In due time the days grew longer and warmer; the snow melted. Large flocks of wild geese passing northward over our heads assured us, with their unmusical but most welcome notes, that the long winter of '56 and '57 was over and gone. The ground was broken up, crops were planted, and everything gave promise of a favorable season. Our home, in its lovely, fresh robes of green, was enchanting, and we felt that the lines had indeed fallen unto us in pleasant places. But as we take pleasant walks through our happy valley, what means this unusual sound that arrests our footsteps? It is like the pattering of gentle summer rain, and yet the sky is clear and cloudless; no drops fall. What can it be? Ah! see that moving in the grass! We stoop to examine, and find myriads of strange-looking insects hardly larger than fleas. They must be—yes, they are, young grasshoppers. And now may God help us! for we are powerless to arrest their depredations. Day by day they grew and increased, until they covered everything; fields of wheat which promised a bountiful harvest were eaten up so completely that not a green blade or leaf was left; gardens were entirely demolished; screens of cloth put over hot-beds for protection were eaten as greedily as the plants themselves, and the rapidity with which they did their destructive work was amazing. So faded away all our hopes of raising anything available that year, and we watched and waited. But one bright June morning there was a movement and an unusual sound. We rushed to see the cause, and beheld our dire enemy rising in masses, like a great army with banners! They passed over us, making our home for a time the "land shadowing with wings," and finally disappeared in the south. With lightened hearts and willing hands we went to work, replanted some things, and labored thankfully, hopefully and successfully to provide for the next winter.
The experience of the past had taught us much. We felt our hearts stronger and richer for its lessons, and we all look back on that memorable time as something we would not willingly have missed out of our lives, for we learned that one may be reduced to great straits, may have few or no external comforts, and yet be very happy, with that satisfying, independent happiness which outward circumstances cannot affect.
FOOTNOTES:
[B] Soon after this great deliverance, the Blackfoot Indians who belonged to our little colony became discontented and homesick for their hunting grounds among the Rocky Mountains, and made their preparations for an exodus so secretly that we were taken entirely by surprise when one evening they were all missing. They had taken their women and children and as much of their stuff as they could carry on two or three horses, and turned their backs upon us, permanently, as they supposed. Immediately our oldest son started in pursuit, and we watched him with a field-glass as long as we could see, and then by the lights he struck from time to time, as he went farther and farther away, to enable him to see their tracks or the votive offerings to the sun which they had placed on the shrubs and bushes by the wayside as they journeyed westward. At the close of the second day he found them encamped near a stream making snow-shoes, and so uncertain as to their route to the home they loved and pined for, as to be somewhat disheartened. A few persuasive words from the lad, who understood their ways thoroughly, with a promise that they should return to their mountains when the warm weather came, prevailed, and they came back to the Prairie somewhat subdued and not a little chagrined at their failure.
CHAPTER XVIII.
MALCOLM CLARK.
A few years ago, Colonel Wilbur F. Sanders, President of the Historical Society of Montana, justly claiming my brother as one of the earliest pioneers of Montana Territory, requested me to furnish the society with a sketch of his life, feeling that without it, the records would be incomplete.
His career was peculiar, and in order that those who come after us may have a correct account of it, I insert here the substance of the sketch prepared at the request of Colonel Sanders: