scruples; and heavily
burdened with the more eligible portions of the buffalo, we set out on
our return. Scarcely had we emerged from the labyrinth of gorges and
ravines, and issued upon the open prairie, when the pricking sleet came
driving, gust upon gust, directly in our faces. It was strangely
dark, though wanting still an hour of sunset. The freezing storm soon
penetrated to the skin, but the uneasy trot of our heavy-gaited horses
kept us warm enough, as we forced them unwillingly in the teeth of the
sleet and rain, by the powerful suasion of our Indian whips. The prairie
in this place was hard and level. A flourishing colony of prairie dogs
had burrowed into it in every direction, and the little mounds of
fresh earth around their holes were about as numerous as the hills in
a cornfield; but not a yelp was to be heard; not the nose of a single
citizen was visible; all had retired to the depths of their burrows,
and we envied them their dry and comfortable habitations. An hour's
hard riding showed us our tent dimly looming through the storm, one
side puffed out by the force of the wind, and the other collapsed in
proportion, while the disconsolate horses stood shivering close around,
and the wind kept up a dismal whistling in the boughs of three old
half-dead trees above. Shaw, like a patriarch, sat on his saddle in the
entrance, with a pipe in his mouth, and his arms folded, contemplating,
with cool satisfaction, the piles of meat that we flung on the ground
before him. A dark and dreary night succeeded; but the sun rose with
heat so sultry and languid that the captain excused himself on that
account from waylaying an old buffalo bull, who with stupid gravity was
walking over the prairie to drink at the river. So much for the climate
of the Platte!

But it was not the weather alone that had produced this sudden abatement
of the sportsmanlike zeal which the captain had always professed. He had
been out on the afternoon before, together with several members of his
party; but their hunting was attended with no other result than the
loss of one of their best horses, severely injured by Sorel, in vainly
chasing a wounded bull. The captain, whose ideas of hard riding were all
derived from transatlantic sources, expressed the utmost amazement at
the feats of Sorel, who went leaping ravines, and dashing at full speed
up and down the sides of precipitous hills, lashing his horse with
the recklessness of a Rocky Mountain ri