Part 6

Our road bore hence north of west, up the left bank of Chapman’s Creek, on which, twenty-three miles from Junction, we halted at “Station 8,” at 11 A. M., to change mules and dine. (This station should be five miles further on, and three or four miles further south, but cannot be for want of wood and water.) There is, of course, no house here, but two small tents and a brush arbor furnish accommodations for six to fifteen persons, as the case may be. A score of mules are picketed about on the rich grass; there is a rail-pen for the two cows; of our landlady’s two sun-browned children (girls of ten and six respectively) one was born in Missouri, the other at Laramie. I was told that their father was killed by Indians, and that the station-keeper is her second husband. She gave us an excellent dinner of bacon and greens, good bread, apple-sauce and pie, and would have given us butter had we passed a few days later; but her cows, just arrived, have been over-driven, and need a few days rest and generous feeding. The water was too muddy—the prejudices of education would not permit me to drink it—the spring being submerged by the high water of the brook, which was the only remaining resource. She apologized for making us eat in her narrow tent rather than under her brush arbor, saying that the last time she set the table there the high prairie-wind made a clean sweep of table-cloth and all upon it, breaking several of her not abundant dishes. I have rarely made a better dinner, though the violent rain of the second previous night came nigh drowning out the whole concern.

We were in the wagon again a few minutes before noon (the hours kept on the Plains are good), for we had thirty-five miles yet to make to-day, which, with a mule team require a long afternoon. True, the roads are harder here, less cut up, less muddy, than in Eastern Kansas; but few men think how much up and down is saved them in traveling over a civilized region by bridges and causeways over water-courses. We still kept north of west for several miles, so as to cling to the high “divide” between Chapman’s Creek and Solomon’s Fork (another tributary of the Smoky Hill) so far as possible. Soon we saw our first antelope, and, in the course of the afternoon, five others; but not one of them seemed to place a proper estimate on the value of our society. Two of them started up so near us as to be for a moment within possible rifle-shot; but they widened the gap between us directly. We crossed many old buffalo-trails and buffalo-heads nearly reduced to the skeleton, but no signs that buffalo have been so far east this season. Two or three of the larger water-courses we crossed had here and there a cotton-wood or stunted elm on its banks, but the general dearth of timber is fearful, and in a dry season there can be little or no water on this long thirty-five miles. But it must be considered that our route avoids the streams, and of course the timber, to the utmost. The creek on which we are encamped (a branch of Solomon’s) is now a fair mill-stream, but in a dry time might doubtless be run through a nine-inch ring. It has considerable wood on its banks—say a belt averaging ten rods in width.

Twenty miles back, the rock suddenly changed entirely from the universal limestone of Kansas, east of Chapman’s Creek to a decaying red sandstone; the soil hence becomes sandy and much thinner; the grass is also less luxuriant, though in some places still good. For acres, especially on the higher ridges, there is little or no soil; rock in place or slightly disturbed nearly covering the surface. Through all this region, the furious rains, rushing off in torrents without obstruction, have worn wide and devious water-courses, but they are neither deep enough nor permanently wet enough to shelter timber. I reckon “claims” will not be greedily hunted nor bought at exorbitant prices hereabouts for some years yet.

Our hostess for the night has two small tents, as at No. 8, and gave us a capital supper, butter included; but she and her two children alike testify that, in one of the drenching thunder-storms so frequent of late, they might nearly as well have been out on the prairie, and that sleeping under such a visitation is an art only to be acquired by degrees. They have a log-cabin going up, I am happy to say. Their tents were first located on the narrow bottom of the creek; but a rapidly rising flood compelled them, a few nights since, to scramble out, and move them to a higher bench of prairie. It would have been pitiful to have been turned out so, only the shelter they were enjoying was good for nothing.

I believe I have now descended the ladder of artificial life nearly to its lowest round. If the Cheyennes—thirty of whom stopped the last express down on the route we must traverse, and tried to beg or steal from it—shall see fit to capture and strip us, we shall probably have further experience in the same line; but for the present the progress I have made during the last fortnight toward the primitive simplicity of human existence may be roughly noted thus:

_May 12th._—_Chicago._—Chocolate and morning newspapers last seen on the breakfast-table.

_23d._—_Leavenworth._—Room-bells and baths make their final appearance.

_24th._—_Topeka._—Beef-steak and wash-bowls (other than tin) last visible. Barber ditto.

