A BURNT PRAIRIE.

The earth offers no aspect more drear and desolate than that of a burnt prairie. The ocean when its waves are grey--a blighted heath--a flat fenny country under a rapid thaw--all these impress the beholder with a feeling of chill monotony; but the water has motion, the heath, colour, and the half-thawed flat exhibits variety in its mottling of white and ground.

Not so the steppe that has been fired and burned. In this, the eye perceives neither colour, nor form, nor motion. It roams over the limitless level in search of one or other, but in vain; and in the absence of all three, it tires, and the heart grows cheerless and sick.

Even the sky scarcely offers relief. It, too, by refraction from the black surface beneath, wears a dull livid aspect; or perhaps the eye, jaundiced by the reflection of the earth, beholds not the brightness of the heavens.

A prairie, when green, does not always glad the eye,--not even when enamelled with fairest flowers. I have crossed such plains, verdant or blooming to the utmost verge of vision, and longed for _something_ to appear _in sight_--a rock, tree, a living creature--anything to relieve the universal sameness; just as the voyager on the ample ocean longs for ships, for _cetaceae_, or the sight of land, and is delighted with a nautilus, polypi, phosphorescence, or a floating weed.

Colour alone does not satisfy the sense. What hue more charming than the fresh verdure of the grassy plain? what more exquisite than the deep blue of the ocean? and yet the eye grows aweary of both! Even the "flower-prairie," with its thousands of gay corollas of every tint and shade--with its golden helianthus, its white argemone, its purple cleome, its pink malvaceae, its blue lupin--its poppy worts of red and orange--even these fair tints grow tiresome to the sight, and the eye yearns for form and motion.

If so, what must be the prairie when divested of all these verdant and flowery charms--when burned to black ashes? It is difficult to conceive the aspect of dreary monotony it then presents--more difficult to describe it. Words will not paint such a scene.

And such presented itself to our eyes as we rode out from the chapparal.

The fire was past--even the smoke had ceased to ascend--except in spots where the damp earth still reeked under the heat--but right and left, and far ahead, on to the very hem of the horizon, the surface was of one uniform hue, as if covered with a vast crape. There was nought of form to be seen, living or lifeless; there was neither life nor motion, even in the elements; all sounds had ceased: an awful stillness reigned above and around--the world seemed dead and shrouded in a vast sable pall!

Under other circumstances, I might have stayed to regard such a scene, though not to admire it. On that interminable waste, there was nought to be admired, not even sublimity; but no spectacle, however sublime, however beautiful, could have won from me a thought at that moment.

The trackers had already ridden far out, and were advancing, half concealed by the cloud of black "stoor" flung up from the heels of their horses.

For some distance, they moved straight on, without looking for the tracks of the steed. Before meeting the fire, they had traced them beyond the edge of the chapparal, and therefore knew the direction.

After a while, I observed them moving more slowly, with their eyes upon the ground as if they had lost it, I had doubts of their being able either to find or follow it now. The shallow hoof-prints would be filled with the debris of the burnt herbage--surely they could no longer be traced?

By myself, they could not, nor by a common man; but it seemed that to the eyes of those keen hunters, the trail was as conspicuous as ever. I saw that, after searching a few seconds, they had taken it up, and were once more moving along, guided by the tracks.

Some slight hollows I could perceive, distributed here and there over the ground, and scarcely distinguishable from the surrounding level.

Certainly, without having been told what they were, I should not have known them to be the tracks of a horse.

It proved a wide prairie, and we seemed to be crossing its central part.

The fire had spread far.

At one place, nearly midway, where the trail was faint, and difficult to make out, we stopped for a short while to give the trackers time. A momentary curiosity induced me to gaze around. Awful was the scene-- awful without sublimity. Even the thorny chapparal no longer relieved the eye; the outline of its low shrubbery had sunk below the horizon; and on all sides stretched the charred plain up to the rim of the leaden canopy, black--black--illimitable. Had I been alone, I might easily have yielded to the fancy, that the world was dead.

Gazing over this vast opacity, I for a moment forgot my companions, and fell into a sort of lethargic stupor. I fancied that I too was dead or dreaming--I fancied that I was in hell--the Avernus of the ancients. In my youth, I had the misfortune to be well schooled in classic lore--to the neglect of studies more useful--and often in life have the poetical absurdities of Greek and Latin mythology intruded themselves upon my spirit--both asleep and awake. I fancied, therefore, that some well-meaning Anchises had introduced me to the regions below; and that the black plain before me was some landscape in the kingdom of Pluto.

Reflection--had I been capable of that--would have convinced me of my error. No part of that monarch's dominions can be so thinly peopled.

I was summoned to reason again by the voices of my followers. The lost trail had been found, and they were moving on.

CHAPTER SEVENTY ONE.

THE TALK OF THE TRACKERS.

I spurred after, and soon overtook them. Regardless of the dust, I rode close in the rear of the trackers, and listened to what they were saying.

These "men of the mountains"--as they prided to call themselves--were peculiar in everything. While engaged in a duty, such as the present, they would scarce disclose their thoughts, even to me; much less were they communicative with the rest of my following, whom they were accustomed to regard as "greenhorns"--their favourite appellation for all men who have not made the tour of the grand prairies.

