The Loom of the Desert

by Idah Meacham Strobridge

Then——

There was a swift, singing sound in the air, and one of the oxen staggered—bellowed—fell!

The sound of an arrow boring the air isn’t quite like anything else one may ever hear; and the man knew—before he heard the big steer’s roar of pain—that the thing he had feared (but had at last come to believe he had no cause to fear, when weeks passed and it had not happened) had finally come to them.

Dashing out from the greasewood cover, the Indians—half naked and wholly devilish—made quick work of their victims. They did not dally in what they had to do. Back on the plains another wagon—two, three, four, a train!—was coming; they did not dare to stay to meet such numbers. They struck only when sure of their strength. Now they were two to one—nay, ten men to one man! And he, that man, went down with a wife’s shrieks and the screaming of children’s voices in his ears.

It was the old story of early times and emigrants on the plains. You have heard it time and again.

After the arrow, the knife; and bloody corpses left by a burning wagon. Things done to turn sick with horror the next lone wayfarers who should reach this gruesome spot. Human flesh and bone for the vultures of the air and the wolves of the desert to feed upon, till—taken from their preying talon and tooth—they might be laid in the shallow graves hollowed by the roadside.

Yet one was spared. The wee bonny laddie wrested from the clinging arms of a dying mother, was held apart to witness a butchery that strained the childish eyes with terror. He lived, but never was he to forget the awful scene of that hour in the desert. And when the brutal work was over, savage arms bore him away to their homes on the heights of near mountains gashed by many a cañon.

There, for years upon years—growing from babyhood to boyhood—from boyhood to youth—he lived among them; and so became as one of their tribe. They were a small tribe—these—of renegade Bannocks; shifting their camps further and further into the North, and away from the White Man’s approach as civilization began to force them back. Northward; and at last into Oregon.

The sturdy little frame remained sturdy. Some children there are who persist in thriving under the most adverse conditions. And he was one of these. Yet, it must be admitted, his captors were kind; for the Indian—savage though he may be—deals gently, always, with his children; and this boy had become to them as their own.

The baby words of the White Man’s tongue were soon forgotten, and Indian gutterals took their place. The little feet were moccasined with deerskin, and the round cheeks daubed with paint. The little body was kept warm in a rabbitskin robe. Their food was his food—grass seeds ground into paste, and game; and his friends were themselves. To all intents and purposes he had become an Indian.