The next day was Sunday, so we did not leave the White River
camp till Monday morning. We found Chadron (pronounced Shadron) an
extremely lively town, in which all of the citizens wore big hats
and immense jingling Mexican spurs. We had the big hats, but to
be in fashion and not to attract attention we also got jingling
spurs.
"I shall wear 'em all night," said Jack, as he strapped his
on. "Only dudes take off their spurs when they go to bed, and I'm
no dude."
Our next objective point was Rapid City. It was a beautiful
morning when we turned to the north. The sand had disappeared,
and the soil was more like asphalt pavement.
"The farmers fire their seed into the ground with
six-shooters," said a man we fell in with on the road. "Very
expensive for powder."
"The soil's what you call gumbo, isn't it?" I said to him.
"Yes. Works better when it's wet. One man can stick a spade
into it then. Takes two to pull it out, though."
It was not long before we passed the Dakota line, marked by a
post and a pile of tin cans. Shortly before noon Ollie made a
discovery.
"What are those little animals?" he cried. "Oh, I
know--prairie-dogs!"
There was a whole town of them right beside the road, with
every dog sitting on top of the mound that marked his home, and
uttering his shrill little bark, and marking each bark by a
peculiar little jerk of his tail.
"How do you know they are prairie-dogs?" asked Jack.
"They had some of them in the park at home," said Ollie. "But
last fall they all went down in their burrows for the winter, and
in the spring they didn't come up. Folks said they must have
frozen to death."
"Nonsense," said Jack. "They got turned around somehow, and
in the spring dug down instead of digging up. They may come out
in China yet if they have good-luck."
"I can hardly swallow that," replied Ollie. "But, anyhow,
these seem to be all right."
There must have been three or four hundred of them, and not
for a moment did one of them stop barking till Snoozer jumped out
of the wagon and charged them, when, with one last bark, each one
of them shot down his hole so quick that it was almost impossible
to see him move.
"Now that's just about the sort of game that Snoozer likes!"
exclaimed Jack. "If they were badgers, or even woodchucks, you
couldn't drive him at them."
"I don't think there is much danger of his getting any of
them," said Ollie.
We called Snoozer back, and soon one of the little animals
cautiously put up his head, saw that the coast was clear, gave
one bark, and all the rest came up, and the concert began as if
nothing had happened.
"I suppose that was the mayor of the town that peeped up
first?" said Ollie. "Yes, or the chief of police," answered Jack.
We camped that night by the bed of a dry creek, and watered the
horses at a settler's house half a mile away.
"That's the most beautiful place for a stream I ever saw,"
observed Jack. "If a man had a creek and no bed for it to run in,
he'd be awfully glad to get that."
The next day was distinctly a prairie-dog day. We passed
dozens of their towns, and were seldom out of hearing of their
peculiar chirp.
"I wonder," said Ollie, "if the bark makes the tail go, or
does the tail set off the bark."
"Oh, neither," returned Jack. "They simply check off the
barks with their tails. There's a National Prairie-Dog Barking
Contest going on, and they are seeing who can yelp the most in a
week. They keep count with their tails."
At the little town of Oelrichs we saw a number of Indians,
since we were again near the reservation. One little girl nine or
ten years old must have been the daughter of an important
personage, since she was dressed in most gorgeous clothes, all
covered with beads and colored porcupine-quill-work. And at last
Ollie saw an Indian wearing feathers. Three eagle feathers stuck
straight up in his hair. He was standing outside of a log house
looking in the window. By-and-by a young lady came to the door of
the house, and as we were nearer than anybody else, she motioned
us to come over.
[Illustration: Big Bear Looks Into the Educational Situation]
"I wish," she said, "that you'd please go around and ask Big
Bear to go away. He keeps looking in the window and bothering the
scholars."
We stepped around the corner, and Jack said: "See here,
neighbor Big Bear, you're impeding the cause of education."
The Indian looked at him stolidly, but did not move.
"Teacher says vamoose--heap bother pappooses," said Jack.
The Indian grunted and walked away. "Nothing like
understanding the language," boasted Jack, as we went back to the
wagon.
