But for the Indian the path is forever down—down into the shadowed vale, down into the abysmal canon, balustraded with sombre, cold gray rocks holding in the far recesses secret streams that make their way beneath the mountain to the cloven rock on the sunlit slope. Thither then they rode, solemn but steadfast. Once and again they turned upon their tired steeds to look back upon the far-reaching line of cliffs which to them seemed to float in the rising tide of a crimson sea. Forward and ever on until they had reached the hush of the spacious prairies, rolling like the billows of the ocean. Melancholy broods in the mind when these limitless and unexplored stretches sweep before the eye bounded only by the horizon. The spirit of a great awe stilled the souls of these men, every one, because added to the monotone of the landscape they must heed the demands for endurance, for it was again “a land where no water is.” Memory is at times the [pg 218] birth-hour of prophecy, but here memory clothes the present with pain and loss, and for them prophecy died yesterday and the despair of a to-morrow writes its gloomy headlines upon every advance step of their journey. But the Indian will face it. He always faces death as though it were a plaything of the hour. The winds on these prairies always travel on swift wing—they are never still—they are full of spectral voices. The chiefs have left the council lodge, they have said farewell, their days of triumph are behind them. Thoughts that burn the brain held the weary pilgrims.
Facing the Sunset
One refreshing thought is now flung at them: their days of journeying have brought them within sight of water—water without which there is no life. That long green fringe winding under the brow of the distant hills means tree growth. The Indian loves the brotherhood of trees. Trees grow in that desolate landscape only on the borders of streams. Toward the water and welcome shade they hasten. Tired beast and tired man lave in the lifegiving flood. The horses wade in it as though the snows had melted and run thither to caress and refresh them. Oh, the exhilaration of water! On the margin of the far banks the camp is made for the night. There is witchery in a Western night. Myriads upon myriads of low-hung stars, brilliant, large and lustrous, bend to warm the soul and light the trail. Under these night lamps, amid the speech of leaves [pg 219] and the rush of the river, they bivouac for their last night, bending under the weight of thoughts too deep for tears. In the haze of a broken sleep they wrought out again the sorrows of their troubled record. When the morning broke through the dull gray of the eastern sky rim, he would be a heartless surgeon of emotions who attempted to probe the pathos of their thoughts, and a dull and vulgar rhetorician who should attempt to parse the fathomless sorrow of their speech.
In the hush of the new morning they mounted, and set forth upon their journey over the Great Divide. All Nature seemed conscious of the burden weighing to the earth every Indian thought, and trailing in the dust every hope of the race. The birds remembered not to sing—the prairie dogs ceased their almost continual and rasping chatter. The very horses seemed to loiter and fear the weary miles of their final day of travel. The hills, the sky, the very light of the noonday sun gathered to themselves a new atmosphere and spread it like a mantle over this travelling host. Tired feet now press the highest dome of the hills. It had been a westward climb. Full in their faces, as though to canonize the moment, the god of day had wrought cloud and sky into a miracle of sunset, transmuting by living fire the brown grasses into burnished gold—the fading sage into a silver glow, and the gleam of the distant river into the red of wine. The scene transfixed them. [pg 220] Gladiators of other days became helpless children. During the solemn suspense of this tragic moment, waiting in confused and wondering silence, their faces lighted with the ominous sunset sheen, one great chief uttered speech for all: “Brothers, the West, the West! We alone have the key to the West, and we must bravely unlock the portals; we can buy no lamp that will banish the night. We have always kept our time by the sun. When we pass through the gates of this dying day, we shall pass into a sunless land, and for us there shall be no more time, a forever-land of annihilating darkness.”
For one wistful moment they looked and waited, then the hill upbore them no longer. They filed down the narrow, barren ridge, lined on either hand by sullen and impassable gulfs. Their eagle feathers fluttered from war-bonnet and coup stick, encarnadined by the sun's red rays. Steeper and more rugged became the path until they were confronted by the sharp edge of the bluff. There was danger in the untrodden descent. It was a pathway of struggle.
Once in the valley
They said farewell forever.
Thus departed the Great Chieftains,
In the purple mists of evening.