CHAPTER VI
After a week in Casement’s camp, Stanley and his cavalrymen, accompanied by Dancing, Scott, and Bucks, struck north and east toward the Spider Water River to find out why the ties were not coming down faster. Rails had already been laid across the permanent Spider Water Bridge––known afterward as the first bridge, for the big river finished more than one structure before it was completely subdued––and the rail-laying was hampered only by the lack of ties.
The straggling bands of Cheyennes had in the interval been driven out of the foot-hills by troops sent against them, and Stanley and his little escort met with no trouble on his rapid journey.
Toward evening of the second day a broad valley opened on the plain before them, and in the sunset Bucks saw, winding like a silver thread far up toward the mountains, the great stream about which he had already heard so much. Camp 79 was pitched on a high bluff that commanded the valley in both directions for many miles, and after supper Scott and Bucks rode down to the river.
In its low-water stage nothing could have looked more sluggish or more sleepily deceptive than the mighty and treacherous stream. Scott and his companions always gave the river the name the Sioux had long ago given it because of its sudden, ravening floods and its deadly traps laid for such unwary men or animals as trusted its peaceful promise and slept within reach of its cruel power.
Standing in the glow of the evening sky in this land where the clear, bright light seemed to lift him high above the earth, Bucks looked at the yellow flood long and thoughtfully––as well he might––for the best of his life was to be spent within ken of its flow and to go in doing battle with it himself, or in sending faithful men to its battling, sometimes to perish within its merciless currents.
Next morning as the party, following a trail along the bluffs, rode up in the direction of the 80 contractors’ camps they discerned out on the river bottom a motley cluster of tents and shanties pitched under a hill. A number of flatboats lay in the backwater behind the bend and a quantity of ties corded along the bank indicated a loading-place, but no one seemed to be doing any loading. The few men that could be seen in the distance appeared to be loafing in the sunshine along the straggling street-way that led to the river. Stanley checked his horse.
“What place is that?” he demanded of Scott.
“That,” returned the guide, “is Sellersville.”
“Sellersville,” echoed Stanley. “What is Sellersville?”