Part 2

One there was in our company who, like Phil Robinson, of travel fame, remembered the principal places along the road by the game he had shot there. Here he had dropped a mallard or a red-head; there, upon that hillside he had made havoc among a covey of rock-partridge, in that grove secured the wild turkey, or, on the banks of that stream, he had brought down a deer, and on that plain had ridden down a buffalo. A good way this, no doubt, to remember the leading features, and special places through which our journey lay; but, unlike my fellow traveller, I recall now all the good spots for bathing. O, what joy it was, after a half, or full day's experience of dust and toil to plunge into the cooling, cleansing waters of spring or stream. O, the Platte! But I must not omit my pleasure in other waters. Now I see the waves of the Elkhorn, now those of the Big and the Little Laramie; and, now, through a fringe of long-leaved arrow-wood, the cold, deep waters of Horse Shoe Creek. One day as I bathed, Spotted Tail, the famous Sioux Chieftain, and his band of five hundred braves, passed along the banks of the Platte. Open mouth I stared at the wild cavalcade, and while wading ashore, I struck my foot against, as it proved to be upon examination, a great stone battleaxe. Perhaps it once belonged, at some remote period of time, to another great chief in that famed and haughty warrior's ancestry.

"A Gathering Storm"--the unbroken prairies! We are brought by this subject to grand phenomena. Heavens what piles of cloud, what solemn loneliness! The clouds--no wonder that the Indian of the plain has many a legend about them!

"Gloomy and dark art thou, O chief of the mighty Omahas; Gloomy and dark as the driving cloud whose name thou hast taken."

"Billowy bays of grasses ever rolling in shadow and sunshine."

Magnificent! But this imperfect little sketch cannot reveal the truth, can only suggest. Nowhere are the clouds more wonderful than when over, never is solitude more impressive than in the open prairies.

The clouds, the clouds! Yes, through many a twilight hour, I watched, lying upon the tufted prairie as the camp-fires died away, the clouds. Weird was the hectic flushing, the glow of the sheet lightning among the July and August cumuli. But these clouds in the sketch are filled with portent. Not only is the prairie darkened with the approach of night, but with the coming storm.

Here are two famous objects; famous, at least, in those days, not far apart, and following each other in the book--"The Court House," and "The Chimney Rock." Distinctly I remember the day on which we first sighted the latter--a pale blue shaft above the plain. We had just formed the last semi-circle of our noon corral and through its western opening was seen the Chimney, wavy through the haze that arose from the heated ground. It was my father who pointed it out to me. It afterwards seemed to us that the slow-going oxen would never reach it; or, rather, that they would never arrive at the point in the road opposite that natural curiosity; for the emigrant trail passed several miles to the northward of the low range of bluffs of which "the Chimney Rock" is a part. One evening several of our company tried to walk from our nearest camp to the terraced hills that formed the Chimney's base, but the distance proved too great. That was one of our first lessons in the deceptiveness of space--the distance to hills and mountains.

From the banks of Lawrence Creek, from where the sketch was made, the bluffs, and the Half-Way-Post, the name by which the Chimney is sometimes suggestively referred to, are most picturesque. Strings of wild ducks arose from the rushes of the creek side as our train approached.

"Scott's Bluffs" make a very different picture from those of the O'Fallen's. The sedimentary heights of the former, with their strong resemblance to walls and towers, are shown in the sketch rosy with the light of the rising sun. In the middle distance, in a little swale of the picture, is a train corralled, the still blue smoke rising in many a straight column from the morning camp-fires. In the foreground are sun-flowers, a buffalo-skull among them.

Ah! here is a sad, dark sketch--"Left by the Roadside." A tall, rank growth, and a low, half-sunken headboard are seen against the sky in which lingers yet a red flush of the twilight. Two or three stars shed their pale rays from afar, and one feels that the silence, is unbroken by even the faintest sigh of wind. But certainly there will come one soon, a long, shivering, almost moan-like sound, as the night wind begins to steal across the waste and gently stirs the prairie grass and flowers.

Yes, after those years it is the Human Comedy; it is the never-ending drama! It is the wonder of that which grows upon one. It is the desires, hopes, trials, pleasures, sorrows of the race! It is the remembered action that interests me in these sketches. The book is filled with the transcripts of once noted places, but my mind, as I look upon them, is filled with thoughts of men and women. It is those who passed among the scenes who are of interest now. I recall the Pioneers themselves. I think of them, filled with hope, yet anxious, eager to begin the new life that lay before them.

