“That’s shuah a big fine ox,” commented Jacob Dodson. “Guess some o’ those emigrants we saw at Kansas Landing are ahead of us.”
“Not very close, Jacob,” answered the lieutenant. “The Oregon Trail is a hundred and more miles north, yet.”
“Seems to me this ox must have cut loose from his party at the Green, an’ he’s making a short cut back through the hills, for Missouri,” decided Kit Carson.
With their red ox in charge the expedition proceeded. It seemed to Oliver rather mean to turn the brave animal about and make him retrace his trail; but in the morning he could not be found, and the lieutenant ordered the men not to look for him.
“Fact is,” declared the lieutenant, to Kit, “I’m glad he got away. He’s won his life, so far as we’re concerned. I’d rather starve a while than kill the old fellow and eat him.”
“Wall,” drawled Kit, “we’ll see if we can’t do better than pore beef.”
Whereupon, as if in reward, that evening he brought into camp a buffalo cow whose fat was two inches thick: the finest buffalo, asserted every man, that he ever had tasted.
To date the march had been not hard, and not unpleasant. The gun-carriage and the spring-wagon had come through without mishap. However, this next evening occurred the first accident, when, the company having crossed the North Platte River to the north of the Bull Pen or New Park, they were caught by the gathering dusk in a deep ravine, where grew sage six feet high. Both lamps of the spring wagon were knocked off, a thermometer was broken, and finally, at ten o’clock, camp was pitched in the dark. Supper was at midnight. Some of the men, who were out hunting buffalo, did not get in at all.
When they did come, in the morning, they brought much meat, and the lieutenant and Kit agreed that it would be wise to dry this meat, for a store against future need. There would be few buffalo, on the Pacific side of the Rockies.