The Indians has druv 'em from the West
and the white man's druv 'em from the East and it don't make no
difference. I knowed Captain Bonneville and he's told me how he stood
on the top of Scotts Bluffs and seen the country black with
'em--millions of 'em. That's twenty-five years ago and he ain't seen
no more than I have on these plains not two seasons back. Out as far
as your eye could reach, crawlin' with buffalo, till you couldn't see
cow nor bull, but just a black mass of 'em, solid to the horizon."
David felt abashed and the doctor came to his rescue with a question
about Captain Bonneville and Joe forgot his scorn of foolish young men
in reminiscences of that hardy pathfinder.
The old trapper seemed to have known everyone of note in the history of
the plains and the fur trade, or if he didn't know them he said he did
which was just as good. Lying on a buffalo skin, the firelight gilding
the bony ridges of his face, a stub of black pipe gripped between his
broken teeth, he told stories of the men who had found civilization too
cramped and taken to the wilderness. Some had lived and died there,
others come back, old and broken, to rest in a corner of the towns they
had known as frontier settlements.
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