The action! The search for the Fountain of Youth, the desire for knowledge, the thirst for gold, these have led men into the wilds; it has taken them to brave unknown dangers in unknown lands. Yes, these, the Propaganda and the love of Freedom, but neither is stronger than the desire for Religious Liberty. Ponce de Leon in the Land of Flowers; Lewis and Clark making their way along the Oregon, the Catholic Fathers, the gold-seekers of California, and the Puritans of New England--these are our examples. And like the latter were the Pioneers who preceded us along our way. And our company, too, such it was that led them. Near the frontier I had looked into a deserted cabin--it revealed the ending of a drama. He who would have found the magic waters, the home and the gold-seeker left behind them many a lonely grave. The Propagandist, the Lover of Freedom left their bones in many an unknown spot. And the Pioneers? They, too, must leave their dead. He who built that deserted cabin had met with failure,--death was the end. But the seekers of Religious Liberty? Surely they must have found the greater consolation in the hour of trial; to them must have come more quickly the thought of peace.

Action! It is true; one might have become easily wearied of the monotonous trip. The shifting panorama might have become monotonous in its shifting. Monotonous, I mean, were it not for, I repeat the word--the action. The plains, the streams, the rocks, the hills, all became important because these led the way. Ever my thought is of the road.

Countless in numbers almost were the graves, on plain and mountain, those silent witnesses of death by the way. The mounds were to be seen in all imaginable places. Each day we passed them, singly or in groups, and sometimes, nay, often, one of our own company was left behind to swell the number. By the banks of streams, on grassy hillocks, in the sands, beneath groves of trees, or among piles of rock, the graves were made. We left the new mounds to be scorched by the sun, beaten upon by the tempests, or for beauty or desolation to gather around as it had about many of the older ones. Sometimes when we camped the old graves would be directly alongside the wagons. I recall sitting by one that was thickly covered with grass and without a headboard while I ate my evening meal, and of sleeping by it at night. One remains in my mind as a very soothing little picture, a child's grave; and it was screened around with a thicket of wild rose that leaned lovingly over it, while the mound itself was overgrown with bright, green moss. I fancied then that the parents of that child were they yet living, the mother, who, no doubt, had left that grave with such agony of heart, such blinding or tearless grief, would have liked, indeed, to have heard the sweet singing of the wild birds in the rose thicket, and have seen how daintily nature had decked that last bed of the loved one.

How painful were the circumstances attending the first burial in our train. A woman died one evening, we were about ten days out, just as the moon had risen over the prairies, and swiftly the tidings spread through the camp. Next morning, it was the Sabbath Day, she was buried, laid to rest on a low, grassy hill top near the banks of a stream. Never can I forget the grief of her children as the body of their mother was lowered into the ground. I can hear their cries yet, those cries that they gave, as they were led away, and their wagon departed with the rest. A network of stakes was placed across the grave to keep away the robber wolves; a short, short sermon was preached, a hymn was then sung, accompanied by the plaintive wailing of a clarinet, and prayer made to the services a solemn close.

That first death made a sad impression upon us. But after a while the burials from our company had become so frequent, that they lost much of their saddening power; or, rather, we refused to retain so deeply the sadness, throwing it off in self defense.

The outline which follows brings up a different train of thought--"Camp material abandoned after an attack by Indians." The ground is littered with all sorts of indescribable things. Panic is evident in the reckless tossing away of every kind of articles; anything to lighten the loads, so that the fear-struck emigrants could hurry forward. This was the train immediately preceding ours, and a couple of days later we passed one of those prairie letters--an ox-shoulder blade or skull--on which was written:

"Captain Chipman's train passed here August 14th, 1866. 8 deaths, 90 head of cattle driven away by the Indians. Great scare in camp."

Apropos of alarms from Indians there is a rapidly executed subject, from memory the next day, that brings back a night of peril and sorrow. It was on the western slope of the Black Hills, and there were four wagons of us belated from the general train. We were the last five on the right-wing, and the right-wing was the latter half of the train that night, so, practically, we were alone. There was a dead woman in the wagon next to ours, and to hear the weeping and sobbing of her little children, in the dark beside the corpse, was heart chilling. The poor husband trudged along on foot hurrying his single yoke of footsore cattle. Still we were far behind; liable at any moment to be cut-off by the prowling Sioux. That was a night to remember.

Here are two scenes among the Black Hills themselves, one is a very suggestive sketch showing rocks, timber-clad bluffs, and ragged peaks with the wagons of our train coming down a deep declivity into a dry torrent bed. Wild clouds are coming over the peaks threatening a stormy night. It appears that the wagons must topple over, end over end, so abrupt is the descent they are making. In the second sketch, made on the evening of the following day, the train is seen winding like a serpent over the hills. In the middle distance is a valley, partly obscured by mists, and beyond it Laramie Peak, purple against the sunset clouds and sky.

