She held up an Indian arrow, its strap-iron head bent over at right angles. "They shot this into our plow beam. Looks like they got a spite at our plow."
"Ma'am, they have got a spite at hit," said the old scout, seating himself on the ground near by. "They're scared o' hit. I've seed a bunch o' Sioux out at Laramie with a plow some Mormon left around when he died. They'd walk around and around that thing by the hour, talkin' low to theirselves. They couldn't figger hit out no ways a-tall.
"That season they sent a runner down to the Pawnees to make a peace talk, an' to find out what this yere thing was the whites had brung out. Pawnees sent to the Otoes, an' the Otoes told them. They said hit was the white man's big medicine, an' that hit buried all the buffler under the ground wherever hit come, so no buffler ever could git out again. Nacherl, when the runners come back an' told what that thing really was, all the Injuns, every tribe, said if the white man was goin' to bury the buffler the white man had got to stay back.
[pg 147]
"Us trappers an' traders got along purty well with the Injuns--they could get things they wanted at the posts or the Rendyvous, an' that was all right. They had pelts to sell. But now these movers didn't buy nothin' an' didn't sell nothin'. They just went on through, a-carryin' this thing for buryin' the buffler. From now on the Injuns is goin' to fight the whites. Ye kain't blame 'em, ma'am; they only see their finish.
"Five years ago nigh a thousand whites drops down in Oregon. Next year come fifteen hundred, an' in '45 twicet that many, an' so it has went, doublin, an' doublin'. Six or seven thousand whites go up the Platte this season, an' a right smart sprinklin' o' them'll git through to Oregon. Them 'at does'll carry plows.
"Ma'am, if the brave that sunk a arrer in yore plow beam didn't kill yore plow hit warn't because he didn't want to. Hit's the truth--the plow does bury the buffler, an' fer keeps! Ye kain't kill a plow, ner neither kin yer scare hit away. Hit's the holdin'est thing ther is, ma'am--hit never does let go."
"How long'll we wait here?" the older woman demanded.
"Anyhow fer two-three days, ma'am. Thar's a lot has got to sort out stuff an' throw hit away here. One man has drug a pair o' millstones all the way to here from Ohio. He allowed to get rich startin' a gris'mill out in Oregon. An' then ther's chairs an' tables, an' God knows what--"