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Show 382 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF " In his grave." "Where is Eliza?" "She was married a month ago, after receiving intelligence of your certain death." I ceased my querying, and averted my eyes fron1 my sister's gaze. And this, I 1nused, is my return home after years of bright anticipations of welcome ! This is my secure and sunshiny haven, after so long and dangerous a voyage! My father dead, my brothers dispersed, my friends in their graves, and 1ny loved one married! She did well-I have no right to complain-she is lost to me forever! If a man's home exists in the heart of his friends, with the death and alienation of those friends his cherished home fades away, and he is again a wanderer upon the earth. I do not know whether it was disappointment at so much death, mutation, and estrangement, or whether I bore the disease immediately in my own heart, but I was disappointed in 1ny return home ; the anticipations I had formed were not realized-a feeling of cynicism passed over me. I thought of my Indian home, and of the unsophisticated hearts I had left behind me. Their lives were savage, and their perpetual animosities repulsive, but with this dark background there was much vivid coloring in relief. If the Indian was unrelenting, and murdered with his lance, his battle-axe, and his knife, his white brother· was equally unfeeling, and had ways of torturing his victim, if less violent, not th.e le~s cert~in. . The sav.age is artless, and when you Win h1s admuatwn there IS no envious reservation to prompt him to do injustice to your name. You live among them honored ; and on your death, your bones are stored religiously in their g1·eat cave along with JAMES P. BECKWOURTH. 383 . others of preceding generations, to be each year visited, and painted, and reflected on by a host of devoted companions. There is not the elegance there, the luxury, the refined breeding, but there is rude plenty, prairies studded with horses, and room to wander without any man to call your steps in question. JVIy child was there, and his mother, whom I loved; a return there was in no way unnatural. I had acqu1.Ted their habits, and was in son1e manner useful to thern. I had no tie to hold me here, and I already almost determined upon returning to my Indian home. Such thoughts as these, as I lay on my sick-bed, passed continuously through my mind. A few of my early friends, as they heard of my return, came one after the other to visit me; but they were all changed. The flight of time had wrought furrows upon their smooth brows, and the shadow of the wings of Time was resting upon the few fair cheeks I had known in my younger days. CHAPTER XXVIII. Disagreeable Rencounters in St. Louis.-Messenger arrives from Fort Cass.-Imminent Peril of the Whites from the Infuriated Crows.The Cause.-Immediate Return.-Incidents of my ArrivaL-Pine Leaf substituted for Eliza.- Last Battle with the Black Feet.Final Adieu to the Crows. IT now comes in the order of relation to describe two or three unpleasant rencounters I had with various parties in St. Louis, growing out of the misunderstanding (already related) between the Crows and Mr. Fitzpatrick's party. I had already heard reports in the mountains detrimental to my character for my supposed ac- |
