Somewhat later, two women from the Solomon were taken captive, one of them being a bride of but four months who had recently come out with her young husband from the State of New York. Custar seized some chiefs and, with noosed lariats dangling before their eyes, bade them send and have those prisoners brought in, or suffer the penalties. Indians have an unconquerable prejudice against being hung, as it prevents their spirits entering the happy hunting grounds, and the captives were promptly sent to Custar's camp. We afterward saw one of them, Mrs. Morgan, on the Solomon. What an agony must have been hers, as she came in sight of her old home, and the memory of her wrongs since leaving it, rose anew before her!
But to return to the history of our emigrants. After the murders, Mr. Sydney and his daughters abandoned their farms, and with the same wagon and oxen which two years before had brought the family out from Ohio, they started for the recently discovered mines in New Mexico. The journey was tedious, and, when at length arrived there, he found but little gold, and even less relief from his mighty sorrow. The old home, with its graves, beckoned him back, and thither he was now returning to spend his remaining days, unless, as he laconically stated, some one had "jumped the claim." Lest my readers toward the rising sun should not clearly understand the old gentleman's meaning, I ought perhaps to explain that, under existing laws, a "Homesteader" can not be absent from his land over six months at any time, without forfeiting his title, and rendering it liable to occupancy by other parties. It was already two days over the allotted period, he said. But the oxen were thin, and he finally decided to rest with us until the next morning, and then push forward.
Flora, the younger daughter, was a blooming Western girl of a thoroughly practical turn, and a counselor on whose advice the father and sister evidently relied greatly. The Professor assured me confidentially that evening, and with much more than his wonted enthusiasm on such a subject, that she preferred the language of the rocks to that of fashion plates. She had even disputed one of his statements, he said, and vanquished him by producing the proof from a well-worn scientific work—one of a dozen books carefully wrapped up and stowed away with other goods in the wagon.
A novel accomplishment which the young lady possessed was that of being an excellent rifle shot, and it afforded us all considerable merriment when she challenged Muggs to a trial of skill, and, producing a target rifle, utterly defeated him. Such a woman as that, the Professor said, was safe on the frontier; she could fight her own way and clear her vicinity of savages, whenever necessary, as well as any of us.
We did not wish our emigrant maiden aught but what she was, and were well pleased with the romance of her visit. For the nonce, she was our queen; the rough ox-wagon was her throne, and the great plains her ample domain. In sober truth, she might justly challenge our esteem and admiration. Here was one of the gentler sex willing to make divorce of happiness, that she might minister to a half-crazed father and mourning sister, and who, for their sake, chose to wander through a country which might at any moment become to them the valley of the shadow of death. In the presence of such heroism, what right had we, though bruised and tired, to complain? No wonder the Professor took early occasion to tell us that she was a noble woman, an honor to her sex.
This emigrant wagon, with its wee bit of domestic life, was a pleasant object to all of us out there on the desert, with the single exception of Alderman Sachem. That worthy member of our party avoided its vicinity, as if a plague spot had there seized upon the valley. "I did think," he exclaimed, dividing glances that were quite the reverse of complimentary between the Professor and Shamus—"I did think that we had got out of the latitude of spooning. We haven't had a digestible mouthful since they came in sight. A love-struck Irishman can neither eat, himself, or let others."
But Shamus was too happy to heed the remark; for the first time since starting, he seemed perfectly contented. An Irish girl, the like of Mary, and devoted enough to follow her old master through such adversity, seemed Dobeen's beau ideal of the lovely and lovable in the sex. The valley became for him the brightest spot upon earth. He would have been content there to court and cook, I think, during the remainder of his natural life. Mary was shy, and Shamus was bold, but it was quite apparent that both enjoyed the situation immensely.
Although the little party stayed but a day, their departure seemed to leave quite a void in the valley. The most noticeable results to us were some errors in cooking and a slackness in the prosecution of scientific investigations.
Mr. Sydney gave us a hearty invitation to visit him upon the Solomon, if our wanderings took us that way, and our prophetic souls, with a common instinct, told all of us that the Professor would recognize a call of science in that direction. By a look and a smile from a maiden, the Philosopher, deeply sunken in the primary formation, had been drawn to the surface of the modern, a result which fashionable society had more than once striven in vain to bring about. Miss Flora certainly bid fair to become a favorite pupil of his, were the opportunity only offered.
This maiden of the plains was a new character. The beautiful heroine mentioned in most Western novels as having penetrated the Indian country, is either the daughter of "once wealthy parents," or the heiress of a noble family and stolen by gypsies for reward or revenge. It was the first appearance that I could recall of a farmer's girl in a position where kidnapping Indians and a frantic lover could so easily appear, and by opportune conjunction weave the plot of a soul-harrowing romance.