Memoirs of Orange Jacobs. Orange Jacobs

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ understand him. I told him that we would give them plenty to eat, with blankets upon which they could sleep, and that we would part as friends in the morning. I told him further that if the Indians attacked us that night he and the two young chiefs would be killed. I told him that he could control the Indians, and that we required him to do it. All of this was said to him in a most positive and emphatic manner, and he communicated it to the younger chiefs. I asked him what so many Indians, all armed, had come away from their villages and to the boundary of their country for? He said the Indians had no bad feelings towards the horse-train, but they had come to make the cow-train pay for the killed and wounded in the fight at Loup Fork. He said that they did not expect to find us with the cow-train. Certain it is, that every circumstance pointed to the conclusion that had not our train been present, the Hopkins train would have been compelled to contribute largely, or would have had another fight more disastrous, perhaps, than the first. The night was made hideous by the almost constant yelling of the Indians. I remained up until eleven, when I retired, worn out and with an acute attack of neuralgic head-ache. After a time I slept or dozed, notwithstanding the uproar. The doctor also had gone to his wagon. The first lieutenant was in command. About three o'clock he came to my wagon, and requested me to get up; he feared, he said, an attack. The Indians, he informed me, were already approaching us. I found that the warriors had left the strip of timber on the river and were within one hundred yards of our picket-line. I went around the camp and found nearly everyone awake and up. I then went with the lame chief and his guard to the picket-line. I told him to tell the Indians, that they must not come any nearer. The chief began to speak immediately and continued to talk for two minutes or more; and while we did not understand what he said, the tumult ceased, and from thence on, comparative quiet prevailed. In the morning we gave our hostages a good breakfast and presented them with a cow brute so lame that it could not travel farther. I saw it killed. An Indian with a strong, and to me almost inflexible bow, threw himself on his back, holding the steel or iron-pointed arrow with both hands against the string of the bow, and with his feet springing it sent the arrow deep into the heart of the animal, which fell at his feet. This was the first exhibition I had ever seen of the power of the bow as a weapon and life-extinguisher. At short range, with a cool nerve, with a full quiver, a person thus armed would be a dangerous foe.

      We got an early start the next morning. We bade our hostages good-bye without regret, and entered onto the land of the Sioux with hopeful satisfaction. We journeyed full twenty miles that day, and camped on a treeless plain with good water and plenty of grass, but no wood save buffalo chips. This want of wood was to continue for hundreds of miles. It was amusing at first, to see the ladies handle the buffalo chips. They literaly cooked with their gloves on. But the principle announced by the poet soon asserted itself:

      "Vice is a monster of so frightful mien,

       As to be hated, needs but to be seen;

       Yet seen too oft, familiar with her face,

       We first endure, then pity, then embrace."

      I do not mean to say that they embraced this fuel; only that they used it as they would other fuel—simply obeying a law of necessity and enduring it.

      This morning we parted from the Hopkins train, got an early start and made a late camp over twenty miles away.

      Early in the commencement of our jurney to the sunset land, I organized a hunting party of four good shots, two of whom I was personally acquainted with and knew that they were well qualified for their position; the other two were chosen on the recommendation of their acquaintances and friends. This selection turned out to be not only harmonious, but a fit and proper one. They organized by the election of the doctor and myself as alternate captains, expecting that one of us would accompany them on each day's hunt. The work was exciting, with a dash of danger in it, and was arduous. Heretofore there had been no opportunity for the proof of their skill. This day, having determined from our guide-book where to camp, I accompanied them to the hills. Shortly after noon the hunters came across a small herd of buffalo in a gully where there was a little pool of seepage water, and succeeded in killing two—one a yearling, the other a barren cow. I was not in at the killing, but I succeeded soon after in ending the swift-bounding career of a fine antelope. We cut the meat from the carcass of the two buffalo and placed it in sacks or rather strong saddle-bags made for that purpose. The bones, neck and horns, save tongue, as well as the hide, were left to be more thoroughly cleaned and devoured by wolves, the ever-ready scavengers of the plains. My trophy of this day's hunt, minus the head and neck, was strapped to the saddle of my horse, and thus by her, grudgingly, borne into camp; but she became accustomed to such work, and protested only at the stinging tightness of the cinch. This was our first ration of fresh meat since crossing the Missouri River. The meat was a treat, fat, juicy and tender. Two days after this the hunters, accompanied by the doctor, at an early hour started for the hills. They returned in the early evening, each with an antelope on his saddle. They saw plenty of buffalo, but could not approach them sufficiently near to get an effective shot. The meat of the antelope, while not as rich and juicy as that of the buffalo, is in the spring of the year, when the grass is green, sweet and tender. It is of much finer grain than that of the buffalo; and the animal is more select in his appetite, eating only the finer grass, with a delicate flavoring of the finest sage, which in many cases was quite distinguishable. I remember that not many years ago the choicest beeves were steers fattened on the rich and luxuriant bunch-grass of the hills, which a week or ten days before marketing were driven to and herded in the valleys where the small sage abounds. They ate it not as a matter of first choice, but of necessity. Such beef, to the epicures, was the realization of a long-felt want.

      The work of the hunters was strenuous, and as a partial compensation for their longer hours, and the beneficent results of the successful work by them, they were excused from guard-duty in the night. To this all agreed.

      On the second day after the doctor's debut as a hunter, I accompanied the hunters to the hills. We did not find game plentiful, but we occasionally caught the glimpse of an antelope bounding away out of range. The day was excessively hot. Late in the afternoon, however, the hunters started a large buffalo bull from the channel of a dry creek, he ran up the channel towards me; and as he attempted to pass me a few rods away, I fired and struck him in the heart, and he staggered, lunged and fell. This was my first buffalo, and I was, of course, elated with my luck. The hunters would probably have killed him had it not been for my fortunate intervention, for they were in close pursuit on the higher plateau on either side, and were fast converging towards him. He could have scarcely run in safety, the gauntlet of four such expert riflemen. As it was, however, the honor was mine. The pelt or robe was large and very fine, but we were compelled to leave it and the stripped bones to be devoured by the waiting wolves. From thence on until we crossed the Rocky Mountains, we had a liberal supply of fresh meat, consisting of antelope, buffalo, a few deer, three elk, one brown bear, and one bighorn Rocky Mountain sheep, or goat.

      So far as travel was concerned, each day was but the tiresome repetition of the preceding one, with very slight variations. When we arrived at Fort Laramie we stopped for some three or four hours. We crossed the river and made a friendly visit to the officers of the fort. We found them to be true American soldiers and gentlemen. The commandant told us that he had heard of the Pawnee difficulty, and had sent an officer and a squad of soldiers to enquire into the affair. He was very anxious to hear from us a statement of the whole matter. I gave him as full a statement as I was able to, and both of us were of the opinion that it was precipitated by the want of proper discipline and control of the men in the train. This may not be very flattering to the white men, but it is the truth, notwithstanding.

      I am not a military man, but I was not impressed with the idea that Laramie, surrounded as it is by an amphitheatre of commanding hills, was a fit site for a fort. As against an enemy with modern artillery, I thought it to be hopelessly defenceless. As against Indians it possibly might do. But then, I knew nothing of Plevna, similarly situated, and so heroically defended by the Turks against a superior and well-equipped Russian army.

      Leaving Fort Laramie, we СКАЧАТЬ