF A TAIL."

THE RARE OLD PLAINSMAN OF THE NOVELS.

Of course, we found use for every item of the above,
and especially for the Bologna. If one can feel satisfied
in his own mind as to what portion of the brute
creation is entering into him, a half-yard of Bologna,
tied to the saddle, stays the stomach wonderfully on
an all day's ride. It is so handy to reach it, while
trotting along, and with one's hunting-knife cut off a
few inches for immediate consumption. Semi-Colon,
however, who was a youth of delicate stomach, sickened
on his ration one day, because he found something[139]
in it which, he said, looked like the end of a tail.
It is a debatable question, to my mind, whether
Satan, among his many ways of entering into man,
does not occasionally do so in the folds of Bologna
sausage. Certain it is that, after such repast, one
often feels like Old Nick, and woe be to the man at
any time who is at all dyspeptic. All the forces of
one's gastric juices may then prove insufficient to
wage successful battle with the evil genius which
rends him.

Our outfit, as regards transportation, consisted of
the animals heretofore mentioned, and two teams
which we hired at Hays, for the baggage and commissary
supplies.

The evening before our departure we rode over to
the fort and called upon General Sheridan. "Little
Phil" had pitched his camp on the bank of Big
Creek, a short distance below the fort, preferring a
soldier's life in the tent to the more comfortable
officer's quarters. This we thought eminently characteristic
of the man. He is an accumulation of
tremendous energy in small compass, a sort of embodied
nitro-glycerine, but dangerous only to his
enemies. Famous principally as a cavalry leader,
because Providence flung him into the saddle and
started him off at a gallop, had his destiny been infantry,
he would have led it to victory on the run.
And now, officer after officer having got sadly tangled
in the Indian web, which was weaving its strong
threads over so fair a portion of our land, Sheridan
was sent forward to cut his way through it.

The camp was a pretty picture with its line of[140]
white tents, the timber along the creek for a background,
and the solemn, apparently illimitable plains
stretching away to the horizon in front. Taken altogether,
it looked more like the comfortable nooning
spot of a cavalry scout than the quarters of a famous
General. Our chieftain stood in front of the center
tent, with a few staff-officers lounging near by, his
short, thick-set figure and firm head giving us somehow
the idea of a small, sinewy lion.

We found the General thoroughly conversant with
the difficult task to which he had been called. "Place
the Indians on reservations," he said, "under their
own chiefs, with an honest white superintendency.
Let the civil law reign on the reservation, military
law away from it, every Indian found by the troops
off from his proper limits to be treated as an outlaw."
It seemed to me that in a few brief sentences this
mapped out a successful Indian policy, part of which
indeed has since been adopted, and the remainder
may yet be.

When speaking of late savageries on the plains
the eyes of "Little Phil" glittered wickedly. In one
case, on Spillman's Creek, a band of Cheyennes had
thrust a rusty sword into the body of a woman with
child, piercing alike mother and offspring, and, giving
it a fiendish twist, left the weapon in her body, the
poor woman being found by our soldiers yet living.

"I believe it possible," said Sheridan, "at once and
forever to stop these terrible crimes." As he spoke,
however, we saw what he apparently did not, a long
string of red tape, of which one end was pinned to
his official coat-tail, while the other remained in the[141]
hands of the Department at Washington. Soon
after, as Sheridan pushed forward, the Washington
end twitched vigorously. He managed, however,
with his right arm, Custer, to deal a sledge-hammer
blow, which broke to fragments the Cheyenne Black-kettle
and his band. Whether or not that band had
been guilty of the recent murders, the property of
the slain was found in their possession, and the terrible
punishment caused the residue of the tribe to
sue for peace. It was the first time for years that
the war spirit had placed any horrors at their doors,
and that one terrible lesson prepared the savage mind
for the advent of peace commissioners.

Our brief conference ended, the General bade us
good day, and wished us a pleasant experience.
Scarcely had we got beyond his tents, however, when
we were overtaken by a decidedly unpleasant one.
On their way to water, a troop of mules stampeded,
and passing us in a cloud of dust, our brutes took bits
in their teeth, and joined company. Happily, the
run was a short one to the creek, where those of
us who had not fallen off before managed to do so
then. Poor Gripe was the only person injured,
suffering the fracture of a rib, which necessitated his
return to Topeka, so that we did not see him again
until some months afterward, when we met him on
the Solomon.

[142]

CHAPTER X.

HAYS CITY BY LAMP-LIGHT—THE SANTA FE TRADE—BULL-WHACKERS—MEXICANS—SABBATH
ON THE PLAINS—THE DARK AGES—WILD BILL AND BUFFALO BILL—OFF
FOR THE SALINE—DOBEEN'S GHOST-STORY—AN ADVENTURE WITH INDIANS—MEXICAN
CANNONADE—A RUNAWAY.

Hays City by lamp-light was remarkably lively
and not very moral. The streets blazed with
the reflection from saloons, and a glance within
showed floors crowded with dancers, the gaily dressed
women striving to hide with ribbons and paint
the terrible lines which that grim artist, Dissipation,
loves to draw upon such faces. With a heartless
humor he daubs the noses of the sterner sex a
cherry red, but paints under the once bright eyes of
woman a shade dark as the night in the cave of despair.
To the music of violin and stamping of feet,
the dance went on, and we saw in the giddy maze old
men who must have been pirouetting on the very
edge of their graves.

Being then the depot for the great Santa Fe trade,
the town was crowded with Mexicans and speculators.
Large warehouses along the track were stored
with wool awaiting shipment east, and with merchandise
to be taken back with the returning wagons.
These latter are of immense size, and, from this circumstance,[143]
are sometimes called "prairie schooners;"
and, in truth, when a train of them is winding its
way over the plains, the white covers flecking its surface
like sails, the sight is not unlike a fleet coming
into port. Oxen and mules are both used. When
the former, the drivers rejoice in the title of "bull-whackers,"
and the crack of their whips, as loud as
the report of a rifle, is something tremendous.

On the day of our arrival at Hays City, one of
these festive individuals noticed Dobeen gazing, with
open mouth, and back towards him, at some object
across the street, and took the opportunity to crack
his lash within an inch of the Irishman's spine. The
effect was ludicrous; Shamus came in on the run to
have a ball extracted from his back!

These Mexicans who come through with the ox-trains
are a very degraded race, dark, dirty, and dismal.
In appearance, they much resemble animated
bundles of rags, walking off with heads of charcoal.
Personal bravery is not one of their striking characteristics;
indeed, they often run away when to stand
still would seem to an American the only safe course
possible. We were desirous of sending back to Hays
City some of the proceeds of our excursion for shipment
to friends at St. Louis and Chicago, and therefore
hired two of the Mexican teamsters to go as far
as the Saline, and return with the fruits of our prowess.
For this service, which would occupy about
four days, they were to receive twenty-five dollars
each.

The morrow was Sunday, and came to us, as nine-tenths
of the mornings on the plains did afterward,[144]
clear and bracing. Compared with the previous
evening, the little town was very quiet. There was
no stir in the streets, although later in the morning
a few of the last night's carousers came out of doors,
rubbing their sleepy eyes, and slunk around town for
the remainder of the day. All nature was calm and
beautiful; it almost seemed as if we might hear the
chime of Sabbath bells float to us from somewhere in
the depths around.

One of our sea legends recites that ship wrecked
bells, fallen from the society of men to that of mermaids,
are straightway hung on coral steeples, where,
when storms roar around the rocks above, they toll
for the deaths of the mariners. Was it impossible,
we mused, that ancient mariners, with whole cargoes
of bells, went down on this inland sea centuries before
Rome howled? The earth around us might be
as full of musical tongues as of saurians, and only
awaiting the savan's spade and sympathetic touch to
give their dumb eloquence voice. If the people of those
days were navigators, surely they might also have
been men of metal. In the far-away past existed
numerous arts which baffle modern ingenuity. Stones
were lifted at sight of which our engineers stand dismayed.
Bodies were embalmed with a skill and perfection
which our medical faculty admire, but have
scarcely even essayed to imitate. Is it impossible
that vessels plowed this ancient ocean with a speed
which would have left our Cunarders out of sight?
If human spirits freed from earth take cognizance of
following generations, how those old captains must[145]
have laughed when Fulton boarded his wheezing experiment
to paddle up the Hudson! And if our
doctor's Darwinian-Pythagorean theory were correct,
Fulton's spirit might have brought the crude idea
from some ancient stoker.

But while we were thus speculating and giving free
reins to Fancy's most erratic moods, the chaplain
arrived from the fort, and mounting the freight platform,
read the Episcopal morning service. A crowd
gathered around, and a voice from the past whispering
in their ears, a few bowed their heads during
prayer. A drunkard went brawling by, with a sidelong
glance and the leering look of eyes whose watery
lids seemed making vain efforts to quench the fiery
balls. How it grated on one's feelings! In a land
so eloquent with voices of the mighty past, it seemed
as if even instinct would cause the knee to bow in
homage before its Maker.

Monday was our day of final preparation, and we
commenced it by making the acquaintance of those
two celebrated characters, Wild Bill and Buffalo Bill,
or, more correctly, William Hickock and William
Cody. The former was acting as sheriff of the town,
and the latter we engaged as our guide to the Saline.

Wild Bill made his entree into one court of the
temple of fame some years since through Harper's
Magazine. Since then his name has become a household
word to residents along the Kansas frontier.
We found him very quiet and gentlemanly, and not
at all the reckless fellow we had supposed. His form
won our admiration—the shoulders of a Hercules
with the waist of a girl. Much has been written[146]
about Wild Bill that is pure fiction. I do not believe,
for example, that he could hit a nickel across
the street with a pistol-ball, any more than an Indian
could do so with an arrow. These feats belong to
romance. Bill is wonderfully handy with his pistols,
however. He then carried two of them, and while
we were at Hays snuffed a man's life out with one;
but this was done in his capacity of officer. Two
rowdies devoted their energies to brewing a riot, and
defied arrest until, at Bill's first shot, one fell dead,
and the other threw up his arms in token of submission.
During his life time Bill has probably killed
his baker's dozen of men, but he has never, I believe,
been known as the aggressor. To the people of
Hays he was a valuable officer, making arrests when
and where none other dare attempt it. His power
lies in the wonderful quickness with which he draws
a pistol and takes his aim. These first shots, however,
can not always last. "They that take the sword
shall perish with the sword;" and living as he does
by the pistol, Bill will certainly die by it, unless he
abandons the frontier.

[147]

BUFFALO BILL—From a Photograph.

WILD BILL—From a Photograph.

Only a short time after we left Hays two soldiers
attempted his life. Attacked unexpectedly, Bill was
knocked down and the muzzle of a musket placed
against his forehead, but before it could be discharged
the ready pistol was drawn and the two soldiers fell
down, one dead, the other badly wounded. Their
companions clamored for revenge, and Bill changed
his base. He afterward became marshal of the
town of Abilene, where he signalized himself by carrying
a refractory councilman on his shoulders to[149]
the council-chamber. A few months later some
drunken Texans attempted a riot, and one of them,
a noted gambler, commenced firing on the marshal.
The latter returned the fire, shooting not only the
gambler, but one of his own friends, who, in the gloom
of the evening, was hurrying to his aid. Bill paid
the expenses of the latter's funeral, which on the
frontier is considered the proper and delicate way of
consoling the widow whenever such little accidents
occur.

The Professor took occasion, before parting with
Wild William, to administer some excellent advice,
urging him especially, if he wished to die in his bed,
to abandon the pistol and seize upon the plow-share.
His reputation as Union scout, guide for the Indian
country, and sheriff of frontier towns, our leader
said, was a sufficient competency of fame to justify
his retirement upon it. In this opinion the public
will certainly coincide.

Buffalo Bill was to be our guide. He informed us
that Wild Bill was his cousin. Cody is spare and
wiry in figure, admirably versed in plain lore, and
altogether the best guide I ever saw. The mysterious
plain is a book that he knows by heart. He
crossed it twice as teamster, while a mere boy, and
has spent the greater part of his life on it since.
He led us over its surface on starless nights, when
the shadow of the blackness above hid our horses
and the earth, and though many a time with no trail
to follow and on the very mid-ocean of the expanse, he
never made a failure. Buffalo Bill has since figured
in one of Buntline's Indian romances. We award[150]
him the credit of being a good scout and most
excellent guide; but the fact that he can slaughter
buffalo is by no means remarkable, since the American
bison is dangerous game only to amateurs.

We were off early on Tuesday morning for the
Saline, our course toward which lay before us a little
west of north, the citizens turning out to see us start.
We had just parted from Gripe, who went East on
the first train to get his ribs healed. "To think,
gentlemen," said he, "that I should have escaped
rebel bullets and Indian atrocities, only to have
my ribs cracked at last by a stampede of mules!"
Poor Gripe's farewell reminded me strongly of the
old saying about the ruling passion strong in death.
As he stood on the platform, with one hand against
his aching side, he could not refrain from waving a
courtly adieu with the other, and bowing himself
from our presence, into the car, as if leaving the
stage after a political speech.

We were sorry to lose our friend, and this, together
with the thought of the weeks of uncertainties
and anxieties which lay before us, made our exit
from Hays rather a solemn affair. Even Tammany
Sachem's face was ironed out so completely that not
a smile wrinkled it. Dobeen had loaded one wagon
with culinary weapons, and now sat among his pots
and pans, evidently ill at ease and wishing himself
doing any thing else rather than about to plunge
further into the wilderness.

When about to mount Cynocephalus, Semi's feelings
were wounded by a depraved urchin who suggested,
"You'd better fust knock that fly off, Boss.[151]
Both on ye 'll be too much for the hoss!" Fortunately,
perhaps, for our feelings, the remainder of
the inhabitants were so civil that further criticisms
on our outfit, though they may have been ripe at
their tongues' end, were carefully repressed.

Moving out over the divide above town the Professor
noticed the general depression of the party,
and forthwith began philosophising.

"My friends," said he, "had the feelings which
explorers suffer, when fairly launched, been allowed
to be present during the days of preparation, science
and discovery would be in their infancy. Enthusiasm
bridges the first obstacles to an undertaking, but
others roll on and block the explorer's path, and the
spirit which has got him into the difficulty momentarily
deserts him. If properly courted, however,
she returns, and meanwhile the traveler is afforded
the opportunity of looking, through matter-of-fact
spectacles, along his future journey. What he
thought pebbles reveal themselves as hills, and what
he had marked on his chart as hills develop into
mountains. These he must recognize and examine
with all the resolution he can summon, and he will
be the more able to climb them from expecting to do
so. Right here is the critical point in his journey.
Numerous cross-roads branch off—some right,
others left, but all with a brighter prospect down
them. Perhaps on one, a wife and children stand at
the door of their home, beckoning him. The garden
that his own hand planted blooms in a background
of flowers, while the path he has now chosen sparkles
with winter snow. He knows, however, that beyond[152]
these, perhaps amid sterile mountains, are the precious
diamonds he seeks.

