It was late travelling through that houseless waste. Deep snow already blanched the Black Hills, and Laramie Peak, their chief. Mr. Bierstadt, in his fine picture in this year’s Academy, has shown them as they are in the mellow days of summer. Now, cold and stern, they warned us to hasten on.
We did hasten. We crowded through the buffalo; we crossed and recrossed the Platte, already curdling with winter; we dashed over the prairies of Kansas, blackened by fire and whitened by snow, but then unstained by any peaceful settler’s blood.
Jake Shamberlain, returning with his party, met us on the way.
“I passed the train with the young woman and her father,” said he. “We camped together one night, and bein’ as I was a friend of your’n, she give me a talk. Pooty tall talkin’ ’t wuz, and I wuz teched in a new spot. I’ve felt mean as muck ever sence she opened to me on religion, and when I git home I’m goan to swing clear of the Church, ef I ken cut clear, and emigrate to Oregon. So, Barrownight, next time you come out, you’ll find me on a claim there, out to the Willamette or the Umpqua, just as much like a gentleman’s park in England as one grasshopper is to another, only they hain’t got no such mountains to England as I’ll show you thar.”
“Well, Jake, we’ll try to pay you our respects.”
We hastened on. Why pause for our adventures? They were but episodes along our new gallop of three. This time it was not restless, anxious gallop. We had no doubt but that in good time we should overtake our friends, in regions where men are not shot along the right arm when they protect insulted dames.
Brent was himself again. We rode hard. Biddulph was as fine a fellow as my grandmother England has mothered. Find an Englishman vital enough to be a Come-outer, and you have found a man worthy to be the peer of an American with Yankee education, Western scope, and California irrepressibility.
Winter chased us close. Often we woke at night, and found our bivouac sheeted with cold snow,—a cool sheet, but luckily outside our warm blankets. It was full December when the plains left us, fell back, and beached us upon the outer edge of civilization, at Independence, Missouri.
The muddy Missouri was running dregs. Steamboats were tired of skipping from sand-bar to sand-bar. Engineer had reported to Captain, that “Kangaroo No. 5 would bust, if he didn’t stop trying to make her lift herself over the damp country by her braces.” No more steamboating on the yellow ditch until there was a rise; until the Platte sent down sand three and water one, or the Yellowstone mud three and water one, or the Missouri proper grit three and water one. We must travel by land to St. Louis and railroads.
We could go with our horses as fast as the stage-coaches. So we sold our pack beasts, and started to continue our gallop of three across Missouri.