Buffalo Land Part 20

THE STAGE DRIVERS OF THE PLAINS--OLD BOB--"JAMAICA AND GINGER"--AN OLD ACQUAINTANCE--BEADS OF THE PAST--ROBBING THE DEAD--A LEAF FROM THE LOST HISTORY OF THE MOUND BUILDERS--INDIAN TRADITIONS--SPECULATIONS--ADOBE HOUSES IN A RAIN--CHEAP LIVING--WATCH TOWERS.

The stage drivers of the plains are rapidly becoming another inheritance of the past, pushed out of existence by the locomotive, whose cow-catcher is continually tossing them from their high seats into the arms of History. What a rare set they are, though! No two that I ever saw were nearly alike, and they resemble not one distinctive cla.s.s, but a number. The Jehus who crack their whips over the buffalo gra.s.s region, and turn their leaders artistically around sharp corners in rude towns, are made up on a variety of patterns. Some are loquacious and others silent, and while a portion are given to profanity, another though smaller number are men of very proper grammar. Some with whom I have ridden would discount truth for the mere love of the exercise, while others I have found so particular that they could not be induced to lie, except when it was for their interest to do so.

In a village on the sh.o.r.es of Lake Champlain, in the frozen regions of northern New York, where mercury becomes solid in November, and remains so until May, I got on intimate terms, when a boy, with a stage driver.

During the long winters the coaches were placed on sleds, and well do I remember the style in which "Old Bob," as he was universally called, would come dashing into the town on frosty mornings, winding uncertain tunes out of a bra.s.s horn, given him years before by a General Somebody, of the State Militia. In front of the long-porched tavern, the leaders would push out to the left, in order to give due magnificence to the right hand circle, which deposited the coach at the bar room door.

Bearish in fur, and sour in face, Bob would then roll from the seat, rush up to the bar, and for the first time open his mouth, to e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.e, "Jamaica and ginger!" The fiery draught would thaw out his tongue, as hot water does a pump, and after that it was easy work to pump him dry of any and all news on the line above.

That was many years ago, and in a spot half a continent away. One morning, while at Sheridan, I heard the blast of a horn up the street, whose notes awakened echoes which had long lain dead and buried in boyhood's memory. A moment more, and out from an avenue of saloons the overland stage rattled, and on its box sat the friend of my childhood, "Old Bob." He had the identical horn, and it was the identical tune, which I had so often heard in the by-gone years, the only difference being that both were cracked, and the lungs behind the mouth-piece, touched by the winters of sixty-odd, wheezed a little. As the coach came to the door, I jumped up by the "boot," and grasping the old fellow's hand, introduced myself. Old Bob rubbed his eyes, which were weak and watery, and scanned me closely.

"Well, well, lad," he said, "your face takes me now, sure enough. I mind your father and mother well, and you're the little rascal that stole my whip once, when I was thawing out with Jamaica and ginger. Did you tell me by the old tune? You did, eh? Well, truth is, lad, the horn won't blow any other. It's got to running in that groove, and when I try to coax any thing new out, it sets off so that it frightens the horses."

The coach was now ready for starting, and, as he gathered up the reins, my friend of auld lang syne called out to me, "When you get back to York State, if you see any Rouse's Point people that ask for Old Bob, tell them he doesn't take any Jamaica and ginger now. Tell them he's out on the plains, tryin' to get back some of the life the cussed stuff burnt out of him." And away the stage coach rattled, and soon was out of hearing.

Next day's down stage brought intelligence that Bob's coach had been attacked by Indians, but the old fellow had handled his lines right skillfully, and brought mails and pa.s.sengers through in safety.

Our last day at Sheridan, for the Professor, was marked by two important events, namely: a communication from the living present, and another from the dead past. The first came, as the postmark showed, by way of Lindsey, on the Solomon river. The Professor said it was simply an answer to some scientific inquiries, but, to our intense amus.e.m.e.nt, he blushed like a school-girl when Sachem bluntly remarked that the handwriting was feminine, and that the scientific information in question must certainly be contraband, as it was not offered for our benefit at all.

A geologist in love is a phenomenon. The dusty museum is no place for Cupid. In his flights, the mischievous boy is apt to hit his head against fossil lizards, and his darts are intercepted by skulls which were petrified before he ever wandered through Paradise and tried his first barb on poor Adam. The atmosphere which inwraps the geologist comes from an unlovable age, in which monstrosities existed only by virtue of their expertness in devouring other monstrosities. No stray spark of love-light flickered, even for an instant, over that waste of waters and gigantic ferns.