The night drives were among the most trying experiences upon the Overland Journey. Usually they were made necessary to us from the drying up of some spring or stream where we had expected to make our evening camp, and the consequent lack of water for the people as well as cattle, so that we must move forward. Our worst drive of this kind was to reach the La Prelle River after leaving Fort Laramie, Saint John's, on the night which followed the making of the first of the two sketches just mentioned. Wildly the lightnings glared, their livid tongues licked the ground beside us. The road was deluged in the downpour of rain; and what with the sudden flashes of light, the crashing of thunder, the poor cattle were quite panic-stricken. It was hard work to make the poor brutes face the storm. Yet, after all, their sagacity was greater than ours. Several times we would have driven them over the edge of a precipice had not their keener senses warned them back. We would have shuddered, so our Captain afterwards told us, could we have seen where the tracks of our wagon wheels were made that night.

Yes, to the emigrant company of those days, the drying up of a stream was often of serious import. Water enough might have been carried to quench the thirst of human beings, but what of the many cattle? The ox that suffers too much from thirst becomes a dangerous animal. Let him scent in the distance the coveted water, and who shall curb his strength? How nearly we met with disaster from this same cause. Almost useless were the brakes; how fiercely the thirst tortured animals strained at their yokes. It was a pitiful sight, and as we approached the broken, boulder-strewn edge of the stream, our position was somewhat dangerous. No less dangerous was the task of removing the yokes from the impatient creatures, and of unloosing the chains.

I try to recall my diary, for I did keep a diary. I did not find it among the old relics where was hidden the sketch-book, and the chances are that long since it has been destroyed, perhaps fed to the flames. In spite of slightness it must have contained many an interesting fact about "The Journey." But I cannot recall a word. The events which gave rise to its entries grow fresh in my mind, but the wording of the matter itself is gone. I know it contained the data which would give the exact number of hours in which we were upon the road, and that I would like to know. I remember writing about Scott's Bluffs, and how they received their name. One fancied that he could see the wounded trapper, abandoned and dying alone, and wondered if he crawled down from the bluffs, and along the way we were travelling. And which was the spot, too, where, at last, his bones were found. There was something, too, about the gathering of buffalo chips, and the seeking of firewood. On the latter quest, what lonely spots we did visit! One comes to my mind at this moment. How weirdly the wind choired in the ancient cedars, and how very old appeared the boulders with their mottling of lichens, and with what a dismal yelp a ragged coyote leaped from his lair and scampered down a rock-strewn gully! It was tantalizing at times to keep to the road. How could one resist the temptation to throw off restraint, and, putting all prudence aside, wander or go galloping on horseback away over hill and through dale? What if the redman did lie in the path? He could be a brother. O, but to be like the Indian; to live wild and free, to be "iron-jointed, supple-sinewed, to hurl our lances in the sun!"

This, of course, was on those days when, having taken "the winds and sunshine into our veins," we felt stirred within us the instincts of primal man. At other times we were sober-minded enough. The romance of being out in the wilds was terribly chilled by an inclement sky. A few days of drizzling rain tried the most ardent spirit. Then it was that the disagreeableness of the time made the true metal of the emigrant show itself. Whatever traits of character he possessed--selfishness, senseless fault-finding, or those rare qualities of kindness, cheerful content, and ready helpfulness--all come out. In Mark Tapley's own phrase, it was all very well to "come out strong" when by the warm glow of the flames or when moving along with the bright blue sky above us, but it was quite another task to remain cheerful when the incessant rain made impossible even the smallest or most sheltered of camp-fires, and one crept into his bed upon the ground with wet clothes and with flesh chilled to the bone, without even the solace of a cup of hot tea or coffee.

Hardly less trying were the days of dust-storms. What misery it was when the wind blew from the front and the whole cloud of dust raised by over three hundred yoke of cattle, and the motion of sixty-five wagons drove in our faces! How intolerably our eyes and our nostrils burned, and how quickly our ears were filled with the flying sand or alkali!

I should like to read once more, those diary entries. Was there anything written, I wonder, about those silhouettes upon the hills? What did it tell, if anything, about the alarm that was spread through our Company? Had we--the unlearned--known more about the ways of the Indian we would have realized that they--those shadows--were no Sioux. Yet it was disturbing to the unknowing to see those figures, those mysteriously moving horsemen of the night. Thank heaven! It was but our own scouting herdsmen. But for once, to those assembled within the corral centre, O, how too long seemed the hymn, and even the prayer! How impatient we were to know the truth.

In "The Cedar Bluffs" the wagons that are sketched corralled are not our own. They comprised a small freight train, and right glad would they have been to, and most likely they did, creep along, as it were, in our wake. There were no women or children in that train, its members were all of the daring "freighter." These were men willing to meet with any danger. Perhaps there might be among them men inexperienced, but they must have possessed intrepid hearts. Rough of the rough, but daring they certainly were. Woe to that little band if later they met the Sioux. It would mean, for them, annihilation. What rude pranks the Indian did sometimes play! The Sioux or Cheyenne, he would take bales of bright stuffs which he sometimes found in the freighters' wagons, fasten one end of it to his pony and let the hundred yards unravel and flaunt on the winds as wildly he dashed across the plain. There was a brutally comic side to the character of the western Indian.

