Our horses, indeed, were beginning to grow wild with excitement, and thinking that their instinct had told them that wolves were near, I tied them closer to where we bivouacked, and then applied my ears to the ground, to try and catch any sound.
"I hear no noise," said I, "except the morning breeze pa.s.sing through the withered gra.s.s. Our horses have been smelling wolves, but the brutes will not approach our fire."
The parson, who had a great faith in my "white Indian nature," resumed the thread of his narrative:--
"To cut the matter short, I pa.s.s over my trip to New Orleans and Galveston. Suffice it to say, that I was a gentleman preacher, with plenty of money, and that the Texians, president, generals, and all, condescended to eat my dinners, though they would not hear my sermons; even the women looked softly upon me, for I had two trunks, linen in plenty, and I had taken the precaution in Louisiana of getting rid of my shin-plasters for hard specie. I could have married any body, if I had wished, from the president"s old mother to the barmaid at the tavern. I had money, and to me all was smiles and sunshine. One day I met General Meyer; the impudent fellow came immediately to me, shook my hand in quite a cordial manner, and inquired how my health had been since he had seen me last. That was more than my professional meekness could endure, so I reproached him with his rascality and abuse of hospitality towards me, adding that I expected he would now repay me what he had so unceremoniously taken from me while I was asleep. General Meyer looked perfectly aghast, and calling me a liar, a scoundrel, and a villain, he rushed upon me with his drawn bowie-knife, and would have indubitably murdered me, had he not been prevented by a tall powerful chap, to whom, but an hour before, I had lent, or given, five dollars, partly from fear of him and partly from compa.s.sion for his dest.i.tution.
"The next day I started for Houston, where I settled, and preached to old women, children, and negroes, while the white male population were getting drunk, swearing, and fighting, just before the door of the church. I had scarcely been there a month when a constable arrested me on the power of a warrant obtained against me by that rascally Meyer.
Brought up before the magistrate, I was confronted with the blackguard and five other rascals of his stamp, who positively took their oaths that they had seen me taking the pocket-book of the general, which he had left accidentally upon the table in the bar of Tremont"s. The magistrate said, that out of respect for the character of my profession he would not push the affair to extremities, but that I must immediately give back the two hundred dollars Meyer said I had stolen from him, and pay fifty dollars besides for the expenses. In vain I remonstrated my innocence; no choice was left to me but to pay or go to gaol.
"By that time I knew pretty well the character of the people among whom I was living; I knew there was no justice to whom I could apply; I reckoned also that, if once put in gaol, they would not only take the two hundred and fifty dollars; but also the whole I possessed. So I submitted, as it was the best I could do; I removed immediately to another part of Texas, but it would not do. Faith, the Texians are a very ugly set of gents."
"And Meyer," I interrupted, "what of him?"
"Oh!" replied the parson, "that is another story. Why, he returned to New Orleans, where, with his three sons, he committed an awful murder upon the cashier of the legislature; he was getting away with twenty thousand dollars, but being caught in the act, he was tried, sentenced, and hanged, with all his hopeful progeny, and the old negro hangman of New Orleans had the honour of making in one day, a close acquaintance with a general, a colonel, a major, and a judge."
"What, talking still!" exclaimed the doctor, yawning: he had just awoke.
"What the devil can you have babbled about during the whole blessed night? Why, "tis morn."
Saying this, he took up his watch, looked at it, applied it to his ear, to see if it had not stopped, and exclaimed:--
"By jingo, but I am only half-past one." The parson drew out his also, and repeated the same, "half-past one."
At that moment the breeze freshened, and I heard the distant and m.u.f.fled noise which in the West announces either an earthquake or an "estampede," of herds of wild cattle and other animals. Our horses, too, were aware of some danger, for now they were positively mad, struggling to break the la.s.soes and escape.
"Up!" I cried, "up! Gabriel, Roche, up!--up, strangers, quick! saddle your beasts! run for your lives! the prairie is on fire, and the buffaloes are upon us."
They all started upon their feet, but not a word was exchanged; each felt the danger of his position; speed was our only resource, if it was not already too late. In a minute our horses were saddled, in another we were madly galloping across the prairie, the bridles upon the necks of our steeds, allowing them to follow their instinct. Such had been our hurry, that all our blankets were left behind, except that of Gabriel; the lawyers had never thought of their saddle-bags, and the parson had forgotten his holsters and his rifle.
For an hour we dashed on with undiminished speed, when we felt the earth trembling behind us, and soon afterwards the distant bellowing mixed up with the roaring and sharper cries of other animals, were borne down unto our ears. The atmosphere grew oppressive and heavy, while the flames, swifter than the wind, appeared raging upon the horizon. The fleeter game of all kinds now shot past us like arrows; deer were bounding over the ground, in company with wolves and panthers; droves of elks and antelopes pa.s.sed swifter than a dream; then a solitary horse or a huge buffalo-bull. From our intense anxiety, although our horses strained every nerve, we almost appeared to stand still.