_26th._—_Manhattan._—Potatoes and eggs last recognized among the blessings that “brighten as they take their flight.” chairs ditto.

_27th._—_Junction City._—Last visitation of a boot-black, with dissolving views of a board bedroom. Beds bid us good-by.

_28th._—_Pipe Creek._—Benches for seats at meals have disappeared, giving place to bags and boxes. We (two passengers of a scribbling turn) write our letters in the express-wagon that has borne us by day, and must supply us lodgings for the night. Thunder and lightning from both south and west give strong promise of a shower before morning. Dubious looks at several holes in the canvas covering of the wagon. Our trust, under Providence, is in buoyant hearts and an India-rubber blanket. Good-night.

VII. THE HOME OF THE BUFFALO.

Station 11, Pike’s Peak Express, } CLEAR CREEK, _May 29, 1859_. }

I ceased writing No. VI. last night at midnight at Station 9—the storm, which had been threatened since dark, just bursting in wind and rain. The wind was a gale, but upset neither tents nor wagons; the rain fell for about an hour, then ceased, though a little more fell this morning, and we have had thunder and lightning at intervals through the day, and have it still, threatening showers before dawn. We rose early from our wagon-bed this morning, had breakfast at six, and soon bade adieu to Pipe Creek, with its fringe of low elms and cotton-woods, such as thinly streak all the streams we have passed to-day that are large enough to protect timber from prairie-fires. Very soon, we were off the sandstone upon limestone again, which has been the only rock visible for the last forty miles, and this but sparingly. The soil is of course improved, but I think not equal to that of Eastern Kansas. The face of the country is slightly rolling—in one place, a level prairie eleven miles wide—but even this is cut and washed out by shallow water-courses, probably dry a good part of each summer. We have crossed many streams to-day, all making south for Solomon’s Fork, which has throughout been from two to six miles from us on our left, its narrow belt of timber constantly sending out longer or shorter spurs up the creeks which feed it on either side. The route has been from fifty to two hundred feet above the bed of the Fork, keeping out of all bottoms and marshes, but continually cut by water-courses, often with abrupt banks and miry beds, in one of which only were we stalled until an extra span of mules was sent from the other wagon to our aid. (The express-wagons always go in pairs, for reciprocal aid and security.) I presume all the timber we have passed through since we left the Republican at Junction (and we are now one hundred and ten miles from it by our route, and perhaps one hundred in a straight line), would not form a belt half a mile wide, with but a few white-oaks to render it of any value except for fuel. A low, long-limbed, twisty elm, forms three-fourths of all the wood we have seen this side of Junction; the residue is mainly cotton-wood. The streams are usually clear, except where riled by recent showers, and springs are not infrequent. If well timbered, this country would be rather inviting. It is largely covered with the dead stalks of the wild sunflower, which is said to indicate a good soil for corn. The sunflower plant has not started this season.

On rising our first ridge this morning, a herd of buffalo was seen grazing on the prairie some three miles toward the Solomon; soon, more were visible; then others. At length, a herd of perhaps a hundred appeared on the north—the only one we saw on that side of our road during the day. Having been observed, they were heading down the valley of a small creek toward the Solomon. Just then, the tents and wagons of a body of encamped Pike’s Peakers appeared right across a little creek; two men were running across the prairie on foot to get a shot at the buffalo; another was mounting a horse with like intent. The herd passed on a long, awkward gallop north of the tents and struck south-west across our road some forty rods ahead of us. A Sharp’s rifle was leveled and fired at them by one of our party, but seemed rather to hasten than arrest their progress. But one old bull shambled along behind in a knock-kneed fashion (having probably been lamed by some former party); and he was fired at twice by our marksmen as he attempted to cross the road—once when only fifteen rods distant. They thought they wounded him fatally, but he vanished from our sight behind a low hill, and their hasty search for him proved unsuccessful.

Thence nearly all day, the buffalo in greater or less numbers were visible among the bottoms of the Solomon on our right—usually two to three miles distant. At length, about 5 P. M., we reached the crest of a “divide,” whence we looked down on the valley of a creek running to the Solomon some three miles distant, and saw the whole region from half a mile to three miles south of our road, and for an extent of at least four miles east and west, fairly alive with buffalo. There certainly were not less than ten thousand of them; I believe there were many more. Some were feeding, others lying down, others pawing up the earth, rolling on it. etc. The novel spectacle was too tempting for our sportsmen. The wagons were stopped, and two men walked quietly toward the center of the front of the herd. Favored by a water-course, they crept up to within fifty rods of the buffalo, and fired eight or ten shots into the herd, with no visible effect. The animals nearest the hunters retreated as they advanced, but the great body of the herd was no more disturbed or conscious of danger than if a couple of mosquitos had alighted among them. After an hour of this fruitless effort, the hunters gave it up, alleging that their rifle was so foul and badly sighted as to be worthless. They rejoined us, and we came away, leaving nine-tenths of the vast herd exactly where we found them. And there they doubtless are sleeping at this moment, about three miles from us.