It was apparent that science would suffer, unless the Solomon river was included in our homeward route. We had examined the heart of Buffalo Land, having traversed its center from east to west, and our party was disposed to oblige the Professor by returning along the northern border.

Southward two hundred miles was the Arkansas, flowing near the southern limit of the buffalo region. While there were some reasons why we desired to visit it, and though it was, perhaps, equally rich in game, it promised nothing of greater interest, upon the whole, than the district we now proposed traversing. But of this more in the next chapter.

Toward evening came our introduction to what we were pleased to imagine was a beauty of the past, which happened thus: As we were wandering among the Mexican teamsters loafing around the depot, an urchin, with half a shirt and very crooked legs, ran up to us, and exclaimed, over a half masticated morsel of cheese, "Mister, there's a bufferler!" His crumby fingers pointed in a direction midway between the horizon and a Mexican donkey, which its owner was trying to drag across the valley, and there, true enough, on the side of a brown ridge, not a mile off, we saw the game, feeding as usual.

Here was a chance for horseback hunting again, which we had not attempted for several days. And what a splendid opportunity of showing the natives how well we could do the thing! Our wagons had groaned under the burden of pelts and meats with which we had loaded them, and we were suffering just then from that dangerous confidence which first success is so apt to inspire.

Half the pleasure of hunting, if sportsmen would but confess it, consists in showing one's trophies to others. It was not at all surprising, therefore, that the send-off found two-thirds of our force in the field. The day was warm, and, though the hunters ran far and fast, the bison went still further and faster, and escaped. He led us, however, to greater spoil than his own tough carca.s.s; for underneath the sod which his hoofs spurned, lay a treasure which glittered as temptingly to geological eyes as gold to the miner, when first struck by his prospecting pick.

The Professor trotted out of town with becoming dignity, following the hunters merely to avail himself of their protection, while examining the ridges around. A mile out, the heat and his rough-paced nag proved too much for him, and he threw himself upon the ground for a rest. Lying there, watching idly the little insects wandering about, his attention was attracted to a colony of burrowing ants, who, with a hole in the earth half an inch in diameter, were continually coming up, rolling before them small grains of sand and pebbles, the latter obtained far below, and a small mound of them already showing the extent of their patient labors. The Professor began to mark more closely the tiny builders, imagining that he could distinguish one of the citizens going down, and recognize him again as he came up again with his burden from below.

Occasionally, it seemed to the observant savan, something blue was brought out, which glittered more than sand. Looking closer, he discovered that the shining particles were beads of some bright substance, and resembling exactly those worn by the Indians of to-day.

It thrilled him, as if he had been brought face to face with the far-off ages, when the world was young. Beneath, evidently, lay the dead of some forgotten tribe, and horse and man were resting upon a place of sepulcher. There was no mound to mark the spot, and if any ever existed, the seasons of ages had obliterated it. The savage races which now roam the plains never bury their dead, but lay the bodies on scaffolds, or hang them in trees. And so these little ants, robbing the graves far beneath us, were bringing to our gaze, on a bright summer day in the Nineteenth Century, the mysteries of ages already h.o.a.ry with antiquity when Columbus first saw our sh.o.r.es.

We found ourselves wondering to what race the hidden dead belonged, and whether the unpictured maidens of those days were pleasant to look upon, or true ancestors of the hideous and unromantic creatures who, with their savage lords, now roam the plains. Thinking of the tribes of the past brought those of the present to mind, and, not wishing to have our hair presented as tribute to some maiden wooed by treacherous Cheyenne, we turned our horses' heads homeward, bringing the beads with us, safely deposited in one of our entomologist's pocket-cases. They remain among the trophies of our expedition, and Mr. Colon has lately written me that he will have an excavation made, during the present year, at the spot where they were found.

These beads, I can not but think, form one link in a chain connecting an ancient people, perhaps the mound-builders, with the savage tribes of the present. There is a tradition among some of the Western Indians that, centuries ago, a people, different in language and form from the red men, came from over the seas to trade beads for ponies. The buffaloes were then larger, and the climate warmer, than now.

Dissensions finally arose, in which the strangers were killed. Is there not reason to believe that this tradition gives us a glimpse of the time when some of the large mammals still existed on the plains, and the genial sun looked down upon pastures clothed in rich vegetation--a time and region, probably, of perennial summer?

