FIRE ON THE PLAINS, AS IT IS.
At the most critical juncture the "waving sea of grass" usually takes fire, in an unaccountable manner—perhaps from the hot condition of the combatants, or the quantities of burning love and revenge which are recklessly scattered about. Multitudes of frightened buffalo and gay gazelles make the ground shake in getting out of the way, and the flames go to licking the clouds, while the emigrants go to licking the Indians. Although the fire can not be put out, one or the other, or possibly both, of the combatants are "put out" in short order.
Should the miserable parents succeed in getting their daughter safely through this peril, it is only because she is reserved for a further laceration of our feelings. The half-breed soon gets her, and the lover and rare old plainsman get on his track immediately afterward. And so on ad libitum.
We beg pardon for condensing into our sunrise reflections the material for a novel, such as has often run well through three hundred pages, and furnished with competencies half as many bill-posters. It is unpleasant to have one's traditionary heroes and heroines all knocked into pi before breakfast. It makes one crusty. Possibly, it may be their proper desert, but, if so, could be better digested after dinner.
The whole story would fail if the fire did, as novelists never like to have their heroines left out in the cold. But it is as impossible for flames as it is for human beings to exist on air alone. It is scarcely less so for them to feed, as they are supposed to do, on such scanty grass. The truth is, that what the bison, with his close-cropping teeth, is enabled to grow fat on, makes but poor material for a first-class conflagration.
The grass which covers the great plains of the Far West is more like brown moss than what its name implies. Perhaps as good an idea of it as is possible to any one who has never seen it, may be obtained by imagining a great buffalo robe covering the ground. The hair would be about the color and nearly the length of the grass, at the season in question. In the spring the plains are fresh and green, but the grass cures rapidly on the stalk, and before the end of July is brown and ripe. It will then burn readily, but the fire is like that eating along a carpet, and by no means terrifying to either man or brute. The only occasion when it could possibly prove dangerous is when it reaches, as it sometimes does, some of the narrow valleys where the tall grass of the bottom grows; but even then, a run of a hundred yards will take one to buffalo grass and safety. This latter fact we learned from actual experience, later on our trip.
What a wild land we were in! A few puffs of a locomotive had transferred us from civilization to solitude itself. This was the "great American desert" which so caught our boyish eyes, in the days of our school geography and the long ago. A mysterious land with its wonderful record of savages and scouts, battles and hunts. We had a vague idea then that a sphynx and half a score of pyramids were located somewhere upon it, the sand covering its whole surface, when not engaged in some sort of simoon performance above. No trains of camels, with wonderful patience and marvelous internal reservoirs of water, dragged their weary way along, it was true; yet that animal's first cousin, the American mule, was there in numbers, as hardy and as useful as the other. Many an eastern mother, in the days of the gold fever, took down her boys discarded atlas, and finding the space on the continent marked "Great American Desert," followed with tearful eyes the course of the emigrant trains, and tried to fix the spot where the dear bones of her first-born lay bleaching.
As a people, we are better acquainted with the wastes of Egypt than with some parts of our own land. The plains have been considered the abode of hunger, thirst, and violence, and most of our party expected to meet these geniuses on the threshold of their domain, and, while Shamus should fight the first two with his skillet and camp-kettles to war against the third with rifle and hunting-knife.
But in the scene around us there was nothing terrifying in the least degree. The sun had risen with a clear highway before him, and no clouds to entangle his chariot wheels. He was mellow at this early hour, and scattered down his light and warmth liberally. Wherever the soil was turned up by the track, we discovered it to be strong and deep, and capable of producing abundant crops of resin weeds and sunflowers, which with farmers is a written certificate, in the "language of flowers," of good character.
We thundered through many thriving cities of prairie dogs, the inhabitants of which seemed all out of doors, and engaged in tail-bearing from house to house. The principal occupations of this animal appears to be two; first, barking like a squirrel, and second, jerking the caudal appendage, which operations synchronize with remarkable exactitude. One single cord seems to operate both extremities of the little body at once. It could no more open its mouth without twitching its tail, than a single-thread Jack could bow its head without lifting its legs. Those nearest would look pertly at us for a moment, and then dive head foremost into their holes. The tail would hardly disappear before the head would take its place and, peering out, scrutinize us with twinkling eyes, and chatter away in concert with its neighbors, with an effect which reminded me of a forest of monkeys suddenly disturbed.