For the benefit of those of my readers who have never seen a member of that unfortunate rabbit family which has been christened by such a humiliating given name, I would state that the species is remarkable for its very long ears, and very long legs. If the reader, being a married man, desires a pictorial representation of this animal, let him draw a donkey a foot high on the wall, and if his wife does not interrupt by drawing a broomstick, he may be satisfied that his work is well done, and a life-size jackass-rabbit will stand out before him.
A mile from the scene of this adventure Silver Creek joined the Saline, and at the junction it was determined to make our camp. We descended among heavy "brakes," staying our loaded wagons with ropes from behind. Immense quarries of the soft, white limestone rose from the valley's bed to the level of the plains above, and the rains of centuries had fashioned out pillars and arches, giving them the appearance of ancient ruins staring down upon us. Mr. Colon picked up a fine moss agate and the Professor a Kansas diamond. Under the surface of the former were several figures of bushes and trees, outlined as distinctly as the images one sees blown into glass. The diamond was as large as a hazel nut and as clear as a drop of pure water, so that, notwithstanding its size, ordinary print could be easily read through it. Had it possessed a hardness corresponding with its beauty, the Professor could have enriched with it half a dozen scientific institutions. Such stones now command a fair market value among travelers, and are generally mounted in rich settings as souvenirs of their trips.
A picturesque group of some half-dozen oaks offered a good camping spot, and around it the wagons were placed for the night in a half-circle, the ends of the crescent resting each side of us upon the creek. The rule of the plains is, "In time of peace prepare for war."
Northward from us, and distant perhaps fifty yards, rippled the clear waters of the Saline, which was then at a low stage. High above it was the table-land of the plains, and the edge of this, as far as we could trace it, was dotted with the dark forms of countless buffalo. So distant as to appear diminutive, their moving seemed like crawling, and the back-ground of light grass gave them much the appearance of bees upon a board. They were crowding up to the very edge of the valley of the Saline, from whence, as we were told, they extended back to the Solomon, thence to the Republican, and at intervals all the way northward to the remote regions of the Upper Missouri.
Could the venerable Uncle Samuel go up in a balloon and take a thousand miles' view of his western stock region, he would perceive that his goodly herds of bison, some millions in number, feeding between the snows of the North and the flowers of the South, were waxing fat and multiplying. This latter fact might somewhat surprise him, when he discovered around his herd a steady line of fire and heard its continual snapping. The unsophisticated old gentleman would see train after train of railroad cars rustling over the plains, every window smoking with the bombardment like the port-holes of a man-of-war. He would see Upper Missouri steamers often paddling in a river black with the crossing herds, and pouring wanton showers of bullets into their shaggy backs. To the south Indians on horseback, to the north Indians on snow shoes, would meet his astonished gaze, and around the outskirts of the vast range his white children on a variety of conveyances, and all, savage and civilized alike, thirsting for buffalo blood. That the buffalo, in spite of all this, does apparently continue to increase, shows that the old and rheumatic ones, the veteran bulls which in bands and singly circle around the inner herds of cows and calves, are the ones that most commonly fall the easy victims to the hunters. Their day has passed, and powder and ball but give the wolves their bones to pick a little earlier.
Such were the thoughts that revolved in my mind while sitting upon one of the wagons, and dividing my attention between the tent pitching going on under the trees and the shaggy thousands which, feeding against the horizon, seemed to grow larger as the sun went down behind them and they stood out in deepening relief in the long autumn twilight. These solitudes made me think of Du Chaillu on the African deserts when night set in, and I wondered if the brute denizens there could be more interesting than those which surrounded us. Had a lion roared, I doubt whether it would have struck me as unnatural, although it might have induced a speedy change of base. It begets a peculiar feeling in one's mind, I thought, when the lower brutes surround him and his fellow-creature alone is absent. Animal organizations are every-where, blood throbbing and limbs moving, and yet the world is as solitary to him as if the planet had been sent whirling into space and no living being upon it except himself. A handkerchief, a hat, any thing which his brother man may have worn, yields more of companionship than all the life around him.
And now, through the trees, we saw several of our men running with their weapons in hand, and immediately afterward heard the rapid reports of their revolvers and rifles from the creek just below, followed by the fluttering, noisy exit of turkeys from among the trees. Some flew away, but most of them were running, and, in their fright, passed directly among the wagons. One old gobbler, with a fine glossy tuft hanging at his breast, had a hard time of it in running the gauntlet of our camp-followers, narrrowly escaping death by a frying pan hurled from the vigorous grasp of Shamus.
This class of our game birds is noted the continent over for its wildness and cunning, these qualities furnishing old hunters with material for numberless yarns, as they gather around the camp-fires and weave their fancies into connected sequence. Thus it has become a matter of veritable history that knowing gobblers sometimes examine the tracks that hunters have left to see which way they are going.
On Silver Creek the turkeys were very tame, and before it became too dark for shooting our party had killed twelve. Muggs and Sachem had combined their forces and devoted their joint attention to one of them sitting stupidly on a limb, where it received a bombardment of five minutes' duration before coming down. Our Briton explained that "the bird was unable to fly away, you see, because I 'it 'im at my first shot." To this statement Sachem stoutly demurred upon two grounds: First, that Muggs' gun had gone off prematurely, the time in question, and barely missed one of his English shoes; and, second, that the turkey showed but one bullet mark, and that wound was necessarily fatal, as it had carried away most of the head! A compromise was finally effected, and we were much edified by seeing the two coming into camp with the bird between them, sharing mutually its honors.
Great numbers of turkeys seemed to inhabit the creek, all along which we heard them, at dark, flying up to their roosts. This induced a number of our party to visit a large oak scarcely a hundred yards from camp, which one of our men had marked as a favorite resort. Proceeding with the utmost caution, under the dim shadows of approaching night, we presently stood beneath the roost. Clearly defined between us and the sky were the limbs, and clustering thickly over them, like apples left in fall upon a leafless tree, we could descry large black balls, indicating to our hunger-stimulated imaginations as many prospective turkey roasts. For this special occasion our only two shot guns had been brought forth from the cases, the remainder of the party being furnished with Spencer and Henry rifles.