Once, during our stay in Kansas, we were directed by a hunter to a spot where he had seen portions of an immense skeleton, and there found one vertebra only remaining of a mastodon. It afterward transpired that, shortly before our trip, some Indians had pa.s.sed Fort Dodge with the large bones lashed on their ponies, taking them to a medicine-lodge on the Arkansas, to be ground up into good medicine. They stated that the bones belonged to one of the big buffaloes which roamed over the plains during the times of their fathers. At that period, the Happy Hunting Ground was on earth, but was afterward removed beyond the clouds by the Great Spirit, to punish his children for bad conduct.

Many reasons, besides dim traditions, exist for the belief that those mysterious nations whose paths we have been able to trace from the Atlantic west, and from the Pacific east, pushed inward until they met in the middle of the continent. The numerous mounds in the Western States, with the curious weapons and vessels which they contain, show that the nations then existing, and migrating toward the interior, were not only powerful but essentially unlike our modern Indians. To instance but one ill.u.s.tration of this, there are near t.i.tusville, Pa., ancient oil wells, which bear unmistakable evidences of having been dug and worked by the mound-builders. Thus they speculated in oil, which of itself is a token of high civilization.

Coming east from the Pacific coast, we find existing on the very edge of the desolate interior extensive ruins of ancient cities, of whose builders even tradition gives no account. By these and other remains which the gnawing tooth of Time has still spared to us, the people of those days tell us that they were full of commercial energy; and who knows but they may have been as determined as our nation has ever been, to push trade across from ocean to ocean? It is highly probable also that the Indians of the interior were then far superior to the present tribes, as seems very fairly determined by many of the traditions and customs which obtain among the latter.

In view of the foregoing considerations, it is not remarkable that the beads, denoting, as they did, a place and manner of burial unlike that of the savages of the plains, interested us so much. It was a leaf, we could not but think, from the lost history of the mound-builders.

A noticeable feature of life on the plains is the sod-house, there called an adobe, from some resemblance to the Mexican structures of sun-dried brick. The walls of these primitive habitations are composed of squares of buffalo-gra.s.s sod, laid tier upon tier, roots uppermost. A few poles give support for a roof, and on these some hay or small brush is laid. Then comes a foot of earth, and the covering is complete. When well-constructed, these houses are water-proof, very warm in winter, and cool in summer; but when the eaves have been made too short to protect the walls, the latter are liable to dissolve under a heavy shower.

During a sudden rain at Sheridan, being obliged to turn out early one morning to protect some goods, we discovered that the neighboring habitation had resolved itself into a mound of dirt, resembling somewhat a tropical ant-hill. We were still gazing at the ruins, when the owner, clad in the brief garment of night-wear, came spluttering through the roof, like a very dirty gnome discharged by a mud-volcano. While he stood there in the rain, letting the falling flood cleanse him off, he remarked, in a manner that for such an occasion was certainly rather dry--"Lucky that houses are dirt-cheap here, stranger, for I reckon this one 's sort o' washed!"

A person of small capital, as may readily be inferred, can live very comfortably on the plains. His house may be built without nail or board, and his meat may be obtained at no other expense than the trouble of shooting it.

We saw many wooden buildings at the different stage stations, which had subterranean communications with little sod watch-towers, rising a couple of feet above the ground, at a distance of forty or fifty yards from the main building. Loop-holes through their walls afforded opportunities for firing, and if the wooden stations were burned, the occupants could find a secure retreat. We heard of but one occasion in which the tower was ever used, but then it was most effectively, the savages, gathered close around the main building, being surprised and put to sudden flight, by the murderous fire which seemed to spring out of the ground at their rear.

CHAPTER XXVII.

OUR PROGRAMME CONCLUDED--FROM SHERIDAN TO THE SOLOMON--FIERCE WINDS--A TERRIFIC STORM--SHAMUS' b.l.o.o.d.y APPARITION AND INDIAN WITCH--A RECONNOISSANCE--AN INDIAN BURIAL GROVE--A CONTRACTOR'S DARING AND ITS PENALTY--MORE VAGABONDIZING--JOSE AT THE LONG BOW--THE "WILD HUNTRESS'" COUNTERPART--SHAMUS TREATS US TO "CHILE"--THE RESULT.

"Gentlemen," said the Professor, next morning, at breakfast, "We have well-nigh exhausted Buffalo Land. North of us some twenty miles, the upper waters of the Solomon may be reached. I believe that district to be rich in fossils; it is also interesting as the path over which the red men have so often swept on their missions of murder. The valley winds eastward and southward during its course, and will discharge us at Solomon City, a point well back on our homeward journey. There our expedition may fitly disband. Should it be considered desirable, during the coming year, to explore the wild territories of the north-west, we can meet at such place as may be designated. What say you?"

