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Updated: June 3, 2025
Peering over the edge at the bunch-grass belt in which their ponies were tethered, the adventurers saw a spectacle which might well have been calculated to excite the cow-puncher.
Another half mile and she urged the pony down into a slight depression where the footing was better. The animal made good progress here, and after a while they struck a level, splotched with dry bunch-grass, which rustled noisily under the tread of the pony's hoofs.
As the cool night drew on, and they approached more nearly to the upraised form of the mesa, the little animals even began to prick their ears and whinny softly. The pack animals, too, seemed to pluck up spirits amazingly. "They smell grass and water," commented Pete, as he observed these signs. Shortly after ten, as had been surmised, they were among the bunch-grass surrounding the mesa.
Five miles were thus stealthily marched without giving an alarm. Then the valley in which the troops had been moving opened out into what is known as the Big Hole, that is, the valley of the Big Hole River. This is a beautiful prairie basin, fifteen miles wide, and sixty miles long, covered with rich bunch-grass and surrounded by high mountains.
Finally, when it seemed to him as if he could no longer remain idle listening to a strong man's childish prattle, the eastern heavens were lighted by a dull glow, which increased steadily until he could see the horse feeding on the dry bunch-grass an hundred yards away, and his long vigil was nearly at an end.
He clutched wildly at the bunch-grass, secured some, and took it along with him. Chance, who always accompanied Sundown, raced alongside, enjoying the novelty of the thing. He barked and then shot ahead, nipping at the steer's heels, and this did not add to his master's prospects of ultimate survival. Sundown shouted for help when he could, which was not often.
A mile beyond, the ranch road merged with the main-traveled highway running east and west. He spoke to the horses. They broke into a fast trot. Waco, gripping the seat, stared straight ahead. Why had Pat laid that gun on the seat? A thin, gray veil drifted across the sun. From the northwest a light wind sprang up and ran across the mesa, whipping the bunch-grass.
This valley is forty miles long and from ten to fifteen wide, and rising at its sides into low plateaus plenteously covered with rich bunch-grass. It is already pre-empted by farmers, and by easy irrigation are produced all the hardier vegetables and cereals, in quantity, size, and closeness of fibre not equalled on the Iowa prairies.
On the opposite side of the park across the half-acre of waving bunch-grass, a many-pronged old buck in his thin red summer coat lay at the edge of the quaking aspens, sunning the velvet of his tender new horns to harden them against approaching combats.
They were galloping skeletons draped in mangy hide, and they out-distanced the boys who herded them. But this was only for a time. Then they fell back to a walk, a quick, eager, shambling, sore-footed walk; and they no longer were lured aside by the dry bunch-grass. "What is it?" my mother asked from within the wagon. "Water," was my father's reply. "It must be Nephi." And my mother: "Thank God!
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