Chapter Twenty-Second.
Return to the family of Mr. Duncan. Lewis and his father succeed in getting back to camp. The effect the capture of the children produced on the health of Mr. and Mrs. Duncan. Cole and the chief reach the camp of the Arapahoes. Their surprise. They continue their course to Mr. Duncan's camp. Joy at the news they bring. They start again for the west. Thirty Arapahoes accompany them. They arrive at the Sierra Nevada.
Having followed our wanderers through many exceedingly trying and difficult scenes, since they became separated from the rest of the family and were lost in the deep and dreary desert, to the hospitable fireside of the curate beyond the Sierra Nevada where they again met with the comforts of civilized life, we will leave them for the present and return to the family of Mr. Duncan. The last we saw of Mr. Duncan and Lewis was in the battle with the Crows; but they succeeded in making their escape, and finally returned to their camp, only, however, to convey the sorrowful intelligence of the sad fate of all who had gone out to the rescue except himself and Lewis. This sad event confined him to a bed of sickness from which he arose after many weeks of suffering, with feeble and tottering steps, and locks whitened by suffering. Grief had done what time had not—it had made him old and grey.
Mrs. Duncan submitted meekly to the terrible blow; but the elasticity of her step was gone, the light from her eye, and the usual glad smile from her lips had disappeared. Had her children sickened and died, she could have laid them away in the grave, with the consoling thought, that all must lay there at last. But the harassing idea of the torture they would be subjected to, and the terrible death they must at last suffer, if indeed they still lived, was a constant source of agony to her.
"If I only knew that they were dead and at rest, I would be content; but, alas! I fear they still live!" she often said to herself, and then the throbbings of her heart would not be still. Poor mother! her thoughts made her life a torture of the deepest intensity.
Lewis would not believe they were dead, and had devoted the whole time of their absence in wandering from tribe to tribe, in his endeavors to gain some information of them. Once he heard there were some white persons captive in a distant Indian village, but he could not learn the name of the tribe, or in what part of the vast western wilds they were located. Twice he had been through to Oregon in hopes of obtaining a clue to their whereabouts, but heartsick had returned only to sink the already drooping spirits of his parents still lower. Mr. Duncan had removed his family farther east, where he would be less liable to be annoyed by hostile Indians, and there taking up his abode determined to await until he could learn the fate of his children.
Cole and the chief travelled with great rapidity. They were inured to hardship from infancy, and with nothing to impede their progress, sometimes riding, and sometimes walking, the fourth week out they came to the Arapahoe village in the evening just as the shades of night were drawing to the lodges, the men, women, and children who had scattered themselves during the day through the forest. The chieftain's eye kindled as the old familiar faces passed before him, and his breast heaved with pride us he read in their cheerful steps and careless ways the security and prosperity of his tribe. Cole and the chief were standing in the shadow of a large chesnut tree, which protected them from observation, but from which they saw all that was passing in the village without being seen. Gradually the Arapahoes seated themselves on the bank of a small stream in little groups, and then the chief saw who it was that had succeeded him in command—it was his best friend—the brave and good Eagle.
"Stay here, till I return," whispered the chief to Cole, and then folding his arms over his brawny chest, he walked with a proud step into their midst. Every tongue seemed to be paralyzed, every limb nerveless, as they, with horror depicted on their swarthy faces, saw him approaching.
At last one old man slowly arose and stretching his long bony hand toward him, said—"Does not our chief rest well in the spirit land, that he comes back to his people again? or does he come to warn us of danger?"