We are near the heart of the buffalo region. The stages from the west that met us here this evening report the sight of millions within the last two days. Their trails chequer the prairie in every direction. A company of Pike’s Peakers killed thirteen near this point a few days since. Eight were killed yesterday at the next station west of this by simply stampeding a herd and driving them over a high creek-bank, where so many broke their necks. Buffalo-meat is hanging or lying all around us, and a calf two or three months old is tied to a stake just beside our wagons. He was taken by rushing a herd up a steep creek-bank; which so many could not possibly climb at once; this one was picked out in the melee as most worth having, and taken with a rope. Though fast tied and with but a short tether, he is true game, and makes at whoever goes near him with desperate intent to butt the intruder over. We met or passed to-day two parties of Pike’s Peakers who had respectively lost three oxen or steers, stampeded last night by herds of buffalo. The mules at the express stations have to be carefully watched to preserve them from a similar catastrophe—to their owners.

I do not like the flesh of this wild ox. It is tough and not juicy. I do not forget that our cookery is of the most unsophisticated pattern—carrying us back to the age of the building of the Pyramids, at least—but I would much rather see an immense herd of buffalo on the prairie than eat the best of them.

The herbage hereabout is nearly all the short, strong grass known as the buffalo-grass, and is closely fed down; we are far beyond the stakes of the land-surveyor—beyond the usual haunts of white men. The Santa Fé trail is far south of us; the California is considerably north. Very probably, the buffalo on Solomon’s Fork were never hunted by white men till this spring. Should one of these countless herds take a fancy for a man-hunt, our riflemen would find even the express-wagons no protection.

Though our road is hardly two months old, yet we passed two graves on it to-day. One is that of an infant, born in a tent of the wife of one of the station-masters on her way to his post, and which lived but a day; the other that of a Missourian on his way to Pike’s Peak, who was accidentally shot in taking a rifle from his wagon. His party seems to have been singularly unfortunate. A camp or two further on, a hurricane overtook them and tore their six wagons into oven-wood; they were able to make but three passable wagons out of the remains. Their loss in other property was serious; and they sustained much bodily harm. One more of them was buried a camp or two further on.

Those whom we meet here coming down confirm the worst news we have had from the Peak. There is scarcely any gold there; those who dig cannot average two shillings per day; all who can get away are leaving; Denver and Auraria are nearly deserted; terrible sufferings have been endured on the Plains, and more must yet be encountered; hundreds would gladly work for their board, but cannot find employment—in short, Pike’s Peak is an exploded bubble, which thousands must bitterly rue to the end of their days. Such is the tenor of our latest advices. I have received none this side of Leavenworth that contradict them. My informant says all are getting away who can, and that we shall find the region nearly deserted. That is likely, but we shall see.

A young clerk with whom I conversed at supper gave me a little less discouraging account; but even he, having frozen his feet on the winter journey out, had had enough of gold-hunting, and was going home to his parents in Indiana, to stick to school for a few years. I commended that as a wise resolution. Next morning, after we had started on our opposite ways, I was apprised by our conductor that said clerk was a woman! I had not dreamed of such a thing; but his more practical or more suspicions eyes had seen through her disguise at once. We heard more of her at Denver—quite enough more—but this may as well be left untold.

VIII. LAST OF THE BUFFALO.

REISINGER’S CREEK, Station No. 13, } Pike’s Peak Express Co., _May 31, 1859_. }

I would rather not bore the public with buffalo. I fully realize that the subject is not novel—that Irving, and Cooper, and many others, have written fully and admirably upon it; and that the traveler’s enthusiastic recital falls coldly on the ear of the distant, critical, unsympathizing reader. Yet I insist on writing this once more on buffalo, promising then to drop the subject, as we pass out of the range of the buffalo before night. All day yesterday, they darkened the earth around us, often seeming to be drawn up like an army in battle array on the ridges and adown their slopes a mile or so south of us—often on the north as well. They are rather shy of the little screens of straggling timber on the creek-bottoms—doubtless from their sore experience of Indians lurking therein to discharge arrows at them as they went down to drink. If they feed in the grass of the narrow valleys and ravines, they are careful to have a part of the herd on the ridges which overlook them, and with them the surrounding country for miles. And, when an alarm is given, they all rush furiously off in the direction which the leaders presume that of safety.

