That valorous chieftain we found limping around outside our wagons, with a lance-cut in one of his legs, while several of his warriors had arrow-wounds, and one a pistol-shot, none of the injuries, however, being dangerous. The Pawnees probably suffered with equal severity; and this was the sum total of the day's frightful carnage—the entire result of all the fierce display that we had witnessed.
Not long afterward, in front of a Government fort, and in plain sight of the garrison, a battle occurred between two large parties of rival tribes, about equal in numbers. Back and forth, amid furious cries and clouds of arrows, the hostile savages charged. Noon saw the affair commenced, and sunset scarcely beheld its ending. The Government report states, if my memory serves me correctly, that one Indian and two horses were killed; and a shade of doubt still exists among the witnesses whether that one unlucky warrior did not break his neck by the fall of his pony!
These savages fight on horseback, and are neither bold nor successful, except when the attacking party is overwhelming in numbers, and then the affair becomes a massacre. All this knowledge came to us afterward, but our first introduction to it was a surprise. Kind-hearted man though he was, I think the resultless ending of the battle disconcerted even the Professor. Having nerved one's self to expect horrors, it is natural to seek, on the gloomy mirror of fate, some rays of glimmering light which can be turned to advantage. I think the Professor's rays, had the contest proved as sanguinary as we first anticipated, would have found their focus in some stout cask containing a nicely-pickled Pawnee or Cheyenne en route to a distant dissecting table. It would have been rather a novel way, I have always thought, of sending the untutored savage to college.
We made a requisition upon our medicine-chest, and dressed the wounds of the suffering warriors. White Wolf stripped to the waist, and, exposing his broad, muscular form, exhibited thirty-six scars, where, in different battles, lances and arrows had struck him. It struck us all as a rather remarkable circumstance, though we prudently refrained from commenting upon it just then, that nearly all these scars were on his back.
The chief expressed great friendship for us, and I really believe he felt it. Sachem's stout form was especially the object of his admiration. Between these two worthies a very cordial regard seemed to be springing up, until White Wolf unluckily offered him an Indian bride and a hundred buffalo robes, if he would go with the band to its wigwams on the Arkansas—a proposition which disgusted our alderman beyond measure. Savages, sooner or later, generally scalp white sons-in-law, and it would be "heap good" for the Cheyenne to have such an opportunity always handy. Sachem declined the honor with all the dignity he could command, and carefully avoided "the match-making old heathen," as he termed him, for the remainder of the evening.
We kept early hours that night. Guard was doubled, to prevent any possible treachery, and a sleepy party laid down to rest. The Cheyennes went into camp a few hundred yards up the creek, a barely perceptible light, looking from our tents like a fire-fly, marking the spot.
When a "cold camp" is discovered on the plains, the experienced frontiersman can always determine at once whether white men or Indians made it, by the size of the ash-heap. The former, even when trying to make their fire a small one, will consume in one evening as much fuel as would last the red man a half-moon. The latter, putting together two or three buffalo chips, or as many twigs, will huddle over them when ignited, and extract warmth and heat enough for cooking from a flame that could scarcely be seen twenty yards.
The two opposing parties, which were now resting only a mile or so apart, had each tested the other's metal, and, as the sequel proved, found them foemen worthy of their steal. From the unconcealed fires in their respective camps, we concluded that neither side had any intention of attacking, or fear of being attacked.
It was early in the dawn of the next morning when we were startled from our slumbers by a terrific cry from Shamus, which brought all of us to our tent-doors, with rifles in hand ready to do battle, in the shortest possible time. Looking out, we beheld our cook standing near the first preparations of breakfast, and gazing with astonished eyes toward the darkness under the trees, among which we heard, or at least imagined we heard, the stealthy steps of moccasined feet. In answer to our interrogatories, Shamus stated that just as he was putting the meat in the pan, he saw the light of the fire reflected, for an instant, on a painted face peering out at him from behind a tree. "Faith, but I shaved the lad's head wid the skillet!" said Dobeen, and sure enough we found that article of culinary equipment lying at the foot of the suspected cottonwood, badly bent from contact with something, but whether that something was the bark or a painted skull is known only to that skulking Cheyenne.
We waited until broad daylight, but no further disturbance occurred, and what was strangest of all, the valley both above and below us seemed entirely destitute of either Pawnee or Cheyenne. A reconnoissance, which was made by the Professor, Mr. Colon, and our guide, developed the fact that not being able to steal any thing else, the savages had executed the difficult military maneuver of stealing away. Just before daybreak, the Pawnees had gone due north, and the Cheyennes, about the same time, due south. As White Wolf had expressed a cold-blooded intention of exterminating the remnant of his foes in the morning, the pitying stars may have taken the matter in hand and misled him; and if so, how disappointed that blood-thirsty band must have been when their path brought them into their own village, instead of the Pawnee camp! In confirmation of this astrological suggestion, I may say that while in Topeka I saw "stars," on several occasions, leading Indians in the opposite direction from that in which they wished to go.