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They paid no attention whatever to Paul, who was hanging to the root of a tree for safety; he pushed ahead as soon as he could get by. The river for miles was churned to foam by their passage. It was the last great drove of buffalo to cross the river, as they were nearly all killed off in a very short time after. About sundown he decided to camp under some high buttes.
They rose by slopes and ledges, steep and rough, and at last ended in the thousand-foot cliffs of the buttes, running sheer and unbroken for many miles. During all the rest of our trip they were to be our companions, the only constant factors in the tumult of lesser peaks, precipitous canons, and twisted systems in which we were constantly involved. The sky was sun-and-shadow after the rain.
To the left of the Bright Angel Gorge, quite an assemblage of buttes awaits inspection. The dominating pile almost opposite Brahma across Bright Angel is Buddha Temple, and below it is Buddha Cloister. Beyond this is another butte, which, however, at times, can scarcely be detected from the main walls of the Kaibab.
Everything about the Wondership was in readiness for the enterprise, and there only remained the tin breakfast utensils and the tents to be packed when they had concluded the morning meal. Naturally excitement ran high. The hunt for the island, too, might be a long one. But they felt that ultimately they would find it, that it would not be like the three buttes of Peg-leg Smith.
Half a mile down the river she could see a corner of Ben's cabin, a section of the corral fence, and one of the small outbuildings. Opposite the cabin, across the river, rose the buttes that met her eyes always when she came to the cabin door. This hill upon which she sat was one that she saw often, when in the evening, watching the setting sun, she followed its golden rays with her eyes.
I had heard of the "Marysville Buttes," as one has heard of Madagascar, but their actual appearance on the landscape came as the greatest surprise of the trip. As I first caught sight of them when within a few miles of Marysville, they gave me a distinct thrill.
They were said to be 5,000, but this is probably an exaggeration. They came from the Buttes Chaumont, where many of them have been kept two days and a half without food. A more villainous collection of faces I never beheld. There were many women, among them some in men's clothes, some as cantinières or ambulancières, and very young boys and old men.
They noticed then that chance had led them back, while they talked, towards the place of sepulture of the Moras, on the summit of an open plateau from which they could see, above myriads of crowded roofs, Montmartre and Les Buttes Chaumont in the distance like vague white billows.
Between the gorgeous buttes and rainbow-tinted ridges there were narrow plains, broken here and there by dry creeks or gulches, and these again were clothed scantily with poplars and sad-colored bull-berry bushes, while the bare spots were purple with the wild Dakota crocuses.
Fred went into Powderville last night and will meet us above at the twin buttes this morning with every cowman in town. All the other outfits have been sent for, and we'll have enough men to make our bluff stand up, never fear. From what I learn, these herds belong to a lot of Yankee speculators, and they don't give a tinker's dam if all the cattle in Montana die from fever.
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