Buffalo Land Part 16

Wondering over this, we lie down on the prostrate bulk, and wait for the wagon.

CHAPTER XXI.

"CREASING" WILD HORSES--MUGGS DISAPPOINTED--A FEAT FOR FICTION--HORSE AND MONKEY--HOOF WISDOM FOR TURFMEN--PROSPECTIVE CLIMATIC CHANGES ON THE PLAINS--THE QUESTION OF SPONTANEOUS GENERATION--WANTON SLAUGHTER OF BUFFALO--AMOUNT OF ROBES AND MEAT ANNUALLY WASTED--A STRANGE HABIT OF THE BISON--NUMEROUS BILLS--THE "SNEAK THIEF" OF THE PLAINS.

While we were at breakfast one morning, the guide ran in to say that the herd of wild horses which we had seen on Silver Creek, were feeding toward us, a mile away. I left the table to obtain a view of them, and by Abe's advice carried my rifle, as he suggested that we might "crease"

one of them. This feat consists in hitting the upper edge of the bones of the neck with a bullet, the blow striking so high up that it will momentarily paralyze, without fracturing. We had read of it often in tales of Western daring, where the hero mounted the prostrate steed, and, upon its return to consciousness, escaped on its back from numberless difficulties and hosts of Indians.

A short distance out from camp, we turned and saw Muggs following us with a saddle and bridle on his arm. He had suffered grievous wrong at the heels of his mule, and was bent on possessing himself of one of our creased horses. After creeping, with almost infinite caution, within seventy-five yards, we succeeded in placing our bullets exactly where we intended, thereby knocking down two victims, who at once became insensible--and no wonder, for their bones were as effectually fractured as if they had been struck with a sledge-hammer. Muggs' faith in the theory of creasing, however, was unbounded. Up he ran and buckled on the saddle, and got one foot in the stirrup, ready to swing himself into the seat, when the animal rose.

After waiting about ten minutes, our Briton concluded that a dead horse was poor riding, and left us with a very emphatic statement that, in his opinion, capturing a mount with a rifle was "another blarsted Hamerican lie, you know!"

I afterward conversed with several plainsmen about the merits of "creasing," and found that their attempts had invariably ended in the same way as ours had done. The feat may have been possible with smooth-bore rifles, in the hands of those remarkable hunters of old, who were able to shoot away the breath of a pigeon, and hit the eye of a flying hawk; but with breech-loaders I unhesitatingly p.r.o.nounce creasing an utter impossibility. The achievement sounds well in theory, but, like much else of popular Western lore is somewhat impracticable when fairly tested. I have an idea that the princ.i.p.al market value of "creased"

horses in the future, as in the past, will be derived from furnis.h.i.+ng creatures of romance with fearful rides. For this purpose, a cracked skeleton would be as apt as a sound one, to carry the rider into many of the scenes with which these tales are wont to harrow our souls.

While crawling up on the herd, we took its census very carefully. I was a little surprised to find there were but twenty-five horses, all told.

They were apparently a little larger than the wild ones of Texas, and had bushy manes and tails, and their step was remarkably firm and elastic. They were exceedingly timid creatures, raising their heads constantly, to gaze around. One very interesting circ.u.mstance connected with the herd was that among these wild horses we noticed two strangers; one, a feeble old buffalo bull, expelled from his tribe, and seeking their aid against the wolves, and the other, the black pacing stallion.

When we fired, the survivors were off on the instant, and the manner in which their clean hoofs struck the earth, and spurned it, was truly worth seeing. No heaves either, it was plain to see, had ever troubled those full chests. We caught sight of the herd awhile after, on a ridge four miles away, and they were still running at full speed. These were the only wild horses we saw on our trip. In fact, but two or three small droves are believed to exist on the plains, as the great ma.s.s of the s.h.a.ggy-maned thousands, children of those old Spanish castaways, swarm nearer the Pacific.

So timid and fleet are these horses that none of them have ever been captured except during the early spring. They are then poor, and, by hard spurring, can be ridden down. At other times their bottom, and the advantage of having no weight to carry, insure their safety. It is quite probable, however, that a systematic pursuit, of the kind practiced in Texas, might prove successful at any season of the year.

