Buckskin Mose: Or, Life From the Lakes to the Pacific, as Actor, Circus-Rider, Detective, Ranger, Gold-Digger, Indian Scout, and Guide.Perrie, George W.
History
Buckskin Mose: Or, Life From the Lakes to the Pacific, as Actor, Circus-Rider, Detective, Ranger, Gold-Digger, Indian Scout, and Guide.
Perrie, George W.
Frontier and pioneer life -- West (U.S.) -- Fiction; Latter Day Saints -- Fiction; Western stories
But we were destined not to return as quietly as we had proposed doing.
Upon our arrival at Boice City, we were induced to join a company who
were going to Jordan Creek for the purpose of prospecting. It had been
made up by Jeff Stanaford and another man of the name of Jennings. After
depositing our gold-dust, therefore, with Wells, Fargo and Company, one
of whose branch-offices was in this place, we started with our new
acquaintances for the spot named, which Stanaford asserted from his own
personal knowledge, was very rich.
All told, our party numbered some twenty-seven men well armed and
provided.
When some three or four days out, we camped at noon, about four o'clock,
on a small rocky knoll, from the summit of which a deliciously clear and
cool spring was oozing. Round the rise of this knoll there was excellent
pasturage for our horses, and stretching beyond this on every side was a
level plain, broken up with small sage-brush. At night-fall, our horses
were brought in and picketed close to the spring. No suspicion of the
slightest danger was entertained by us. Indeed, we all of us slept
soundly during the first part of the night, save Jennings, who was on
the watch.
Some three hour's before dawn, however, I became restless, and my
slumbers were broken. A feeling of impending danger seemed to present
itself to me, which I was unable to shake off.
Sitting up, I looked around. The night was as dark as pitch. Nothing
could be seen by me, save the forms stretched upon the grass by the
dying embers of the camp-fire, which scarcely gave light enough to
detect them. I, however, managed to make out the figure of Jennings, who
was sitting on the ground at a little distance. He was leaning forward
upon his rifle, and was, I at once felt certain, fast asleep.
Possibly somewhat annoyed by this carelessness, I had caught up one of
the half-extinguished brands from the fire, and was about hurling it at
him, when I felt a light hand touch my shoulder.
The brand fell from my grasp as I rapidly turned, and the scattering
sparks thrown from its burning end showed me a face which, since I had
first looked on it, had never entirely passed from my memory.
How it was, my lips did not give utterance to a cry of astonishment, it
is now, as it would have been then, impossible for me to say.
There were the superbly dark eyes, whose eloquence of expression I had
never forgotten. There was that wealthy mass of raven hair, which had
crowned the head of the Cheyenne maiden, for whom I had so nearly thrust
from me the memory of the little woman I had left behind me in the East,
or "God's country," as so many of the settlers and trappers call it.
It was Clo-ke-ta.
As she moved slowly away, I rose to my feet and followed her.
I seemed to be in a dream.
All I remember is, that the sleeper near me, on my right, stirred. My
movement had startled him. He, nevertheless, did not wake.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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