“If we ride into camp, we shall have to ride back in the morning. It will be sixteen extra miles for our cattle.”
“True.”
“Let us stay here, then. Here’s water and grass. There’s buffalo meat; and yonder’s a waggon load of ‘chips.’ We have our blankets; what more do we want?”
“I say, camp where we are.”
“And I.”
“And I.”
In a minute the girth buckles flew open, our saddles were lifted off, and our panting horses were cropping the curly bunches of the prairie grass, within the circles of their cabriestos.
A crystal rivulet, the arroyo of the Spaniards, stole away southward to the Arkansas. On the bank of this rivulet, and under one of its bluffs, we chose a spot for our bivouac. The bois de vache was collected, a fire was kindled, and hump steaks, spitted on sticks, were soon sputtering in the blaze. Luckily, Saint Vrain and I had our flasks along; and as each of them contained a pint of pure Cognac, we managed to make a tolerable supper. The old hunters had their pipes and tobacco, my friend and I our cigars, and we sat round the ashes till a late hour, smoking and listening to wild tales of mountain adventure.
At length the watch was told off, the lariats were shortened, the picket-pins driven home, and my comrades, rolling themselves up in their blankets, rested their heads in the hollow of their saddles, and went to sleep.
There was a man named Hibbets in our party, who, from his habits of somnolency, had earned the sobriquet of “Sleepy-head.” For this reason the first watch had been assigned to him, being the least dangerous, as Indians seldom made their attacks until the hour of soundest sleep—that before daybreak.