PLOTS AND COUNTER-PLOTS
He who would hear that paradox of impossibilities—silence become vocal—must traverse the vast wastes of the prairie by night. As a mother quiets a fretful child, so the illimitable calm lulls tumultuous thoughts. The wind moving through empty solitudes comes with a sigh of unutterable loneliness. Unconsciously, men listen for some faint rustling from the gauzy, wavering streamers that fire northern skies. The dullest ear can almost fancy sounds from the noiseless wheeling of planets through the overspanning vaulted blue; and human speech seems sacrilege.
Though the language of the prairie be not in words, some message is surely uttered; for the people of the plains wear the far-away look of communion with the unseen and the unheard. The fine sensibility of the white woman, perhaps, shows the impress of the vast solitudes most readily, and the gravely repressed nature of the Indian least; but all plain-dwellers have learned to catch the voice of the prairie. I, myself, know the message well, though I may no more put it into words than the song love sings in one's heart. Love, says the poet, is infinite. So is the space of the prairie. That, I suppose, is why both are too boundless for the limitation of speech.
Night after night, with only a grassy swish and deadened tread over the turf breaking stillness, we journeyed northward. Occasionally, like the chirp of cricket in a dry well, life sounded through emptiness. Skulking coyotes, seeking prey among earth mounds, or night hawks, lilting solitarily in vaulted mid-heaven, uttered cries that pierced the vast blue. Owls flapped stupidly up from our horses' feet. Hungry kites wheeled above lonely Indian graves, or perched on the scaffolding, where the dead lay swathed in skins.
Reflecting on my experiences with the Mandanes and the Sioux, I was disposed to upbraid fate as a senseless thing with no thread of purpose through life's hopeless jumble. Now, something in the calm of the plains, or the certainty of our unerring star-guides, quieted my unrest. Besides, was I not returning to one who was peerless? That hope speedily eclipsed all interests. That was purpose enough for my life. Forthwith, I began comparing lustrous gray eyes to the stars, and tracing a woman's figure in the diaphanous northern lights. One face ever gleamed through the dusk at my horse's head and beckoned northward. I do not think her presence left me for an instant on that homeward journey. But, indeed, I should not set down these extravagances, which each may recall in his own case, only I would have others judge whether she influenced me, or I, her.
Thus we traveled northward, journeying by night as long as we were in the Sioux territory. Once in the land of the Assiniboines, we rode day and night to the limit of our horses' endurance. Remembering the Hudson's Bay outrage at the Souris, and having also heard from Mandane runners of a raid planned by our rivals against the North-West fort at Pembina, I steered wide of both places, following the old Missouri trail midway between the Red and Souris rivers. It may have been because we traveled at night, but I did not encounter a single person, native or white, till we came close to the Red and were less than a day's journey from Fort Gibraltar. On the river trail, we overtook some Hudson's Bay trappers. The fellows would not answer a single question about events during the year and scampered away from us as if we carried smallpox, which had thinned the population a few years before.
"That's bad!" said I aloud, as the men fled down the river bank, where we could not follow. Little Fellow looked as solemn as a grave-stone. He shook his head with ominous wisdom that foresees all evil but refuses to prophesy.
"Bother to you, Little Fellow!" I exclaimed. "What do you mean? What's up?"
Again the Indian shook his head with dark mutterings, looking mighty solemn, but he would not share his foreknowledge. We met more Hudson's Bay men, and their conduct was unmistakably suspicious. On a sudden seeing us, they reined up their horses, wheeled and galloped off without a word.
"I don't like that! I emphatically don't!" I piloted my broncho to a slight roll of the prairie, where we could reconnoitre. Distinctly there was the spot where the two rivers met. Intervening shrubbery confused my bearings. I rose in my stirrups, while Little Fellow stood erect on his horse's back.