One refreshing thought is now flung at them: their days of journeying have
brought them within sight of water—water without which there is no life.
That long green fringe winding under the brow of the distant hills means
tree growth. The Indian loves the brotherhood of trees. Trees grow in
that desolate landscape only on the borders of streams. Toward the water
and welcome shade they hasten. Tired beast and tired man lave in the
lifegiving flood. The horses wade in it as though the snows had melted
and run thither to caress and refresh them. Oh, the exhilaration of
water! On the margin of the far banks the camp is made for the night.
There is witchery in a Western night. Myriads upon myriads of low-hung
stars, brilliant, large and lustrous, bend to warm the soul and light the
trail. Under these night lamps, amid the speech of leaves and the rush of
the river, they bivouac for their last night, bending under the weight of
thoughts too deep for tears. In the haze of a broken sleep they wrought
out again the sorrows of their troubled record. When the morning broke
through the dull gray of the eastern sky rim, he would be a heartless
surgeon of emotions who attempted to probe the pathos of their thoughts,
and a dull and vulgar rhetorician who should attempt to parse the
fathomless sorrow of their speech.
In the hush of the new morning they mounted, and set forth upon their
journey over the Great Divide. All Nature seemed conscious of the burden
weighing to the earth every Indian thought, and trailing in the dust every
hope of the race. The birds remembered not to sing—the prairie dogs
ceased their almost continual and rasping chatter. The very horses seemed
to loiter and fear the weary miles of their final day of travel. The
hills, the sky, the very light of the noonday sun gathered to themselves a
new atmosphere and spread it like a mantle over this travelling host.
Tired feet now press the highest dome of the hills. It had been a
westward climb. Full in their faces, as though to canonize the moment,
the god of day had wrought cloud and sky into a miracle of sunset,
transmuting by living fire the brown grasses into burnished gold—the
fading sage into a silver glow, and the gleam of the distant river into
the red of wine. The scene transfixed them. Gladiators of other days
became helpless children. During the solemn suspense of this tragic
moment, waiting in confused and wondering silence, their faces lighted
with the ominous sunset sheen, one great chief uttered speech for all:
“Brothers, the West, the West! We alone have the key to the West, and we
must bravely unlock the portals; we can buy no lamp that will banish the
night. We have always kept our time by the sun. When we pass through the
gates of this dying day, we shall pass into a sunless land, and for us
there shall be no more time, a forever-land of annihilating darkness.”
For one wistful moment they looked and waited, then the hill upbore them
no longer. They filed down the narrow, barren ridge, lined on either hand
by sullen and impassable gulfs. Their eagle feathers fluttered from
war-bonnet and coup stick, encarnadined by the sun’s red rays. Steeper
and more rugged became the path until they were confronted by the sharp
edge of the bluff. There was danger in the untrodden descent. It was a
pathway of struggle.