United States or Botswana ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
I was not, therefore, prepared to expect much from the City of Laramie; and the more so as I knew that but a few years since the original Fort Laramie consisted of only a quadrangular enclosure inhabited by trappers, who had established it for trading purposes with the Indians.
From this point runners were sent out to the Sioux occupying the country west of the Missouri River, to meet us in council at the Forks of the Platte that fall, and to Sitting Bull's band of outlaw Sioux, and the Crows on the upper Yellowstone, to meet us in May, 1868, at Fort Laramie.
He might have got news from England too, an' all in all I was agitated. Two days before the ceremony was scheduled I gave him up an' made a run to Laramie. I wasn't sure just what I would do, but I was minded to get all the evidence I could. I tried to get speech with Dick's wife, but she wouldn't pay any heed to my knocks, an' finally the lights in the house went out.
The second line, so far as it went, overlooked the Laramie Trail, which fact was proof that the old trail-finders had as keen eyes as engineers. With a large band of hostile Sioux watching their movements the engineer corps found it necessary to have the troops close at hand all the time. The surveyors climbed the ridges while the soldiers kept them in sight from below.
I was right by his side; and I swore God forgive me! that through the crack and tear in the paper I could see the layers of greenbacks, when I knew 'twas only some ones and twos Gower had slipped in to make it look right; and Captain Rayner stood there and saw the packet, too, and Sergeant Walshe and Bugler White; but them two were killed with him: so that 'twas only Captain Rayner and I was left as witnesses, and never till we got to Laramie after the campaign did the trouble come.
'Slingerland, I want you! he kept yellin' at me. An' I said, 'So it 'pears, but what fer? Then he told me he was goin' after the gold thet Horn had buried along the old Laramie Trail. Wal, I took my outfit, an' we rode back into the hills. You remember them. Wal, we found the gold, easy enough, an' we packed it back to Roarin' City. Thar Neale sent me off on a train to fetch the gold to you.
The scowling faces looked deadly in earnest. "Right about, face!" commanded the tall man. "March, every man back to the other end o' the boat. Laramie, take the other side and round up anybody ye see. Now, gentlemen, hurry."
"Who accuses me of telling them?" she demanded. "Who says I conspired to murder anyone did Mr. Laramie say so?" She shot the question at Belle in a furious tone. Her eyes flashed in a way that confounded her accuser. "I'm asking you how they found out," retorted Belle, but in spite of herself on the defensive. Kate's face was set and her eyes were on fire.
At sunset they stood on eminences and pointed in its direction, let their mental vision conjure up Grand Island and sweep forward to the buffalo-darkened plains and the river sunk in its league-wide bottom, even peered still further and saw Fort Laramie, a faint, white dot against the cloudy peaks of mountains. The afternoon was hot and the camp drowsed.
He looked at Laramie narrowly watching shook the hair from before his eyes and fumbling at the firing lever tried to elevate his rifle to pump. But he swayed on his bent knee; the rifle slipped from his grasp.
Word Of The Day