But they did stop; for as they were descending a long slope of short brush and flowers, and a glimmer of a stream, at the bottom, had risen the glad cry: “Sweetwater!” another cry interrupted. “Buffalo! Buff’ler!” At the mouth of a shallow valley, across, had appeared dark masses that looked like moving gooseberry bushes.
Down dashed Lucien Maxwell, the official hunter of the expedition; down dashed Kit Carson, and Clément Lambert, and Ike and William New, and Oliver himself; and as soon as they could down dashed others: so that by the time camp was located beside the Sweetwater and fires had been made, [the first buffalo had fallen to the crack of Kit Carson’s rifle]. Oliver killed a fat cow and a huge bull; his Kit Carson rifle shot strong and true. Every hunter was successful, so that this night there was much meat in camp, and the company did not mind sleeping under sage-bushes, in a rain. Only the big lodge had been brought along, and here was no tree to serve as lodge-pole.
[THE FIRST BUFFALO HAD FALLEN TO THE CRACK OF KIT CARSON’S RIFLE]
The next morning they moved up the Sweetwater to Independence Rock.
“Thar she is—the Sign-board o’ the Sweetwater Trail to South Pass,” directed Ike, as the Carson squad came in sight of a gray mass up-swelling like an enormous whaleback above the sea of sage; a single pine, like a scrap of a fin, upon its very spine.
“She’s independent, all right,” observed William New. “She stands out alone. But I reckon she war named ’cause some o’ Ashley’s beaver-hunters, who broke this trail, after the Injuns, ten or fifteen year ago celebrated Fourth o’ July hyar, or Indypendence Day, as it air called down east.”
Independence Rock was a huge bare weather-beaten, rounded mass of gray granite, forty yards high and 650 yards long, rising right out of the plain, on the north of the Sweetwater. As seemed to Oliver, curiously examining the surface, about everybody who had passed had carved or scratched his name or initials. Here were names of trappers, traders and missionaries, already thickly placed as high as arm could reach from horseback. To read the collection was a fascinating pastime. Oliver found Kit Carson’s name, and Jim Bridger’s, and Jim Beckwourth’s, and William New’s, and Ike’s, and Sol Silver’s, and General Ashley the famous Missouri fur-trader’s; etc. And there were many Indian signs; and there were names, freshly carved, of the emigrants who had passed by only two or three weeks before. And a large “Independence.”
This afternoon part of the company (whose names were already upon the rock) went buffalo hunting; but Oliver and the others attacked the rock.
“Hooray!” cheered the red-headed Irishman Tom Tobin, appearing from the other side of the rock, carrying a ladder made from cross-sticks tied with hide thongs to a pair of lodge-poles.