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The "rustler" of the range made his appearance, bold, hardy, unprincipled; and the story of his undoing by the law is precisely that of the finish of the robbers of the mines by the Vigilantes. Now, too, came the days of transition, which have utterly changed all the West. The railroad sprang across this great middle country of the plains.
He had the power of description, because he felt intensely what he was saying. He told of the great forests and rivers of the West, of the vast plains beyond, of the huge buffalo herds that were a day in passing, and of the terrible storms that sometimes came thundering out of the endless depths of the plains. Holderness listened without interruption, and at the end he drew a long breath.
Thither I determined to go, and next morning Moore and I started in a buggy drawn by a redoubtable horse, named Jim Swinger, which we were allowed to use because he bucked so under the saddle that nobody on the ranch could ride him. We drove six or seven hours across the dry, waterless plains.
Ned recalled afterward that he did not say anything about Roylston's relieving force. What he thought of then was the deep feeling in Crockett's words. "I'm coming back," he said, "and I hope to hunt buffalo with you over the plains of a free Texas." "Go! go! Hurry, Ned!" said Crockett. "Good-by," said Ned, and he dropped lightly to the ground.
It is, according to the testimony of all who have visited it, a most beautiful and pleasing land; the mountains are tolerably high, but do not run much in ranges, and the views among them are continually broken and cheered by delightful valleys and fertile plains.
"The officers," said the papers, "seem to see red Indians in every bush," and unpleasant things were hinted at the officers as a consequence. Indians there certainly were in other sections, and they were unquestionably "raising the devil" along the Smoky Hill and the Southern Plains, and there the Interior Department insisted that troops in strong force should be sent.
Their meekness, as aliens, and their utter ignorance of the country they were in, were very unusual in natives, and excited our sympathy, especially when their demeanour was contrasted with the prouder bearing and intelligence of the native of the plains, who had undertaken to be my guide.
The agricultural resources are not so important, especially from a military point of view, though vast quantities of sheep are raised in the highlands in the spring and summer, the flocks being driven down into the plains to the south in winter.
Brown, skurrying men in torn bagging, the muscles of whose bare, hairless legs seemed carved in dark oak; shining black men whose faces were ebony under the ivory white of their turbans; pale, patient Kabyles of the plains bent under great sacks of flour which drained through ill-sewn seams and floated on the air in white smoke, making every one sneeze as the crowd swarmed past.
In the brilliant atmosphere an antelope at four hundred yards appears as large as it would at one hundred in most other parts of the world; and on the flat plains, where there is not a bush or a shrub to obscure the view, a tiny stone stands out like a golf ball on the putting green.
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