A brutal side! Yes, and there was often a comic side to the white man's fear. Well, indeed, a friend of mine has told it. Twelve young men comprised a company; two wagons and six yoke of oxen made up their outfit. That certainly was taking their risks in those perilous times! Yet they were unmolested. Once, indeed, they thought themselves at the mercy of the Sioux; as truly, in another way they were. Death and the scalping-knife appeared their lot. But it was all a hoax. What had been taken for the painted savage was but a party of whites with blankets over their heads to keep away the rain. Taking into consideration the really dangerous position of the little band, there was a tragic-farcical touch in their list of arms. My friend's sole means of defense was a butcher-knife some six inches long.

But in a later adventure, so he told me, the farcical part was left out. That was an experience in which, if the tragedy was also wanting, there was a most severe test upon his nerves. He had left the camp, taking a fowling piece with him, and he wandered along a stream. He had just taken sight upon a skein of wild fowl, and was about to fire, when suddenly a band of Indians came from behind a bank, and in another instant the shot would have been among them. But luckily he had not pulled the trigger. However his attitude, the pointed gun made him an object of suspicion. The Indians were upon the war-path, but not with the whites just then. My friend was surrounded, and he must explain to the satisfaction of the savages who he was, and why he was there. He was finally released, however, upon proof that he was from a camp of whites near by. But all the same it was an ordeal to stand surrounded by those painted savages, scalps dangling from their pony saddles. And it was one that the actor therein would not have cared to repeat.

It did produce upon one a disturbing sensation; that knowledge, I mean, of how often the eyes of ambushed Indians might be fixed upon one. And the wild animals, too! From the distance they watched. Herds of buffalo, perhaps, or of deer, looked upon our moving train from the plateau tops. Beyond the flaming yellow sun-flowers, amid the bright red of the rocky hills, the Sioux was often concealed. His face was painted of the same gaudy colors, and he looked with blood lust upon us. We knew not when this might be; yet that it was always possible gave a sort of aspect of menace to the bluffs and hills along the way.

Many a time had Captain Holladay with his natural caution gained from experience; his sagacity and knowledge, given a timely warning. The girls must not be led too far by their passion for the gathering of flowers. How often had the desire to possess some especially beautiful or brilliant, some alluring bunch of desert bloom tempted them beyond the lines of safety. Especially true was this among the Black Hills and the mountain ranges, too, beyond them. There was danger, also, in the going for water, the dipping places were often at quite a distance from the camp. How terrible an example was that which occurred in one of the trains which crossed the Hills the year before our own. It was on the banks of the La Bonte River. A band of five Sioux suddenly dashed out from amid a clump of trees on the river bank, and carried away, beyond all hope of rescue, one of two girls who had rashly gone too far down the stream. The train remained at the river for a period of three days, the Indians were pursued for many miles, but it was all in vain. The young husband never saw his young wife again. One of the young women was slightly in advance of the other, and those few steps made this difference, that one was lost, the other saved. And the young woman who escaped was the writer's sister.

Something of all the passions; something of all the passions--joy, love, hope, fear, and the others, too, must have been recorded in the pages of that diary. Or, rather, there should have been had the youthful writer of those pages put down upon them what he once actually looked upon, as now he recalls them mentally. They must have told, too, how a foe even stronger than the Sioux, one not to be gainsaid, took away a sister at last. We took the oaken wagon seats to make her little coffin. Did it tell how we laid her away to rest; after those days of suffering, when she was carried by turns in our arms, to save her what pain we could; did it tell, then, how she was laid beneath the cottonwoods, where ripple the waters of the Laramie, and how the soil was hardly replaced in the grave ere we must depart? Did it tell of the wild night of storm and darkness, through which later we passed? The remainder of "The Journey" was for us, darkened by that ever-remembered tragedy.

Love, upon "The Journey"--O it was sure to come! Where will not love follow, where is it not to be found? Coquettishly the sun-bonnet may be worn; coquettishly the sun-flower may be placed at the waist, or the cactus bloom amid the dark-brown hair. By what strange and circuitous routes are lovers brought to meet! Through what strange and unforseen circumstances does love begin! In our Company were there not those maidens who could still walk coquettishly and with grace, although it was their truthful boast that their feet had measured each mile of the lengthened way? Were there not those in whose red cheeks the prairie sun kissed English blood? The man from the west, why should he not learn to love that beauty from Albion's Isle?