Out of Central Asia our own people had come.
or perhaps from the lands east of the Danube or Don.
The question is disputed, but my own inclination is toward Central Asia. Among those migrating tribes were the Celts and we who moved farthest to the west, we Irish, Welsh, and Bretons still kept some of the old beliefs, the old customs.
Since the beginning of time, men had been migrating, with the movement usually to the south or west. Perhaps this of which I was now a part would be the last great migration. Yet this was different. This was no organized movement of tribes, nations, or conquering armies; it was a migration of individuals, each making his own decision, gathering his own supplies and equipment. From a thousand villages and cities they came, strangers to each other, yet with a common goal.
Over the mountains from the coastal provinces, filtering down the slopes, floating down the rivers, some dying, some living, many killed by savages, but the dead were always replaced by others.
There was no end to them.
I had seen them on the Monongahela and the Ohio, floating their rafts down stream, finding homes in Illinois, Missouri, or going on to Texas.
Here and there I heard talk of Oregon, and of California. Once a man has made that first move, once he has cast off his moorings, his associations, broken with his school, his church, his village store, and his relatives, it is easy to continue on. It is always easier to travel than to stop.
As long as one travels toward a promised land, the dream is there, to stop means to face the reality, and it is easier to dream than to realize the dream.
“You spoke of the Injuns awhile back, their hunting, and all. Hunting is all right when there’s game, but the game drifts when the climate changes, and during the winter there’s no berries or nuts or seeds to be had, so grub can be mighty hard to come by.” “You’re right, of course. But they did smoke meat, and some of the Indians planted corn and squash.” “You bet they did, but Injuns aren’t much hand to put by. I lived among ’em a time or two when their bellies were empty and the papooses cried themselves to sleep. It took a lot of grub to get them through the winter, and I reckon no tribe ever had enough.” Remembering my own early years, I could only agree. Many a time before I had the Ferguson rifle, we had gone hungry, and there’d been a few times after. More than once I’d hiked miles through the wet woods hunting something when all the animals had laid up to wait out the storm.
Suddenly, Shanagan pulled up, pointing.
The tracks of several riders of unshod ponies had passed diagonally across our route, and not long since. They had drawn up here, watching our party go by.
“We’d better be gettin’ back.” Davy took a look around, then we raced our horses across the flat to get back to the others. Solomon Talley rode to meet us.
“They heard our shootin’,” Davy said. “They could never have missed it, but they didn’t attack even when they knew our guns were empty.” Cusbe Ebitt spat. “They want us all together, and at the right time.” “Likely,” Heath agreed. He glanced at the antelope. “Two shots, two kills.
That’s prime!” “Don’t worry none about Chantry,” Shanagan told them. “His was a runnin’ shot, two hundred yards if an inch, and right through the heart.” We spread out to offer less of a target, yet you could have drawn a fifty-yard circle around the lot of us. Back east there was much talk of the red man and the wrongs that had been done him, but I found myself less concerned with those wrongs and more with my own scalp at this moment.
“You got to see it their way,” Davy said. “To an Injun our outfit would make him a mighty rich man. One ambush, and they ride home loaded with powder, shot, traps, blankets, rifles, and horses, to say nothing of our trifles.” Ahead of us was a knoll where a fringe of woodland came up out of a stream bed and crested the knoll. There were a few granite boulders around.
We spread out into a skirmish line and rode up the slope. There was a spring flowing from under a boulder, several cottonwood trees, and one huge fallen one. There was a little brush.
Only the Otoe hung back. “No good,” he said. “Bad spirits here.” “Looks all right to me,” Bob Sandy said.
We walked our horses into the little hollow atop the knoll. On our north side, the ground fell steeply away into a coulee where our spring’s water trickled away to join a small stream.
A more perfect camping place could not be found, but no ashes of campfires existed. There were many evidences of antelope, buffalo, and even wild horses about, and no bones to indicate a poison spring. Such springs were rare, but I had heard of some with arsenic in the water, and others with numerous minerals in suspension that might upset the human organism.
Talley swung down and tasted the water.
“Hell, there’s nothing wrong with that. I never tasted better.” “No good,” the Otoe insisted. He gestured sweepingly. “No like. Bad place for Indian.” Deg Kemble prowled about while Ebitt rode out along the ridge above the stream. On all three sides but that of the stream we would have an excellent field of fire with protection from a natural mound of earth that banked the source of the spring on three sides. On the other the fallen log offered an equally fine breastwork. The space within was perhaps thirty yards by twenty, ample for ourselves and our horses.
The Otoe hung back. Obviously he wanted no part of the place.
Talley stopped by where I still sat my horse.
“You are an educated man, Chantry. What do you make of him?” “There seem to be two possibilities. One that he didn’t intend to bring us here because the place is too good a position to defend, in case he’s planned to ambush us, or else the place is taboo for some reason.” “Taboo?” “An Indian doesn’t have our knowledge, and for what he cannot otherwise explain, he imagines evil spirits are the cause. For example, suppose some Indians got hold of the blankets or clothing of people who died by smallpox and rode to this place with them. As you know, such things have happened and the Indians died very quickly.
“Other Indians may have found the bodies, dead but with no marks upon them, and would immediately assume evil spirits had been at work. After all, Kemble, it’s only a few years since we were doing the same thing.” “Makes sense. Anyway, I’m for stayin’.
You agree?” “I do.” Later I wondered if my advice was sound.
No one among us was the leader. Each had his abilities, each contributed in his own way.
While I put together a small fire, Isaac Heath picketed the horses, Bob Sandy and the Otoe kept watch, Shanagan staked out our antelope hides and began scraping them of excess flesh. The others gathered fuel for the night and Cusbe Ebitt put on a kettle and began to prepare a stew.
Talley went off down the trickle to the stream, scouting the country.
My fire going, I went to the edge and looked out over the vastness of the prairie, the grass flame red with the setting sun. For the first time, I realized what a move I had made.
My wife and child were gone. Burned to death in the flames of a fire set by… whom?
Or was it purely accident, like so many others?
Sudden fires were not uncommon.
But what had I done? I had cut all ties, abandoned the planning of a lifetime, and ridden off into a wild land. Only two months ago I had sat with distinguished men, men of letters, directors of affairs, leaders of men, and now here I was, far off in the wilderness headed toward what?
CHAPTER 3
The sky was shot with flaming arrows that slowly faded, leaving a kiss of crimson on the edges of clouds, and the prairie itself turned a sullen red, darkening into shadows and the night. Somewhere down in the copse an owl hooted.
It was an empty land, but I knew my people, and it would not be empty long. I had seen them back there with their simple wagons. I had seen them afoot, with wife and child riding, sometimes driving a cow, crossing the mountains, clearing the roads.
Already they had cut paths into the dark forests of Pennsylvania and Ohio. Men had long been trapping west of the Mississippi as well as east of it, and the adventurous ones, such as this party, were pushing out into the plains.