第35章

Riches among the Dakotas consist in horses, and of these The Hog had accumulated more than thirty.He had already ten times as many as he wanted, yet still his appetite for horses was insatiable.Trotting up to me he shook me by the hand, and gave me to understand that he was a very devoted friend; and then he began a series of most earnest signs and gesticulations, his oily countenance radiant with smiles, and his little eyes peeping out with a cunning twinkle from between the masses of flesh that almost obscured them.Knowing nothing at that time of the sign language of the Indians, I could only guess at his meaning.So I called on Henry to explain it.

The Hog, it seems, was anxious to conclude a matrimonial bargain.He said he had a very pretty daughter in his lodge, whom he would give me, if I would give him my horse.These flattering overtures I chose to reject; at which The Hog, still laughing with undiminished good humor, gathered his robe about his shoulders, and rode away.

Where we encamped that night, an arm of the Platte ran between high bluffs; it was turbid and swift as heretofore, but trees were growing on its crumbling banks, and there was a nook of grass between the water and the hill.Just before entering this place, we saw the emigrants encamping at two or three miles' distance on the right;while the whole Indian rabble were pouring down the neighboring hill in hope of the same sort of entertainment which they had experienced from us.In the savage landscape before our camp, nothing but the rushing of the Platte broke the silence.Through the ragged boughs of the trees, dilapidated and half dead, we saw the sun setting in crimson behind the peaks of the Black Hills; the restless bosom of the river was suffused with red; our white tent was tinged with it, and the sterile bluffs, up to the rocks that crowned them, partook of the same fiery hue.It soon passed away; no light remained, but that from our fire, blazing high among the dusky trees and bushes.We lay around it wrapped in our blankets, smoking and conversing until a late hour, and then withdrew to our tent.

We crossed a sun-scorched plain on the next morning; the line of old cotton-wood trees that fringed the bank of the Platte forming its extreme verge.Nestled apparently close beneath them, we could discern in the distance something like a building.As we came nearer, it assumed form and dimensions, and proved to be a rough structure of logs.It was a little trading fort, belonging to two private traders; and originally intended, like all the forts of the country, to form a hollow square, with rooms for lodging and storage opening upon the area within.Only two sides of it had been completed; the place was now as ill-fitted for the purposes of defense as any of those little log-houses, which upon our constantly shifting frontier have been so often successfully maintained against overwhelming odds of Indians.Two lodges were pitched close to the fort; the sun beat scorching upon the logs; no living thing was stirring except one old squaw, who thrust her round head from the opening of the nearest lodge, and three or four stout young pups, who were peeping with looks of eager inquiry from under the covering.In a moment a door opened, and a little, swarthy black-eyed Frenchman came out.His dress was rather singular; his black curling hair was parted in the middle of his head, and fell below his shoulders; he wore a tight frock of smoked deerskin, very gayly ornamented with figures worked in dyed porcupine quills.His moccasins and leggings were also gaudily adorned in the same manner; and the latter had in addition a line of long fringes, reaching down the seams.The small frame of Richard, for by this name Henry made him known to us, was in the highest degree athletic and vigorous.There was no superfluity, and indeed there seldom is among the active white men of this country, but every limb was compact and hard; every sinew had its full tone and elasticity, and the whole man wore an air of mingled hardihood and buoyancy.

Richard committed our horses to a Navahoe slave, a mean looking fellow taken prisoner on the Mexican frontier; and, relieving us of our rifles with ready politeness, led the way into the principal apartment of his establishment.This was a room ten feet square.