The Best Ballantyne Westerns. R. M. Ballantyne

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      CHAPTER SIX.

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      The great prairies of the “far west”—A remarkable colony discovered, and a miserable night endured.

      Of all the hours of the night or day the hour that succeeds the dawn is the purest, the most joyous and the best. At least so think we; and so think hundreds and thousands of the human family; and so thought Dick Varley, as he sprung suddenly into a sitting posture next morning, and threw his arms with an exulting feeling of delight round the neck of Crusoe, who instantly sat up to greet him.

      This was an unusual piece of enthusiasm on the part of Dick, but the dog received it with marked satisfaction, rubbed his big hairy cheek against that of his young master, and arose from his sedentary position in order to afford free scope for the use of his tail.

      “Ho! Joe Blunt! Henri! Up, boys, up! The sun will have the start o’ us. I’ll catch the nags.”

      So saying Dick bounded away into the woods with Crusoe gambolling joyously at his heels. Dick soon caught his own horse and Crusoe caught Joe’s. Then the former mounted and quickly brought in the other two.

      Returning to the camp he found everything packed and ready to strap on the back of the pack-horse.

      “That’s the way to do it, lad,” cried Joe. “Here Henri, look alive and git yer beast ready. I do believe yer goin’ to take another snooze!”

      Henri was indeed, at that moment, indulging in a gigantic stretch and a cavernous yawn, but he finished both hastily, and rushed at his poor horse as if he intended to slay it on the spot. He only threw the saddle on its back, however, and then threw himself on the saddle.

      “Now then, all ready?”

      “Ay,—oui, yis!”

      And away they went at full stretch again on their journey.

      Thus day after day they travelled, and night after night they laid them down to sleep under the trees of the forest, until at length they reached the edge of the Great Prairie.

      It was a great, a memorable day in the life of Dick Varley, that on which he first beheld the prairie,—the vast boundless prairie. He had heard of it, talked of it, dreamed about it, but he had never,—no, he had never realised it. ’Tis always thus. Our conceptions of things that we have not seen are almost invariably wrong. Dick’s eyes glittered, and his heart swelled, and his cheeks flushed, and his breath came thick and quick.

      “There it is,” he gasped, as the great rolling plain broke suddenly on his enraptured gaze; “that’s it—oh!—”

      Dick uttered a yell that would have done credit to the fiercest chief of the Pawnees, and, being unable to utter another word, he swung his cap in the air and sprang like an arrow from a bow over the mighty ocean of grass. The sun had just risen to send a flood of golden glory over the scene; the horses were fresh, so the elder hunters, gladdened by the beauty of all around them, and inspired by the irresistible enthusiasm of their young companion, gave the reins to the horses and flew after him. It was a glorious gallop, that first headlong dash over the boundless prairie of the “far west!”

      The prairies have often been compared, most justly, to the ocean. There is the same wide circle of space bounded on all sides by the horizon; there is the same swell, or undulation, or succession of long low unbroken waves that marks the ocean when it is calm; they are canopied by the same pure sky, and swept by the same untrammelled breezes. There are islands, too—clumps of trees and willow-bushes,—which rise out of this grassy ocean to break and relieve its uniformity; and these vary in size and numbers as do the isles of ocean—being numerous in some places, while in others they are so scarce that the traveller does not meet one in a long day’s journey. Thousands of beautiful flowers decked the green sward, and numbers of little birds hopped about among them.

      “Now, lads,” said Joe Blunt, reining up, “our troubles begin to-day.”

      “Our troubles! our joys, you mean!” exclaimed Dick Varley.

      “P’raps I don’t mean nothin’ o’ the sort,” retorted Joe. “Man wos never intended to swaller his joys without a strong mixtur’ o’ troubles. I s’pose he couldn’t stand ’em pure. Ye see we’ve got to the prairie now—”

      “One blind hoss might see dat!” interrupted Henri.

      “An’ we may or may not diskiver buffalo. An’ water’s scarce, too, so we’ll need to look out for it pretty sharp, I guess, else we’ll lose our horses, in which case we may as well give out at once. Besides, there’s rattlesnakes about in sandy places—we’ll ha’ to look out for them; an’ there’s badger holes—we’ll need to look sharp for them СКАЧАТЬ