This is what gives us such excellent opportunities for regarding them to the best advantage. They are moving northward, and are still mainly south of our track. Whenever alarmed, they set off on their awkward but effective canter to the great herds still south, or to haunts with which they are comparatively familiar, and wherein they have hitherto found safety. This necessarily sends those north of us across our roads often but a few rods in front of us, even when they had started a mile away. Then a herd will commence running across a hundred rods ahead of us, and, the whole blindly following their leader, we will be close upon them before the last will have cleared the track. Of course, they sometimes stop and tack, or, seeing us, sheer off and cross further ahead, or split into two lines; but the general impulse, when alarmed, is to follow blindly and at fall speed, seeming not to inquire or consider from what quarter danger is to be apprehended.

What strikes the stranger with most amazement is their immense numbers. I know a million is a great many, but I am confident we saw that number yesterday. Certainly, all we saw could not have stood on ten square miles of ground. Often, the country for miles on either hand seemed quite black with them. The soil is rich, and well matted with their favorite grass. Yet it is all (except a very little on the creek-bottoms, near to timber) eaten down like an overtaxed sheep-pasture in a dry August. Consider that we have traversed more than one hundred miles in width since we first struck them, and that for most of this distance the buffalo have been constantly in sight, and that they continue for some twenty-five miles further on—this being the breadth of their present range, which has a length of perhaps a thousand miles—and you have some approach to an idea of their countless myriads. I doubt whether the domesticated horned cattle of the United States equal the numbers, while they must fall considerably short in weight, of these wild ones. Margaret Fuller long ago observed that the Illinois prairies seemed to repel the idea of being new to civilized life and industry—that they, with their borders of trees and belts of timber, reminded the traveler rather of the parks and spacious fields of an old country like England—that you were constantly on the involuntary look-out for the chateaux, or at least the humbler farm-houses, which should diversify such a scene. True as this is or was of Illinois, the resemblance is far more striking here, where the grass is all so closely pastured and the cattle are seen in such vast herds on every ridge. The timber, too, aids the illusion, seeming to have been reduced to the last degree consistent with the wants of a grazing country, and to have been left only on the steep creek-banks where grass would not grow. It is hard to realize that this is the center of a region of wilderness and solitude, so far as the labors of civilized man are concerned—that the first wagon passed through it some two months ago. But the utter absence of houses or buildings of any kind, and our unbridged, unworked road, winding on its way for hundreds of miles without a track other than of buffalo intersecting or leading away from it on either hand, bring us back to the reality.

I shall pass lightly over the hunting exploits of our party. A good many shots have been fired—certainly not by me; even were I in the habit of making war on nature’s children, I would as soon think of shooting my neighbor’s oxen as these great, clumsy, harmless, creatures. If they were scarce, I might comprehend the idea of hunting them for sport; here, they are so abundant that you might as well hunt your neighbor’s geese. And, while there have been several shots fired by our party at point-blank distance, I have reason for my hope that no buffalo has experienced any personal inconvenience therefrom. For this impunity, the foulness of the rifle has had to answer in part; the greenness of the sportsmen is perhaps equally responsible for it. But then we have had no horse or mule out of our regular teams, and the candid will admit that a coach-and-four is not precisely the fittest turn-out for a hunting party.

I write in the station-tent (having been driven from our wagon by the operation of greasing its wheels, which was found to interfere with the steadiness of my hastily-improvised table), with the buffalo visible on the ridges south and every way but north of us. They were very close down to us at daylight, and, till the increasing light revealed distinctly our position, since which they have kept a respectful distance. But a party of our drivers, who went back seven miles on mules last evening, to help get our rear wagon out of a gully in which it had mired and stuck fast, from which expedition they returned at midnight, report that they found the road absolutely dangerous from the crowds of buffalo feeding on either side, and running across it—that, the night being quite dark, they were often in great danger of being run over and run down by the headlong brutes. They were obliged to stand still for minutes, and fire their revolvers right and left, to save their lives and their mules.