Down the centre of the stream we led the pack-horses in file, and away to the north went the scout and the Cree. It was toilsome work wading along the channel of the river, which in some places held rocks and large loose stones; but by little and little progress was made, and ere sunset the dry ground was once more under foot, and our party was pursuing a rapid course along the meadows to the west.
Red Cloud had told the scout that he would await him at the Minitchinas, or Solitary Hill, a conical elevation in the plains some twenty miles away to the west. At the north side of this hill our whole party came again together about the middle of the following day, and after a hearty meal we turned our faces towards that great plain which stretches from the base of this solitary mound into what seemed an endless west.
Everybody was in high spirits; even the dog had quite recovered from the effects of his arrow-wound, and the scout and he had become firm friends.
[It was a curious group this, that now held its course into the western wilds.]
[It was a curious group this, that now held its course into the western wilds.]
There were representatives of three of those strange families of the aboriginal race of North America—that race now rapidly vanishing from the earth, and soon only to be known by those wild names of soft sound and poetic meaning which, in the days of their glory, they gave to ridge, lake, and river, over the wild wilderness of their vast dominions; and two white men from a far-distant land, alien in race, strange in language, but bound to them by a sympathy of thought, by a soldier instinct which was strong enough to bridge the wide gulf between caste and colour, and make red and white unite in a real brotherhood—a friendship often pictured in the early dreams of the red race when the white man first sought the wilds, but never fully realized in all these long centuries of war and strife, save when the pale-faced stranger whom they called the Black Robe, came to dwell amongst them and to tell them of a world beyond the grave, more blissful than their fabled happy hunting-grounds, where red men and white were to dwell, the servants of One Great Master.
And now days began to pass of quiet travel over the autumn prairies—days of real enjoyment to me, who hour by hour read deeper into the great book which nature ever holds open to those who care to be her students—that book whose pages are sunsets and sunrises, twilights darkening over interminable space, dawns breaking along distant horizons, shadows of inverted hill-top lying mirrored in lonely lakes, sigh of west wind across measureless meadow, long reach of silent river, stars, space, and solitude.
Ten days of such travel carried our little party far into the west. We had reached that part of the northern plains which forms the second of those sandy ridges or plateaux which mount in successive steps from the basin of the great lake Winnipeg, to the plains lying at the base of the Rocky Mountains.
In this great waste game was numerous. Buffalo roamed in small bodies hither and thither; cabri could be seen dotting the brown grass, or galloping in light bounds to some vantage hill, from whence a better survey of the travellers could be had; wolves and foxes kept skulking in the prairie depressions, and dodged along the edges of ridges to scent or sight their prey. The days were still fine and bright; but the nightly increasing cold told that winter was slowly but surely coming on.