"It is wise that, where these roads branch off—some
to castles of indolence, others to comfortable homes
and moderate exertion—the man should be left alone
for a time and allowed to survey the rough path before
him, with all the blinding glamour of enthusiasm
subdued by the light of truth, and with a full knowledge
of all the stumbling blocks which lie before
him. If he then thumbs the edge of his hunting-knife,
examines his Henry rifle, and presses forward,
the metal is there, and from that time onward you
may at any time learn of his whereabouts by inquiring
at the temple of fame."

Sachem interrupted the Professor to remonstrate
at the girding of loins being left out. He had always
been used to the girding in similar discourses, and
considered that loins were in much more general use
than Henry rifles.

And now Shamus, from his perch on the pans, suddenly
broke in: "Faith, Professor, your enthusiasm
once brought me sore trouble. It got me into a
haunted house, when the clock was strikin' midnight,
and my legs were sore put to it to get me out fast
enough. Ye see, I bet a pig with my next cousin
that I would stay all night in an old house full of
spirits. The master and his house-keeper had been
murdered in the tenantry riots, and the boys that did
the business, they swung for it soon afterward. And
now, there was a regular barricadin' and attackin'
going on those nights ever since. While I was
lookin' at the old clock, and thinkin' of the pig I'd[153]
drag home in the morning, I must have dramed a
little. He was as likely a pig as yez ever saw, and
I was listenin' proudly to his swate cries as I carried
him from the sty, and feelin' full enough of enthusiasm
to stay there a hundred years. Just then there was
a rustlin' in front, and I opened my eyes wide, and
there stood the old house-keeper leanin' against the
shaky clock, with her ear to its yellow face, and
lookin' straight behind me to where I could feel the
master was sittin'. There was an awful light in her
eyes, and I thought I heard her say—any way, I
knew she was sayin' it—'Hark, Sir Donald, they're
comin', but the soldiers will be here, too, at twelve.'
An' then there was a sort of shudder in the old clock
and it commenced a wheezin' an' bangin' away, a
tryin' to get through the strokes of twelve, as it did
twenty years before. But it hadn't got out half,
when I heard the crowd outside scrapin' against the
window sill. An' then there come a report, and the
room was filled with smoke, an' somethin' hit the
back of my head. How I got out I don't know, but
when I come to myself I was running for dear life
across the common. I have the scar of the ghost's
bullet ever since. See here, yez can see it for yourselves."
And taking off his cap, Shamus showed us
a bald spot about the size of a silver dollar on the
back of his cranium.

"And what became of the pig?" asked Mr. Colon
quietly.

"Faith, an' my cousin carried him home next
morning," replied Shamus, with a regretful sigh;
"and lady Dobeen, bless her sowl, never forgot to[154]
tell me of that to her dying day. We were needin'
the bacon them times."

Sachem, who delighted to spoil our cook's stories,
declared that, to gain a pig, it was worth the cousin's
while to fire an old musket through the window over
a drunken Irishman inside. Still that did not excuse
him for his carelessness; he should have seen that
the wad flew higher.

What Dobeen's answer might have been will never
be known; for, just at that moment, the attention of
the entire party was suddenly directed to a dark mass
of moving objects away off upon our right, a mile
distant at least, and to our untrained eyes entirely
unrecognizable. The Mexicans, however, pronounced
them buffaloes. Whether thinking to vindicate his
reputation for personal courage, or whether simply
from love of excitement, is not exactly clear, but
Dobeen eagerly requested permission to pursue them,
and as he would, ex officio, be debarred the pleasure
of future sport, consent was given. This was done
the more readily, because we knew that Shamus,
while as inexperienced in the chase as any of us,
was also a wretched rider; for, although constantly
boasting of the tournaments he had been engaged in,
we all indorsed Sachem's opinion, that, if ever connected
with such an affair at all, it must have been in
holding a horse, not riding one.

It was worthy of note that every one of the party
was as eager for the chase as Shamus, and yet that
personage was allowed to ride off alone. Mr. Colon,
it is true, essayed to join his company, but after
going a hundred yards or so, suddenly changed his[155]
mind and came back. Our maiden efforts in buffalo
hunting promised such modesty as to refuse a public
appearance, unless together.

Our cook had been instructed by the guide to avail
himself of the ravines, and after getting as near the
herd as possible, then spur rapidly up to it. He
went off at a gallop, his solid body flying clear of
the saddle whenever the donkey's feet struck ground,
and soon disappeared in a ravine which seemed to
promise a winding way almost into the very midst
of the herd. We watched intently for his reappearance.
In such periods of suspense the minutes seem
strangely long, creeping as slowly toward their
allotted three-score as they do when one, at a sickbed
vigil, listens for the funeral chimes of the clock,
telling when the minutes are buried in the hours.

At length, in the far away distance, we descried
Shamus, disdaining further concealment, riding gallantly
out of the ravine for a charge. A few moments
more and game and hunter were face to face,
and we held our breath, expecting to see the dark
cloud dash away with our bloodthirsty cook at
its skirts. "As I am alive," suddenly ejaculated
Muggs, "Dobeen's coming this way, at a bloody
good run, and the buffalo after him!" We could
scarcely believe our eyes, but, sure enough, it was a
clear case of pursuer and pursued, with the appropriate
positions entirely reversed. Shamus seemed
imitating that famous hunter who brought home his
bear-meat alive, preceding it by only half a coat-tail.
But the game before us was changing in appearance[156]
most wonderfully. It seemed bristling with unusually
long horns, and as we looked the dark cloud
suddenly spread out into a fan-like shape, and we all
cried, simultaneously, "Indians!"

There they were, a party of our red brethren
bearing rapidly down upon us in pursuit of Dobeen,
whose arms and legs were playing like flails on his
donkey's sides, with an appeal for speed which had
evidently called into action all the reserves of that
true conservative.

Our party would have sold out their interest in
the plains for a bagatelle. Our whole outfit had
whirled, like a weather-cock, and was pointing back
to Hays. The Mexicans were already dodging in
and out among their oxen, and firing their old muskets
furiously, although the foe was yet a fair cannon-shot
away. Shamus could not well have been in
more danger from foes behind than he was from
friends before; indeed, he afterward said that asking
deliverance from the latter made him almost forget
the former.

[157]



OUR HORSES RUN AWAY WITH US.

The horses of both Sachem and Muggs ran away,
taking a straight line for the distant town. This
caused a general stampede on the part of all the
other horses, much to the regret of their riders, who
were thus cruelly prevented from a proper display of
latent prowess in rendering protection to the wagons
and our cook. From the former came a steady cannonade.
Squirming like eels among their oxen, the Mexicans
fired from under the animals' bellies, astride the
tongue, from anywhere, indeed, that furnished a barricade
between the distant Indians and themselves.

[159]It is one of the remarkable tactics of this remarkable
people, in military emergencies, that when they
can not put distance between them and the enemy,
they must substitute something else. A single trooper,
on an open plain, could send a small army of them
scampering off, but let them get behind a barricade,
and they will continue banging away with their old
muskets until either the weapon bursts or ammunition
gives out. It is surprising how harmless their fusillades
generally are. If Mexican powder is used, it
goes off like a mixture of lamp-black and nitro-glycerine,
with a premonitory fiz and then a fearful
concussion, leaving a smell of burnt oil in the air
which overcomes for a moment the natural aroma of
the warriors themselves.

But while we were still being run away with by
our spirited animals, another change occurred in the
situation equally as unexpected as the first. The Indians
had stopped running about the time that we commenced,
and now stood in a dusky line something less
than half a mile off, making signs to us. Shamus
evidently considered it a horrible incantation for his
scalp, and every time he looked backward plied with
renewed fervor at his donkey's ribs. Our guide, who
had stayed with the wagons and exerted himself to
silence the Mexican batteries, motioned us to return,
which we were finally enabled to do by virtue of
steady pulling upon one rein and coming back in half
circles.

By the time our cook reached us, out of breath
and perspiring terribly, two savages had ridden
out from their band, weaponless, and were[160]
now gesturing a wish to communicate. The Professor
and our guide rode to meet them, apparently
unarmed; but with characteristic exhibition
of the white man's subtlety, the tail-pocket of the
philosopher's coat held a pistol in reserve, and the
guide, I have no doubt, was equally well provided.

[161]

CHAPTER XI.

WHITE WOLF, THE CHEYENNE CHIEF—HUNGRY INDIANS—RETURN TO HAYS—A
CHEYENNE WAR PARTY—THE PIPE OF PEACE—THE COUNCIL CHAMBER—WHITE
WOLF'S SPEECH, AS RENDERED BY SACHEM—THE WHITE MAN'S WIGWAM.

About midway between our party and the
dusky group that stood watching us the four
embassadors met. The Indians proved to be a band
of Cheyennes, under White Wolf, or, as he is more
frequently called, Medicine Wolf, out on the war-path
against the Pawnees. The Wolf was a fine-looking
man, six feet four in height, straight as
an arrow, and developed like a giant. Being a chief,
he possessed the regalia and warranty deed of one,
consisting of a ragged military coat without any tail,
and a dirty letter from some Indian agent, with a lie
in it over which even a Cheyenne must have smiled,
telling how White Wolf loved the whites. Perhaps
he did; his namesake loves spring lamb.

Our guide was an indifferent interpreter, but had
no difficulty in understanding that the Indians were
hungry and wished something to eat. In all my experience
from that day to this I have never found an
Indian who was not hungry, except once. The exception
was an old fellow who, although enough of an
Indian to be habitually drunk, was so degenerate a
specimen in other respects as to be somewhat dyspeptic.
His stomach had repudiated, after receiving[162]
a deposit from a trader of one hundred pickled
oysters, and had temporarily closed its doors. His
stock of gastric juices seemed to have been well-nigh
bankrupted by a fifty years' discounting of jerked
buffalo. The one hundred tons of this compound which
the noble warrior had dissolved would have exhausted
the liquid of a tannery. Let these savages of the
plains meet a white man, whenever or wherever they
may, their first demand is always for meat and drink,
followed not unfrequently by another for his scalp.
The victim may have but a day's rations, and be a
hundred miles from any station where more can be
obtained, but his all is taken as greedily and remorselessly
as if he commanded a commissary train.

The Professor and our guide motioned White Wolf
and his companion to wait, and rode back to us for
the purpose of casting up our account of ways and
means. The only chance of balancing it seemed to
be by sight draft on Shamus' wagon or an entry of
war. We dare not refuse them and go on; they
would be sure to dog our steps, and at the first convenient
opportunity attack and probably murder us.
Shamus, with recovered courage, stoutly protested
against a raid upon his department. "To think," he
expostulated, "of the swate sausage and ham bein'
used to wad such painted carcasses as them divils!"
The guide suggested as the best alternative that we
should invite the Indians to return with us to Hays.
We caught at the idea and adopted it immediately;
and while the guide rode back as the bearer of our
invitation, we "stood to arms," awaiting the result
with silent but ill-concealed solicitude.

[163]Should the Indians consider it an attempt to trap
them, our bones might have an opportunity to rest in
some neighboring ravine until the ready spades of
some future geological expedition should disturb them,
and we be at once reconstructed into some rare species
of ancient ape or specimens of extinct salamanders.
Or, if happily resurrected at a somewhat earlier
period, might not some enterprising Barnum of the
twentieth century place on our bones the seal of centuries,
and lay them with the mummies in his showcases?
Our expedition was partly intended for diving
into the past, but not quite so deep or so permanent a
dive as that. What wonder that incipient ague-chills
played up and down and all about our spinal column,
as we reflected how completely we were dependent on
the caprice of those Native Americans sitting out
there, in half-naked dignity, on their tough ponies?
Or that we gazed anxiously at the huge chief as he
sat, silent and motionless, awaiting the approach of
our guide?

Our ideas of the savage had been so thoroughly
Cooperised during boyhood, that when our guide approached
the Wolf, and, with a gesture to the south,
invited him back to Hays, I was prepared to see the
tall form straighten in the saddle, and pictured to my
imagination some such specimen of untutored eloquence
as this:

"Pale-face, the blood of the Cheyenne burns quick.
He meets you trailing like a serpent across his war-path,
seeking to steal treasures from the red man's
land. He asks food, and you tell him to come into[164]
your trap and get it. Pale-faces, remove your hats;
noble Cheyennes, remove their scalps!"

Nothing of this kind occurred, however. Our guide
informed us that the bold savage simply fastened one
button of his tailless coat, grunted out "Ugh!" in a
satisfied way, and motioned his band to follow. This
they did, and we were soon retracing our steps to
Hays; by the guide's advice, making the savages
keep a fair distance behind us.

The roofs of Hays glistened across the plains, as
they say those of Damascus do in the East. We had
formed a boy's romantic acquaintance with that land,
where the sun burns and the simooms frolic, and once
were quite enamored of its wild Bedouins of the desert.
Our manhood was now experiencing the sensation
of seeing a tribe fiercer than their eastern brethren,
not exactly at our doors, because we had none,
but following very closely at our heels.

As our strange cavalcade re-entered the town the
people stopped to gaze a moment, and then came out
to meet us. News flew to the fort, and some of the
officers rode over. The Land Company's office was
selected for a council room, the Cheyennes tying their
ponies to the stage corral near. The Indians were a
strange-looking crew. Sachem declared them all women,
and Dobeen affirmed that they looked more like
a covey of witches than warriors. With their long
hair divided in the middle, and falling, sometimes in
braids and again loosely, over their shoulders, and
their blankets hanging around them, they did really
look much like the traditional squaw who so kindly
assists one in cutting his eye-teeth at Niagara Falls,[165]
with her sharp practice and cheap bead-work. Their
faces were as smooth as a woman's, without the least
trace of either mustache or whiskers; so that, altogether,
when we essayed to pick out some females, we
got completely "mixed up," and were at length forced
to the conclusion that the majestic White Wolf
was traveling over the plains with a copper-colored
harem.