At noon we camped beside a stream, but thirty feet above
it. There was a clay bank almost as hard as stone rising
perpendicularly from the water's edge. With a pail and rope we
drew up all the water we needed. In the afternoon we got our
first sight of the Black Hills, like clouds low on the northern
horizon. About the same time we struck into the old Sidney trail,
which, before the railroad had reached nearer points, was used in
carrying freight to the Hills in wagons. In some places it was
half a mile wide and consisted of a score or more of tracks worn
into deep ruts. There was a herd of several thousand Texas cattle
crossing the trail in charge of a dozen men, and we waited and
watched them go by. Ollie had never seen such a display of horns
before.
Shortly after this we came upon the first sage-bush which we
had seen. It was queer gray stuff, shaped like miniature trees,
and had the appearance of being able to get along with very
little rain.
Toward night we found ourselves winding down among the hills
to the Cheyenne River. They were strange-looking hills, most
of them utterly barren on their sides, which were nearly
perpendicular, the hard soil standing almost as firm as rock.
They were ribbed and seamed by the rain--in fact, they were not
hills at all, properly speaking, but small bluffs left by the
washing out of the ravines by the rain and melting snows. Just as
the sun was sinking among the distant hills we came to the river.
It was shallow, only four or five yards wide, and we easily
forded it and camped on the other side. The full moon was just
rising over the eastern hills. There was not a sound to be heard
except the gentle murmur of the stream and the faint rustle of
the leaves on a few cottonwood-trees. There was plenty of
driftwood all around, and after supper we built up the largest
camp-fire we had ever had. The flame leaped up above the
wagon-top, and drifted away in a column of sparks and smoke,
while the three horses stood in the background with their heads
close together munching their hay, and the four of us (counting
Snoozer) lay on the ground and blinked at the fire.
"This is what I call the proper thing," remarked Jack, after
some time, as he roiled over on his blanket and looked at the
great round moon.
"Yes," I said, "this will do well enough. But it would be
pretty cool here if it wasn't for that fire."
"Yes, the nights are getting colder, that's certain. I was
just wondering if that cover will withstand snow as well as it
does rain?"
"Why," said Ollie, "do you think it's going to snow?"
"Not to-night," returned Jack. "But it may before we get out
of the mountains. The snow comes pretty early up there sometimes.
I think I'll get inside and share the bed with the rancher after
this, and you and Snoozer can curl up in the front end of the
wagon-box. It would be a joke if we got snowed in somewhere, and
had to live in the Rattletrap till spring."
"I wouldn't care if we could keep warm," said Ollie. "I like
living in it better than in any house I ever saw."
"I'm afraid it would get a little monotonous along in March,"
laughed Jack. "Though I think myself it's a pretty good place to
live. Stationary houses begin to seem tame. I hope the trip won't
spoil us all, and make vagabonds of us for the rest of our
lives."
We were reluctant to leave this camp the next morning, but
knew that we must be moving on. It was but a few miles to the
town of Buffalo Gap, and we passed through it before noon.
"There are more varmints," cried Ollie, as we were driving
through the town. They were in a cage in front of a store, and we
stopped to see them.
"What are they?" one of us asked the man who seemed to own
them.
"Bob-cats," he answered, promptly.
"Must be a Buffalo Gap name for wild-cats," said Jack, as we
drove on, "because that's what they are."
Ollie had gone into a store to buy some cans of fruit, and
when he came out he looked much bewildered.
[Illustration: A Lesson in Finance]
"I think," he said, "that that man must be crazy, or
something. There were thirty cents coming to me in change. He
tossed out a quarter and said, 'Two bits,' and then a dime and
said, 'Short bit--thank you,' and closed up the drawer and
started off. I didn't want more than was coming to me, so I
handed out a nickle and said, 'There, that makes it right.' The
man looked at it, laughed, and pushed it back, and said, 'Keep
it, sonny; I haven't got any chickens.' Now, I'd like to know
what it all meant."
We both laughed, and when Jack recovered his composure he
said:
"It means simply that we're getting out into the mining
country, where no coin less than a dime circulates. He didn't
happen to have three dimes, so the best he could do was to give
you either twenty-five or thirty-five cents, and he was letting
you have the benefit of the situation by making it thirty-five. A
bit is twelve and a half cents, and a short bit is ten cents. A
two-bit piece is a quarter."
"Yes; but what about his not keeping chickens?"
"Oh, that was simply his humorous way of saying that all
coins under a dime are fit only for chicken-feed."
