The western country seems naturally fitted in many ways for love and romance. In that region the mind is uncramped and unfettered by the excessive schooling and over-training which prevails in the older settlements of the East. The heart heats more freely and warmly when its current is unchecked by conventionalities. Life is more intense in the West. The transitions of life are more frequent and startling. Both men and things are continually changing. In such a society impulse governs largely: the cooler and more selfish faculties of man's nature are less dominant. When we add to these conditions, the changes, hardships, and enforced separations of the frontier as frequent concomitants, we have exactly a state of society which is fruitful in romantic incidents—brides torn from their husband's embrace and hurried away; but restored as suddenly and strangely; two faithful lovers parted forever or re-united miraculously; and thrilling scenes in love's melodrama acted and re-acted on different stages but always with startling effect.
The effects of the romantic incidents in the lives of our pioneer women are also heightened by the extraordinary freshness and ever-changing scenery of the wilderness. Nature there spreads out like a mighty canvas: the forest, the mountains, and the prairies show clear and distinct through the crystal air so that peak and tree and even the tall blades of grass are outlined with a microscopic nearness. Over this vivid surface bison are browsing, and antelopes gambolling; plumed warriors flit by on their ponies, as the pioneer-men and women with wagons, oxen and horses are moving westward. This is the scene where love springs spontaneously out of the close companionship which danger enforces.
The story of the Chase family is an illustration of the adage that truth is often stranger than fiction, and might readily furnish the groundwork upon which the genius of some future Cooper could construct an American romance of thrilling interest.
The stage whereon this drama of real life was acted lay in that rich, broad expanse between the Arkansas and the South Platte Rivers. The time, 1847. The principal actors were the Chase family, consisting of old Mr. Chase, his wife, sons, and grandsons, Mary, his daughter, La Bonte and Kilbuck two famous hunters and mountaineers, Antoine a guide and Arapahoe Indians.
The scene opens with a view of three white-tilted Conestoga wagons or "prairie schooners," each drawn by four pair of oxen rumbling along through a plain enameled with the verdure and many tinted flowers of spring. The day is drawing to its close, and the rays of the sinking sun throw a mellow light over a waving sea of vernal herbage. The wagons are driven by the sons of Mr. Chase and contain the women and the household goods of the family. Behind the great swaying "schooners" walk the men with shouldered rifles, and a troup of mounted men have just galloped up to bid adieu to the departing emigrants. From out this group, the mild face of Mary Chase beams with a parting smile in response to rough but kindly farewells of these her old friends and neighbors. The last words of warning and God-speed are spoken by the mounted men, who gallop away and leave them making their first stage on a journey which will carry them northward and westward more than two thousand miles from their old home in Missouri.
And now the sun has set, and still in the twilight the train moves on, stopping as the darkness falls, at a rich bottom, where the loose cattle, starting some hours before them, have been driven and corralled. The oxen are unyoked, the wagons drawn up, so as to form the sides of a small square. A huge fire is kindled, the women descend and prepare the evening meal, boiling great kettles of coffee, and baking corn-cakes in the embers. The whole company stretch themselves around the fire, and having finished their repast, address themselves to sweet sleep, such as tired voyagers over the plains can so well enjoy. The men of the party are soon soundly slumbering; but the women, depressed with the thoughts that they are leaving their home and loved friends and neighbors, perhaps forever, their hearts filled with forebodings of danger and misfortune, cast only wakeful eyes upon the darkened plain or up to the inscrutable stars that are shining with marvelous brightness in the azure firmament. Far into the night they wake and watch, silently weeping until nature is exhausted, and a sleep, troubled with sad dreams, visits them.
With the first light of morning the camp is astir, and as the sun rises, the wagons are again rolling along across the upland prairies, to strike the trail leading to the south fork of the Platte. Slowly and hardly, fifteen miles each day, they toil on over the heavy soil. At night, while in camp, the hours are beguiled by Antoine, their Canadian guide, who tells stories of wild life and perilous adventures among the hunters and trappers who make the prairies and mountains their home. His descriptions of Indian fights and slaughters, and of the sufferings and privations endured by the hunters in their arduous life, fix the attention of the women of the party, and especially of Mary Chase, who listens with greater interest because she remembers that such was the life led by one very dear to her—one long supposed to be dead, and of whom, since his departure, fifteen years before, she has heard not a syllable. Her imagination now pictures him anew, as the most daring of these adventurous hunters, and conjures up his figure charging through the midst of yelling savages, or as stretched on the ground, perishing of wounds, or of cold and famine.
Among the characters that figure in Antoine's stories is a hunter named La Bonte, made conspicuous by his deeds of hardihood and daring. At the first mention of his name Mary's face is suffused with blushes; not that she for a moment dreamed that it could be her long lost La Bonte, for she knows that the name is a common one, but because from associations which still linger in her memory, it recalled a sad era in her former life, to which she could not revert without a strange mingling of pleasure and pain. She remembers the manly form of La Bonte as she first saw him, and the love which sprang up between them; and then the parting, with the hope of speedy reunion. She remembers how two years passed without tidings of her lover, when, one bitter day, she met a mountaineer, just returned from the far West to settle in his native State; and, inquiring tremblingly after La Bonte, he told how he had met his death from the Blackfeet Indians in the wild gorges of the Yellowstone country.
Now, on hearing once more that name, a spring of sweet and bitter recollections is opened and a vague hope is raised in her breast that the lover of her youth is still alive. She questions the Canadian, "Who was this La Bonte who you say was such a brave mountaineer?" Antoine replies, "He was a fine fellow—strong as a buffalo-bull, a dead shot, cared not a rush for the Indians, left a girl that he loved in Missouri, said the girl did not love him, and so he followed the trail to the mountains. He hasn't gone under yet; be sure of that," says the good natured guide, observing the emotion which Mary showed, and suspecting that she took a more than ordinary interest in the young hunter.
As the guide ceased to speak, Mary turns away and bursts into a flood of tears. The mention of the name of one whom she had long believed dead, and the recital of his praiseworthy qualities, awake the strongest feelings which she had cherished towards one whose loss she still bewails.