CHAPTER XXIV
FORSAKING ALL OTHERS
When finally our entire party had been gotten across the Platte, and wehad resumed our westward journey, the routine of travel was, for thetime, broken, and our line of march became somewhat scattered across thelow, hilly country to which we presently came. For my own part, ourprogress seemed too slow, and mounting my horse, I pushed on in advanceof the column, careless of what risk this might mean in an Indiancountry. I wished to be alone; and yet I wished to be not alone. I hopedthat might occur which presently actually did happen.
It was early in the afternoon when I heard her horse's feet coming upbehind me as I rode. She passed me at a gallop; laughing back as thoughin challenge, and so we raced on for a time, until we quite left out ofsight behind us the remainder of our party. Ellen Meriwether was aVirginia girl with Western experience, and it goes without saying thatshe rode well--of course in the cavalry saddle and with the cross seat.Her costume still was composed of the somewhat shriveled and wrinkledbuckskins which had been so thoroughly wetted in crossing the river. Inoticed that she had now even discarded her shoes, and wore theaboriginal costume almost in full, moccasins and all, her gloves and hatalone remaining to distinguish her in appearance at a distance from anative woman of the Plains. The voluminous and beruffled skirts of theperiod, and that feminine monstrosity of the day, the wide spreadingcrinoline, she had left far behind her at the Missouri River. Again thelong curls, which civilization at that time decreed, had been forgotten.Her hair at the front and sides half-waved naturally, but now, insteadof neck curls or the low dressing of the hair which in those days partlycovered the fashionable forehead, she had, like a native woman, arrangedher hair in two long braids. Her hat, no longer the flat straw or theflaring, rose-laden bonnet of the city, was now simply a man's cavalryhat, and almost her only mark of coquetry was the rakish cockade whichconfined it at one side. Long, heavy-hooped earrings such as women atthat time wore, and which heretofore I had never known her to employ,she now disported. Brown as her face was now becoming, one might indeed,at a little distance, have suspected her to be rather a daughter of thePlains than a belle of civilization. I made some comment on this. Sheresponded by sitting the more erect in her saddle and drawing a long,deep breath.
"I think I shall throw away my gloves," she said, "and hunt up somebrass bracelets. I grow more Indian every day. Isn't it glorious, hereon the Plains? Isn't it _glorious_!"
It so seemed to me, and I so advised her, saying I wished the westernjourney might be twice as long.
"But Mr. Orme was saying that he rather thought you might take an escortand go back down the river."
"I wish Mr. Orme no disrespect," I answered, "but neither he nor any oneelse regulates my travel. I have already told you how necessary it wasfor me to see your father, Colonel Meriwether."
"Yes, I remember. But tell me, why did not your father himself comeout?"
I did not answer her for a time. "My father is dead," I replied finally.
I saw her face flush in quick trouble and embarrassment. "Why did younot tell me? I am so sorry! I beg your pardon."
"No," I answered quietly, "we Quakers never wish to intrude our owngriefs, or make any show of them. I should have told you, but there weremany other things that prevented for the time." Then, briefly, Ireviewed the happenings that had led to my journey into the West. Hersympathy was sweet to me.
"So now, you see, I ought indeed to return," I concluded, "but I cannot. We shall be at Laramie now very soon. After that errand I shall goback to Virginia."
"And that will be your home?"
"Yes," I said bitterly. "I shall settle down and become a staid oldfarmer. I shall be utterly cheerless."
"You must not speak so. You are young."
"But you," I ventured, "will always live with the Army?"
"Why, our home is in Virginia, too, over in old Albemarle, though wedon't often see it. I have been West since I came out of school, prettymuch all the time, and unless there should be a war I suppose I shallstay always out here with my father. My mother died when I was veryyoung."
"And you will never come back to quiet old Virginia, where ploddingfarmers go on as their fathers did a hundred years ago?"
She made no immediate answer, and when she did, apparently mused onother things. "The Plains," she said, "how big--how endless they are!Is it not all wild and free?"
Always she came back to that same word "free." Always she spoke ofwildness, of freedom.
"For all one could tell, there might be lions and tigers and camels andgazelles out there." She gestured vaguely toward the wide horizon. "Itis the desert."
We rode on for a time, silent, and I began to hum to myself the rest ofthe words of an old song, then commonly heard:
"O come with me, and be my love, For thee the jungle's depths I'll rove. I'll chase the antelope over the plain, And the tiger's cub I'll bind with a chain, And the wild gazelle with the silvery feet I'll give to thee for a playmate sweet."
"Poets," said I, "can very well sing about such things, but perhaps theycould not practice all they sing. They always--"
"Hush!" she whispered, drawing her horse gently down to a walk, andfinally to a pause. "Look! Over there is one of the wild gazelles."
I followed the direction of her eyes and saw, peering curiously down atus from beyond the top of a little ridge, something like a hundred yardsaway, the head, horns, and neck of a prong-horn buck, standing facingus, and seeming not much thicker than a knife blade. Her keen eyescaught this first; my own, I fancy, being busy elsewhere. At once Islipped out of my saddle and freed the long, heavy rifle from its sling.I heard her voice, hard now with eagerness. I caught a glance at herface, brown between her braids. She was a savage woman!
"Quick!" she whispered. "He'll run."
Eager as she, but deliberately, I raised the long barrel to line andtouched the trigger. I heard the thud of the ball against the antelope'sshoulder, and had no doubt that we should pick it up dead, for itdisappeared, apparently end over end, at the moment of the shot.Springing into the saddle, I raced with my companion to the top of theridge. But, lo! there was the antelope two hundred yards away, and goingas fast on three legs as our horses were on four.