I gazed at our two victims with less satisfaction than at any thing I had ever killed. Shooting horses, dear reader, is a good deal like shooting monkeys. They are both too intimately a.s.sociated with man to be made food for his powder. One is a very true and faithful servant, and the other, if we may believe Mr. Darwin, was once his ancestor.

In examining the two handsome bodies lying there, I noticed one fact to which I should have liked to draw the attention of the whole learned fraternity of blacksmiths, who mutilate horses, the world over. The hoofs were as solid and as sound as ivory, without a crack or wrong growth of any sort. And why? Turning them up, the secret lay exposed; for there, filling the cavity within--a sponge of life-giving oil--was the frog entire, just as Nature made and kept it. Its business was to feed and moisten the hoof, and this it had done perfectly. No blacksmith had ever gouged it out with his knife, and robbed it anew at every shoeing.

It is noticeable that the equine race, in its wild state, has none of the ills of the species domesticated. The sorrows of horse-flesh are the fruits of civilization. By the study and imitation of Nature's methods, we could greatly increase the usefulness of these valuable servants, and remove temptation from the paths of many men who lead blameless lives, except in the single matter of horse-trades. It may well be queried, perhaps, whether even the patient man of Uz, had he been laid up by a runaway colt instead of boils, could have resisted the temptation to trade it off upon Bildad the Shuhite, when that individual came to condole with him.

As we journeyed onward, we found the soil ever the same, in depth and strength equal to an Illinois prairie. The old cretaceous ocean, and the great lakes, certainly left it rich in deposits. When its surface shall have been broken by the plow, and the water-fall absorbed instead of shed off, the plains will resemble, in appearance and products, any other prairie country. The amount of moisture annually pa.s.sing over them, in storm-clouds that burst further east, is abundantly sufficient to make the tract very fertile. It is a well established fact in relation to climatic influences, that moisture attracts moisture; and in this region the dry ground, with its few shallow streams, has now no claim upon the summer clouds. The tough buffalo gra.s.s has put a lock-jaw on the plain. It can drink nothing from the floods of the rainy season.

But pry open the hungry mouth with the plowshare, and the earth will drink greedily. The moisture then absorbed, given up through the agency of capillary attraction, will draw the showers of summer, as they are pa.s.sing over. Already a marked change has taken place over a portion of the plains, and crops have been grown as far west as Fort Wallace.

The subject of spontaneous generation, I may remark in this connection, became a very interesting one to our party. Wherever the soil has been disturbed, wild sun-flowers spring suddenly into existence. The "grading camps" of the railroads were followed by belts of these self-a.s.serting annuals. The first garden-patch cultivated at Fort Wallace had weeds and insects similar to those that infest gardens elsewhere. In some cases hundreds of miles of barren plain intervened between the spots where the seeds germinated, and the nearest points where other plants of the same variety grew. Neither birds or wind could have carried the seeds in such quant.i.ties. Is the theory true that germs fall down to us from other planets? Or, do not the plains offer a strong argument on behalf of spontaneous generation?

Another matter on which the plains appealed to us strongly, pertained to the wanton destruction of its wild cattle. During the year 1871, about fifty thousand buffalo were killed on the plains of Kansas and Colorado alone. Of this number, it will be correct to estimate that about one-third were shot for their robes, as many more for meat, and sixteen thousand or so for sport. Each buffalo could probably have furnished five hundred pounds of meat and tallow, the quant.i.ty of the latter being small. When killed for food, only the hind quarters and a small portion of the loin are saved, in all perhaps two hundred pounds. The hides of these are sacrificed, the skin being cut with the quarters, and left on them for their protection. The profits of this great slaughter would, therefore, be about 16,500 robes and 3,300,000 pounds of meat; the waste over 33,000 robes, and probably not less than 20,000,000 pounds of meat. In this computation, the vast herds which range further north are not included. There, however, the waste is comparatively small, as the red man is in the habit of saving the greater portion of the flesh and robes. Of the above twenty million pounds of meat left to rot in the sun, and taint the air of the plains, the greater proportion would furnish sweeter and more nouris.h.i.+ng food to the poor cla.s.ses of our cities than the beef which they are able to obtain.

