All the details of the journey and the camp had become familiar to us.We had seen life under a new aspect; the human biped had been reduced to his primitive condition.We had lived without law to protect, a roof to shelter, or garment of cloth to cover us.One of us at least had been without bread, and without salt to season his food.Our idea of what is indispensable to human existence and enjoyment had been wonderfully curtailed, and a horse, a rifle, and a knife seemed to make up the whole of life's necessaries.For these once obtained, together with the skill to use them, all else that is essential would follow in their train, and a host of luxuries besides.One other lesson our short prairie experience had taught us; that of profound contentment in the present, and utter contempt for what the future might bring forth.
These principles established, we prepared to leave Fort Laramie.On the fourth day of August, early in the afternoon, 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 our 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 Raymond stood guard over the band of grazing horses.
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 frying antelope steaks, then he would come and 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 first cut off his tail when at full speed, or relating whimsical anecdotes of the bourgeois Papin.At last he snatched up a volume of Shakespeare that was lying on the grass, and halted and stumbled through a line or two to prove that he could read.He went gamboling about the camp, chattering like some frolicsome ape; and whatever he was doing at one moment, the presumption was a sure one that he would not be doing it the next.
His 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 traveled farther, crossing the wide sterile basin called Goche's Hole.Toward 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 foot-prints, like those of a human giant.They were the track of the grizzly bear; and on the 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, and the edge of the horizon was continually changing its aspect.Shaw and I were riding together, and Henry Chatillon was alone, a few rods before us; he stopped his horse suddenly, and turning round with the peculiar eager and earnest expression which he always wore when excited, he called to us to come forward.We galloped to his side.Henry pointed toward a black speck on the gray swell of the prairie, apparently about a mile off.
"It must be a bear," said he; "come, now, we shall all have some sport.Better fun to fight him than to fight an old buffalo bull;grizzly bear so strong and smart."
So we all galloped forward together, prepared for a hard fight; for these bears, though clumsy in appearance and extremely large, are incredibly fierce and active.The swell of the prairie concealed the black object from our view.Immediately after it appeared again.
But now it seemed quite near to us; and as we looked at it in astonishment, it suddenly separated into two parts, each of which took wing and flew away.We stopped our horses and looked round at Henry, whose face exhibited a curious mixture of mirth and mortification.His hawk's eye had been so completely deceived by the peculiar atmosphere that he had mistaken two large crows at the distance of fifty rods for a grizzly bear a mile off.To the journey's end Henry never heard the last of the grizzly bear with wings.
