Greater Britain. Charles Wentworth Dilke
very nearly starved, having been unsuccessful in our shots from the “coach,” except, indeed, at the snakes.
On Thursday we passed Big Timber, the only spot on the plains where there are trees; and there the Indians had counted the trunks and solemnly warned the men against cutting more: “Fifty-two tree. You no cut more tree – no more cut. Grass! You cut grass; grass make big fire. You good boy – you clear out. Fifteen day, we come: you no gone – ugh!” The “ugh” accompanied by an expressive pantomime.
On Thursday evening we got a meal of buffalo and prairie dog, the former too strong for my failing stomach, the latter wholesome nourishment, and fit for kings – as like our rabbit in flavor as he is in shape. This was at the horse-station of “The Monuments,” a natural temple of awesome grandeur, rising from the plains like a giant Stonehenge.
On Friday we “breakfasted” at Pond Creek station, two miles from Fort Wallis. Here the people had applied for a guard, and had been answered: “Come into the fort; we can‘t spare a man.” So much for the value of the present forts; and yet even these – Wallis and Ellsworth – are 200 miles apart.
We were joined at breakfast by Bill Comstock, interpreter to the fort, – a long-haired, wild-eyed half-breed, – who gave us, in an hour‘s talk, the full history of the Indian politics that have led to the present war.
The Indians, to the number of 20,000, have been in council with the Washington Commissioners all this summer at Fort Laramie; and, after being clothed, fed, and armed, lately concluded a treaty, allowing the running on the mail-roads. They now assert that this treaty was intended to apply to the Platte road (from Omaha and Atchison through Fort Kearney), and to the Arkansas road, but not to the Smoky Hill road, which lies between the others, and runs through the buffalo country; but their real opposition is to the railroad. The Cheyennes (pronounced Shíans) have got the Camanches, Appaches, and Arrapahoes from the south, and the Sioux and Kiowas from the north, to join them in a confederation, under the leadership of Spotted Dog, the chief of the Little Dog section of the Cheyennes, and son of White Antelope, – killed at Sand Creek battle by the Kansas and Colorado Volunteers, – who has sworn to avenge his father.
Soon after leaving Pond Creek, we sighted at a distance three mounted “braves,” leading some horses; and when we reached the next station, we found that they had been there openly proclaiming that their mounts had been stolen from a team.
All this day we sat with our revolvers laid upon the mail-bags in front of us, and our driver also had his armory conspicuously displayed, while we swept the plains with many an anxious glance. We were on lofty rolling downs, and to the south the eye often ranged over much of the 130 miles which lay between us and Texas. To the north the view was more bounded; still, our chief danger lay near the boulders, which here and there covered the plains.
All Thursday and Friday we never lost sight of the buffalo, in herds of about 300, and the “antelope” – the prong-horn, a kind of gazelle – in flocks of six or seven. Prairie dogs were abundant, and wolves and black-tail deer in view at every turn.
The most singular of all the sights of the plains is the constant presence every few yards of the skeletons of buffalo and of horse, of mule and of ox; the former left by the hunters, who take but the skin, and the latter the losses of the mails and the wagon-trains through sunstroke and thirst. We killed a horse on the second day of our journey.
When we came upon oxen that had not long been dead, we found that the intense dryness of the air had made mummies of them: there was no stench, no putrefaction.
During the day I made some practice at antelope with the driver‘s Ballard; but an antelope at 500 yards is not an easy target. The driver shot repeatedly at buffalo at twenty yards, but this only to keep them away from the horses; the revolver balls did not seem to go through their hair and skin, as they merely shambled on in their usual happy sort of way, after receiving a discharge or two.
The prairie dogs sat barking in thousands on the tops of their mounds, but we were too grateful to them for their gayety to dream of pistol-shots. They are no “dogs” at all, but rabbits that bark, with all the coney‘s tricks and turns, and the same odd way of rubbing their face with their paws while they con you from top to toe.
With wolves, buffalo, antelope, deer, skunks, dogs, plover, curlew, dottrel, herons, vultures, ravens, snakes, and locusts, we never seemed to be without a million companions in our loneliness.
From Cheyenne Wells, where we changed mules in the afternoon, we brought on the ranchman‘s wife, painfully making room for her at our own expense. Her husband had been warned by the Cheyennes that the place would be destroyed: he meant to stay, but was in fear for her. The Cheyennes had made her cook for them, and our supper had gone down Cheyenne throats.
Soon after leaving the station, we encountered one of the great “dirt-storms” of the plains. About 5 P.M. I saw a little white cloud growing into a column, which in half an hour turned black as night, and possessed itself of half the skies. We then saw what seemed to be a waterspout; and, though no rain reached us, I think it was one. When the storm burst on us we took it for rain, and halting, drew down our canvas and held it against the hurricane. We soon found that our eyes and mouths were full of dust; and when I put out my hand I felt that it was dirt, not rain, that was falling. In a few minutes it was pitch dark, and after the fall had continued for some time, there began a series of flashes of blinding lightning, in the very center and midst of which we seemed to be. Notwithstanding this, there was no sound of thunder. The “norther” lasted some three or four hours, and when it ceased, it left us total darkness, and a wind which froze our marrow as we again started on our way. When Fremont explored this route, he reported that the high ridge between the Platte and Arkansas was notorious among the Indians for its tremendous dirt-storms. Sheet lightning without thunder accompanies dust-storms in all great continents; it is as common in the Punjab as in Australia, in South as in North America.
On Saturday morning, at Lake station, we got beyond the Indians, and into a land of plenty, or at all events a land of something, for we got milk from the station cow, and preserved fruits that had come round through Denver from Ohio and Kentucky. Not even on Saturday, however, could we get dinner, and as I missed the only antelope that came within reach, our supper was not much heavier than our breakfast.
Rolling through the Arrapahoe country, where it is proposed to make a reserve for the Cheyennes, at eight o‘clock on Saturday morning we caught sight of the glittering snows of Pike‘s Peak, a hundred and fifty miles away, and all the day we were galloping toward it, through a country swarming with rattlesnakes and vultures. Late in the evening, when we were drawing near to the first of the Coloradan farms, we came on a white wolf unconcernedly taking his evening prowl about the stock-yards. He sneaked along without taking any notice of us, and continued his thief-like walk with a bravery that seemed only to show that he had never seen man before; this might well be the case, if he came from the south, near the upper forks of the Arkansas.
All this, and the frequency of buffalo, I was unprepared for. I imagined that though the plains were uninhabited, the game had all been killed. On the contrary, the “Smoky district” was never known so thronged with buffalo as it is this year. The herds resort to it because there they are close to the water of the Platte River, and yet out of the reach of the traffic of the Platte road. The tracks they make in traveling to and fro across the plains are visible for years after they have ceased to use them. I have seen them as broad and as straight as the finest of Roman roads.
On Sunday, at two in the morning, we dashed into Denver; and as we reeled and staggered from our late prison, the ambulance, into the “cockroach corral” which does duty for the bar-room of the “Planters’ House,” we managed to find strength and words to agree that we would fix no time for meeting the next day. We expected to sleep for thirty hours; as it was, we met at breakfast at seven A.M., less than five hours from the time we parted. It is to-day that we feel exhausted; the exhilaration of the mountain air, and the excitement of frequent visits, carried us through yesterday. Dixon is suffering from strange blains and boils, caused by the unwholesome food.
We have been called upon here by Governor Gilpin and Governor Cummings, the opposition governors. The former is the elected governor of the State of Colorado which is to be, and would have