Our response was a unanimous vote in favor of accepting the programme thus sketched out. Some of us desired the trip, and all knew that the Professor would go at any rate.

Our path lay over the same undulating plain that we had been traversing for many weeks, the wind blowing fiercely in our teeth. The violent movement of the air over this vast surface is often unpleasant, and during a severe winter is more dangerous than the intense cold of the far north, as it penetrates through the thickest clothing. The winter of 1871-2, when numbers of hunters and herders were frozen to death, ill.u.s.trated this to a painful degree. The months of December and January are usually mild, and no precautions were taken. On the morning of the most fatal day, it was raining; in the afternoon, the wind veered and blew cold from the north, the rain changing to sleet, and this, in turn, to snow so blinding that objects became invisible at the distance of a few feet.

After the storm, near Hays City, five men belonging to a wood-train were found frozen to death. They had unloaded a portion of their wood, and endeavored to keep up a fire, but the fierce wind blew the flames out, s.n.a.t.c.hing the coals from the logs, and flinging them into darkness. The men seized their stores of bacon and piled them upon fresh kindling, but even the inflammable fat was quenched almost instantly. One of another party, who finally escaped the same sad fate, by finding a deserted dugout, said it seemed as if invisible spirits seized the tongues of flame and carried them, like torches, out into the awful blackness.

Thousands of Texas cattle perished during that storm. One herder, in order to save his life, cut open a dying ox, and, after removing the entrails, took his place inside the warm carca.s.s.

We noted a curious incident, relative to the wind's fantastic freaks on the plains, while at Sheridan. One day, during the prevalence of a north wind, we observed all the old papers, cards, and other light rubbish which ornament a frontier town, moving off to the south like flocks of birds. Two days afterward, the wind changed, and the refuse all came flying back again, and pa.s.sed on to the northward.

On the first evening of our homeward journey from Sheridan, we encamped on what appeared to be a small tributary of the upper Solomon. While the tents were being pitched, and the necessary provisions unloaded, Shamus strolled toward a clump of trees half a mile off, in hopes of securing a wild turkey to add to his stores. He soon came running back in a great fright, to tell us that, as he was pa.s.sing among the trees, the black pacer of the plains, with its b.l.o.o.d.y master in the saddle, had started out of a bottom meadow just beyond, and fled away into the gloom. This was a sufficiently ghostly tale in itself, but it was not all; Shamus further averred that as he turned to fly, he saw a hideous Indian witch swinging to and fro in a tree directly before him. The spot was unwholesome, he a.s.sured us, and he urged instant removal.

It seemed evident that our cook had some foundation for his fears, as his terror was too great and his account too circ.u.mstantial for the matter to be simply one of an excited imagination. If there were Indians close by, it was necessary that we should know it at once, and avoid the danger of an attack at dawn. We organized a reconnoissance immediately, and, six men strong, moved toward the timber. Scattering as much as possible, that concealed savages might not have the advantage of a bunch-shot, we cautiously reached the border of the trees, and entered their shadows. We breathed more freely; if tree-fighting was to be indulged in, we now had an equal chance. It is a trying experience, reader, to advance within range of a supposed ambuscade, and the moment when one reaches the cover unharmed is a blessed one. The logs and stumps which seemed so hideous, when death was thought to be crouching behind, suddenly glow with friendship, and one is glad to know that he can hug such friends, should danger glare out from the bushes ahead.

As we walked forward, Shamus' witch suddenly appeared before us. It was the body of a papoose, fastened in a tree.

The spot was evidently an Indian burying-ground. The corpse had been loosened by the wind, and now rocked back and forth, staring at us. It was dried by the air into a shriveled deformity, rendered doubly grotesque by the beads and other articles with which it had been decked when laid away. We had neither time nor inclination to explore the grove for other bodies, preferring our supper and our blankets. As Shamus stoutly held to the story of the phantom pacer, we were forced to conclude that some stray Indian, from motives of either curiosity or reverence, had been visiting the grove when frightened out of it by our cook. In the gathering gloom, a red shirt or blanket would have answered very well for b.l.o.o.d.y garments.

