Of the meat, a portion went to our friends, and the balance to Fulton Market, New York. In the first quarter, it carried dyspepsia and disgust, and was so tough that the recipients, with the utmost effort, could not find a tender regret for our danger in obtaining it; while our New York consignee wrote that the first morning's steaks "finished the market," and very nearly finished his customers. He found it impossible, even by the Fulton Market method of subtraction, to get three hundred dollars' worth of express charges out of half that amount of sales, and suggested a discontinuance of shipments. The buffalo calf died on the cars, which probably saved somebody's bones from being broken in celebration of his maturity. The gray wolf got safely to the State of New York, but escaping soon after, a county hunt became necessary, to save the sheep from total extinction. One farmer, in his ire, even went so far as to threaten us with a suit for violating the law, and importing a pauper and disreputable character into the State.
Our experience may be useful to future hunters, to all of whom we would say, unless solely to find amusement, never kill old bulls. Cows and calves are generally juicy and tender, but not so the veterans; they, after death, butt around among one's digestive organs with a ferocity which makes the liver ache. Being most easily obtained, bull beef is generally all that is sent to market, and thus many a patriarchal bison, dead, accomplishes more in retaliation for his sudden taking-off than the Fates ever permitted him to do in lusty life.
A few days more were spent in our Silver Creek camp, and we then folded our tents and took a westward course, with the purpose of examining, not only the remoter regions of Kansas, but also the Colorado portion of the plains. The new town of Sheridan, fourteen miles east of the State line, and nine from Fort Wallace, was our objective point.
"Gentlemen," said the Professor, as we packed and adjusted our things in the wagons, "we are now to climb for a hundred miles directly up the roof of the Rocky Mountain water-shed, its long rivers and rich valleys forming the gutters, or spouts, to carry off the surplus water."
Sachem, who dreaded these lectures almost as much as he did crinoline, interposed with some of his usual badinage; but among irreverent classes of Sophomores and Freshmen, the Professor had learnt to answer only such questions as were relevant, and to pass all others by unheeded. For this reason such interruptions never broke the thread of his discourse, and but temporarily checked its unwinding. In a few minutes, however, the wagons started, and our expedition began crawling up the slope of the Professor's metaphorical roof, and thereupon our worthy leader's discourse was brought to a graceful conclusion.
For four days we continued our westward journey, the soft grass carpet beneath us ever stretching away to the horizon in its tiresome sameness, its figures of buffalo and antelope, big antlered elk and skulking wolves woven more beautifully upon its brown ground than in the rug-work of the looms. How I loved to sit upon such rugs, when a child, and gaze at the strange figures, as they were lit up by the flashing fire-light! Memory recalled one very impracticable reindeer, which used to lie just in front of a maiden aunt's chair, representing a Brussels manufacturer's idea of the animal. His horns were longer than his head, body and tail combined, and the spring he was making, when transfixed by the loom, brought his nose so close to the ground, that my older boyhood calculated the immense antlers would certainly have tipped him over had he not been held back by the threads.
But to return to the plains. We examined highlands and lowlands for poor soil, but found none. What we had once expected to see a bed of sand, if ever we saw it at all, turned up under the spade a rich dark loam, in depth and character fully equal to an Illinois prairie. Together with those other legends, localized drought and grasshoppers, the American desert, when revealed by the head-light of civilization, had taken to itself the wings of a myth, and fled away. There was a great sameness in the climate, as well as the scenery. Day followed day, with its sunshine and its winds, the latter being decidedly the most disagreeable feature of the entire trip.
Various episodes marked our journey from Silver Creek to Sheridan. A few only of the more noteworthy incidents can be transferred to these pages. They will suffice, however, as specimens of our adventures, and help the reader, I trust, to a better acquaintance with the free, wild life of the West.
The second day after leaving Silver Creek, we suddenly encountered another specialty of the plains, the "Wild Huntress." So often has this personage and her male counterpart danced, with big letters and a bowie-knife, across yellow covers, that we met the "original Jacobs" of the tribe gleefully. She came to us in a cloud of buffalo, with black eyes glittering like a snake's, and coarse and uncombed hair that tangled itself in the wind, and streamed and twisted behind her like writhing vipers. A black riding habit flowed out in the strong breeze, its train snapping like a loose sail, and a black mustang fled from her Indian lash—the dark wild horse, a fit carrier for such somber outfit.