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"That was the first sign I noticed that the old /fidus Diogenes/ business between me and Paisley Fish was ended forever. He knew how I hated a talkative person, and yet he stampedes into the conversation with his amendments and addendums of syntax. On the map it was Big Spring Valley; but I had heard Paisley himself call it Spring Valley a thousand times.
"What is it? another one of them blamed stampedes?" the old blind trapper asked in a queer and petulant falsetto, as the cries of men and dogs and the grind of the sleds swept the silence of the room. "It sure is," Lucy answered. "An' I never seen gold like it. Feel that, old man." She put the big nugget in his hand. He was but slightly interested.
Instead of stopping and bravely fighting off the blood-thirsty beasts, they would run. Then the whole pack were sure to leave the bolder animals and make for the runaways, which they seldom failed to overtake and despatch. On the Old Trail some years ago one of these stampedes occurred of a band of government horses, in which were several valuable animals.
"This example of Texas scares us up a whole lot; the fact is, it stampedes us; an' without a further word of argyment, the whole band makes a break for the corral, throws saddles onto the swiftest ponies, an' in two minutes we're lost in that cloud of alkali dust we kicks up down the trail toward the no'th.
What is usually called good luck, is almost always the result of wise precautions. In reference to this adroit mode of horse-stealing adopted by the Indians, it is written: "These stampedes are a source of great profit to the Indians of the Plains. It is by this means they deprive the caravans of their animals. The Comanches are particularly expert and daring in this kind of robbery.
The Injins is mighty wasteful of thar flesh, but I doubt whether all the Injins in the continent kills as many as kills themselves in them wild stampedes. We will just wait where we are until they are past, and then we will drop down on 'em and cut three or four of 'em off.
Although Adrian was a little alarmed at this new experience of army stampedes, yet in due time places were found for all to work, and eventually many of them became owners of their own homes. The children of soldiers and other homeless waifs, needed attention, and I found more than a dozen in our Orphans' Home without a shirt for a change.
The years of 1853-4 were years of comparative peace, free from actual Indian wars, and afforded the pioneers an opportunity of improving their farms, building up more comfortable homes and surrounding their families with some comforts and conveniences of civilization. Yet even these years were not free from alarms and stampedes.
Barring accidents, which will happen, his view is the correct one, if care has been used for the first few weeks in properly breaking the herd to the trail. But though hunger and thirst are probably responsible for more stampedes than all other causes combined, it is the unexpected which cannot be guarded against.
It had dried out in a little swale, an' ordinarily no steer would ever hev run fer it. But the herd was nervous en' wild. An' jest as Lassiter said, when that bunch of white steers got to movin' they was as bad as buffalo. I've seen some buffalo stampedes back in Nebraska, an' this bolt of the steers was the same kind. "I tried to mill the herd jest as Lassiter did.
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