第56章 CHAPTER XXIII(2)

The reader would not thank me for an account of the monotonous drudgery, the hardships, the quarrellings, which grew worse from day to day after we left Fort Laramie. Fred and I were about the only two who were on speaking terms; we clung to each other, as a sort of forlorn security against coming disasters. Gradually it was dawning on me that, under the existing circumstances, the fulfilment of my hopes would be (as Fred had predicted) an impossibility; and that to persist in the attempt to realise them was to court destruction. As yet, I said nothing of this to him. Perhaps I was ashamed to. Perhaps I secretly acknowledged to myself that he had been wiser than I, and that my stubbornness was responsible for the life itself of every one of the party.

Doubtless thoughts akin to these must often have haunted the mind of my companion; but he never murmured; only uttered a hasty objurgation when troubles reached a climax, and invariably ended with a burst of cheery laughter which only the sulkiest could resist. It was after a day of severe trials he proposed that we should go off by ourselves for a couple of nights in search of game, of which we were much in need. The men were easily persuaded to halt and rest.

Samson had become a sort of nonentity. Dysentery had terribly reduced his strength, and with it such intelligence as he could boast of. We started at daybreak, right glad to be alone together and away from the penal servitude to which we were condemned. We made for the Sweetwater, not very far from the foot of the South Pass, where antelope and black-tailed deer abounded. We failed, however, to get near them - stalk after stalk miscarried.

Disappointed and tired, we were looking out for some snug little hollow where we could light a fire without its being seen by the Indians, when, just as we found what we wanted, an antelope trotted up to a brow to inspect us. I had a fairly good shot at him and missed. This disheartened us both. Meat was the one thing we now sorely needed to save the rapidly diminishing supply of hams. Fred said nothing, but I saw by his look how this trifling accident helped to depress him. I was ready to cry with vexation. My rifle was my pride, the stag of my life - my ALTER EGO. It was never out of my hands; every day I practised at prairie dogs, at sage hens, at a mark even if there was no game. A few days before we got to Laramie I had killed, right and left, two wild ducks, the second on the wing; and now, when so much depended on it, I could not hit a thing as big as a donkey.

The fact is, I was the worse for illness. I had constant returns of fever, with bad shivering fits, which did not improve the steadiness of one's hand. However, we managed to get a supper. While we were examining the spot where the antelope had stood, a leveret jumped up, and I knocked him over with my remaining barrel. We fried him in the one tin plate we had brought with us, and thought it the most delicious dish we had had for weeks.

As we lay side by side, smoke curling peacefully from our pipes, we chatted far into the night, of other days - of Cambridge, of our college friends, of London, of the opera, of balls, of women - the last a fruitful subject - and of the future. I was vastly amused at his sudden outburst as some start of one of the horses picketed close to us reminded us of the actual present. 'If ever I get out of this d-d mess,' he exclaimed, 'I'll never go anywhere without my own French cook.' He kept his word, to the end of his life, I believe.

It was a delightful repose, a complete forgetting, for a night at any rate, of all impending care. Each was cheered and strengthened for the work to come. The spirit of enterprise, the love of adventure restored for the moment, believed itself a match for come what would. The very animals seemed invigorated by the rest and the abundance of rich grass spreading as far as we could see. The morning was bright and cool. A delicious bath in the Sweetwater, a breakfast on fried ham and coffee, and once more in our saddles on the way back to camp, we felt (or fancied that we felt) prepared for anything.

That is just what we were not. Samson and the men, meeting with no game where we had left them, had moved on that afternoon in search of better hunting grounds. The result was that when we overtook them, we found five mules up to their necks in a muddy creek. The packs were sunk to the bottom, and the animals nearly drowned or strangled. Fred and I rushed to the rescue. At once we cut the ropes which tied them together; and, setting the men to pull at tails or heads, succeeded at last in extricating them.