_ CHAPTER XXIV. FORSAKING ALL OTHERS
When finally our entire party had been gotten across the Platte, and we had resumed our westward journey, the routine of travel was, for the time, broken, and our line of march became somewhat scattered across the low, hilly country to which we presently came. For my own part, our progress seemed too slow, and mounting my horse, I pushed on in advance of the column, careless of what risk this might mean in an Indian country. I wished to be alone; and yet I wished to be not alone. I hoped that might occur which presently actually did happen.
It was early in the afternoon when I heard her horse's feet coming up behind me as I rode. She passed me at a gallop; laughing back as though in challenge, and so we raced on for a time, until we quite left out of sight behind us the remainder of our party. Ellen Meriwether was a Virginia girl with Western experience, and it goes without saying that she rode well--of course in the cavalry saddle and with the cross seat. Her costume still was composed of the somewhat shriveled and wrinkled buckskins which had been so thoroughly wetted in crossing the river. I noticed that she had now even discarded her shoes, and wore the aboriginal costume almost in full, moccasins and all, her gloves and hat alone remaining to distinguish her in appearance at a distance from a native woman of the Plains. The voluminous and beruffled skirts of the period, and that feminine monstrosity of the day, the wide spreading crinoline, she had left far behind her at the Missouri River. Again the long curls, which civilization at that time decreed, had been forgotten. Her hair at the front and sides half-waved naturally, but now, instead of neck curls or the low dressing of the hair which in those days partly covered the fashionable forehead, she had, like a native woman, arranged her hair in two long braids. Her hat, no longer the flat straw or the flaring, rose-laden bonnet of the city, was now simply a man's cavalry hat, and almost her only mark of coquetry was the rakish cockade which confined it at one side. Long, heavy-hooped earrings such as women at that time wore, and which heretofore I had never known her to employ, she now disported. Brown as her face was now becoming, one might indeed, at a little distance, have suspected her to be rather a daughter of the Plains than a belle of civilization. I made some comment on this. She responded by sitting the more erect in her saddle and drawing a long, deep breath.
"I think I shall throw away my gloves," she said, "and hunt up some brass bracelets. I grow more Indian every day. Isn't it glorious, here on the Plains? Isn't it
glorious!"
It so seemed to me, and I so advised her, saying I wished the western journey might be twice as long.
"But Mr. Orme was saying that he rather thought you might take an escort and go back down the river."
"I wish Mr. Orme no disrespect," I answered, "but neither he nor any one else regulates my travel. I have already told you how necessary it was for me to see your father, Colonel Meriwether."
"Yes, I remember. But tell me, why did not your father himself come out?"
I did not answer her for a time. "My father is dead," I replied finally.
I saw her face flush in quick trouble and embarrassment. "Why did you not tell me? I am so sorry! I beg your pardon."
"No," I answered quietly, "we Quakers never wish to intrude our own griefs, or make any show of them. I should have told you, but there were many other things that prevented for the time." Then, briefly, I reviewed the happenings that had led to my journey into the West. Her sympathy was sweet to me.
"So now, you see, I ought indeed to return," I concluded, "but I can not. We shall be at Laramie now very soon. After that errand I shall go back to Virginia."
"And that will be your home?"
"Yes," I said bitterly. "I shall settle down and become a staid old farmer. I shall be utterly cheerless."
"You must not speak so. You are young."
"But you," I ventured, "will always live with the Army?"
"Why, our home is in Virginia, too, over in old Albemarle, though we don't often see it. I have been West since I came out of school, pretty much all the time, and unless there should be a war I suppose I shall stay always out here with my father. My mother died when I was very young."
"And you will never come back to quiet old Virginia, where plodding farmers go on as their fathers did a hundred years ago?"
She made no immediate answer, and when she did, apparently mused on other things. "The Plains," she said, "how big--how endless they are! Is it not all wild and free?"
Always she came back to that same word "free." Always she spoke of wildness, of freedom.
"For all one could tell, there might be lions and tigers and camels and gazelles out there." She gestured vaguely toward the wide horizon. "It is the desert."
We rode on for a time, silent, and I began to hum to myself the rest of the words of an old song, then commonly heard:
"O come with me, and be my love,
For thee the jungle's depths I'll rove.
I'll chase the antelope over the plain,
And the tiger's cub I'll bind with a chain,
And the wild gazelle with the silvery feet
I'll give to thee for a playmate sweet."
"Poets," said I, "can very well sing about such things, but perhaps they could not practice all they sing. They always--"
"Hush!" she whispered, drawing her horse gently down to a walk, and finally to a pause. "Look! Over there is one of the wild gazelles."
I followed the direction of her eyes and saw, peering curiously down at us from beyond the top of a little ridge, something like a hundred yards away, the head, horns, and neck of a prong-horn buck, standing facing us, and seeming not much thicker than a knife blade. Her keen eyes caught this first; my own, I fancy, being busy elsewhere. At once I slipped out of my saddle and freed the long, heavy rifle from its sling. I heard her voice, hard now with eagerness. I caught a glance at her face, brown between her braids. She was a savage woman!
"Quick!" she whispered. "He'll run."
Eager as she, but deliberately, I raised the long barrel to line and touched the trigger. I heard the thud of the ball against the antelope's shoulder, and had no doubt that we should pick it up dead, for it disappeared, apparently end over end, at the moment of the shot. Springing into the saddle, I raced with my companion to the top of the ridge. But, lo! there was the antelope two hundred yards away, and going as fast on three legs as our horses were on four.