We camped that night beside the trail near a little log
store. "What you want to do," said the man in charge, "is to take
your horses down there behind them trees to park 'em for the
night. Good feed down there."
"'To park,'" said Jack, in a low voice. "New and interesting
verb. He mean's turn 'em out to grass. We mustn't appear green."
Then he said to the man:
"Yes, we reckoned we'd park 'em down there to-night."
The next day was the coldest we had experienced, and we were
glad to walk to keep warm. We were getting among the smaller of
the hills, with their tops covered with the peculiarly dark
pine-trees which give the whole range its name. We camped at
night under a high bank which afforded some protection from the
chilly east wind. Now that we were all sleeping in the wagon
there was no room in it to store the sacks of horse-feed which we
had, and we knew that if we put them outside Old Blacky would eat
them up before morning.
"There's nothing to do," said Jack, "but to carry them around
up on that bank and hang them down with ropes. Leave 'em about
twelve feet from the bottom and ten feet from the top, and I
don't think the Pet can get them."
We accordingly did so, and went to bed with the old scoundrel
standing and looking up at the bags wistfully, though he had just
had all that any horse needed for supper. But in the morning we
found that he had clambered up high enough to get hold of the
bottom of one of the sacks and pull it down and devour fully half
of it. He was, as Jack said, "the worst horse that ever looked
through a collar."
[Illustration: The Rattletrap in the Storm]
But the weather in the morning gave us more concern than did
the foraging of the ancient Blacky. It was even colder than the
night before, and the raw east wind was rawer, and with it all
there was a drizzling rain. It was not a hard rain, but one of
the kind that comes down in small clinging drops and blows in
your face in a fine spray. Jack got breakfast in the wagon, and
we ate the hot cakes and warmed-over grouse with a good relish.
Then we loaded in what was left of the horsefeed, and started.
It was impossible to keep warm even by walking, but we
plodded on and made the best of it. The road was hilly and stony;
but by noon we had got beyond the rain, and for the rest of the
way it was dry even if cold. The hills among which we were
winding grew constantly higher, and the quantity of pine timber
upon their summits greater. Just as dusk was beginning to creep
down we came around one which might fairly have been called a
small mountain, and saw Rapid City spread out before us, the
largest town we had seen since leaving Yankton. We skirted around
it, and came to camp under another hill and near a big stone
quarry a half-mile west of town. There was a mill-race just below
us, and plenty of water. We fed the horses and had supper. There
was a road not much over a hundred yards in front of our camp,
along which, through the darkness, we could hear teams and wagons
passing.
"I wonder where it goes to?" said Ollie.
"I think it's the great Deadwood trail over which all the
supplies are drawn to the mines by mule or horse or ox teams,"
said Jack. "There's no railroad, you know, and everything has to
go by wagon--goods and supplies in, and a great deal of ore out.
Let's go over and see."
The moon was not yet risen and the sky was covered with
clouds, so it was extremely dark. We took along our lantern, but
it did not make much impression on the darkness. When we reached
the road we found that everywhere we stepped we went over our
shoe-tops in the soft dust. We beard a deep, strange creaking
noise, mixed with what sounded like reports of a pistol, around
the bend in the trail. Soon we could make out what seemed to be a
long herd of cattle winding towards us, with what might have been
a circus tent swaying about behind them.
"What's coming?" we asked of a boy who was going by.
"Old Henderson," he replied.
"What's he got?"
"Just his outfit."
"But what are all the cattle?"
"His team."
"Not one team?"
"Yes; eleven yoke."
"Twenty-two oxen in one team?"
"Yes; and four wagons."
The head yoke of oxen was now opposite to us, swaying about
from side to side and swirling their tails in the air, but still
pressing forward at the rate of perhaps a mile and a half or two
miles an hour. Far back along the procession we could dimly see a
man walking in the dust beside the last yoke, swinging a long
whip which cracked in the air like a rifle. Behind rolled and
swayed the four great canvas-topped wagons, tied behind one
another. We watched the strange procession go by. There was only
one man, without doubt Henderson, grizzled and seemingly sixty
years old. The wagon wheels were almost as tall as he was, and
the tires were four inches wide. The last wagon disappeared up
the trail in the dust and darkness.
"Well," said Jack, "I think when I start out driving at this
time of night with twenty-two guileless oxen and four ten-ton
wagons that I'll want to get somewhere pretty badly." Then we
went back to the Rattletrap.