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We gathered buffalo-chips, to boil our coffee and cook our buffalo and antelope steak, smoked for a while around the smouldering fire until the animals were through grazing, and then started on our lonely way again.
For the distance of about two hundred and fifty miles from the Missouri they did not find game very abundant, although they never suffered, as there was always enough to supply their wants. The timber began to thin out too, and they were obliged to resort for their fire to the bois de vache, or buffalo-chips.
We staid, patient-like, for two or three hours more after dark to see what the Ingins was going to do, as while we sot round our little fire of buffalo-chips, smoking our pipes, we could still hear the red devils a howling and chanting, while they picked up their dead laying along the river-bottom.
Everywhere smoke floated up in tiny threads from smoldering buffalo-chips, and clumps of weeds burned damply, only now and then bursting into flame. At last, with a shout of joy, the biggest brother made out the farm-house; with an unhappy cry he announced the burning of the stacks.
Where the river-bluffs back of Brannon shoved their dark shoulders through the snow, the wind having swept their tops clean of the last downfall, he was working away like a muskrat. To and fro, he went, searching diligently for buffalo-chips.
Some of the men set to work taking the wheel apart and fitting the spokes and getting the wheel ready to set the tire. Others had collected a couple of gunny-sacks full of the only fuel of the Platte Valley, viz., "buffalo-chips," and they soon had the job completed.
In two days they arrived at the vast naked prairie, the wintry aspect of which had caused them in December to pause and turn back. It was now clothed with the early verdure of spring, and plentifully stocked with game. Still, when obliged to bivouac on its bare surface, without any covering, by a scanty fire of buffalo-chips, they found the night-blasts piercingly cold.
One of our number, however, while diligently searching for something to utilize, suddenly discovered scattered all around him a large quantity of buffalo-chips, and he soon had an excellent fire under way, his coffee boiling and his bacon sizzling over the glowing coals.
As they were hungry, one of the men went down under cover of the darkness to get a few buffalo-chips with which to cook their rabbit, and to change the animals to where they could get fresh grass. He returned safely to the summit of the rock, where a little fire was made and their supper prepared.
When we'd go into camp, Paul, he'd run and pick up buffalo-chips for the fire, and wanted to help all he could. Then when it came time to go to sleep, the boy would always get under my blankets and cuddle up close to me. He'd be sure to say his prayers first, though; but it seemed so strange to me who hadn't heard a prayer for thirty years. I never tried to stop him, you may be certain of that.
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