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About a week after this time an atajo of pack-mules nearly fifty in number loaded with buffalo-hides and tasajo, was seen struggling up the eastern ceja of the Llano Estacado, and heading in a north-westerly direction over that desert plain. The arriero, mounted upon the mulera, was a half-blood Indian.
Whole tribes of Indians, amounting to many thousands of individuals, subsist entirely upon these animals, as the Laplander upon the reindeer, or the Guarani Indian upon the moriche palm. Their blankets are buffalo-robes, part of their clothing buffalo-leather, their tents are buffalo-hides, and buffalo-beef is their sole food for three parts of the year.
The door had been battered, and now sacks of flour were piled against it, to strengthen it. Indians, dismounted, skulked everywhere, taking pot-shots at the loop-holes, and forcing the men to keep close under cover. Some seventy-five yards behind the store was a large stack of buffalo-hides.
These arrangements being made, we spread our buffalo-hides, with our saddles for pillows, and, as we were all exhausted, we stretched ourselves, if not to sleep, at least to repose.
Louis, then the only place where they could be disposed of in the whole West. The day when everything was about ready for embarkation down the river to the Missouri, in a rude boat which they had constructed of buffalo-hides drawn over a framework of poles, Brady and one of the men were in the camp alone the others were at work on the bank of the stream.
It was rudely built of stout poles, plastered with clay, and had a roof of the same material sloping down to broad eaves, which effectually protected the walls from moisture. It had a wide entrance, protected by two large buffalo-hides hung so as to meet together in the middle.
Lading their baggage on the wild horses from the Cenis, which found their pasture everywhere in the prairies, in shoes made of green buffalo-hides; for want of other paths, following the track of the buffalo, and using skins as the only shelter against rain, winning favour with the savages by the confiding courage of their leader they ascended the streams towards the first ridges of highlands, walking through beautiful plains and groves, among deer and buffaloes, now fording the clear rivulets, now building a bridge by felling a giant tree across a stream, till they had passed the basin of the Colorado, and in the upland country had reached a branch of the Trinity River.
Its exterior, having been protected by a triple covering of buffalo-hides, was found to be impervious even to Greek fire.
The floor was carpeted with buffalo-hides and panther-skins, and round the walls were hung eagles' tails, and the peltries of the fox, the wolf, the badger, the otter, and other wild animals. From a pole in the centre was suspended a small bag, the mysterious medicine-bag of the occupant.
They are made of long posts, neatly squared, firmly fixed into the ground, and covered over with tanned buffalo-hides, the roof being formed of white straw, plaited much finer than the common summer hats of Boston manufacture. These dwellings are of a conical form, thirty feet in height and fifteen in diameter.
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