Cooper having told us that the Indian term of reproach
is to be or to look like a woman, we avoided
offense and the "arrows of outrageous fortune"
which an Indian is so dexterous in using, and gained
the information desired by addressing a direct inquiry
to White Wolf, through the interpreter, whether he
had any squaws along. He replied by holding up
two fingers and pointing out the couple thus designated.
We tried to find, first in their features and then
in their clothing, some distinguishing characteristic
but found it impossible; so that when they changed
positions an instant afterward, I was entirely at a
loss to recognize them again.

All had extremely uninviting countenances, any
one of which would have sufficed to hang three ordinary
men, and a common villainy made them as
much alike as forty-six nutmegs. White Wolf alone
differed in appearance. He was stoutly built, as well
as tall and straight, with broad features, the bronze
of his complexion merging almost into white, and he
smiled pleasantly and readily. The others were no
more able to smile than Satan himself, the expression
which their faces assumed when attempting it being
simply diabolical. Dobeen was so startled by one[166]
who tried that contortion on and asked for "tobac,"
that he retreated in disorder from the council-chamber.

White Wolf and the more important members of
his band took the chairs proffered them, and sat in a
circle, the Professor, Sachem, and two leading citizens
of Hays being sandwiched in at proper intervals.
The object of the gathering was gravely announced
to be that the Indians might smoke the pipe of peace
with the towns-people. As war was a chronic passion
with these wild horsemen of the plains, none of
them had ever been near the place in friendly mood
before, and the novelty of the occasion, therefore,
brought the entire population around the building.
The postmaster of Hays, Mr. Hall, had once traded
among the Cheyennes and, understanding their sign-language,
acted as interpreter. This curious race has
two distinct ways of conversing—one by mouth, in a
singularly unmusical dialect, and the other by motions
or signs with the hands. The latter is that
most generally understood and employed by scouts
and traders.

[167]

THE PIPE OF PEACE—THE PROFESSOR'S DILEMMA.

One of the Indians now took from a sack a red-clay
pipe, with a ridiculously long bowl and longer shank,
and inserted into it a three-foot stem, profusely ornamented
with brass tacks and a tassel of painted
horse hair. This was handed to White Wolf, together
with a small bag of tobacco, in which the Killikinnick
leaves had been previously crumbled and mixed.
These were a bright red, evidently used for their
fragrance, as they only weakened the tobacco without
adding any particular flavor. We were struck with[169]
the Indian mode of smoking. The chief took a few
quick whiffs, emitting the fumes with a hoarse blowing
like a miniature steam-engine. He then passed
it, mouth-piece down so that the saliva might escape,
and it commenced a slow journey around the circle.
When it reached our worthy professor he found himself
in a sore dilemma. No smoke had ever curled
along the roof of his mouth, or made a chimney of
his geological nose. For an instant the philosopher
hesitated; then, reflecting that passing the pipe would
be worse than choking over it, the excellent man
put the stem to his mouth and gave a pull which
must have filled the remotest corner of his lungs
with Killikinnick. Gasping amid the stifling cloud,
it poured from both mouth and nose, and called on
the way at his stomach, which gave unmistakable
symptoms of distress. We feared that he would be
forced to forsake the council, but, with an effort worthy
of the occasion and himself, he kept his seat, and
opening wide his mouth, waited patiently until the
fiend of smoke had withdrawn from his interior its
trailing garments.

The council disappointed us. In White Wolf we
had found as fine-looking an Indian as ever murdered
and stole upon his native continent. His people were
first in war, first to break peace, and the last to keep
it, their excuse being that the white man trespassed
on their hunting grounds. We had rather expected
that burly form to rise from his seat, and, with flashing
eyes, utter then and there a flood of aboriginal
eloquence: "White man, your people live where the
sun rises, ours where it sets. When did you ever[170]
come to us hungry and be fed, or clothed and go
away so," and so on ad infinitum. Instead of all
this there was a tremendous smoking and grunting,
more like a farmer's fumigation of hogs than one of
those pipe-of-peace councils which I had so often
studied on canvas and in books. I have often regretted
since that our aborigines can not read. If
they could only learn from the white man's literature
what they ought to be, the contrast between it and
what they really are would be so violent that it
might make an impression, even upon an Indian.

For a happy mingling of lies and truth our "big
talk" could hardly be excelled. A reporter could
have taken down the proceedings somewhat as follows:

Scene—Six Indians and as many white men in a
ring. Postmaster Hall in the center, acting as interpreter.

Indian—"Cheyenne love white man much (lie).
Forty-six warriors all hungry (truth). Us good Indians"
(lie). And so on, alternately.

Pale Brother—"White man love Cheyenne. Got
lots of food, but no whisky" (the latter a lie which
almost choked the speaker).

It would not interest the reader to know all the repetitions
or nonsense uttered, and we spare him the
infliction of even attempting to tell him. The Indians
had for their object food, and they got it. The
whites had for their object permanent peace, and did
not get it.

[172]

WHITE WOLF AT HOME.


"The red man is noble, big injun is me."

In due time the council broke up, and in an incredibly
short time thereafter many of the Indians were reeling[173]
drunk. That White Wolf did not become equally
so was owing altogether to his being a man of iron
constitution. Any thing but metal, it seemed to me,
must have been burnt out by the fiery draughts which
we saw the noble chief take down. A tin cupful of
"whisk," such as would have made the cork in a bottle
tight, was tossed off without a wink.

Sachem, who took notes, rendered White Wolf's
speech at the council in verse, as follows:

White brother, have pity; the White Wolf is poor,

The skin of his belly is shrunk to his back;

A gallon of whisky is good for a cure,

If followed by plenty of "bacon and tack."



The red man is noble, big Injun is me:

Like berries all crimson and ready to pick,

The scalps on my pole are a heap good to see—

Good medicine they when poor Injun is sick.



The red man is truth, and the white one is lies;

The first suffers wrong at hand of the other;

The way they skin us is good for sore eyes,

The way we skin them astonishing, rather.



They rob us of guns and offer us plows,

And tell us to farm it, to go into corn;

We're good to raise hair, and good to raise rows,

And good to raise essence of corn—in a horn.



Go back to your cities and leave us our home,

Or off with your scalp and that remnant of shirt;

Go, let the poor Injun in happiness roam,

And live on his buffalo, puppies, and dirt.

[174]Two or three of the Indians mounted their ponies
and took a race through the streets. The animals were
thin, despondent brutes, but as wiry as if their hides
were stuffed, like patent mattresses, full of springs.
The Indians, as is their universal custom, mounted
from the right side, instead of the left as we do. At
the lower end of the street they got as nearly in line
as their inebriated condition would permit, and when
the word was given set off toward us with frightful
shouts, which made the ponies scamper like so many
frightened cats.

The animal which came out ahead had no rider
to claim the honors, that blanketed jockey having
fallen off midway. He was now sitting on his hams,
looking the wrong way down the track, and evidently
adding up the "book" which he had made
for the race. As he soon arose, with a dissatisfied
grunt, we thought his figures probably read about
as follows:

Given—A gallon of Hays whisky in the saddle,
and a race-horse under it. Endeavor to divide the
latter by a rawhide whip, and the result is a sore-headed
Indian, who stands forfeit to his peers for
"the drinks."

As we wandered back to the council-chamber, the
scene there had changed somewhat. White Wolf
had been transformed into a cavalry colonel, and
was strutting around with two gilt eagles on his
broad shoulders, looking fully as important as many
a real colonel whom we have caught in his pin
feathers and, withal, much more of the hero. Our
warrior had seen some of the officers from the fort[175]
strolling around, and straightway fell to coveting his
neighbors' straps, which observing, Sachem at once
purchased from a store the emblems of power and
pinned them upon him. He whispered to us that
when White Wolf took his first step as a colonel, it
had been accompanied by a snort of pain, the unlucky
slipping of a pin having evidently conveyed to the
chief the idea that one of the eagles had grasped
his shoulder in its talons.

The chief modestly requested similar honors for
his "papoose," and that individual was treated to the
straps of a captain. A different application of strap,
it occurred to me, would have seemed more proper
upon the six feet of unpromising humanity which
appeared above the "papoose's" moccasins.

It had been a matter of surprise to us how the
Indians could make such inferior looking stock as
theirs capable of such speed and extraordinary journeys;
but it ceased to excite our wonder after an
examination of their whips. These ingenious instruments
of torture have handles, which in form and
size resemble a policeman's club. To one end are
attached some thongs of thick leather, half a yard in
length, and to the other a loop of the same material,
just large enough to go over the hand and bind
slightly on the wrist. Dangling from the latter, the
handle can be instantly grasped, and the body of
thongs brought down on the pony's skin, with a
crack like a flail on the sheaves, and the result is
what Sachem called an astonishing "shelling out"
of speed.

We explained to White Wolf that Tammany[176]
Sachem was one of many great chiefs who had a
mighty wigwam in the big city of the pale-faces, far
away toward the rising sun; that they were all good
men, and never lied like the chiefs of the Cheyennes,
or took any thing belonging to others; and that their
women, instead of carrying heavy burdens, spent all
their time in distributing the money and goods of the
big wigwam to the needy.

White Wolf signified, through the interpreter,
that such a wigwam was too good for earth, and
ought to be pitched on the happy hunting grounds
as soon as possible.

Sachem thought the savage meant to be sarcastic.

[177]

CHAPTER XII.

ARMS OF A WAR PARTY—A DONKEY PRESENT—EATING POWERS OF THE NOMADS—SATANTA,
HIS CRIMES AND PUNISHMENT—RUNNING OFF WITH A GOVERNMENT
HERD—DAUB, OUR ARTIST—ANTELOPE CHASE BY A GREYHOUND.

At our request White Wolf and two of his braves
gave us a display of their skill—or rather,
their strength—in the use of their bows, shooting
their arrows at a stake sixty yards off. The efforts
were what would be called good "line shots,"
although missing the slender stick. We then essayed
a trial with the chief's bow, which was an
exceedingly stout hickory wrapped in sinew, but we
found that more practiced strength than ours was
required even to bend it. Some amusement was
created when the first of our party took up the bow,
by the haste with which a small and unusually ugly
Indian retreated from the foreground as if fearing
that an arrow might be accidentally sent through
his blanket.

Among the stock which the savages had brought
with them was a long-eared, diminutive brute, scarcely
higher than a table, and apparently forming the
connecting link between a jackass rabbit and a donkey.
This animal White Wolf seemed extremely
anxious to present to the Professor, but it was[178]
politely declined, by the advice of the interpreter,
who explained to us that a return gift of the donkey's
weight in sugar and coffee would be expected.
Notwithstanding the stringency of the law forbidding
the sale of whisky and ammunitions to the
Indians, the savages found little difficulty in filling
themselves with fire-water, and also got a little powder.
White Wolf went off with his pocket full of cartridges
in exchange for some Indian commodities,
but the cunning pale face rendered them of little
value by selecting ammunition a size too small for
the gun.

The eating powers of these nomads are marvelous.
We saw the chief, inside of two hours, devour three
hearty dinners, one of which was gotten up from our
own larder and was both good and plentiful. As he
did full justice to every invitation to eat and drink,
we concluded that he would continue to accept during
the whole afternoon, if the opportunity were only
offered him. What a capital minister to England
was here wasting his gastric juices on the desert
air! If Great Britain should continue her hesitation
to digest our Alabama claims, the wolf at their door
would digest enough roast beef to bring them to
terms or starvation. Sugar, coffee, spices, pickles,
sardines, ham, and many another luxury of civilization,
were alike welcome at the capacious portal of
the untutored savage. Dobeen discovered him eating
a can of our condensed milk under the impression
that it was a sweet porridge.

Their entertainment at the town being concluded,
the Indians were conducted over to the fort and[179]
some rations given them. They manifested an
especial fondness for sugar, but took any thing they
could get, their ponies proving capable of carrying
an unlimited number of sacks. It seemed as difficult
to overload these animals as it is a Broadway omnibus;
and their riders, perhaps in order to avoid being
top heavy, took freight for the inside whenever
opportunity offered. As they came back through the
town, we all turned out to see them off. The band
promised us peace, notwithstanding which it was no
small satisfaction to discover that they were poorly
armed. Bows and arrows were the only weapons
which all possessed, and while a few had revolvers,
the chief alone sported a rifle, a rusty-looking old
breech-loader.

As our late cavalry escort rode off, their attitudes
plainly bespoke that they had been raiding upon
more than the flesh-pots of Egypt. Sons of the sandy-complexioned
desert, we saw several of them kiss
their mother before they got out of sight. The most
serious question with us now was whether or not these
red gormandizers had been uttering peace notes not
properly indorsed by their hearts. The trouble is
that when one discovers a circulation of this kind,
his own ceases about the same instant, and his bones
become a fixed investment in the fertile soil of the
plains.

One of the officers of the fort told us an amusing
instance of the impudent treachery of which the
western Indians of to-day are sometimes guilty. A
year or two before, when Hancock commanded the
Department and was encamped near Fort Dodge, on[180]
the Arkansas, Satanta and his band of Kiowas came
in. This chief has always been known as very hostile
to the whites, usually being the first of his tribe
to commence hostilities. He was the very embodiment
of treachery, ferocity, and bravado. Phrenologically
considered, his head must have been a cranial
marvel, and the bumps on it mapping out the
kingdom of evil a sort of Rocky Mountain chain
towering over the more peaceful valleys around.
Viewed from the towering peaks of combativeness
and acquisitiveness the territory of his past would
reveal to the phrenologist an untold number of government
mules, fenced in by sutler's stores, while
bending over the bloody trail leading back almost
to his bark cradle, would be the shades of many
mothers and wives, searching among the wrecks of
emigrant trains for flesh of their flesh and bone of
their bone.

Satanta was long a name on the plains to hate and
abhor. He was an abject beggar in the pale faces'
camp and a demon on their trail. On the occasion in
question he came to Gen. Hancock with protestations
of friendship, and, although these were not believed,
he was treated precisely as if they had been. To
gratify his love of finery an old military coat with
general's stars, said to be one that Hancock himself
had cast off, was presented him. By some means he
also acquired a bugle, and the garrison were greatly
amused for the remainder of the day by seeing
Satanta galloping back and forth before his band,
blowing his bugle and parading his coat, the warriors
all cheering the old cut-throat and proud as himself[181]
of the display. The way he handled that bugle,
however, before the next morning was by no means
so amusing.

Some time before dawn the sleepy garrison were
aroused by the thunders of a stock stampede, and out
of the darkness came the clatter of hoofs, as Satanta
and his band departed for the south with a goodly
herd of government mules and horses. Pursuit was
commenced at once, with the hope of cutting them off
before they could get the stock across the Arkansas,
then somewhat swollen. Just as the troops reached
the bank of that stream, a major-general's uniform
was seen going out of the water upon the other side.
Notwithstanding its high rank fire was instantly
opened upon it, but ineffectually. The savage turned
a moment, blew a shrill, defiant blast upon his bugle,
and galloped off in safety. Too much promotion
made him mad. As a simple chief, he might have
stolen some straggling teams; as a major-general, he
appropriated a whole herd.

