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Show 78 THE CALIFORNIA AND OREGON TRAIL • over the gloomy plain, a fierce and stern howl, close at hand, seeme d t o 0a r·eet it as an unwelcome intruder. There was something impressive and awful in the place and the hour; for I and the beasts were all that had consciousness for many a league around. Some days elapsed, and brought us near the Platte. Two men on horseback approached us one morning, and we watched them with the curiosity and interest that, upon the solitude of the plains, such an encounter always excites. They were evidently whites, from their mode of riding, though, contrary to the usage of that region, neither of them carried a rifle. 'Fools !' remarked I-Ienry Chatillon, ' to ride that way on the prairie; Pawnee find them-then they catch it!' Pawnee had found them, and they had come very near 'catching it;' indeed, nothing saved them from trouble but the approach of oue party. Shaw and I knew one of them; a man named Turner, whom we had seen at Westport. He and his companion belonged to an emigrant party encamped a few miles in advance, and had returned to look for some stray oxen, leaving their rifles, with characteristic rashness or ignorance, behind them. Their neglect had nearly cost them dear; for j u:st before we came up, half a dozen Indians approached, and seeing them apparently defenceless, one of the rascals seized the bridle of Turner's fine horse, and ordered him to dismount. Turner was wholly unarmed; but the other jerked a little r vol ving pistol out of his pocket, at which the Pawnee recoiled · and . ' JUst then some of our men appearing in the distance, the whole party whipped their rugged little hor s, and made off. In no way daunted, Turner foolishly per isting in going forward. Long after leaving him, and late that afternoon in the midst ' THE PLATTE AND THE DESERT. 79 of a gloomy and barren prairie, we came suddenly upon the great Pawnee trail, leading from their villages on the Platte, to their war and hunting grounds to the southward. Here every summer pass the motley concourse ; thousands of savages, men, women, and children, horses and mules, laden with their weapons and implements, and an innumerable multitude of unruly wolfish dogs, who have not acquired the civilized accomplishment of barking, but howl like their wild cousins of the prairie. .The permanent winter villages of the Pawnees, stand on the lower Platte, but throughout the summer the greater part of the inhabitants are wandering over the plains, a treacherous, cowardly banditti, who by a thousand acts of pillage and murder, have deserved summary chastise1nent at the hands of government. Last year a Dahcotah warrior performed a signal exploit at one of these villages. f-Ie approached it alone, in the middle of a dark night, and clambering up the outsiJe of one of the lodges, which are in the form of a half-sphere, he looked in at the round hole made at the top for the escape of smoke. The dusky light from the smouldering embers showed him the forms of the sleeping inmates; and dropping lightly through the opening, he unsheathed his knife, and stirring the fire, coolly selected his victilns. One by one, he stabbed and seal ped them; when a child suddenly aw-oke and screamed. He rushed from the lodge, yelled a Sioux war-cry, shouted his narne in triumph and defiance, and in a moment had darted out upon the dark prairie, leaving the whole village behind him in a turnult, with the howling and baying of dogs, the screams of women, and the yells of the enraged warriors. Our friend Kearsl.ey, as we learned on rejoining him, signalized himself by a less bloody achievement. He and his men |
