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Show • 336 THE CALIFORNIA AND OREGON TRAIL. These principles established, we prepared to leave Fort Laramie. On the fourth day of August, early in the after. noon, we bade a final adieu to its hospitable gateway. Again Shaw and I were riding side by side on the prairie. For the first fifty miles we had companions with us; Troche, a little trapper, and Rouville, a nondescript in the employ of the Fur Company, who were going to join the trader Bisonette at his encampment near the head of Horse Creek. We rode only six or eight miles that afternoon before we came to a little brook traversing the barren prairie. All along its course grew copses of young wild-cherry trees, loaded with ripe fruit, and almost concealing the gliding thread of water with their dense growth, while on each side rose swells of rich green grass. Here we encamped ; and being much too indolent to pitch our tent, we flung ou1 saddles on the ground, spread a pair of buffalo-robes, ' lay down upon them, and began to smoke. Meanwhile, Delorier busied himself with his hissing frying-pan, and Ray. mond stood guard over the band 6f grazing hors~s. Delorier had an active assistant in Rouville, who professed great skill in the culinary art, and seizing upon a fork, began to lend his zealous aid in making ready supper. Indeed, according to his own belief, Rouville was a man of universal knowledge, and he lost no opportunity to display his manifold accomplishments. He had been a circus-rider at St. Louis, and once he rode round Fort Laramie on his head, to the utter bewilderment of all the Indians. He was also noted as the wit of the fort; and as he had considerable humor and abundant vivacity, he contributed more that night to the liveliness of the camp than all the rest of the party put together. At one instant he would be kneeling by Delorier, instructing him in the true method of THE LONELY JOURNEY. 337 frying antelope-steaks, then he would come an~ seat himself at our side, dilating upon the orthodox fashion of braiding up a horse's tail, telling apocryphal stories how he had killed a buffalo- bull with a knife, having fir t cut off his tail when at full speed, or relating whimsical anecdotes of the bourgeois Papin. At last he snatched up a volume of Shakspeare that was lying on the grass, and halted and stumbled through a line or two to prove that he could read. I-Ie went gambolling about the camp, chattering like some frolicksome ape ; and whatever he was doing at one moment, the presumption was a sure one that he would not be doing it the next. I-Iis companion Troche sat silently on the grass, not speaking a word, but keeping a vigilant eye on a very ugly little Utah squaw, of whom he was extremely jealous. On the next day we travelled farther, crossing the wide sterile basin called ' Goche's flole.' Towards night we became involved among deep ravines; and being also unable to find water, our journey was protracted to a very late hour. On the next morning we had to pass a long line of bluffs, whose raw sides, wrought upon by rains and storms, were of a ghastly whiteness most oppressive to the sight. As we ascended a gap in these hills, the way was marked by huge footprints, like those of a human giant. They were the track of the grizzly bear; and on tho previous day also we had seen abundance of them along the dry channels of the streams we had passed. Immediately after this we were crossing a barren plain, spreading in long and gentle undulations to the horizon. Though the sun was bright, there was a light haze in the atmosphere. The distant hills assumed strange, distorted forms, a~d the edge of the horizon was continual1y changing its - aspect. ' l |
