Red Cloud, the Solitary Sioux: A Story of the Great Prairie

by Sir William Francis Butler

Coming down upon both sides of the river, they tried to find a place where they could cross the water, and we could see them endeavouring to peer through the close-set branches that fringed the rocks, for indications of our presence. The central portion of our rocky refuge was, however, more depressed in level than the edges, so that our horses would have been quite concealed from view even had the bordering screen of brushwood been less dense.

When they found the current flowing on both sides of the island was everywhere too rapid to permit a man to cross, we saw them gather again about our old camping-place, and again we could discern by their actions that the idea of making a descent upon the point of the island above the rapid—the point where we ourselves had landed—had not escaped their notice.

But to think of the descent was one thing, to carry it out was another. No man could hope to swim to that point, and carry his life to the island, if the men whom they sought were there; on the other hand, a landing in force from a raft would promise far greater chance of security even in daylight, and if made at night there was no reason why they could not gain the island without loss.

That they reasoned thus was evident to us, for they now set to work to cut down several trees, and the remainder of the day was spent by them in drawing out the felled tree-trunks, and putting them together in a raft. That this raft was to be a large one we could tell by the number of trees carried out to the place at which it was being built. So the day passed away, the long evening closed in twilight, and darkness at last lay upon the scene.

The night came very dark. The shadow cast by the lofty mountains was rendered still more obscure by a thick canopy of clouds which drifted across the sky as the night closed in. At first this veil of clouds came unaccompanied by wind; but soon we heard a noise of pine-trees swaying in the upper valleys, and later came the crash of storm, as the thunder tempest drew nearer to our glen.

Intense as were the feelings of excitement with which I looked forward to the night that had now begun, I nevertheless could not help almost forgetting the peril of our position, and the proximity of our enemies, in the stupendous spectacle of the warfare of the elements to which we were now spectators.

At first the rapidly succeeding flashes of lightning were at the farther side of the mountains that encircled our valley; but as the storm rolled on, broad sheets of flame filled the vault above us, and streams of jagged fire poured down on crag and pinnacled pine; while the crash of thunder, multiplied tenfold by echo, seemed to shake the massive mountains to their base. At last the full fury of the storm burst upon us: the rain splashed down in blinding torrents, the trees swayed wildly in the rush of the tempest, and the roar of the cataract grew louder as the swollen waters, hissing under the rainfall, poured down past our island.

It must have been some time after midnight, when the fury of the storm having spent itself, there came a lull in the wind and rain. Everything was still dark—it was the gloom before the dawn: it was also the hour at which we might expect our enemies to attempt a landing upon the island.

We had lain exposed to all the rain and storm during the night. We did not want for food, for we had the meat of an elk, killed by the Iroquois when we first entered the valley; but as a fire lighted on the island would have been seen by the Sircies, we had of course to lie exposed to the violence of the tempest, without chance of drying our dripping clothes or of warming our chilled bodies.

At first I had thought little of these hardships; the expected attack had kept me fully awake and on the alert. But now, as the small hours of the night drew on, a sense of drowsiness began to overcome me, and insensibly I found myself falling into fitful snatches of sleep upon the wet rock against which I was lying. In these brief moments of slumber, the outward surroundings of our position, the rush of the river, the drip of leaves, the occasional flash of still vivid lightnings, and the rumble of the receding thunder, all found semblance in a vague sense of the danger that menaced us, and I would start to sudden wakefulness, to find the reality and the dream so much alike that it was difficult to distinguish one from the other.