In the years gone by these same ravines had afforded secure hiding-places for the hostile Sioux, who had so stubbornly resisted the onward march of the white man.
From their cavernous depths they had poured forth in overwhelming numbers to pounce upon some wagon train, and in them they had found refuge when worsted in conflict with the troops, their perfect knowledge of the ground enabling them to effectually baffle pursuit.
Far beyond the ravines, long miles away, and yet rendered so distinct by the clear atmosphere that it seemed to Oscar that but a few hours’ ride would be required to take him to it, was a tract of level prairie, which stretched away through four degrees of longitude to the foot-hills.
This level prairie was known as the Laramie plains, and even so far back as the day Oscar gazed upon it it was historic ground. Little mounds of stone, and the bleaching and crumbling bones of horses and cattle, marked the spot where more than one desperate battle had been fought between the hardy pioneers and their savage foes, and when Oscar, a few days later, was brought face to face with these mementoes, he wondered at his own temerity in so eagerly accepting a commission that took him to a country in which such scenes had been enacted.
He knew that the Laramie plains were still debatable ground; that the outrages that had been perpetrated there might at almost any day be repeated.
It was true that the country was now thickly settled,—at least the old pioneer thought so,—that comfortable ranches and dug-outs were scattered over the prairie, from fifteen to twenty miles apart, and that numerous droves of sheep and cattle cropped the grass which had once afforded pasturage for countless thousands of buffalo; but these evidences of the irresistible progress of civilization did not intimidate the Indian. They rather served to enrage him and to excite his cupidity.
Isolated ranches could be easily plundered, and the flesh of sheep and cattle was fully as palatable as that of the buffalo, which had been driven away.
Of course there was no trouble to be apprehended at that season of the year, it being too near winter for the Sioux to break out into open hostilities.
A plains Indian does not like to move during the snowy season. Indeed it is almost impossible for him to do so, for the reason that his main dependence—his pony (without which, so old hunters say, the Indian is not a foe to be feared)—is utterly unfit for service.
His food being deeply buried under the drifts, he is forced to content himself with the branches of the cottonwood, which the squaws cut for him to browse upon.