ours, and to hear the weeping and sobbing of her little children, in the dark beside the corpse, was heart chilling. The poor husband trudged along on foot hurrying his single yoke of footsore cattle. Still we were far behind; liable at any moment to be cut-off by the prowling Sioux. That was a night to remember.

Here are two scenes among the Black Hills themselves, one is a very suggestive sketch showing rocks, timber-clad bluffs, and ragged peaks with the wagons of our train coming down a deep declivity into a dry torrent bed. Wild clouds are coming over the peaks threatening a stormy night. It appears that the wagons must topple over, end over end, so abrupt is the descent they are making. In the second sketch, made on the evening of the following day, the train is seen winding like a serpent over the hills. In the middle distance is a valley, partly obscured by mists, and beyond it Laramie Peak, purple against the sunset clouds and sky.

Camp at Scott’s Bluffs.

The night drives were among the most trying experiences upon the Overland Journey. Usually they were made necessary to us from the drying up of some spring or stream where we had expected to make our evening camp, and the consequent lack of water for the people as well as cattle, so that we must move forward. Our worst drive of this kind was to reach the La Prelle River after leaving Fort Laramie, Saint John’s, on the night which followed the making of the first of the two sketches just mentioned. Wildly the lightnings glared, their livid tongues licked the ground beside us. The road was deluged in the downpour of rain; and what with the sudden flashes of light, the crashing of thunder, the poor cattle were quite panic-stricken. It was hard work to make the poor brutes face the storm. Yet, after all, their sagacity was greater than ours. Several times we would have driven them over the edge of a precipice had not their keener senses warned them back. We would have shuddered, so our Captain afterwards told us, could we have seen where the tracks of our wagon wheels were made that night.

Yes, to the emigrant company of those days, the drying up of a stream was often of serious import. Water enough might have been carried to quench the thirst of human beings, but what of the many cattle? The ox that suffers too much from thirst becomes a dangerous animal. Let him scent in the distance the coveted water, and who shall curb his strength? How nearly we met with disaster from this same cause. Almost useless were the brakes; how fiercely the thirst tortured animals strained at their yokes. It was a pitiful sight, and as we approached the broken, boulder-strewn edge of the stream, our position was somewhat dangerous. No less dangerous was the task of removing the yokes from the impatient creatures, and of unloosing the chains.

I try to recall my diary, for I did keep a diary. I did not find it among the old relics where was hidden the sketch-book, and the chances are that long since it has been destroyed, perhaps fed to the flames. In spite of slightness it must have contained many an interesting fact about “The Journey.” But I cannot recall a word. The events which gave rise to its entries grow fresh in my mind, but the wording of the matter itself is gone. I know it contained the data which would give the exact number of hours in which we were upon the road, and that I would like to know. I remember writing about Scott’s Bluffs, and how they received their name. One fancied that he could see the wounded trapper, abandoned and dying alone, and wondered if he crawled down from the bluffs, and along the way we were travelling. And which was the spot, too, where, at last, his bones were found. There was something, too, about the gathering of buffalo chips, and the seeking of firewood. On the latter quest, what lonely spots we did visit! One comes to my mind at this moment. How weirdly the wind choired in the ancient cedars, and how very old appeared the boulders with their mottling of lichens, and with what a dismal yelp a ragged coyote leaped from his lair and scampered down a rock-strewn gully! It was tantalizing at times to keep to the road. How could one resist the temptation to throw off restraint, and, putting all prudence aside, wander or go galloping on horseback away over hill and through dale? What if the redman did lie in the path? He could be a brother. O, but to be like the Indian; to live wild and free, to be “iron-jointed, supple-sinewed, to hurl our lances in the sun!”

This, of course, was on those days when, having taken “the winds and sunshine into our veins,” we felt stirred within us the instincts of primal man. At other times we were sober-minded enough. The romance of being out in the wilds was terribly chilled by an inclement sky. A few days of drizzling rain tried the most ardent spirit. Then it was that the disagreeableness of the time made the true metal of the emigrant show itself. Whatever traits of character he possessed—selfishness, senseless fault-finding, or those rare qualities of kindness, cheerful content, and ready helpfulness—all come out. In Mark Tapley’s own phrase, it was all very well to “come out strong” when by the warm glow of the flames or when moving along with the bright blue sky above us, but it was quite another task to remain cheerful when the incessant rain made impossible even the smallest or most sheltered of camp-fires, and one crept into his bed upon the ground with wet clothes and with flesh chilled to the bone, without even the solace of a cup of hot tea or coffee.

Hardly less trying were the days of dust-storms. What misery it was when the wind blew from the front and the whole cloud of dust raised by over three hundred yoke of cattle, and the motion of sixty-five wagons drove in our faces! How intolerably our eyes and our nostrils burned, and how quickly our ears were filled with the flying sand or alkali!

I should like to read once more, those diary entries. Was there anything written, I wonder, about those silhouettes upon the hills? What did it tell, if anything, about the alarm that was spread through our Company? Had we—the unlearned—known more about the ways of the Indian we would have realized that they—those shadows—were no Sioux. Yet it was disturbing to the unknowing to see those figures, those mysteriously moving horsemen of the night. Thank heaven! It was but our own scouting herdsmen. But for once, to those assembled within the corral centre, O, how too long seemed the hymn, and even the prayer! How impatient we were to know the truth.

In “The Cedar Bluffs” the wagons that are sketched corralled are not our own. They comprised a small freight train, and right glad would they have been to, and most likely they did, creep along, as it were, in our wake. There were no women or children in that train, its members were all of the daring “freighter.” These were men willing to meet with any danger. Perhaps there might be among them men inexperienced, but they must have possessed intrepid hearts. Rough of the rough, but daring they certainly were. Woe to that little band if later they met the Sioux. It would mean, for them, annihilation. What rude pranks the Indian did sometimes play! The Sioux or Cheyenne, he would take bales of bright stuffs which he sometimes found in the freighters’ wagons, fasten one end of it to his pony and let the hundred yards