During the next eighteen months, Satanta had
several encounters with the troops, generally wearing
the major-general's coat and blowing his bugle. His
last exploit, which brought the long hesitating sword
of justice upon his head, is too fresh and too painful
to be soon forgotten. A few months ago the savage
chief was living with his people on a reserve in the
Indian Territory and being fed by the government.
Gathering a few of his warriors he stole forth, and,
crossing the Texas border, surprised a wagon train,
murdered the teamsters, and drove off the mules.
Fortunately, Gen. Sherman, in his examination of[182]
frontier posts, happened to be near the scene of murder,
and at once ordered troops in pursuit. They
were still trailing the marauders when Satanta returned
to the reservation at Fort Sill, and with bold
effrontery begotten of long immunity, actually boasted
of the crime before the Quaker agent. "I did it,"
said he, "and if any other chief says it was him, tell
him he lies. I am the man." Gen. Sherman had
just arrived, and when Satanta, with a number of
minor chiefs who were with him on the raid, came
into the fort to trade and visit, they were seized and
bound, and started for Texas under a strong guard,
to be tried by the authorities there. On the way one
of the Indians in some manner loosened his bands,
and seizing the musket of the guard nearest him,
shot the soldier in the shoulder, but before he could
do further harm the other guards fired, and the
savage rolled from the wagon down upon the plain,
apparently dead. The body was afterward found
close by the road-side in a position which showed that
after falling the savage had enough of vitality left to
enable him to crawl with bloody hands for several
yards. Finding the life-tide ebbing fast, he had then
placed his body in position toward the rising sun, composed
his arms by his side and, with Indian stoicism,
yielded up his breath. The remainder of the party,
including Satanta, were brought safely to Texas, tried,
and sentenced to be hanged.

Our adventure with White Wolf and his band
obliged us, of course, to pass another night in Hays.
We spent a most pleasant hour during the evening
in the office of Dr. John Moore, an old resident of[183]
Plattsburg, N. Y., who assisted us materially in selecting
medical stores, and who by his genial disposition
endeared himself to our entire party, so that when
we heard of his sad fate soon afterward, it seemed as
if death had crouched by our own camp-fire. Should
the Indians become troublesome, there was some
talk at the fort, he now informed us, of organizing
a company for operations against them, composed
of buffalo hunters and scouts under the lead of regular
officers, and in this case it was his purpose to accompany
it in the capacity of a surgeon. As good guns
were difficult to obtain there, and we had some extra
weapons, one of our party loaned the doctor an improved
Henry rifle and holster revolvers. Before we
again heard of him, he had crossed that shadowy line
which winds between the tombs and habitations of
men, and his name was added to the drearily long
list which bears for its heading—"Killed by Indians."

Commencing with those first entries after the Mayflower
introduced our fathers to savage audience, and
chiseling separately each name on a marble milestone,
the white witnesses would girdle the earth.

Sunrise next morning saw us again moving northward,
fully determined that no body of Indians, unless
comprising the whole Cheyenne nation, should
force us back again. We had met the red man on
his native heath and familiarity had bred contempt.
All were in excellent spirits and felt the braver, perhaps,
because our late visitors had assured us that
their tribe was on the war-path against the Pawnees,
and meant only peace with the whites.

[184]Our party left Hays the second time with quite an
acquisition. On the eve of starting we had been approached
by an artist, who begged permission to accompany
us. We assented on the instant. An artist
was, of all others, the thing we needed. How interesting
it would be to have the thrilling incidents
of the coming months sketched by our artist on the
spot. "Daub" was a fine-looking fellow, with peaked
hat, peaked beard, and peaked mustache; in short,
was of the genuine artist cut, of the kind that are
always sitting around on the stones in romantic places
and getting married to heiresses.

During the day we saw many varieties of the cactus,
some of them very beautiful. As we had no regular
botanist with our expedition, Mr. Colon developed
a taste in that direction, and secured and deposited
several fine specimens which were carefully laid away
in Shamus' wagon. It was not long before that excellent
Irishman gave a prolonged howl, the cause of
which he did not vouchsafe to tell us, but as we saw
him cautiously rubbing his pantaloons we surmised
that he had rolled or sat down upon a choice variety.
The remainder of the plants he must, with still
greater caution, have dropped overboard, as none
could subsequently be found for boxing. If the truth
must be said, I was not at all sorry for it. I had
lent a hand in obtaining an unusually large cactus,
but the loan was returned in such damaged condition
that I lost all interest at once. The minute needles
which nature has scattered over these plants will
pierce a glove readily, and burrow in the flesh like[185]
trichina. The cactus may be set down as Dame Nature's
pin-cushions.

Endless prairie-dog villages covered the country,
and occasionally cayotes, about the size of setters,
with brushy, fox-like tails, started out of ravines and
ran off with a hang-dog sort of look, stopping occasionally
to see if they were being pursued. Our guide
ran one of these down with his horse and it was almost
with sympathy that we watched the tired wolf,
when he found running useless, dodging between the
horse's legs, rendering the rider's aim false. It was
finally dispatched by a greyhound. The latter deserved
his name only from courtesy of species, as his
color was inky black. He belonged to one of our
hostlers, who got him from a Mexican train-master,
and was a wonderful fighter. I saw him afterward
in combats with not only the cayote, but the
large timber wolf, and in every instance he came off
the victor. On one occasion, I remember, he whipped
the combined curs of a railroad tie camp, making
every antagonist take to his heels. Very nearly as
high as a table, with powerful chest and immense
spring, the hound's movements were like flashes
of light. He danced round and over his foe, his
fangs clicking like a steel trap, first on one side and
now on the other, and again, ere his enemy had closed
its jaws on the shadow in front, he was at the rear.
I have seen a gray wolf bleeding and helpless, and
the hound untouched, after a half hour's combat.

On the north fork of Big Creek we frightened a
dozen antelopes out of the brakes, and had a fine
opportunity of witnessing a chase by the hound which[186]
alone was worth a journey to the plains to see. I
remember having been very much interested, when a
boy, in reading accounts of gazelle hunting in the
Orient, where hawks and dogs are both used. The
former pounce down from the air on the fleet-footed
victim's head, compelling it to stop every few moments
to shake its unwelcome passenger off, and the
dogs are thus enabled to overtake it. This always
seemed to me a cowardly sort of sport. The harmless
victim of the chase, who can not touch the earth
without its turning tell-tale to the keen-scented pursuer,
should not be robbed of his only refuge, speed,
or the pursuit becomes butchery.

The American antelope upon our plains is what
the gazelle is upon those of Africa. Timid and fleet,
it often detects and avoids danger to which its powerful
neighbor, the buffalo, falls a victim. The group
which we had frightened bounded away with an elasticity
as if nature had furnished them hoofs and joints
of rubber. There was no apparent effort in their motion,
and we imagined larger powers in reserve than
really existed. As the greyhound slowly gained
upon them, we noticed this, and the Professor thereupon
delivered what Sachem aptly styled a running
discourse.

"Gentlemen, poetry of motion, perhaps by poetical
license, gives exaggerated ideas of force. A
smooth-running engine, though taxed to its utmost
capacity, seems capable of accomplishing more, while
its wheezing neighbor, groaning and straining as if
on the verge of dissolution, has abundant powers in
reserve. Some Hercules may lift a weight on which[187]
a straw more would seem to him large enough to sustain
the traditional drowning man. The feat marks
itself by a life-long backache, but, if he has performed
it gracefully, he bears with it a reputation for a fabulous
reserve of power, the exhibition seeming but
the safety valve to his supposed giant forces struggling
for expression."

Our learned friend seldom found us less attentive
than then. All the wagons were stopped, and from
every elevation upon them we looked out over the
solitudes at the race going on before us. Pursuer and
pursued were pitting against each other the same
quality—speed. There was no lying in ambush or
taking unawares. The fleetest-footed of game was
flying before the swiftest of dogs. There could be
no trailing, as these hounds run only by sight. What
a straining of muscles! The low ridge barely lifting
the animals against the horizon, their legs, from rapidity
of motion, were invisible, and the bodies, for a
short space, seemed floating in air. It was one short,
black line, running rapidly into twelve gray ones,
these latter resolving occasionally into as many balls
of white cotton, when the puffy, rabbit-like tails of the
antelopes were turned toward us. Two of the best
mounted horsemen from our party had started with
the chase, but seemed scarcely moving, so rapidly
were they left behind.

Twice we thought the hound had closed, but instantly
succeeding views showed daylight still between,
although the narrow strip was being blotted
out with the same regular certainty with which the
dark slide of the magic lantern seizes the figures on[188]
the wall. Down into a ravine, and out of sight they
passed, and we were fearing the finale would be hidden,
when they came into view on the opposite side
and pressed up the bank. The bounds of the hound
were magnificent, and we all gave a cry of admiration,
as with a splendid effort he launched himself
like a black ball upon the herd. In an instant after
we saw him hurled back and taking a very unvictor-like
roll down the hill. He quickly recovered,
however, and fastened on an antelope which seemed
lagging behind. His first selection, the leader of the
herd, had proved an unfortunate one, and he bore
a bruise for some time where the buck had struck
him with his horns.

The second seizure turned out to be a doe, and
was quite dead when we reached it. The victor was
lying along side, looking very much as if one antelope
hunt a day was sufficient for even a greyhound.
We noticed that the hair was rubbed off from the
doe's sides by its struggles, and on passing our hands
over the neck found that its coarse coat parted from
the skin at a slight touch. This peculiarity in the
antelope is very marked. In a subsequent hunt I
once saw a wounded buck plunge forward, roll along
the ground for a few feet, and then run off with the
bare skin along his entire side showing just where
he had struck the earth.

One of our party produced a knife, and the animal
was bled and the entrails taken out. We seemed
destined to have a mishap with every adventure, and
had already learned to expect such sequences, the
only question being whose turn should come next.[189]
This time it proved to be Semi-Colon's. We were a
mile from the wagons, and Semi's horse, being considered
the most thoroughly broken, was nominated
to bear the game to them. To this proceeding Cynocephalus
seemed in nowise indisposed, quietly submitting
to the management of one of the hostlers and
our guide, as they lashed the antelope across his
back, securing it to the rear of the large Texas saddle
with the powerful straps which always hang there
for purposes of this kind. This accomplished, Semi
climbed into the saddle, gave a click and a kick, and
set his steed in motion. That eccentric assemblage
of bones made one spasmodic step forward, which
brought the bloody, hairy carcass with a swing
against his loins.

What a change that touch produced! Those wasted
nostrils emitted a terrific snort, the stiff stump-tail
jerked upward like the lever of a locomotive, and
with a dart Cynocephalus was off across the plains.
He probably imagined that some beast of prey had
coveted his spare-ribs, and was whetting its teeth on
the vantage-ground of his backbone. Occasionally
the frightened animal would slack up and indulge in
a fit of kicking, looking back meanwhile with terror
at the object fastened upon his hide, then plunge
frantically forward again. The antelope stuck to
the saddle for some time, but not so Semi-Colon.
The first of these irregular proceedings caused that
young man, as Sachem expressed it, "to get off upon
his head." Cynocephalus finally burst his saddle-girths,
and we were obliged to furnish other transportation
for our game.

[190]Let me say, en passant, that I am trying to chronicle
minutely the events which befel our half-scientific,
half-sporting, and somewhat incongruous party
on its trip through Buffalo Land; and, although my
readers may think us particularly unfortunate, we
really suffered no more than amateurs usually do.
My object is to set up guide boards at the dangerous
places, that other travelers may avoid the pitfalls
and the perils into which we fell. And to every
amateur hunter we beg to offer this advice: Never
tie dead game upon a strange horse unless you owe
the rider a grudge.

"Young men," said the Doctor, from his saddle,
"you have seen a beautiful illustration in the theory
of development. The hound and the antelope may
have been originally an oyster and a worm. From
their first slow motion, when one only opened its
jaws to seize the other, they have progressed until
the speed of to-day results. Should the hound ever
become wild, and pursuit and flight change to an
every-day matter instead of a holiday-sport, development
would still continue. A giraffe-like antelope,
with the speed of the wind, would fly before a hound
the size of a stag." The Doctor's "clinic," as
Sachem called it, was suddenly cut short at this
point by a struggle for mastery between himself and
the human spirit concealed in his horse.

"How much," exclaimed the Professor, when Pythagoras
had at length come off triumphant, and we
again moved forward—"How much the race that we
have witnessed is like that we all run. Powerful and
eager as the greyhound, man sees flying before him,[191]
on the plain of life, an object which he thirsts to grasp.
Taxing every muscle in pursuit, panting after it over
the smooth country below the 40th mile-post, he
crosses there the ravine where rheumatism and
straggling gray hairs lurk, and with these clinging
to him, starts up the hill of later life. Half-way to
its summit, on which the three-score stone marking
the down-hill grade looks uncomfortably like that
over a tomb, he seizes the object of pursuit only to
be flung back by it bruised. If of the proper metal,
he falls but to rise again, and should the first wish
be out of reach, fastens on one of its companions.
There is where blood tells. If the least taint of cur
is in it the first blow sends its recipient yelling to
his kennel, there to whine for the remainder of life
over bruised ribs."

Muggs thought a single toss was sufficient, and
retreat then only prudence. If the bones on one side
were broken, he saw no reason to expose the other.
Dying successful was only procuring meat for others
to enjoy.

The Professor was developing a remarkable talent
for finding not only the stones of the past written all
over with a wonderful and translatable history, but
also the moral connected with each incident of our
journey. Had any of us broken our necks he would
doubtless have improved the occasion to draw a comparison
and have made it the text of a philosophic
disquisition.

[192]

CHAPTER XIII.

CHARACTER OF THE PLAINS—BUFFALO BILL AND HIS HORSE BRIGHAM—THE GUIDE
AND SCOUT OF ROMANCE—CAYOTE VERSUS JACKASS-RABBIT—A LAWYER-LIKE
RESCUE—OUR CAMP ON SILVER CREEK—UNCLE SAM'S BUFFALO HERDS—TURKEY
SHOOTING—OUR FIRST MEAL ON THE PLAINS—A GAME SUPPER.