Let this slaughter continue for ten years, and the bison of the American continent will become extinct. The number of valuable robes and pounds of meat which would thus be lost to us and posterity, will run too far into the millions to be easily calculated. All over the plains, lying in disgusting ma.s.ses of putrefaction along valley and hill, are strewn immense carca.s.ses of wantonly slain buffalo. They line the Kansas Pacific Railroad for two hundred miles.

Following ordinary sporting parties for an hour after they have commenced smiting the borders of a herd, stop by a few of the monsters that they leave behind, in pools of blood, upon the gra.s.s; draw your hunting-knife across the fat hind-quarters, and see how the cuts reveal depths of sweet, nouris.h.i.+ng meat, sufficient to supply two hundred starving wretches with an abundant dinner; then if your humanity does not tempt to a shot at the worse than pot-hunters in front, G.o.d's bounties have indeed been thrown away upon you.

By law, as stringent in its provisions as possible, no man should be suffered to pull trigger on a buffalo, unless he will make practical use of the robe and the meat. What would be thought of a hunter, in any of the Western States, who shot quails and chickens and left them where they fell? Every citizen, whether sportsman or not, would join in outcry against him. Another matter which the law should regulate relates to the protection of the buffalo cows until after the season when they have brought forth their young. The calf will thrive, though weaned by necessity at a very early age, and the season for shooting cows, although short, would be amply long enough to comport with the chances of future increase.

Probably the most cruel of all bison-shooting pastime, is that of firing from the cars. During certain periods in the spring and fall, when the large herds are crossing the Kansas Pacific Railroad, the trains run for a hundred miles or more among countless thousands of the s.h.a.ggy monarchs of the plains. The bison has a strange and entirely unaccountable instinct or habit which leads it to attempt crossing in front of any moving object near it. It frequently happened, in the time of the old stages, that the driver had to rein up his horses until the herd which he had startled had crossed the road ahead of him. To accomplish this feat, if the object of their fright was moving rapidly, the animals would often run for miles.

When the iron-horse comes rus.h.i.+ng into their solitudes, and snorting out his fierce alarms, the herds, though perhaps a mile away from his path, will lift their heads and gaze intently for a few moments toward the object thus approaching them with a roar which causes the earth to tremble, and enveloped in a white cloud that streams further and higher than the dust of the old stage-coach ever did; and then, having determined its course, instead of fleeing back to the distant valleys, away they go, charging across the ridge over which the iron rails lie, apparently determined to cross in front of the locomotive at all hazards. The rate per mile of pa.s.senger trains is slow upon the plains, and hence it often happens that the cars and buffalo will be side by side for a mile or two, the brutes abandoning the effort to cross only when their foe has merged entirely ahead. During these races the car-windows are opened, and numerous breech-loaders fling hundreds of bullets among the densely crowded and flying ma.s.ses. Many of the poor animals fall, and more go off to die in the ravines. The train speeds on, and the scene is repeated every few miles until Buffalo Land is pa.s.sed.

Another method of wanton slaughter is the stalking of the herds by men carrying needle-guns. These throw a ball double the weight of the ordinary carbine, and the shot is effective at six hundred yards.

Concealed in ravines, the hunter causes terrible havoc with such weapons before the herd takes flight. We were never guilty of ambus.h.i.+ng after those two days on the Saline, and of those occasions we were heartily ashamed ever afterward.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _BUREAU OF ILl.u.s.tRATION BUFFALO_

One specialty of the plains that deserves mention, and quite as remarkable as its brutes and plants, though of rather more modern origin, is its numerous Bills. Of these, we became acquainted, before our trip was ended, with the following distinct specimens: Wild Bill, Buffalo Bill, California Bill, Rattlesnake Bill, and Tiger Bill, the last named being, as one of our men who had played with him remarked, the "dangererest on 'em all." We also heard of a Camanche Bill and an Apache Bill, but these celebrities it was not our fortune to meet.