"Ride!" she called. "Hurry!" And she spurred off at breakneck speed in pursuit, myself following, both of us now forgetting poesy, and quite become creatures of the chase.
The prong-horn, carrying lead as only the prong-horn can, kept ahead of us, ridge after ridge, farther and farther away, mile after mile, until our horses began to blow heavily, and our own faces were covered with perspiration. Still we raced on, neck and neck, she riding with hands low and weight slightly forward, workmanlike as a jockey. Now and again I heard her call out in eagerness.
We should perhaps have continued this chase until one or the other of the horses dropped, but now her horse picked up a pebble and went somewhat lame. She pulled up and told me to ride on alone. After a pause I slowly approached the top of the next ridge, and there, as I more than half suspected, I saw the antelope lying down, its head turned back. Eager to finish the chase, I sprang down, carelessly neglecting to throw the bridle rein over my horse's head. Dropping flat, I rested on my elbow and fired carefully once more. This time the animal rolled over dead. I rose, throwing up my hat with a shout of victory, and I heard, shrilling to me across the distance, her own cry of exultation, as that of some native woman applauding a red hunter.
Alas for our joy of victory! Our success was our undoing. The very motion of my throwing up my hat, boyish as it was, gave fright to my horse, already startled by the shot. He flung up his head high, snorted, and was off, fast as he could go. I followed him on foot, rapidly as I could, but he would none of that, and was all for keeping away from me at a safe distance. This the girl saw, and she rode up now, springing down and offering me her horse.
"Stay here," I called to her as I mounted. "I'll be back directly"; and then with such speed as I could spur out of my new mount, I started again after the fugitive.
It was useless. Her horse, already lame and weary, and further handicapped by my weight, could not close with the free animal, and without a rope to aid me in the capture, it would have been almost impossible to have stopped him, even had I been able to come alongside. I headed him time and again, and turned him, but it was to no purpose. At last I suddenly realized that I had no idea how far I had gone or in what direction. I must now think of my companion. Never was more welcome sight than when I saw her on a distant ridge, waving her hat. I gave up the chase and returned to her, finding that in her fatigue she had sunk to the ground exhausted. She herself had run far away from the spot where I had left 'her.
"I was afraid," she panted. "I followed. Can't you catch him?"
"No," said I, "he's gone. He probably will go back to the trail."
"No," she said, "they run wild, sometimes. But now what shall we do?"
I looked at her in anxiety. I had read all my life of being afoot on the Plains. Here was the reality.
"But you are hurt," she cried. "Look, your wound is bleeding."
I had not known it, but my neck was wet with blood.
"Get up and ride," she said. "We must be going." But I held the stirrup for her instead, smiling.
"Mount!" I said, and so I put her up.
"Shall we go back to camp?" she asked in some perturbation, apparently forgetting that there was no camp, and that by this time the wagons would be far to the west. For reasons of my own I thought it better to go back to the dead antelope, and so I told her.
"It is over there," she said, pointing in the direction from which she thought she had come. I differed with her, remembering I had ridden with the sun in my face when following it, and remembering the shape of the hilltop near by. Finally my guess proved correct, and we found the dead animal, nearly a mile from where she had waited for me. I hurried with the butchering, cutting the loin well forward, and rolling it all tight in the hide, bound the meat behind the saddle.
"Now, shall we go back?" she asked. "If we rode opposite to the sun, we might strike the trail. These hills look all alike."
"The river runs east and west," I said, "so we might perhaps better strike to the southward."
"But I heard them say that the river bends far to the south not far from where we crossed. We might parallel the river if we went straight south."
"But does not the trail cut off the bend, and run straight west?" I rejoined. Neither of us knew that the course of the north fork ran thence far to the northwest and quite away from the trail to Laramie.
Evidently our council was of little avail. We started southwest as nearly as we could determine it, and I admit that grave anxiety had now settled upon me. In that monotonous country only the sun and the stars might guide one. Now, hard as it was to admit the thought, I realized that we would be most fortunate if we saw the wagons again that night. I had my watch with me, and with this I made the traveler's compass, using the dial and the noon mark to orient myself; but this was of small assistance, for we were not certain of the direction of the compass in which the trail lay. As a matter of fact, it is probable that we went rather west than southwest, and so paralleled both the trail and the river for more than a dozen miles that afternoon. The girl's face was very grave, and now and again she watched me walking or trotting alongside at such speed as I could muster. My clothing was covered with blood from my wound.
I looked always for some little rivulet which I knew must lead us to the Platte, but we struck no running water until late that evening, and then could not be sure that we had found an actual water course. There were some pools of water standing in a coulee, at whose head grew a clump of wild plum trees and other straggly growth. At least here was water and some sort of shelter. I dared go no farther.
Over in the west I saw rising a low, black bank of clouds. A film was coming across the sky. Any way I looked I could see no break, no landmark, no trend of the land which could offer any sort of guidance. I wished myself all places in the world but there, and reproached myself bitterly that through my clumsiness I had brought the girl into such a situation.
"Miss Meriwether," I said to her finally, putting my hand on the pommel of her saddle as we halted, "it's no use. We might as well admit it; we are lost." _