Notwithstanding that Stanfield and Black were backwoodsmen and hunters by profession, Quackenboss a splendid shot, Le Blanc a regular _voyageur_, and the others more or less skilled in woodcraft, all were greenhorns in the opinion of the trappers. To be otherwise a man must have starved upon a "sage-prairie"--"run" buffalo by the Yellowstone or Platte--fought "Injun," and shot Indian--have well-nigh lost scalp or ears--spent a winter in Pierre's Hole upon Green River--or camped amid the snows of the Rocky Mountains! Some one of all these feats must needs have been performed, ere the "greenhorn" can matriculate and take rank as a "mountain man."

I of all my party was the only one who, in the eyes of Rube and Garey, was _not_ a greenhorn; and even I--gentleman-amateur that I was--was hardly up either in their confidence or their "craft." It is indeed true--with all my classic accomplishments--with my fine words, my fine horse, and fine clothes--so long as we were within the limits of prairie-land, I acknowledged these men as my superiors. They were my guides, my instructors, my masters.

Since overtaking them on the trail, I had not asked them to give any opinion. I dreaded a direct answer--for I had noticed something like a despairing look in the eyes of both.

As I followed them over the black plain, however, I thought that their faces brightened a little, and appeared once more lit up by a faint ray of hope. For that reason, I rode close upon their heels, and eagerly caught up every word that was passing between them. Rube was speaking when I first drew near.

"Wagh! I don't b'lieve it, Bill: 'taint possyble no-howso-ever. The paraira wur sot afire--must 'a been--thur's no other ways for it. It cudn't 'a tuk to bleezing o' itself--eh?"

"Sartinly not; I agree wi' you, Rube."

"Wal--thur wur a fellur as I met oncest at Bent's Fort on the Arkinsaw-- a odd sort o' a critter he wur, an no mistake; he us't to go pokin about, gatherin' weeds an' all sorts o' green garbitch, an' spreadin'

'em out atween sheets o' paper--whet he called button-eyesin--jest like thet ur Dutch doctur as wur rubbed out when we went into the Navagh country, t'other side o' the Grand."

"I remembers him."

"Wal, this hyur fellur I tell 'ee about, he us't to talk mighty big o'

this, thet, an t' other; an he palavered a heap 'bout a thing thet, ef I don't disremember, wur called _spuntainyus kumbuxshun_."

"I've heerd o' 't; that are the name."

"Wal, the button-eyeser, he sayed thet a paraira mout take afire o'

itself, 'ithout anybody whatsomdiver heving sot it. Now, thet ur's what this child don't b'lieve, nohow. In coorse, I knows thet lightnin'

sometimes may sot a paraira a bleezin', but lightnin's a natral fire o'

itself; an it's only reezunible to expect thet the dry grass wud catch from _it_ like punk; but I shed like to know how fire kud kindle 'ithout somethin to kindle it--thet's whet I shed like to know."

"I don't believe it can," rejoined Garey.

"Ne'er a bit o' it. I never seed a burnin' paraira yit, thet thur wa'n't eyther a camp-fire or a Injun at the bottom o' it--thet ur 'ceptin whur lightnin hed did the bizness."

"And you think, Rube, thar's been Injun at the bottom o' this?"

"Putty nigh sure; an I'll gie you my reezuns. Fust, do 'ee see thur's been no lightnin this mornin to 'a made the fire? Seconds, it's too fur west hyur for any settlement o' whites--in coorse I speak o' Texans-- thur might be Mexikins; them I don't call white, nohow-nosomediver. An then, agin, it kin scace be Mexikins neyther. It ur too fur no'th for any o' the yellur-bellies to be a straying jest now, seein as it's _the Mexikin moon_ wi' the kimanchees, an both them an the Leepans ur on the war-trail. Wal, then, it's clur thur's no Mexikin 'bout hyur to hev sot the paraira afire, an thur's been no lightnin to do it; thurfor, it must 'a been did eyther by a Injun, or thet ur dodrotted spuntainyus kumbuxshun."

"One or t'other."

"Wal, being as this child don't b'lieve in the kumbuxshun nohow, thurfore it's my opeenyun thet red Injuns did the bizness--_they_ did sartint."

"No doubt of it," assented Garey.

"An ef they did," continued the old trapper, "thur about yit some whur not fur off, an we've got to keep a sharp look-out for our har--thet's what _we_ hev."

"Safe, we have," assented Garey.

"I tell 'ee, Bill," continued Rube in a new strain, "the Injuns is mighty riled jest now. I never knowd 'em so savagerous an fighty. The war hez gin 'em a fresh start, an thur dander's up agin us, by reezun thet the gin'ral didn't take thur offer to help us agin the yellur-bellies. Ef we meet wi' eyther Kimanch or Leepan on these hyur plains, thu'll scalp us, or we'll scalp 'em--thet 'll be it. Wagh!"

"But what for could they 'a sot the parairy on fire?" inquired Garey.

"Thet ere," replied Rube,--"thet ere wur what puzzled me at fust. I thort it mout 'a been done by accydent--preehaps by the scattering o' a camp-fire--for Injuns is careless enuf 'bout thet. Now, howsowever, I've got a different idee. Thet story thet Dutch an Frenchy hev fetched from the rancherie, gies me a insight inter the hull bizness."