Chapter Fourteenth.
The return of spring. Their thoughts of home. Preparations to continue their journey. The chief insists upon their course being wrong. Escape of the Wild Man. They discover a borough of Prairie Dogs. Traces of Buffalo observable. They suffer from want of water. A party of Indians. A beautiful landscape. A terrific storm. The chief rendered insensible by a stroke of lightning. He recovers and returns to the camp.
The warm south wind now began to stir the air, while the lengthened days, swelling buds, and melting snows, assured them the patiently waited for and much desired spring had come.
"Home—father, mother, brothers, sister; for, where they are, there is home. Shall we indeed see you and once more be folded in your arms? Shall these wanderings ever cease, of which our souls are weary, and our hearts are sick? Oh! home; thou hope of the weary, and haven of rest, though thy place be the tomb, when shall we see thee!" they sadly and feelingly exclaimed.
Howe and the chief made daily excursions down the valley, in search of wild horses, being anxious to secure each member of their party one for riding and two for pack horses. "For," said Howe, "we will start with good horses, and as the summer is before us, it will go hard with us, if we do not find home before cold weather comes again."
"Before the snows again fall," said the chief, "we will not only have found the son of the great Medicine, but will be back here, never more to leave again."
They were successful in their hunts, and a finer set of horses never wore a halter than those wild ones they had secured, and which twice a day they rode round the forest, in order to tame, and accustom them to carry burthens. They had quite a store of nuts still on hand, packed in bags made of skins, which they lashed on one of the horses' backs; and their jerked and dried meats, together with a quantity of salt that they collected at the salt spring, were packed on another; as was also, half a dozen gourd shells, and one of the kettles they had found, which had, from the many uses to which they applied it, become a necessity. Three or four skins according to their thickness, that had been cured with the hair on, were tightly sewed together for a saddle with small strings, and the whole firmly bound on the horses' back by a broad band. By means of the leather they had been enabled to make a very good bridle for Jane and Edward, but Howe and the chief preferred riding with a single band or string for a halter, and this they rarely held in their hands, but went dashing through the forest, their hands free, and their bodies bent almost to their horses' necks.
With something like the feeling of parting with a friend, they bade adieu to the friendly shelter that had protected them from the wet and cold so many months; the beautiful valley with its park-like trees, many now in bloom; and the smooth verdant sward, its ruins, the sole links of the present with the past, and the only token left that others had lived, known joy and sorrow, and died on a land, supposed to have never, before the present race become its masters, known a civilized people.
They rode gaily forth—Howe with his niece and nephew, the Indian chieftain, the timid Mahnewe with her child, and the wild man, whom they had christened Oudin, from a habit he had of repeating a sound very much like the pronunciation of that word. He had become quite docile, understood many sentences, and could be made to understand by words and signs all that was required of him. He also attempted to use words in conveying his wants to others, and they noticed with pleasure, his fits of passion were less frequent, and when they had passed away he seemed ashamed of them.