Our trail was taking us west of north, and we expected
to reach the Saline about dusk and there
encamp. The same strange evenness of country surrounded
us. Over its surface, smooth and firm as a
race track, we could drive a wagon or gallop a horse
in any direction. Even the Bedouin has no such field
for cavalry practice—his footing being shifting sand,
while ours was the compact buffalo grass, so short
that its existence at all could scarcely have been detected
a few yards away. Sachem said he could think
of no such cavalry field except that of his boyhood,
when he slipped into the parlor and pranced his rocking-horse
over the soft carpet; with which memory,
he added, was coupled another, to the effect that
while thus skirmishing on dangerous ground, his
cavalry was attacked from the rear by heavy infantry
and badly cut up.

Numerous buffalo trails crossed our path, running
invariably north and south. This is caused by the
animals feeding from one stream to another, the water
courses following the dip of the country's surface[193]
from west to east. Wallows were also very numerous,
and we noticed as a peculiarity of these, as well
as the paths, that the grass killed by treading and
rolling does not renew itself when the spots are abandoned.
More than once on the Grand Prairie of
Illinois I have seen these wallows, made before the
knowledge of the white man, still remaining destitute
of grass.

An old bull who has been rolling when the wallow
is muddy, is an interesting object. The clay plastered
over and tangled in his shaggy coat bakes in the sun
very nearly white; and this it was, probably, that
gave rise to the early traditions of white buffalo.

Wherever on our route the rock cropped out along
creeks or in ravines, it was the white magnesia limestone,
and so soft as to be easily cut. Further west
alternate pink and white veins occur, giving the stone
a very beautiful appearance. We frequently found
on the rocks and in the ravines deposits of very perfect
shells, apparently those of oysters. Sachem suggested
that they marked the location of pre-historic
restaurants—the Delmonicos of the olden time, say
fifty thousand years before the Pharaohs were born.
He thought it possible that some future quarry-man
might blast out an oyster-knife and money pot
of quaint coins.

Muggs thought this patch of our continent resembled
Australia—"Not that it is as rich, you know,
but there's so much of it." He even became enthusiastic
enough to affirm that the land might be made
profitable, "if some Hinglish sheep and 'eifers were
put on it, you see."

[194]The Professor assured us that the country around
was equal to the plains of Lombardy in point of
fertility, and as the soil was of great depth, and rich
in the proper mineral properties, it would undoubtedly
become before 1890 the great wheat-producing
region of the world.

Our party fell into silence again, and, having nothing
else to interest me at the moment, I resumed my
study, which this episode had interrupted, of Buffalo
Bill, our guide. Athletic and shrewd, he rode ahead
of us with sinews of iron and eye ever on the alert,
clad in a suit of buckskin. His mount was a tough
roan pony which he had named Brigham and of
which he seemed very fond. Nevertheless, this fondness
did not prevent hard riding, and when I last saw
Brigham, several months afterward, he was a very
sorry-looking animal, insomuch that I concluded not
to have his photograph taken as that of a model steed
for Buffalo Land, as I once contemplated doing.

It was extremely fortunate for us that we had
secured Cody as guide. The whole western country
bordering on the plains, as we afterward learned,
from sorry experience, is infested with numberless
charlatans, blazing with all sorts of hunting and
fighting titles, and ready at the rustle of greenbacks
to act as guides through a land they know nothing
about. These reprobates delight in telling thrilling
tales of their escapes from Indians, and are constantly
chilling the blood of their shivering party by
pointing out spots where imaginary murders took
place. Without compasses they would be as hopelessly
lost as needleless mariners. I have my doubts[195]
if one-third of these terribly named bullies could tell,
on a pinch, where the north star is. Unless they
chanced to strike one of the Pacific lines which stretch
across the plains, a party, under their guidance, wishing
to go west would be equally liable to get among
the Northern Siouxs or the Ku-Klux of Arkansas.

A thousand miles east Young America's cherished
ideal of the frontier scout and guide is an eagle-eyed
giant, with a horse which obeys his whistle, and
breaks the neck of any Indian trying to steal him. In
addition to its wonderful master, the back of this model
steed is usually occupied by a rescued maiden. At
risk of infringing on the copyrights of thirty-six thousand
of the latest Indian stories, we have obtained from
an artist on the spot an illustration of the last heroine
brought in and her rescuer, the rare old plainsman.[1]

Cody had all the frontiersman's fondness for practical
jokes, and delighted in designating Mr. Colon
as "Mr. Boston," as if accidentally confounding the
residence with the name. In one instance, with a cry
of "Come, Mr. Boston, here's a specimen!" he enticed
the philanthropist into the eager pursuit of a
beautiful little animal through some rank bottom
grass, and brought the good man back in such a condition
that we unanimously insisted on his traveling
to leeward for the rest of the day.

While we thus journeyed, and, in traditional
traveler's style, mused and pondered, Shamus came
running back to say that we were wanted in front.
"Such a goin' on in the ravine beyant as bates a
witch's dance all holly!" We saw that the forward
wagons had halted and the men were peering[196]
cautiously over the edge of the highland into the
valley of Silver Creek, which stream wound along
below, entirely out of sight until one came directly
upon it. In this lonely land, the pages of whose history
Time had so often turned with bloody fingers, an
event slight as even this was startling. That hollow
in the plain before us seemed to yawn, as if awaking
in sleepy horrors, and we noticed a general tightening
of reins and rattling of spurs. This maneuver
was executed to prevent our horses running away
again and thus rendering us incapable of supporting
our advanced guard. If savages were around, our
provisions must be protected, and we at once dismounted
and scattered among the teams in such a
way as to offer the most successful defense.

Our fears were groundless. In a few moments
Cody came galloping back on Brigham, and said
briefly that we should lose a fine lesson in natural
history unless we hurried to the front. Truth compels
me to say that we did not hanker after a close
acquaintance with Lo on the rampage; yet we did
earnestly desire to improve every opportunity of
studying the other inhabitants of the plains, and a
few moments accordingly found our whole party peering
over the edge of the bluff into the valley below.

[197]

THE WILD DENIZENS OF THE PLAINS.

There, on a patch of bottom grass, half a dozen elk
were feeding; a short distance away, a small herd of
wild horses drank from the brook; while in a ravine
immediately in front of us, three cayotes were attempting
to capture a jackass-rabbit. What a wealth
of animal life this valley had opened to us. From
our own level the table-lands stretched away in all[199]
directions until striking its grassy waves against
the horizon, with not a shrub, tree, or beast to relieve
the clearly-cut outlines. Casting our eyes upward,
the bright blue sky, clear of every vestige of
clouds, arched down until resting on our prairie floor,
and not even a bird soared in the air to charm the
profound space with the eloquence of life. Casting
our eyes downward, the earth was all astir with the
activity of its brute creation.

Before we could make any effort at capture, the
elk and horses winded us and fled away toward the
opposite ridges, where stalking them would have
been exceedingly difficult, if not impossible. Leading
the mustangs was a large black stallion, which
kept its position by pacing while the others ran.
Buffalo Bill said this was an escaped American horse
which had fled to solitude with the rider's blood upon
his saddle. We noted the statement as one for future
elucidation at our camp-fire. The rabbit chase in the
ravine continued, and we watched it unseen for
several minutes. The wolves were endeavoring to
surround their victim, and cut in ahead of it whenever
he attempted to get out of the ravine. Although
such odds were against him, the rabbit had thus far
succeeded by superior speed and quick dodging in
evading his enemies; but escape was hopeless, as he
was hemmed in and becoming exhausted. These
tireless wolves, cowardly creatures though they are,
might worry to death an elephant. A few shots terminated
this scene, driving off the wolves, but killing
the rabbit for whose protection they were fired. The
Professor remarked that this was like a lawyer's rescue.[200]
He sometimes frightens away the persecutors,
but the charges generally kill the client.

For the benefit of those of my readers who have
never seen a member of that unfortunate rabbit
family which has been christened by such a humiliating
given name, I would state that the species is
remarkable for its very long ears, and very long legs.
If the reader, being a married man, desires a pictorial
representation of this animal, let him draw a donkey
a foot high on the wall, and if his wife does not
interrupt by drawing a broomstick, he may be satisfied
that his work is well done, and a life-size jackass-rabbit
will stand out before him.

A mile from the scene of this adventure Silver
Creek joined the Saline, and at the junction it was
determined to make our camp. We descended
among heavy "brakes," staying our loaded wagons
with ropes from behind. Immense quarries of the
soft, white limestone rose from the valley's bed to
the level of the plains above, and the rains of centuries
had fashioned out pillars and arches, giving
them the appearance of ancient ruins staring down
upon us. Mr. Colon picked up a fine moss agate
and the Professor a Kansas diamond. Under the
surface of the former were several figures of bushes
and trees, outlined as distinctly as the images one sees
blown into glass. The diamond was as large as a
hazel nut and as clear as a drop of pure water, so
that, notwithstanding its size, ordinary print could be
easily read through it. Had it possessed a hardness
corresponding with its beauty, the Professor could[201]
have enriched with it half a dozen scientific institutions.
Such stones now command a fair market
value among travelers, and are generally mounted in
rich settings as souvenirs of their trips.

A picturesque group of some half-dozen oaks offered
a good camping spot, and around it the wagons
were placed for the night in a half-circle, the ends of
the crescent resting each side of us upon the creek.
The rule of the plains is, "In time of peace prepare
for war."

Northward from us, and distant perhaps fifty yards,
rippled the clear waters of the Saline, which was then
at a low stage. High above it was the table-land of
the plains, and the edge of this, as far as we could
trace it, was dotted with the dark forms of countless
buffalo. So distant as to appear diminutive, their
moving seemed like crawling, and the back-ground
of light grass gave them much the appearance of bees
upon a board. They were crowding up to the very
edge of the valley of the Saline, from whence, as we
were told, they extended back to the Solomon, thence
to the Republican, and at intervals all the way northward
to the remote regions of the Upper Missouri.

Could the venerable Uncle Samuel go up in a balloon
and take a thousand miles' view of his western stock
region, he would perceive that his goodly herds of
bison, some millions in number, feeding between the
snows of the North and the flowers of the South, were
waxing fat and multiplying. This latter fact might
somewhat surprise him, when he discovered around
his herd a steady line of fire and heard its continual
snapping. The unsophisticated old gentleman would[202]
see train after train of railroad cars rustling over the
plains, every window smoking with the bombardment
like the port-holes of a man-of-war. He would see
Upper Missouri steamers often paddling in a river
black with the crossing herds, and pouring wanton
showers of bullets into their shaggy backs. To the
south Indians on horseback, to the north Indians on
snow shoes, would meet his astonished gaze, and
around the outskirts of the vast range his white children
on a variety of conveyances, and all, savage
and civilized alike, thirsting for buffalo blood. That
the buffalo, in spite of all this, does apparently continue
to increase, shows that the old and rheumatic
ones, the veteran bulls which in bands and singly
circle around the inner herds of cows and calves, are
the ones that most commonly fall the easy victims to
the hunters. Their day has passed, and powder and
ball but give the wolves their bones to pick a little
earlier.

Such were the thoughts that revolved in my mind
while sitting upon one of the wagons, and dividing
my attention between the tent pitching going on
under the trees and the shaggy thousands which,
feeding against the horizon, seemed to grow larger as
the sun went down behind them and they stood out
in deepening relief in the long autumn twilight.
These solitudes made me think of Du Chaillu on the
African deserts when night set in, and I wondered if
the brute denizens there could be more interesting
than those which surrounded us. Had a lion roared, I
doubt whether it would have struck me as unnatural,
although it might have induced a speedy change of[203]
base. It begets a peculiar feeling in one's mind, I
thought, when the lower brutes surround him and his
fellow-creature alone is absent. Animal organizations
are every-where, blood throbbing and limbs
moving, and yet the world is as solitary to him as if
the planet had been sent whirling into space and no
living being upon it except himself. A handkerchief,
a hat, any thing which his brother man may have
worn, yields more of companionship than all the life
around him.

And now, through the trees, we saw several of our
men running with their weapons in hand, and immediately
afterward heard the rapid reports of their
revolvers and rifles from the creek just below, followed
by the fluttering, noisy exit of turkeys from
among the trees. Some flew away, but most of them
were running, and, in their fright, passed directly
among the wagons. One old gobbler, with a fine
glossy tuft hanging at his breast, had a hard time of
it in running the gauntlet of our camp-followers,
narrrowly escaping death by a frying pan hurled from
the vigorous grasp of Shamus.

This class of our game birds is noted the continent
over for its wildness and cunning, these qualities furnishing
old hunters with material for numberless
yarns, as they gather around the camp-fires and
weave their fancies into connected sequence. Thus
it has become a matter of veritable history that knowing
gobblers sometimes examine the tracks that hunters
have left to see which way they are going.

On Silver Creek the turkeys were very tame, and
before it became too dark for shooting our party had[204]
killed twelve. Muggs and Sachem had combined
their forces and devoted their joint attention to one of
them sitting stupidly on a limb, where it received a
bombardment of five minutes' duration before coming
down. Our Briton explained that "the bird was unable
to fly away, you see, because I 'it 'im at my first
shot." To this statement Sachem stoutly demurred
upon two grounds: First, that Muggs' gun had gone
off prematurely, the time in question, and barely
missed one of his English shoes; and, second, that the
turkey showed but one bullet mark, and that wound
was necessarily fatal, as it had carried away most of
the head! A compromise was finally effected, and
we were much edified by seeing the two coming into
camp with the bird between them, sharing mutually
its honors.

Great numbers of turkeys seemed to inhabit the
creek, all along which we heard them, at dark, flying
up to their roosts. This induced a number of our
party to visit a large oak scarcely a hundred yards
from camp, which one of our men had marked as a
favorite resort. Proceeding with the utmost caution,
under the dim shadows of approaching night, we presently
stood beneath the roost. Clearly defined between
us and the sky were the limbs, and clustering
thickly over them, like apples left in fall upon a leafless
tree, we could descry large black balls, indicating
to our hunger-stimulated imaginations as many prospective
turkey roasts. For this special occasion our
only two shot guns had been brought forth from the
cases, the remainder of the party being furnished
with Spencer and Henry rifles.

[205]We had been instructed each to select our bird, and
fire at the word to be given by the guide. How loud
and sharp the clicking of the locks sounded, in the
stillness of that jungle on the plains, as six barrels
pointed upward, but their aim made all unsteady by
the thumping of as many palpitating hearts. Then,
in a low tone, came the words—and they seemed
hoarsely loud in the painful silence around us—"Ready!
Take careful aim!" "Hold!" cried the
Professor, in a sudden outburst of enthusiasm;
"Gentlemen, you see above us thirty fine specimens of
that noblest of all American birds, the turkey. Wisely
has it been said that, instead of the eagle, the turkey
should have been our National"—"Fire!" cried the
guide, in an agony, as the Professor, having dropped
his gun, was rising to his feet, and the turkeys,
alarmed by his eloquence, were preparing for flight.