Five pictures for the consideration of Uncle Samuel, suggestive of a game law to protect his comb-horns, b.u.t.tons, tallow, dried beef, tongues, robes, ivory-black, bone-dust, hair, hides, etc.]

I can not dismiss the peculiar characters of the plains without again paying tribute to that unapproachable thief, the cayote. Let no party of travelers leave any thing exposed in camp lighter than an anvil. We lost, in one night, at the hands--or rather the jaws--of these slinking sneak-thieves of the plains, a boot, a pair of leather breeches, and a half-quarter of buffalo calf, besides some smaller articles.

CHAPTER XXII.

A LIVE TOWN AND ITS GRAVE-YARD--HONEST ROMBEAUX IN TROUBLE--JUDGE LYNCH HOLDS COURT--MARIE AND THE VINE-COVERED COTTAGE--THE TERRIBLE FLOODS--DEATH IN CAMP AND IN THE DUG-OUT--WAS IT THE WATER WHICH DID IT?--DISCOVERY OF A HUGE FOSSIL--THE MOSASAURUS OF THE CRETACEOUS SEA--A GLIMPSE OF THE REPTILIAN AGE--REMINISCENCES OF ALLIGATOR-SHOOTING--THEY SUGGEST A THEORY.

Our fourth day's travel from Silver Creek brought us to Sheridan, our secondary base of operations, so to speak, and only fourteen miles east of the Colorado border. We found the town a very lively one, notwithstanding that the grave-yard, beautifully located in a commanding position overlooking the princ.i.p.al street, was patronized to a remarkable extent. The place had built itself up as simply the temporary terminus of the Pacific Railroad. Soon after our visit it moved westward, and at last accounts but one house remained to mark its former site.

The shades of night had just settled over the town upon the evening of our arrival, when Abe, our hostler-guide, came running to us with information that "Honest Rombeaux," another of our hostlers, was being hung by some of the citizens. The locality which had been selected for this little diversion was a railroad trestle a short distance below the town. We were already acquainted with the penchant our Sheridanites had for hanging people. Thirty or more graves on the neighboring hill had been pointed out before sundown, as those of persons who had fallen under sentence from Judge Lynch. In the expressive language of the citizen who volunteered the information, there had been "thirty funerals, and not one nateral death." Now that Judge Lynch had opened court at our own door, we proposed to raise the question of jurisdiction.

Armed, at once, we set off for a rescue, and, stumbling through the darkness, had gone only a hundred yards or so, when we met the lynchers returning. At their head, with a very dirty piece of rope around his neck, walked our hostler, trembling all over, and chattering broken English rapidly, in mingled fright and anger. The leader of the party told us that the evidence not being quite sufficient for hanging, an extra session of court had been called to be held immediately, and as having some interest in the case, we were invited to seats on the jury.

The trial, we were further informed, was to be held in Rombeaux's own house. This last was a new surprise, for reasons to be explained presently. Rombeaux had been with us ever since leaving Hays, and had gained his t.i.tle of "Honest" from a particularly faithful discharge of duty.

To him had been intrusted the supplies for hired men and horses. Three of the Mexicans he had severally thrashed for stealing. Once, in the night, on Silver Creek, we had heard a rattling at the medicine-chest, and trembling for our limited stock of spirits, stole forth to catch the culprit. On his knees by the open box was Rombeaux, replacing the brandy-bottle, and we feared that he, too, had become a thief. But just then, on the still air, came words of thanks to the Virgin Mary, for having enabled him to awake in time to frighten away the robber. Nor was this all; in the fierceness of his indignation, we beheld him sally forth immediately afterward, and kick a sleeping Mexican out of his blankets, on suspicion. Thereupon, we went back to bed with implicit faith in Rombeaux, which had followed us ever since.

Had he not told us, moreover, of a vine-covered cottage in France, where pretty Marie watched and waited until her lover could earn dowry sufficient to match hers? It was the old story. A maiden fair tarried in Europe, while a true knight ransacked foreign lands for fame and fortune; and long since had all of us, save Sachem, exhausted our stock of spare change to hasten the reunion.

