pping, now one wagon and now another, threw the train out of all
semblance of order and it wandered along the trail with its divisions
mixed, which caused the sweat to stand out on the worried captain's
forehead. His lieutenants threatened and swore and pleaded and at last,
after the wagons had all they could carry of the meat, managed to get
four passable divisions in somewhat presentable order.

While the caravan shuffled itself, chased buffalo out of the way, turned
aside thundering ranks of the formidable-looking beasts, and had a time
hectic enough to suit the most irrational, Pawnee Rock loomed steadily
higher, steadily nearer, and the great sand-hills of the Arkansas
stretched interminably into the West, each fantastic top a glare of
dazzling light.

Well to the North, rising by degrees out of the prairie floor, and
gradually growing higher and bolder as they neared the trail and the
river, were a series of hills which terminated abruptly in a rocky cliff
frowning down upon the rutted wagon road. From the distance the mirage
magnified the ascending hills until they looked like some detached
mountain range, which instead of growing higher as it was approached,
shrunk instead. It was a famous landmark, silent witness of many bloody
struggles, as famous on this trail as was Chimney Rock and Courthouse
Rock along the great emigrant trail going up the Platte; but compared to
them in height it was a dwarf. Here was a lofty perch from which the
eagle eyes of Indian sentries could descry crawling caravans and pack
trains, in either direction, hours before they reached the shadow of the
rocky pile; and from where their calling smoke signals could be seen for
miles around.

Two trails passed it, one east and west; the other, north and south. The
former, cut deep, honest in its purpose and plainness, here crossed the
latter, which was an evanescent, furtive trail, as befits a pathway to
theft and bloodshed, and one made by shadowy raiders as they flitted to
and from the Kiowa-Comanche country and the Pawnee-Cheyenne; only marked
at intervals by the dragging ends of the lodgepoles of peacefully
migrating Indian villages, and even then pregnant with danger. Other
eyes than those of the prairie tribes had looked upon it, other blood
had been spilled there, for distant as it was from the Apaches, and
still more distant from the country of the Utes, war parties of both
these tribes had accepted the gage of battle there flung d