And fire we did. A half dozen tongues of flame
shot upward, and the roar of our unmasked battery
reverberated over the solitude. The rustling and
fluttering among the tree tops was terrific, and showers
of twigs and bark rained down upon us. Every
one of us knew that his shot had told, yet for some
reason, perhaps owing to the superior cunning of the
birds, none fell at our feet. Before regaining the
wagon, however, we found fluttering on our path a fine
fat one with a shattered second joint. It was claimed
by Sachem, on the ground that in his aiming he had
made legs a speciality, not wishing to injure the
breasts.

Later in the season, when the birds had become
much wilder, I often shot them, both running and[206]
flying. They are very hard to kill, and a sorely
wounded one will often astonish the hunter by running
long distances, or hiding where it seems impossible.
The fall through the air, or sudden stop from
full speed when running, are alike exciting spectacles.
And the big body, with red throat and dark plume,
luscious even to look at, is fit game to excite the pride
of any sportsman.

The modes of hunting the wild turkey are numerous.[2]
Mounted on a swift pony it is not difficult to
run one down, as may be done in half an hour, the
birds, when pushed, seeking the open prairie and its
ravines at once. On foot, with a dog, they can easily
be started from cover, and generally rise with a tremendous
commotion among the bushes, when they
may be brought down with coarse shot. Another
method of turkey shooting, and one that became
quite a favorite of mine, was to steal out from camp
in the gray of early morning—so early that only the
tops of the trees were visible against the sky—provided
with a rifle and shot gun both. When the
birds have once been hunted, extreme caution is necessary
to get within seventy yards of them. Upon a
high bough, in the gloom, the old gobbler appears
twice his real size, looking as long as a rail. Try the
rifle first, and, two chances out of three, there is a
miss. Then, as the great wings spread suddenly,
like dark sails against the sky, and the big body,
launched from the bough, shakes the tree top as if a
wind was passing through it, catch your shot gun,[207]
and fire. In the dim light, and at long distance, it
takes a quick and true eye to call from the ground
that welcome resound which tells of game fallen.

Under the big oaks, meanwhile, our camp fire burned
brightly, and Shamus was developing the mysteries
of his art. Roast turkey and broiled antelope tempt
the pampered appetites of dyspeptic city men, but here
in the wilderness, their fresh juices, hissing from beds
of glowing coals, filled the air with a fragrance that
to us was sweeter than roses. Tired enough, after an
all day's ride, and hungry as bears from twelve hours
fasting, we sucked in the odors of the cooking meat,
as a sort of aërial soup, while the Dobeen stood an
aproned king of grease and turkey, with basting spoon
for scepter, and with it kept motioning back the
hungry hordes that skirmished along his borders.

Two mess chests had been placed a few feet apart,
with the tail-boards of our wagons connecting them,
and over this was spread a linen table cloth, white
plates, clean napkins, and bright knives, with salt,
pepper, and butter. All were in their accustomed
places. This our first meal on the plains looked more
like an aristocratic pic-nic than a supper in the territory
of the buffaloes. But the picture was too bright
to last, and ere many days neither napkins nor cloth
could have been made available as flags of truce.

It is one of those threadbare truisms, adorning
all hunting stories of every age and clime, that hunger
is the best seasoning. We had an excess of it on
hand just then, and would willingly have shared it
with the dyspeptic, baldheaded young men of Fifth
Avenue. The turkey we found fat and very rich in[208]
flavor, and the antelope steaks more delicate than
venison. Condensed milk supplied well the place of
the usual lacteal, and was an improvement on the city
article, inasmuch as we knew exactly what quantity
and quality of water went into it. We were obliged
to economize, however, respecting this part of our supplies.
The following entry in our log-book, by Sachem,
under date of the day preceding this, will explain
the reason: "Two cans of milk stolen, probably
by the Cheyennes. Consider the article more reliable
for families than city stump-tail, requiring neither
milking or feeding, and never kicking the bucket, or
causing infants to do so. Had no idea that a taste of
it would develop such a talent for hooking."

[209]

CHAPTER XIV.

A CAMP-FIRE SCENE—VAGABONDIZING—THE BLACK PACER OF THE PLAINS—SOME
ADVICE FROM BUFFALO BILL ABOUT INDIAN FIGHTING—LO'S ABHORRENCE OF
LONG RANGE—HIS DREAD OF CANNON—AN IRISH GOBLIN—SACHEM'S "SONG OF
SHAMUS."

How vividly, when one is fairly embarked in any
new enterprise, do the events of the first night
impress one's imagination, and how indelibly do they
fix themselves in the memory! Inside our tents all
was clean and cheery, but as none of us were disposed
to seek them before a late hour, we spent the evening
around our camp-fires. Excitement, for the time, had
overmastered our sense of fatigue. The Professor's
notes were out, and, with his feet to the fire and a box
for a desk, he looked more like the Arkansas traveler
writing home, than the learned savan committing to
paper the latest secrets wrung from nature. The remainder
of our party were scattered promiscuously
around the fire, some seated on logs and boxes, the
others outstretched upon the grass.

Tammany Sachem was the first to break the silence.
"Fellow citizens," he exclaimed, "let's vagabondize!"
Now, with our alderman, vagabondizing
meant story telling, an accomplishment which we
consider the especial forte of vagabonds.

We all hailed this proposition gladly, for Buffalo
Bill, stretched there before the fire, had much of plain[210]
lore stored in his active brain that we wished to draw
out, and we at once seized the opportunity to ask
about the black pacer we had seen during the afternoon,
and his weird story of the bloody saddle.

From Bill's narrative we gathered the following:
Something over a year before the era of our expedition a
train of government wagons left Fort Hays destined for
Fort Harker, and the Indians being troublesome, some
twenty soldiers were sent in the wagons, as a guard.
A few hours later there passed through Hays City a
man from the mountains riding a powerful black stallion,
while his family, consisting of a young wife and
her brother, occupied a covered wagon which followed
close behind. The stranger determined to take advantage
of the protection afforded by the government
train, and the little party pushed out after it over the
plains. The day was a sultry one in midsummer, the
sun pouring down its flood of heat on the desolate
surface of the expanse that spread away on all sides.
The long train, a full mile from front to rear, dragged
its slow length sluggishly along, the mules sleepily
following the trail, while the teamsters and soldiers
dozed in the covered wagons. A driver, who happened
to be awake, saw in the distance a beautiful
mirage, and in it, as he looked, strange objects,
like mounted men, were bobbing up and down. But
then he had often seen weeds and other small objects
similarly transformed, by these wonderful illusions
of the plains, and even he forgot the bobbing
shadows and dozed away again on his seat.

But there was danger near. Stealthily out of the
mirage, and bending low in their saddles, rode a[211]
painted band of savages, hiding their advance in a
ravine. Their purpose was to strike and cut off the
rear of the train, the length of which promised unusual
success to their undertaking, as the white men
were too much scattered to oppose any resistance to
a sudden onset. At length, nearly the entire train had
filed by, and the foremost of the last half dozen wagons
approached the ravine. At the signal, out from
it burst the troop of red horsemen, and crossed the
road like a dash of dust from the hand of a hurricane,
every savage spreading his blanket and uttering the
war whoop. The startled teams fled in stampede over
the plains, dragging the wagons after them. Some
of the drivers were thrown out and others jumped.
Two or three were killed, and by the time the other
teams and the guards had taken the alarm, and turned
back for a rescue, the savages had cut the traces of
the frightened mules, and were on the return with
them to their distant villages. Instead of stopping
the animals to release them from the wagons, the Indians
urged them to wilder speed, and leaning from
their saddles, cut the fastenings at full run. Among
the booty taken, was a valuable race horse and fifteen
hundred dollars in greenbacks, belonging to an officer
who was on his way from New Mexico to the East.

Meanwhile, our friend, the owner of the black pacer,
with his outfit, was moving quietly along two or three
miles in the rear, entirely unaware of affairs at the
front. Some of the savages, while escaping with the
booty, espied him, and coveting the noble animal
which he rode, they made a detour and surprised
him as he sat jogging along a hundred yards or so[212]
ahead of the wagon containing his wife and brother-in-law.
Though mortally wounded at their first volley,
with the desperate effort of a dying man he clung
to the saddle for a hundred yards or more, and then
rolled upon the prairie a lifeless corpse. Frantic with
terror, the horse dashed through the circle of Indians
that surrounded him, and fled. The savages, probably
fearing longer delay, did not pursue, nor even
attack the wagon, and the black pacer was not seen
again for some months, when at length some hunters
discovered him, freed from saddle and bridle, the
leader of the wild herd.

Buffalo Bill gave us quite an insight into some of
the mysteries of plain craft. When you are alone,
and a party of Indians are discovered, never let them
approach you. If in the saddle, and escape or concealment
is impossible, dismount, and motion them
back with your gun. It shows coolness, and these
fellows never like to get within rifle range, when a
firm hand is at the trigger. If there is any water
near, try and reach it, for then, if worst comes to
worst, you can stand a siege. The savages of the
plains are always anxious to get at close quarters before
developing hostility. Unless very greatly in the
majority, and with some unusual incentive to attack,
they will not approach a rifle guard. Were they as
well supplied with breech-loading guns as with pistols,
the case would be different, of course. Bill was
the hero of many Indian battles, and had fought
savages in all ways and at all hours, on horseback
and on foot, at night and in daytime alike.

As an amusing illustration of the savage abhorrence[213]
of long-range guns, I beg the reader's indulgence
for introducing an anecdote which I afterward
heard narrated by an officer who participated in the
affair. Major A—— was sent out from Fort Hays
with a company of men on an Indian scout, and, when
near a tributary of the south fork of the Solomon, the
savages appeared in force, and a fight commenced,
which continued until dark. Several soldiers were
wounded and two killed. As the Indians were evidently
increasing in numbers, after nightfall a squad
was dispatched to the fort for ambulances and reinforcements.
Only six men could be spared, and these
were sent off with a light field-piece in charge. Soon
after crossing the Saline, a strong band of Indians
was discovered half a mile off reconnoitering. A
shell was sent screaming toward them, but the aim
was too high, and it burst a short distance beyond
them. Nevertheless, the effect was instantaneous;
the savages vanished, nor stood upon the order of
their going. During the next ten miles this scene
was repeated three times, the stand-point on each occasion
being removed further and further away. The
last shot was a remarkably long one, and the shell
burst directly in their faces. Not only did they disappear
for good, but the whole investing force, on
receiving their report, fled likewise.

Talking thus about Indians, under the gloom of the
trees, seemed in some unaccountable way to suggest
the idea of witches to the mind of Pythagoras. Perhaps,
in accordance with his pet theory of development,
he was cogitating whether, ages ago, the red
man's family horse might not have been a broomstick.[214]
At any rate, he suddenly gave a new turn to
the conversation by asking Shamus why, when the
dogs pointed the witch-hazel during our quail hunt at
Topeka, he had affirmed that the canine race could
see spirits and witches which to mortal eyes were invisible.
Now, the Dobeen had been bred on an Irish
moor, where the whole air is woven, like a Gobelin
tapestry, full of dreams of the marvelous, and where
whenever an unusual object is noticed by moonlight,
the frightened peasant, instead of stopping a moment
to investigate the cause, rushes shivering to his hut
to tell of the fearful phookas he has seen. He was
very superstitious, and we had often been amused at
his evasions, when, as sometimes happened, his faith
conflicted with our commands. The time might be
near when such peculiarities would prove troublesome
instead of amusing, and it was well, therefore,
that we should get a peep at the foundations of our
cook's faith, and perhaps that portion of it which related
to our friends, the dogs, would be especially entertaining.
Moreover, we had had so much of the red
man that we were glad to welcome an Irish witch to
our first camp-fire. Dobeen's narrative was substantially
as follows, though I can not attempt to clothe it
in his exact language, and still less in the rich brogue
which yet clung to him after years of ups and downs
in "Ameriky."

"Dogs can study out many things better than men
can," said Shamus, in his most impressive manner.
"Before I left old Ireland for America, I had a dashing
beast, with as much wit as any boy in the country.
He could poach a rabbit and steal a bird from under[215]
the gamekeeper's nose, an' give the swatest howl of
warnin' whenever a bailiff came into them parts."

Sachem suggested that these were rather remarkable
habits for a dog connected with the great house
of Dobeen.

"But yez must know he was only a pup when my
fortunes went by," responded Shamus, "and he learnt
these tricks afterward. Ah, but he was a smart
chap! Couldn't he smell bailiffs afore ever they
came near, an' see all the witches and ghosts, too, by
second sight! He wouldn't never go near the O'Shea's
house, that had a haunted room, though pretty Mary,
the house-girl, often coaxed at him with the nicest
bits of meat."

Sachem thought that perhaps the animal's second
sight might have shown him that stray shot from
pretty Mary's master, aimed at a vagabond, might
perhaps hit the vagabond's dog.

"I wasn't a vagabond them times," retorted Shamus,
quickly, yet with entire good humor, "and sorry
for it I am that the name could ever belong to me
since. And please, Mr. Sachem, don't be after interruptin'
again. Some people wonder why the dogs
bark at the new moon an' howl under the windows
afore a death. In the one matter, your honors, they
see the witches on a broomstick, ridin' roun' the sky,
an' gatherin' ripe moon-beams for their death-mixtures
an' brain blights. Many a man in our grandfathers'
time—yes, an' now-a-days too—sleepin' under
the full moon, has had his brains addled by the unwholesome
powder falling from the witches' aprons.
Wise men call it comet dust. And why shouldn't a[216]
dog that has grown up to mind his duty of watchin'
the family, howl when he sees Death sittin' on the
window sill, a starin' within, and preparin' to snatch
some darlint away? Ah, but their second sight is a
wonderful gift though!