Pa.s.sing some of the lowest and most flashy-looking saloons in the place, we entered a ravine, and soon stopped before a "dug-out." So much was it the work of excavation, that the dirt roof was level with the earth above, and the door seemed to open directly into the bank. We knocked, and were answered promptly by a fat, gayly dressed French woman. This was Rombeaux's wife, and here was Rombeaux's house. What a Marie and vine-clad cottage these!

Without delay the trial commenced, the Frenchman and his wife occupying places in the center, and the court seated on boxes, barrels, and the bed. The evidence taken that night in the cabin was substantially the following:

Two years before Jules Pigget, a native of France, accompanied by his young wife, appeared on the railroad below, and solicited work. They both found ready employment, and lived below Hays, in a dug-out, happy and prosperous. Within a year came another Frenchman, our present Honest Rombeaux. Across the water, he and Jules had been rival suitors for Marie's hand; yet strangely enough, the newcomer was welcomed by the young couple, and took up his abode with them. Matters prospered with all three, and soon Jules was to be appointed tank-tender on the road.

That year came the great rain-storm, when so many families in Western Kansas and Texas were drowned. Hundreds of people were living in dug-outs, rude excavations in the banks of streams, with the roof on a level with the bank above, but the room itself entirely below high-water mark--a style of dwelling which, as no great rise had occurred in years, had become quite popular among new-comers.

On the night of the great flood people went to bed as usual. The streams had risen but little. At midnight the rain fell heavily; the firm surface of the plains shed the waters like a roof; streams rose ten feet in an hour, and the foaming currents, roaring like cataracts, came down with the force of mighty tidal waves. Many dwellers in the dug-outs sprang from their beds into water, to find egress by the doors impossible, and were fortunate if they succeeded in escaping through the chimneys or roofs. Whole families were drowned. Fort Hays, at the fork of Big Creek, and supposed to be above high-water, was inundated, six or eight soldiers being swept away, while the remainder were obliged to seek safety on the roofs of the stone barracks. Large numbers of mules, picketed on the adjacent bottoms, were drowned. Their picket-pins fast in the earth, the animals were swept from their feet by the rising waters, and towed under by the firmly-held lariats. Emigrants encamped on the bottom heard the roar of the flood; with no time to harness, they seized the tongues of their wagons themselves, but the rising tide gained on them too rapidly, and they were glad to save life at the expense of oxen and goods. The horrors of that night are indescribable, and, to crown all, they took place amid a darkness that was total.

Above, was the roar of waters descending; below, the answering roar of the floods, as they rolled madly onward, carrying in their strong arms the wreck of farms, and corpses by the score.

On that night Jules, the husband, perished. Honest Rombeaux and Marie, however, were rescued from the roof of their dwelling at daylight; and afterward, when the flood had subsided, the body of Jules was taken from the wash in the fire-place. And now came suspicion, and pointed over the shoulders of the throng gathered around; for there was an ugly wound half hidden in the dead husband's hair, and his fingers were bruised.

Some men did not hesitate to say boldly that when Rombeaux escaped through the chimney, Jules stayed behind to a.s.sist his wife out, and that when he tried to follow, he was struck on the head by his quondam rival, and, still clinging to the chimney's edge, his fingers were pounded until their hold was loosed, and the victim sucked under the roof, against which the waters were already beating. The man and woman, however, claimed that it was the whirl of the waters against pegs and logs which had disfigured the corpse. Three weeks afterward they were married.

"And now, gentlemen," said our foreman, rising from his barrel, when the evidence was all in, "the question for the jury to decide is, Was it the water that did it?"

A doubt existing in the case, we gave the prisoner its benefit; but there was murder in the air, and Rombeaux knew it. Before morning he had departed--Marie said for La Belle France, but, as the citizens generally believed, really for Texas.

The next twenty-four hours const.i.tuted a regular field-day for the Professor, being distinguished by an event which, from a scientific stand-point, was among the most important of our entire expedition. This was the discovery of a large fossil saurian, which we came upon while exploring quite in sight of Sheridan, and not more than half a mile from its eastern outskirts.