第105章
In the afternoon we came to the foot of a considerable hill.As we ascended it Rouville began to ask questions concerning our conditions and prospects at home, and Shaw was edifying him with a minute account of an imaginary wife and child, to which he listened with implicit faith.Reaching the top of the hill we saw the windings of Horse Creek on the plains below us, and a little on the left we could distinguish the camp of Bisonette among the trees and copses along the course of the stream.Rouville's face assumed just then a most ludicrously blank expression.We inquired what was the matter, when it appeared that Bisonette had sent him from this place to Fort Laramie with the sole object of bringing back a supply of tobacco.
Our rattle-brain friend, from the time of his reaching the Fort up to the present moment, had entirely forgotten the object of his journey, and had ridden a dangerous hundred miles for nothing.Descending to Horse Creek we forded it, and on the opposite bank a solitary Indian sat on horseback under a tree.He said nothing, but turned and led the way toward the camp.Bisonette had made choice of an admirable position.The stream, with its thick growth of trees, inclosed on three sides a wide green meadow, where about forty Dakota lodges were pitched in a circle, and beyond them half a dozen lodges of the friendly Cheyenne.Bisonette himself lived in the Indian manner.
Riding up to his lodge, we found him seated at the head of it, surrounded by various appliances of comfort not common on the prairie.His squaw was near him, and rosy children were scrambling about in printed-calico gowns; Paul Dorion also, with his leathery face and old white capote, was seated in the lodge, together with Antoine Le Rouge, a half-breed Pawnee, Sibille, a trader, and several other white men.
"It will do you no harm," said Bisonette, "to stay here with us for a day or two, before you start for the Pueblo."We accepted the invitation, and pitched our tent on a rising ground above the camp and close to the edge of the trees.Bisonette soon invited us to a feast, and we suffered abundance of the same sort of attention from his Indian associates.The reader may possibly recollect that when I joined the Indian village, beyond the Black Hills, I found that a few families were absent, having declined to pass the mountains along with the rest.The Indians in Bisonette's camp consisted of these very families, and many of them came to me that evening to inquire after their relatives and friends.They were not a little mortified to learn that while they, from their own timidity and indolence, were almost in a starving condition, the rest of the village had provided their lodges for the next season, laid in a great stock of provisions, and were living in abundance and luxury.
Bisonette's companions had been sustaining themselves for some time on wild cherries, which the squaws pounded up, stones and all, and spread on buffalo robes, to dry in the sun; they were then eaten without further preparation, or used as an ingredient in various delectable compounds.
On the next day the camp was in commotion with a new arrival.Asingle Indian had come with his family the whole way from the Arkansas.As he passed among the lodges he put on an expression of unusual dignity and importance, and gave out that he had brought great news to tell the whites.Soon after the squaws had erected his lodge, he sent his little son to invite all the white men, and all the most distinguished Indians, to a feast.The guests arrived and sat wedged together, shoulder to shoulder, within the hot and suffocating lodge.The Stabber, for that was our entertainer's name, had killed an old buffalo bull on his way.This veteran's boiled tripe, tougher than leather, formed the main item of the repast.For the rest, it consisted of wild cherries and grease boiled together in a large copper kettle.The feast was distributed, and for a moment all was silent, strenuous exertion; then each guest, with one or two exceptions, however, turned his wooden dish bottom upward to prove that he had done full justice to his entertainer's hospitality.The Stabber next produced his chopping board, on which he prepared the mixture for smoking, and filled several pipes, which circulated among the company.This done, he seated himself upright on his couch, and began with much gesticulation to tell his story.I will not repeat his childish jargon.It was so entangled, like the greater part of an Indian's stories, with absurd and contradictory details, that it was almost impossible to disengage from it a single particle of truth.All that we could gather was the following:
He had been on the Arkansas, and there he had seen six great war parties of whites.He had never believed before that the whole world contained half so many white men.They all had large horses, long knives, and short rifles, and some of them were attired alike in the most splendid war dresses he had ever seen.From this account it was clear that bodies of dragoons and perhaps also of volunteer cavalry had been passing up the Arkansas.The Stabber had also seen a great many of the white lodges of the Meneaska, drawn by their long-horned buffalo.These could be nothing else than covered ox-wagons used no doubt in transporting stores for the troops.Soon after seeing this, our host had met an Indian who had lately come from among the Comanches.The latter had told him that all the Mexicans had gone out to a great buffalo hunt.That the Americans had hid themselves in a ravine.When the Mexicans had shot away all their arrows, the Americans had fired their guns, raised their war-whoop, rushed out, and killed them all.We could only infer from this that war had been declared with Mexico, and a battle fought in which the Americans were victorious.When, some weeks after, we arrived at the Pueblo, we heard of General Kearny's march up the Arkansas and of General Taylor's victories at Matamoras.