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Updated: June 3, 2025
And all this while the waggon jolted on over the rough ground or rolled smoothly over the flat plain, crushing down the thick buffalo-grass, or smashing some succulent, thorny cactus with a peculiar whishing sound that seemed to penetrate far through the silence of the night.
The boys, with the agile energy of their kind, had leaped out to scamper about on the rimy buffalo-grass, dull gray, dried and withered, yet full of nutriment for the little droves of horned cattle already browsing placidly along the slopes where but a few years before the Sioux and Cheyenne chased great herds of bison.
We crossed a wide, noble mesa clothed with buffalo-grass: there was no heat, no dust, and the long caravan before us made, as usual, a moving picture. The desert looked more like Palestine than ever, with the low buttes and sandhills yellow in the distance. "Towered cities called us then," yet when we reached them we found but desolation, "and the fox looked out of the window."
Our saddle stock, outside of what was stabled and grain-fed, braved the winter, pawing away the snow and sleet in foraging for their subsistence. A few weeks of fine balmy weather in January and February followed the distressing season of wintry storms, the cattle taking to the short buffalo-grass and rapidly recuperating.
The number of these solitary, and almost obliterated mounds is small when compared with the vast multitude in the cemeteries of our towns, though if the host of those whose bones are mouldering under the short buffalo-grass and tall blue-stem of the prairies between the Missouri and the mountains were tabulated, the list would be appalling.
The chief nodded, and said that it was good; and while strict watch was kept from the rock, three parts of the men were hurried down to the nearest point where there was an abundance of buffalo-grass really in a state of naturally-made hay, and bundles of this were cut and carried to the starving cattle.
In addition to this, our horse was filling out his sides upon the rich buffalo-grass that grew along the stream; and the dogs poor fellows! they were like to fare worst of all stood watching my operations, and snapped eagerly at every scrap that fell from my knife.
The girl alone remained motionless, crouched on the floor, her white face uplifted. The entire field stretching to the river was clear to the view, the short, dry buffalo-grass offering no concealment. To the right of the coach, some fifty feet away, was the only depression, a shallow gully leading down from the bluff, but this slight advantage was unavailable.
The country was fairly carpeted with well-cured buffalo-grass; on the north and west was a range of sand-dunes, while on the south the country was broken by deep coulees, affording splendid shelter in case of blizzards or wintry storms. A dugout was built on either end of the range.
Dead men were lying about in the short buffalo-grass which had been stained and matted by their flowing blood, and the agonized posture of their bodies told far more forcibly than any language the tortures which had come before a welcome death. All had been scalped; all had been mutilated in that nameless manner which seems to delight the brutal instincts of the North American savage.
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