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The miners were hustling him to the door to the Court House or to the cotton-wood a toss-up which. "Look here!" cried out the Colonel; "McGinty and Johnson haven't got back!" Nobody listened. Justice had been sufficiently served in sending them. They had forced Butts out across the threshold, the crowd packed close behind.
The river is swift, and there are many smooth rapids. I stand on deck, keeping careful watch ahead, and we glide along, mile after mile, plying strokes, now on the right and then on the left, just sufficient to guide our boats past the rocks into smooth water. At noon we emerge from Gray Canyon, as we have named it, and camp for dinner under a cotton-wood tree standing on the left bank.
A good many were willing to help since they'd been cheated out of a hanging, and even defrauded of a shot at a thief on the wing. Nobody seemed to care to remain in the neighbourhood of the crooked cotton-wood. The crowd was dispersing somewhat sheepishly. Nobody looked at Butts, and yet he was a sight to see. His face and his clothes were badly mauled. He was covered with mud and blood.
Pines, willows, cotton-wood, two kinds of hickory, water-oak, live-oak, sweet-gum, magnolia, the red and white bay-tree, a few red cedars, and haw-bushes, with many species not known to me, made up a rich wall of verdure on either side, as I sped along with a light heart to Columbus, where my compagnons de voyage were to meet me. Wood-ducks and egrets, in small flocks, inhabited the forest.
Presently, he observed a long distance off upon the plain, a figure which he believed was moving. Was this only a poplar or a cotton-wood tree? He got upon his knees, and put his ear to the ground; the soft thud of a horse's hoof vibrated under his ear, and he was satisfied. "But there is only one horseman. What can it mean?"
Meantime, the thing that was running in my mind was, 'Now if my ears hear aright, I have not only to get the names of all the towns and islands and bends, and so on, by heart, but I must even get up a warm personal acquaintanceship with every old snag and one-limbed cotton-wood and obscure wood pile that ornaments the banks of this river for twelve hundred miles; and more than that, I must actually know where these things are in the dark, unless these guests are gifted with eyes that can pierce through two miles of solid blackness; I wish the piloting business was in Jericho and I had never thought of it.
The log cabin of Settler Rowland, as a landmark, stood forth. Barred it was the white of barked cotton-wood timber alternating with the brown of earth that filled the spaces between like the longitudinal stripes of a prairie gopher or on the back of a bob-white. Long wiry slough grass, razor-sharp as to blades, pungent under rain, weighted by squares of tough, native sod, thatched the roof.
They resembled the wintry appearance of a large branch from an oak tree, and this was the prize which I could not distinctly see when entangled in the cotton-wood, within my grasp.
From the heavy grove of cotton-wood beyond the creek there arose several great birds, soaring majestically across eagles also interested in the coming of the fish. Suddenly one of these made a swift dart from its poise high in the air, straight as an arrow, and flinging the water in every direction as it struck. Struggling, it rose again with a great fish in its talons.
Meanwhile, a couple of axes had been grappled by stout hands; a cotton-wood tree name crashing down after a few sharp blows; and, having been cut into "logs," was soon crackling under the red blaze. Over this, the ribs and steaks of the bighorn soon sputtered, and the coffee-kettle steamed, simmered, and bubbled, with its brown and aromatic contents.
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