The coach was now ready for starting, and, as he gathered up the reins, my friend of auld lang syne called out to me, "When you get back to York State, if you see any Rouse's Point people that ask for Old Bob, tell them he doesn't take any Jamaica and ginger now. Tell them he's out on the plains, tryin' to get back some of the life the cussed stuff burnt out of him." And away the stage coach rattled, and soon was out of hearing.
Next day's down stage brought intelligence that Bob's coach had been attacked by Indians, but the old fellow had handled his lines right skillfully, and brought mails and passengers through in safety.
Our last day at Sheridan, for the Professor, was marked by two important events, namely: a communication from the living present, and another from the dead past. The first came, as the postmark showed, by way of Lindsey, on the Solomon river. The Professor said it was simply an answer to some scientific inquiries, but, to our intense amusement, he blushed like a school-girl when Sachem bluntly remarked that the handwriting was feminine, and that the scientific information in question must certainly be contraband, as it was not offered for our benefit at all.
A geologist in love is a phenomenon. The dusty museum is no place for Cupid. In his flights, the mischievous boy is apt to hit his head against fossil lizards, and his darts are intercepted by skulls which were petrified before he ever wandered through Paradise and tried his first barb on poor Adam. The atmosphere which inwraps the geologist comes from an unlovable age, in which monstrosities existed only by virtue of their expertness in devouring other monstrosities. No stray spark of love-light flickered, even for an instant, over that waste of waters and gigantic ferns.
It was apparent that science would suffer, unless the Solomon river was included in our homeward route. We had examined the heart of Buffalo Land, having traversed its center from east to west, and our party was disposed to oblige the Professor by returning along the northern border. Southward two hundred miles was the Arkansas, flowing near the southern limit of the buffalo region. While there were some reasons why we desired to visit it, and though it was, perhaps, equally rich in game, it promised nothing of greater interest, upon the whole, than the district we now proposed traversing. But of this more in the next chapter.
Toward evening came our introduction to what we were pleased to imagine was a beauty of the past, which happened thus: As we were wandering among the Mexican teamsters loafing around the depot, an urchin, with half a shirt and very crooked legs, ran up to us, and exclaimed, over a half masticated morsel of cheese, "Mister, there's a bufferler!" His crumby fingers pointed in a direction midway between the horizon and a Mexican donkey, which its owner was trying to drag across the valley, and there, true enough, on the side of a brown ridge, not a mile off, we saw the game, feeding as usual.
Here was a chance for horseback hunting again, which we had not attempted for several days. And what a splendid opportunity of showing the natives how well we could do the thing! Our wagons had groaned under the burden of pelts and meats with which we had loaded them, and we were suffering just then from that dangerous confidence which first success is so apt to inspire.
Half the pleasure of hunting, if sportsmen would but confess it, consists in showing one's trophies to others. It was not at all surprising, therefore, that the send-off found two-thirds of our force in the field. The day was warm, and, though the hunters ran far and fast, the bison went still further and faster, and escaped. He led us, however, to greater spoil than his own tough carcass; for underneath the sod which his hoofs spurned, lay a treasure which glittered as temptingly to geological eyes as gold to the miner, when first struck by his prospecting pick.
The Professor trotted out of town with becoming dignity, following the hunters merely to avail himself of their protection, while examining the ridges around. A mile out, the heat and his rough-paced nag proved too much for him, and he threw himself upon the ground for a rest. Lying there, watching idly the little insects wandering about, his attention was attracted to a colony of burrowing ants, who, with a hole in the earth half an inch in diameter, were continually coming up, rolling before them small grains of sand and pebbles, the latter obtained far below, and a small mound of them already showing the extent of their patient labors. The Professor began to mark more closely the tiny builders, imagining that he could distinguish one of the citizens going down, and recognize him again as he came up again with his burden from below.
Occasionally, it seemed to the observant savan, something blue was brought out, which glittered more than sand. Looking closer, he discovered that the shining particles were beads of some bright substance, and resembling exactly those worn by the Indians of to-day. It thrilled him, as if he had been brought face to face with the far-off ages, when the world was young. Beneath, evidently, lay the dead of some forgotten tribe, and horse and man were resting upon a place of sepulcher. There was no mound to mark the spot, and if any ever existed, the seasons of ages had obliterated it. The savage races which now roam the plains never bury their dead, but lay the bodies on scaffolds, or hang them in trees. And so these little ants, robbing the graves far beneath us, were bringing to our gaze, on a bright summer day in the Nineteenth Century, the mysteries of ages already hoary with antiquity when Columbus first saw our shores.