"The name of my dog, your honors, was Goblin,
an' he came to us in a queer sort of way, just like a
goblin should. There was a hard storm along the
coast, an' the next mornin' a broken yawl drifted in,
half full of water, with a dead man washin' about in
it, an' a half-drowned pup squattin' on the back seat.
Me an' my cousin buried the man, an' the other beast
I brought up. May be there was somethin' in this
distress that he got into so young that he couldn't
outgrow. Even the priest used to notice it, and say
the poor creature had a sort of touch of the melancholy;
an' sure, he never was a joyful dog. Smart
an' true he was, but, faith, he wasn't never happy;
yez might pat him to pieces, an' get never a wag of
the tail for it. He delighted in wakes and buryins,
an' when a neighborin' gamekeeper died, he howled
for a whole day an' a night, though the man had shot
at him twenty times. Mighty few men, your honors,
with a dozen slugs in their skin, would have stood on
the edge of a man's grave that shot them, an' mourned
when the earth rattled on the box the way Goblin,
poor beast, did then. Ah, nobody knows what dogs
can see with their wonderful second sight. That beast
thought an' studied out things better than half the
men ye'll find; an' it's my belief that dogs did so before,
an' they have done it since, an' they always
will."

[217]"You are right, Dobeen," said the Professor. "Put
a wise dog, and a foolish, vicious master together.
The brute exhibits more tenderness and thoughtfulness
than the man. In the latter, even the mantle of
our largest charity is insufficient to cover his multitude
of sins, while the skin of his faithful animal wraps nothing
but honest virtue. The dog, having once suffered
from poison, avoids tempting pieces of meat thenceforward,
when proffered by strange hands, but the man
steeps his brain in poison again and again—or as often
as he can lay hold of it. While grasping the deadly
thing, he sees, stretching out from the bar room door,
a down grade road, with open graves at the end, and
frightened madmen, chased by the blue devils and murder
and misery, rushing madly toward them. These
swallow their victims, as the hatches of a prison ship
do the galley slave, and close upon them to give them
up only when the jailer, the angel of the resurrection,
shall unlock the tombs, and calls their occupants to
judgment. Does the sight appall and bring him to his
senses? No, he crowds among the terrors, and takes
to his bosom the same venomous serpent that he has
seen sting so many thousands to death before him.
And yet people give to the brute's wisdom the name
of instinct, and call man's madness wisdom."

"But, your honors," interposed Dobeen, "I shall be
after losing my dog entirely, unless yez lave off interruptin'
me, an' let me finish my story."

"Go on, Shamus, go on!" we all cried with one
breath.

"Well, then, when Goblin came to me in his infancy,
he wore a silver collar with his name all beautifully[218]
engraved on it. May be the dead man in the boat
had been bringing him from some strange land to the
childer at home, and thinking how the odd name
would please them all, when the shadows were darting
around his hearth. And so Goblin howled his way
through the world, till one full moon eve, when every
bog was shinin' as if the peat was silver. Such times,
any way in old Ireland, your honors, the air is full of
unwholesome spirits. This was good as a wake for
Goblin, and I can just hear him now the way he cried
and howled that night! He kept both eyes fixed on
the moon, and no mortal man, livin' or dead, will ever
know what he saw, but when he howled out worse nor
common that night, it meant, may be, that some witch,
uglier than the rest, had just whisked across the shinin'
sky. Just at midnight, I was waked out of a
swate sleep by the quietness without, the way a miller
is when his mill stops. I looked out of the window
at the dog where he sat, an', faith, the dog wasn't
there at all! Just then I heard a despairin' sort of
howl, away up in the air above the trees, an' by that
token I knew the witches had Goblin. Next mornin',
one of the lads livin' convanient to us told me he had
heard the same cry in the middle of the night, the cry,
your honors, of the poor beast as the witches carried
him off. Afore the week was out, Goblin's collar was
found on the gamekeeper's grave; that was all—not a
hair else of him was ever seen in old Ireland."

As Shamus concluded his veracious narrative he
looked around upon us with an air of triumph, as if
satisfied that even Sachem dare not now dispute the
second sight of the canine race.

[219]That worthy took occasion to declare on the instant,
however, that the nearest neighbor was fully
justified in playing the witch. If any thing could
destroy the happiness of human beings, as well as
of the broom-riding beldams, it would be the howling
of worthless curs at night. He himself had often
been in at the death of vagabond cats and dogs engaged
in moon-worship. The outbursts of Goblin
had simply been silenced in an outburst of popular
indignation.

SMASHING A CHEYENNE BLACK KETTLE.

[220]

CHAPTER XV.

A FIRE SCENE—A GLIMPSE OF THE SOUTH—'COON HUNTING IN MISSISSIPPI—VOICES
IN THE SOLITUDE—FRIENDS OR FOES—A STARTLING SERENADE—PANIC IN
CAMP—CAYOTES AND THEIR HABITS—WORRYING A BUFFALO BULL—THE
SECOND DAY—DAUB, OUR ARTIST—HE MAKES HIS MARK.

Our fire scene was evidently no novelty to the
Mexicans, whose lives had been spent in camping
out, and who, with one cheap blanket each, for
mattress and covering, slept soundly under the
wagons. Across their dark, expressionless faces the
flames threw fitful gleams of light, which were as unheeded
as the flashes with which the Nineteenth Century
endeavors to penetrate the gloom which shrouds
them as a nation. While the world moves on, the
degenerate descendants of Montezuma sleep.

In the valley bordering our little skirt of trees we
could hear the horses cropping the short, juicy buffalo
grass, and trailing their lariat ropes around a
circle, of which the pin was the center. Semi-Colon
lay on the grass close to his father, who occupied a
cracker-box seat in this tableau, the amiable son at
little intervals raising his head to indorse, in his peculiar
dissyllabic way, what the positive parent said.
Looking at the group around me, and thinking of our
evening turkey hunt, memory carried me back to the[221]
last time I had been among the trees after dark,
with gun in hand, which was at the South, away
down in Mississippi, just after the war.

It was a lazy time, those November days. Large
flocks of swans filled the air above, with their flute-like
notes, and thousands of sand-hill cranes circled
far up toward the sun, their bodies looking like distant
bees, as from dizzy heights they croaked their
approbation of the rich crops beneath them. Ducks
passed like charges of grape shot, sending back shrill
whistles from their wings, as they dived down into the
standing corn.

As night came on, the moon went up in a great
rush of light, like the reflector of a railroad train
mounting the sky. Soon every shadow is driven
from the woods, and then the horns are tooted, the
dogs howl, and away go gangs of woolly heads, old
and young, in pursuit of Messrs. 'Possum and 'Coon.
In vain the sly tree-fox doubles around stumps, and
leaving tempting persimmon and oaks full of plumpest
acorns, at the warning noise, seeks refuge among
huge cypresses. On go the hunters—big dogs, little
dogs, bear-teasers, and deer-hounds, sprinkled with
darkeys—crashing through cane and underbrush, the
human portion of the party laughing and yelling as
if a tempest had stolen them ages ago from Babel,
and just discharged them in pursuit of that particular
'coon.

The voice of the Professor suddenly called me back
to the present, and I found myself chilled by the wet
grass, as if my body had been wandering with the[222]
mind in that land of cotton, and was unprepared for
the northern air.

"Gentlemen"—this was what the voice said—"we
are now one thousand and five hundred miles from
Washington City, latitude 39, longitude 99. Stick a
pin there on the map, and you will find that we have
got well out on the spot that geographers have been
pleased to call desert. Does it look like one? Tell
me, gentlemen, had you rather discount your manhood
among the stumps of New England than loan
it at a premium to the rich banks of these streams?"

The Professor came to an abrupt pause, for borne
to us on the still air was that most unmistakable of
all sounds, the human voice. The note of one bird
at a distance may be mistaken for another, and the
cry of a brute, when faintly heard, lose its distinguishing
tones. But once let man lift up his voice in the
solitude, and all nature knows that the lord of animal
creation is abroad. There are many sounds
which resemble the human voice, just as there are
many objects which, indistinctly seen, the hunter's
eye may misinterpret as birds. But when a flock of
birds does cross his vision, however far away, he
never mistakes them for any thing else. The first
may have excited suspicion, the latter resolves at
once into certainty.

We listened attentively and anxiously. It might
very naturally be supposed that, after leaving the
abodes of his fellows, and going far out into the solitary
places of Nature, man would rejoice to catch the
sounds which told him that others of his race were
near, but this, like many other things, is modified by[223]
circumstances. On the plains the first question asked
is, "Are they friends or foes?" No one being able
to answer, the breeze and general probabilities are inquired
of, and until the eyes pass verdict the moments
are laden with suspense. Even in times of
peace the hunter, if possible, avoids the savage bands
which flit back and forth across Buffalo Land; for, if
he saves his life, he is apt to lose an inconvenient
amount of provisions, at least, at their hands.

Our guide speedily informed us that Indians never
make any noise when in camp, which was gratifying
intelligence. All further suspense was shortly relieved
by the appearance down the valley of muskets
glittering in the moon-light. The bearers proved to
be two soldiers, who stated that some officers, with a
small force of cavalry, were in camp a mile below us,
being out for the purpose of obtaining buffalo meat,
and having as guests two or three gentlemen from St.
Louis, desirous of seeing the sport. They had heard
our late heavy firing, and sent to know what was the
matter. We gave the soldiers a late paper to carry
back, and with many regrets that our fatigue was too
great to think of accompanying them for a neighborly
call, we bade them good-night, and saw them disappear
down the valley.

At the Professor's suggestion, preparations were
now made for retiring, and we sought our tent and
blankets. In a few brief moments, the others of the
party were blowing, in nasal trumpetings, the praises
of Morpheus. I could not sleep, however; for each
bone had its own individual ache, and was telling[224]
how tired it was. Pulling up a tent-pin, I looked
out under the canvas.

On a log by the fire sat Shamus, his head between
his hands, gazing at the coals, and droning a low tune.
Occasionally, he would make a dash at some fire-brand,
with a stick which he used as a poker, and break
it into fragments, or toss it nervously to one side.
Whether this was because it resolved itself into a fire-sprite
winking at him, or some unhappy memory
glowed out of the coals, I tried to tempt sleep by conjecturing.

Off at a little distance, I could see one of our men
standing guard near the horses, and once or twice my
excited fancy thought it detected shadows creeping
toward him. A little beyond, nervously stretching
his lariat rope, while walking in a circle around the
pin, was Mr. Colon's Iron Billy. His clean head
erect, and fine nose taking the breeze, the intelligent
animal appeared restless, and I could not help thinking
that he saw or smelt something unusual, away in
the darkness. What if the bottom grass was full of
creeping savages?

The crescent moon, just rising over the divide, was
scarred by many cloud lines, and as yet gave no light.
The sensation which had stolen over me was becoming
disagreeable, when far off, at some ford down the
creek, I heard animals splashing through water, and
concluded that Billy's nervousness was caused by
crossing buffaloes. The horse had an established reputation
as a watch, his former owner having assured
us that neither Indian nor wild beast could approach
camp without Billy giving the alarm.

[225]Presently, Dobeen resumed his droning, which had
been suspended for a few moments, this time singing
some snatches from an old Irish ballad. The last words
were just dying away, when I started to my feet in
horror. What an infernal chorus filled the air! Each
point of the compass was represented, and we were
wrapped around with a discordant, fiendish cordon of
sound. Bursting upon us with a deep mocking cry,
it ended abruptly in a wild "Ha-ha!" It was such
a chorus as pours through Hades, when some poet
opens, for an instant, the gate of the damned. Our
poor Irishman, at the first sound, had fallen from the
log as if shot, but had suddenly sprung to his feet,
and was now performing a terror-dance behind the
fire with a club. For a moment, I, too, had taken the
outburst for the war-whoop of savages, but was saved
from a panic by seeing through the gloom the figure
of the sentinel still at his post, and the next instant
the voice of the guide was lifted, with the re-assuring
intelligence—"Only cayotes, gentlemen, only cayotes!"

Mr. Sachem and Mr. Muggs had been lying close
behind me in their blankets. The former had given
a terrified snort, and then both lay motionless. After
the alarm, Sachem admitted that he was frightened.
Had always heard that people shot over instead of
under the mark in battle. Was resolved to lay low.
Had no high views about such things. Muggs had
not thought it worth while to get up. Knew they
were wolves. Had heard more hextraordinary 'owls
before he came to the blarsted country.

But where was the doctor? Echo answered,[226]
"Where?" "Hallo, Doctor!" cried the guide, and
a voice from the woods, which was not echo, answered,
"Coming!" Again Buffalo Bill lifted his voice in
the solitude, and again came an answer, this time in
a form of query, "Is it developed, my boy? If so,
classify it." And we answered that the birth in the
air had developed into wolves, and been classified as
the canis latrans, noisy and harmless.

Finding that this new lesson in natural history had
taken away all desire for sleep, I finished the study
by the fire, with our guide for a tutor.

The cayote (pronounced Kī-o-te), in its habits, is a
villainous cross between a jackal and a wolf, feasting
on any kind of animal food obtainable, even unearthing
corpses negligently buried. With the large gray
wolf, the cayotes follow the herds of bison, generally
skulking along their outskirts, and feeding upon the
wounded and outcasts. These latter are the old bulls
which, gaunt and stiff from age and spotted all over
with scars, are driven out of the herd by the stout
and jealous youngsters. Feeding alone, and weak
with the burden of years upon his immense shoulders,
the old bull is surrounded by the hungry pack. But
they dare not attack. One blow of that ponderous
head, with the weight of that shaggy hump behind
it, is still capable of knocking down a horse.
The veteran could fling his adversaries as nearly over
the moon as the cow ever jumped, if they only gave
him a chance. Like a grim old castle, he stands
there more than a match for any direct assault of
the army around.

[227]

MIDNIGHT SERENADE ON THE PLAINS.

With the tact of our modern generals, a line of investment[229]
is at once formed, and a system of worrying
adopted. No rest now for the old bull. He can not
lie down, or the beasts of prey will swarm upon him.
Again and again he charges the foe, each time clearing
a passage readily, but only to have it close again
almost instantly. In these resultless sorties the
garrison is fast using up its material of war. The
ammunition is getting short which fires the old warrior,
and sends the black horns, like a battering-ram,
right and left among his foes. As long as he keeps
his feet he lives, though hemmed in closely by the snapping
and snarling multitude. The tenacity of one of
these patriarchs is wonderful. For a whole life-time
chief of the brutes on his native plains, he has grown
up surrounded by wolves. Not fearing them himself,
he has easily defended the cows and calves. An
attempted siege would once have been but sport to
him, and it seems difficult for the brain in the thick
skull to understand that Time, like a vampire, has
been sucking the juices from his joints and the blood
from his veins.

Tired out at length, the old bull begins to totter,
and his knees to shake from sheer exhaustion. His
shakiness is as fatal as that of a Wall Street bull.
As he lies down the wolves are upon him. They are
clinging to the shaggy form, like blood-hounds, before
it has even sunk to the sod, and the victim never
rises again.