"Ride!" she called. "Hurry!" And she spurred off at breakneck speed inpursuit, myself following, both of us now forgetting poesy, and quitebecome creatures of the chase.
The prong-horn, carrying lead as only the prong-horn can, kept ahead ofus, ridge after ridge, farther and farther away, mile after mile, untilour horses began to blow heavily, and our own faces were covered withperspiration. Still we raced on, neck and neck, she riding with handslow and weight slightly forward, workmanlike as a jockey. Now and againI heard her call out in eagerness.
We should perhaps have continued this chase until one or the other ofthe horses dropped, but now her horse picked up a pebble and wentsomewhat lame. She pulled up and told me to ride on alone. After a pauseI slowly approached the top of the next ridge, and there, as I more thanhalf suspected, I saw the antelope lying down, its head turned back.Eager to finish the chase, I sprang down, carelessly neglecting to throwthe bridle rein over my horse's head. Dropping flat, I rested on myelbow and fired carefully once more. This time the animal rolled overdead. I rose, throwing up my hat with a shout of victory, and I heard,shrilling to me across the distance, her own cry of exultation, as thatof some native woman applauding a red hunter.
Alas for our joy of victory! Our success was our undoing. The verymotion of my throwing up my hat, boyish as it was, gave fright to myhorse, already startled by the shot. He flung up his head high, snorted,and was off, fast as he could go. I followed him on foot, rapidly as Icould, but he would none of that, and was all for keeping away from meat a safe distance. This the girl saw, and she rode up now, springingdown and offering me her horse.
"Stay here," I called to her as I mounted. "I'll be back directly"; andthen with such speed as I could spur out of my new mount, I startedaga
in after the fugitive.
It was useless. Her horse, already lame and weary, and furtherhandicapped by my weight, could not close with the free animal, andwithout a rope to aid me in the capture, it would have been almostimpossible to have stopped him, even had I been able to come alongside.I headed him time and again, and turned him, but it was to no purpose.At last I suddenly realized that I had no idea how far I had gone or inwhat direction. I must now think of my companion. Never was more welcomesight than when I saw her on a distant ridge, waving her hat. I gave upthe chase and returned to her, finding that in her fatigue she had sunkto the ground exhausted. She herself had run far away from the spotwhere I had left 'her.
"I was afraid," she panted. "I followed. Can't you catch him?"
"No," said I, "he's gone. He probably will go back to the trail."
"No," she said, "they run wild, sometimes. But now what shall we do?"
I looked at her in anxiety. I had read all my life of being afoot on thePlains. Here was the reality.
"But you are hurt," she cried. "Look, your wound is bleeding."
I had not known it, but my neck was wet with blood.
"Get up and ride," she said. "We must be going." But I held the stirrupfor her instead, smiling.
"Mount!" I said, and so I put her up.
"Shall we go back to camp?" she asked in some perturbation, apparentlyforgetting that there was no camp, and that by this time the wagonswould be far to the west. For reasons of my own I thought it better togo back to the dead antelope, and so I told her.
"It is over there," she said, pointing in the direction from which shethought she had come. I differed with her, remembering I had ridden withthe sun in my face when following it, and remembering the shape of thehilltop near by. Finally my guess proved correct, and we found the deadanimal, nearly a mile from where she had waited for me. I hurried withthe butchering, cutting the loin well forward, and rolling it all tightin the hide, bound the meat behind the saddle.
"Now, shall we go back?" she asked. "If we rode opposite to the sun, wemight strike the trail. These hills look all alike."
"The river runs east and west," I said, "so we might perhaps betterstrike to the southward."
"But I heard them say that the river bends far to the south not far fromwhere we crossed. We might parallel the river if we went straightsouth."
"But does not the trail cut off the bend, and run straight west?" Irejoined. Neither of us knew that the course of the north fork ranthence far to the northwest and quite away from the trail to Laramie.
Evidently our council was of little avail. We started southwest asnearly as we could determine it, and I admit that grave anxiety had nowsettled upon me. In that monotonous country only the sun and the starsmight guide one. Now, hard as it was to admit the thought, I realizedthat we would be most fortunate if we saw the wagons again that night. Ihad my watch with me, and with this I made the traveler's compass, usingthe dial and the noon mark to orient myself; but this was of smallassistance, for we were not certain of the direction of the compass inwhich the trail lay. As a matter of fact, it is probable that we wentrather west than southwest, and so paralleled both the trail and theriver for more than a dozen miles that afternoon. The girl's face wasvery grave, and now and again she watched me walking or trottingalongside at such speed as I could muster. My clothing was covered withblood from my wound.
I looked always for some little rivulet which I knew must lead us to thePlatte, but we struck no running water until late that evening, and thencould not be sure that we had found an actual water course. There weresome pools of water standing in a coulee, at whose head grew a clump ofwild plum trees and other straggly growth. At least here was water andsome sort of shelter. I dared go no farther.
Over in the west I saw rising a low, black bank of clouds. A film wascoming across the sky. Any way I looked I could see no break, nolandmark, no trend of the land which could offer any sort of guidance.I wished myself all places in the world but there, and reproached myselfbitterly that through my clumsiness I had brought the girl into such asituation.
"Miss Meriwether," I said to her finally, putting my hand on the pommelof her saddle as we halted, "it's no use. We might as well admit it; weare lost."