These burial spots are held in high reverence by the Indians, and their hatred of the white man receives fresh fuel whenever the latter chops down the sacred trees for cord-wood. On one occasion, a contractor destroyed a burial grove, a few miles above Fort Wallace, to supply the post with fuel. The first blow of the axe had scarcely fallen upon the tree, when some Indians who chanced to be in the neighborhood sent word that the desecrator would be killed unless he desisted. Messages from the wild tribes, coming in out of the waste, telling that they were watching, ought to have been warning sufficient. But he was reckless enough to disregard them, and continued his work. The trees were felled and cut up, and the wood delivered. The contractor went to the post for his pay, and as he took it, spoke in a jocose vein of the threat which had come to naught.

Soon afterward, he set out for camp. Midway there, he heard the rush of trampling hoofs, and looking up, his horrified gaze beheld a band of painted savages sweeping down upon him from out the west. Five minutes later, he lay upon the plain a mutilated corpse, and every pocket rifled. The Indians had fulfilled their threats. The trees which to them answered the same purpose that the marble monuments which we erect over our dead do among us, had been broken up by a stranger, and sold. They acted very much as white men would have done under similar circ.u.mstances, except that the purloined greenbacks were probably scattered on the ground, or fastened, for the sake of the pictures, on wigwam walls, instead of being put out at interest.

Our little adventure gave rise to another evening of "vagabondizing."

Each one of our men, including the Mexicans, had some Indian tale of thrilling interest to relate, in which he had been the hero. Jose, a cross-eyed child of our sister Republic, spun the princ.i.p.al yarns of the occasion. He had commenced outwitting Death while yet an infant, being content to remain quiet under a baker's dozen of murdered relations, that he might be rescued after the paternal hacienda had taken fire, by somebody who survived.

After a careful a.n.a.lysis of several thousand remarkable stories which were told to us first and last during our journey, I have deemed it wise to repeat only those which we were able to corroborate afterward. Among the latter is a narrative that was given us by the guide on this occasion, having for its text a side remark to the effect that crazy Ann, the wild huntress whom we met above Hays, was not the first lunatic who had been seen wandering upon the plains. About the close of 1867, a small body of Kiowas appeared in the vicinity of Wilson's Station, a few miles above Ellsworth, being first discovered by a young man from Salina, who was herding cattle there. They rushed suddenly upon him, and he fled on his pony toward the station, a mile away. The chief's horse alone gained on him, and the savage was just poising his spear to strike him down, when the young man turned quickly in his saddle, and discharged a pistol full at his pursuer's breast, killing him instantly.

Meanwhile, the half-dozen negro soldiers at the station had been alarmed, and now ran out and commenced firing. The Indians fled in dismay, without stopping to secure their dead chieftain, who was at once scalped by the station men, and left where he fell.

Next morning the soldiers revisited the place, and found that the band had returned in the night, and removed the corpse. The negroes followed the trail for a mile or more, in order to discover the place of burial, and shortly found the chief's body lying exposed on the bank of the Smoky. It had apparently been abandoned immediately upon the discovery that the scalp had been taken, from the belief, probably, which all Indians entertain, that a warrior thus mutilated can not enter the Happy Hunting Ground. Now for the apparition in question. As the soldiers approached the spot, a white woman, in a wretched blanket, fled away. In vain they called out to her that they were friends; she neither ceased her running, nor gave them any answer. The men pursued, but the fugitive eluded them among the trees, and disappeared. A few days after, she was again seen, but once more succeeding in escaping.

It afterward transpired that, a year or so before, a white girl had been stolen from Texas, and pa.s.sed into possession of one of the tribes. She lost her reason before long, and, like all the unfortunate creatures of this cla.s.s among the Indians, became an object of superst.i.tion at once.

One morning she was missed by her captors, and a few days later a Mexican teamster reported having seen a strange woman, near his camp, who fled when he approached her. His description left no doubt of her ident.i.ty with the missing captive. I have since conversed with some of the soldiers, then stationed at Wilson, and they a.s.sured me that the white girl was plainly visible to them on both occasions. As she was never afterward seen in the vicinity of civilization, the poor creature is believed to have perished from exposure. Possibly she was making her way to the settlements, when frightened back by the negroes, who may have resembled her late tormentors too closely to be recognized as friends.

After one has been for months pa.s.sing over a country stained every-where by savage outrage, it is easy to understand how the man whose wife or sister has met the terrible fate of an Indian captive, can spend his life upon their trail, committing murder. For murder it is, when revenge, not justice, prompts the blow, and the innocent must suffer alike with the guilty.