The cayotes are very cowardly, and when carcasses
are plenty, sleep during the day in their holes, which
are generally dug into the sides of some ravine. If
found during the hours of light, it is usually skulking[230]
in the hollows near their burrows. They have a
decidedly disagreeable penchant for serenading
travelers' camps at night, so that our late experience,
the guide assured me, was by no means uncommon.
They will steal in from all directions, and sit quietly
down on their haunches in a circle of investment.
Not a sound or sign of their coming do they make,
and, if on guard, one may imagine that every foot of
the country immediately surrounding is visible, and
utterly devoid of any animate object. All at once,
as if their tails were connected by a telegraphic wire,
and they had all been set going by electricity, the
whole line gives voice. The initial note is the only
one agreed upon. After striking that in concert, each
particular cayote goes it on his own account, and the
effect is so diabolical that I could readily excuse
Shamus for thinking that the dismal pit had opened.

At this point Dobeen approached and cut off my
further gleaning of wolf lore. The corners of his
mouth seemed still inclined to twitch, showing that
the shock had not yet worn off. He was chilled by
the night, he said, and did not feel very well, and
craved our honors' permission to sleep at our feet in
the tent. Consent was given, and as he left us he
turned to announce his belief that animals with such
voices must have big throats.

It was not yet light, next morning, when our camp
was all astir again. Drowsiness has no abiding place
with an expedition like ours upon the plains. Should
he be found lurking anywhere among the blankets, a
bucket of water, from some hand, routs him at once
and for the whole trip. Even Sachem, who usually[231]
hugged Morpheus so long and late, might that morning
have been seen among the earliest of us washing
in the waters of the creek.

We were all in excellent spirits, and with appetites
for breakfast that would have done no discredit to a
pack of hungry wolves. No sign of the sun was yet
visible, save a scarcely perceptible grayish tinge diffusing
itself slowly through the darkness, and the lifting
of a light fog along the creek upon which we were
encamped. Although sufficiently novel to most of
our party, the scene was quite dreary, and we longed,
amid the gloom and chill, for the appearance of the
sun, and breakfast. By the way, I have noticed that
with excursion parties, whether sporting or scientific,
enthusiasm rises and sets with the sun. The gray
period between darkness and dawn is an excellent
time for holding council. The mind, no less than the
body, seems to find it the coolest hour of the twenty-four,
and shrinks back from uncertain advances.

Added to the discomforts usually attendant upon
camp-life were our stiff joints. The first day upon
horseback is twelve hours of pleasant excitement,
with a fair share of wonder that so delightful a recreation
is not indulged in more generally. The next
twenty-four hours are spent in wondering whether
those limbs which furnish one the means of locomotion
are still connected with the stiffened body, or utterly
riven from it; and, if the whole truth must be
told, the saddle has also left its scars.

As the edge of the plateau overlooking the river
became visible in the growing light, we saw, as on
the evening previous, multitudes of buffalo feeding[232]
there, and after breakfast a council of war was held.
I am somewhat ashamed to record that it voted
no hunting that day. To find the noblest of American
game some of us had come half away across the
continent, and now, in sight of it, the tide of enthusiasm
which had swept us forward hitherto stood suddenly
still. Not because it was about to ebb, but simply
in obedience to certain signals of distress flying
from the various barks, and which it was utterly impossible
for any of us to conceal.

For mounting a horse was entirely out of the question
for that day. Not one of us could have swung
himself into saddle for any less motive than a race
with death. Our steps were slow and painful, and we
felt as if, at this period of life's voyage, every timber
of our several crafts had been pounded separately
upon some of the hidden rocks of ocean. It was absolutely
necessary to go into dock for repairs, and
the valley promised to be a pleasant harbor.

It was a truly melancholy spectacle to behold Sachem
and Muggs. The liveliest and the gayest ones
yesterday, but to-day the gravest of the grave. That
rotund form, which always doubted his own or other
people's emotions, was the walking embodiment of
woe, and for once evidently clear of all doubt upon
one subject, at least. Muggs was even free to confess
that, for general results, yesterday's rough riding
exceeded "a 'unt with the 'ounds." Our animals
were also quite stiff, but the hostlers attributed
this not so much to their yesterday's service as to
their long ride in the cars. They had not yet got
their "land legs" fully on again. It was soothing to[233]
our pride, if not to our feelings, to reflect that perhaps
some of our soreness was the result of their first
day's stiffness.

A beaver colony near us, and a great abundance
of turkeys, offered lessons in natural history of no
small interest, and within reach of lame students.
The valley gave an entomological invitation to Mr.
Colon, and the great ledges, with their possibilities of
valuable fossils, attracted the Professor.

Sitting on a wagon tongue, and applying liniment
to an abraded shin, might have been seen Pythagoras,
M. D., whose daily life, since leaving Topeka, had
been a series of struggles with the brute he rode. His
belief in the transition of souls into horses was growing
upon him. He felt that he was combating the
spirit of a deceased prize-fighter, which used its hoofs
as fists, landing blows right and left. Doctor David
called these "spiritual manifestations." A favorite
habit of the animal was what is known as brushing
flies from the ear with the hind foot, and often, as the
owner was about to mount, this species of front kick
would upset him. The equine's disposition, it must
be said, had not been improved by the immense saddle-bags
with which the Doctor had surmounted him
when on the march. Originally, these contained a
small amount of medicine, but this had all been
ground to powder under the weight of sundry stones
and bones, gathered in the furtherance of the great
theory of development.

As the sun got well up in the heavens, staying in
camp became monotonous, and we hobbled off in different
directions, to examine the surroundings. Our[234]
Mexicans climbed to the plains above, taking their
rusty muskets along to kill buffalo. Our guide went
down to the hunting camp below us, intending to return
to Hays with the officers, home duties requiring
his attention. One of our hostlers, familiar with the
country, was to be our pilot in future.

Back of our camp lay the castellated rocks which
had attracted our notice the previous evening, and
over which Daub, our artist, now became intensely
enthusiastic. He wandered back and forth in front
of them, his soul in his eyes, and these upturned to
the bluffs. And thus we left him.

"Genius is struggling hard for utterance there,"
said the Professor impressively. "That young man
will make his mark; see if he doesn't." Alas, how
little we thought he would do it so soon.

An hour later, returning that way, we descried our
artist high up on the face of the rocks, perched on a
jutting fragment, and clinging to a stunted cedar with
one hand, while with the other he plied his brush.
Fully forty feet intervened between him and the
earth.

"What devotion!" cried the Professor.

"Beautiful spirit," said Mr. Colon, "how soon it
commences to climb."

"That young man will develop," said Dr. Pythagoras.

A few feet more, and the artist and his work were
fully revealed. He had developed. A cry of agony
came from the Professor's lips; for there in large yellow
lines, half blotting out a beautiful stone, our eyes
beheld the diabolical letters, S O Z.

[235]He never finished the word. The Professor seized
a rifle, and brought it to a level with the artist's paint
pot. "Come down, you rascal!" he cried. "How
dare you deface one of nature's castles with a patent
name?" Would he have fired? I think he would.
But the man of genius caught his eye, and comprehending
the situation, cried, with face whiter than
the chalk before him, "O, don't!"

"Add the 'odont', you villain," screamed the Professor,
"and I'll—I'll fire!"

With our first returning wagon, the artist went
back to Hays, but his work, alas! remains, and perhaps—who
knows?—some future generation may yet
point to that wall and tell how SOZ, king of an extinct
people, once held dominion over the beautiful
valley.

[236]

CHAPTER XVI.

BISON MEAT—A STRANGE ARRIVAL—THE SYDNEY FAMILY—THE HOME IN THE VALLEY—THE
SOLOMON MASSACRE—THE MURDER OF THE FATHER AND THE CHILD—THE
SETTLERS' FLIGHT—INCIDENTS—OUR QUEEN OF THE PLAINS—THE
PROFESSOR INTERESTED—IRISH MARY—DOBEEN HAPPY—THE HEROINE OF
ROMANCE—SACHEM'S BATH BY MOONLIGHT—THE BEAVER COLONY.

At noon we were all in camp again, fully prepared
to do justice to the ample dinner of buffalo,
antelope, and turkey which we found awaiting
us. The Mexicans brought in the quarter of an old
bull, and, according to their own story, had committed
terrible slaughter on the plain above; but, as we had
already learned to balance a Mexican account by a deduction
of nine-tenths for over-drafts, we felt that we
saw before us the result of their day's hunt. This
our first taste of bison, gave us highly exaggerated
ideas of that animal's endurance. The entire flesh
was surprisingly elastic—indeed, a very clever imitation
of India rubber. It recoiled from our teeth with
a spring, and just then I should scarcely have been
surprised had I seen those buffalo which were feeding
in the distance, go bounding off like immense
foot-balls. My opinion in regard to buffalo meat
afterward underwent a great change, but not until I
had tasted the flesh of the cows and calves. Shamus,
on this occasion, had devoted his culinary energies[237]
especially to the turkeys, and they were well worthy
such attention. Their fat forms, nicely browned,
would have tempted the veriest dyspeptic.

Just as we rose from dinner, a covered emigrant
wagon was discovered approaching us, coming down
the valley right on our trail. From the fact that we
were off the route of overland travel, our first conjecture
was that it was from Hays, with a party of
hunters, or possibly with Tenacious Gripe, so far recovered
as to be rejoining us. We assumed an attitude
of dignified interest, prepared to develop it into
friendship, or "don't want to know you" style, as occasion
might require. A hale, elderly man was the
driver, now walking beside his oxen. The outfit
halted before our astonished camp, and as it did so two
women, genuine spirits of calico and long hair, lifted
a corner of the wagon cover and looked out. Both
were apparently young, but one face was thin, and
had that peculiar expression of being old before its
time which is far more desolate than age. The other
countenance was certainly good-looking and interesting—quite
different, indeed, from those usually seen
peeping out of emigrant wagons. Introductions are
short and decisive on the plains. We liked their
looks, and invited them to stop; they liked ours, and
accepted. I think the Professor's dignified attitude
and scholarly bearing stood us in good stead as references.

Another female developed as the wagon gave forth
its load—this time a bouncing Irish girl, rosy-cheeked
and active, evidently the family servant. At this
latter apparition Shamus dropped one of our platters,[238]
but quickly recovering himself, began to put forth
wonderful exertions to prepare a second dinner, the
new comers having consented, after some hesitation,
to become our guests during the nooning hour.

Before proceeding to give the reader the history of
this interesting family, I ought, perhaps, to say that
I do so with their express permission, the only disguise
being that, at his request, the father will here be
designated by his Christian name, Sydney.

These people, after an absence of about a year, were
now returning from Elizabeth City, a recently-started
mining town in New Mexico, to their former home,
about forty miles east of our present camp, which they
had left the preceding season under circumstances that
were sad, indeed. About three years before, the family,
then consisting of Mr. Sydney and wife, and
their two daughters, had moved from Ohio to Kansas
and settled on a tributary of the Solomon. Availing
himself of the homestead law, Mr. Sydney took a
tract of one hundred and sixty acres, and commenced
improving it. One of the daughters soon married a
young man to whom she had been betrothed at the
East, and who at once set earnestly to work to make
for himself and young wife a home in the new land.
The houses of the father and the child were but half a
mile apart, and, no timber intervening, each could be
plainly seen from the other. For a time this little
colony of two families was very happy. Having had
the first choice, their farms were well situated, embracing
both river and valley, and their herds, provided
with rich and unlimited range, increased
rapidly. Soon rumors came from below that a railroad,[239]
on its way to the Rocky Mountains, would
shortly wind its way up the Solomon Valley, bringing
civilization to that whole region, and daily mails
within a few miles of their doors.

The second year of prosperity had nearly ended,
when one morning a man from the settlements above
dashed rapidly past Mr. Sydney's house, turning in
his saddle to cry that the Cheyennes had been murdering
people up the river, and were now sweeping
on close behind him. The message of horror was
scarcely ended when the dusky cloud appeared in
sight, rioting in its tempest of death down the valley.
Midway between home and the house of her daughter,
Mrs. Sydney was overtaken by the yelling demons.
In vain the agonized husband pressed forward to the
rescue, firing rapidly with his carbine. She was
killed before his eyes, but not scalped, the Indians
evidently considering delay dangerous.

It is a fact that speaks volumes in illustration of
the mingled ferocity and cowardice that characterize
the wild Indians of to-day that, in all that terrible
Solomon massacre, not a single armed man who used
his weapon was harmed, nor was one house attacked.
The victims were composed entirely of the surprised
and the defenseless, overtaken at their work
and on the roads.

Passing the dead body of the mother, the Cheyennes,
on their wiry ponies, swept onward, like demon
centaurs, toward the home of the daughter. Sitting
by our fire at evening, with that dreary, fixed
look which one never forgets who has once seen it,
the young woman told us the story of her childless[240]
widowhood. Her face was one of those which, smitten
by sorrow, are stricken until death. Once evidently
comely, the smiles and warm flush had died
out from it forever—just as in the lapse of centuries
the colors fade from a painting. Though scarcely
twenty-five, her youth was but an image of the past.
She told her story in that mechanical, absent sort of
manner which showed that no morning had followed
the evening of that desolate day. She was still living
with her dead.

"The Lord gave me then a cup so bitter," she said,
"that its sting drove a mother's joy from my heart
forever. I have been at peace since, because, among
the dregs, I found that God had placed a diamond
for me to wear when I was wedded to him. Even then
I did not rebel and reproach my Maker, but I sunk
down with one loud cry, and it went right along to
the great white throne up there, with the spirits of
my husband and my babe. I thought I could see
them in the air, like two white doves flitting upward,
bearing with them, as part of our sacrifice, the cry
that I gave, when my heart-strings seemed to snap,
and I knew that I was a widow and childless. Perhaps
I was crazed for a moment, or—I do not know—perhaps
my spirit really did go with them part of the
way. The neighbors found me there for dead, and I
remained cold, till they brought in my dear babe, my
poor, mutilated babe, and placed him on my breast.
His warm blood must have woke me, and I sat up, and
saw them bringing John's body to lay it by me. And
then the whole scene came before me again, and it
seemed so stamped into my very brain, that shutting[241]
my eyes left me more alone with my murdered ones
and the murderers. And I just dragged myself where
I could look at the setting sun, and tried with its
bright glare to burn the scene from off my vision,
so that, if I went mad, there wouldn't be any memory
of it left. For mad people have their memories
and suffer from them, and they know it, and the very
fact that they know it keeps them mad. I went
through it all.