The atmosphere rapidly became more dense, the heat more oppressive, the roars sounded louder and louder in our ears; now and then they were mingled with terrific howls and shrill sounds, so unearthly that even our horses would stop their mad career and tremble, as if they considered them supernatural; but it was only for a second, and they dashed on.
A n.o.ble stag pa.s.sed close to us, his strength was exhausted; three minutes afterwards, we pa.s.sed him--dead. But soon, with the rushing noise of a whirlwind, the ma.s.s of heavier and less speedy animals closed upon us: buffaloes and wild horses, all mixed together, an immense dark body, miles in front, miles in depth; on they came, trampling and dashing through every obstacle. This phalanx was but two miles from us.
Our horses were nearly exhausted; we gave ourselves up for lost; a few minutes more, and we should be crushed to atoms.
At that moment, the sonorous voice of Gabriel was heard, firm and imperative. He had long been accustomed to danger, and now he faced it with his indomitable energy, as if such scenes were his proper element:--"Down from your horses," cried he; "let two of you keep them steady. Strip off your shirts, linen, anything that will catch fire; quick, not a minute is to be lost." Saying this, he ignited some tinder with the pan of his pistol, and was soon busy in making a fire with all the clothes we now threw to him. Then we tore up withered gra.s.s and buffalo-dung, and dashed them on the heap.
Before three minutes had pa.s.sed, our fire burned fiercely. On came the terrified ma.s.s of animals, and perceiving the flame of our fire before them, they roared with rage and terror, yet they turned not, as we had hoped. On they came, and already we could distinguish their horns, their feet, and the white foam; our fuel was burning out, the flames were lowering; the parson gave a scream, and fainted. On came the maddened myriads, nearer and nearer; I could see their wild eyes glaring; they wheeled not, opened not a pa.s.sage, but came on like messengers of death--nearer--nearer--nearer still. My brain reeled, my eyes grew dim; it was horrible, most horrible! I dashed down, with my face covered, to meet my fate.
At that moment I heard an explosion, then a roar, as if proceeding from ten millions of buffalo-bulls--so stunning, so stupefying was the sound from the ma.s.s of animals, not twenty yards from us. Each moment I expected the hoofs which were to trample us to atoms; and yet, death came not. I only heard the rushing as of a mighty wind and the trembling of the earth. I raised my head, and looked.
Gabriel at the critical moment had poured some whisky upon the flames, the leathern bottle had exploded, with a blaze like lightning, and, at the expense of thousands crushed to death, the animals had swerved from contact with the fierce, blue column of fire which had been created.
Before and behind, all around us, we could see nothing but the s.h.a.ggy wool of the huge monsters; not a crevice was to be seen in the flying ma.s.ses, but the narrow line which had been opened to avoid our fire.
In this dangerous position we remained for one hour, our lives depending upon the animals not closing the line; but Providence watched over us, and after what appeared an eternity of intense suspense, the columns became thinner and thinner, till we found ourselves only encircled with the weaker and more exhausted animals, which brought up the rear. Our first danger was over, but we had still to escape from one as imminent-- the pursuing flame, now so much closer to us. The whole prairie behind us was on fire, and the roaring element was gaining on us with a frightful speed. Once more we sprang upon our saddles, and the horses, with recovered wind and with strength tenfold increased by their fear, soon brought us to the rear of the buffaloes.
It was an awful sight! a sea of fire roaring in its fury, with heaving waves and unearthly hisses, approaching nearer and nearer, rushing on swifter than the sharp morning breeze. Had we not just escaped so unexpectedly a danger almost as terrible, we should have despaired and left off an apparently useless struggle for our lives.
Away we dashed, over hills and down declivities; for now the ground had become more broken. The fire was gaining fast upon us, when we perceived that, a mile ahead, the immense herds before us had entered a deep, broad chasm, into which they dashed, thousands upon thousands, tumbling headlong into the abyss. But now, the fire rushing quicker, blazing fiercer than before, as if determined not to lose its prey, curled its waves above our heads, smothering us with its heat and lurid smoke.
A few seconds more we spurred in agony; speed was life; the chasm was to be our preservation or our tomb. Down we darted, actually borne upon the backs of the descending ma.s.s, and landed, without sense or motion, more than a hundred feet below. As soon as we recovered from the shock, we found that we had been most mercifully preserved; strange to say, neither horse nor rider had received any serious injury. We heard, above our heads, the hissing and cracking of the fire; we contemplated with awe the flames, which were roaring along the edge of the precipice--now rising, now lowering, just as if they would leap over the s.p.a.ce and annihilate all life in these western solitudes.
We were preserved; our fall had been broken by the animals, who had taken the leap a second before us, and by the thousands of bodies which were heaped up as a hecatomb, and received us as a cushion below. With difficulty we extricated ourselves and horses, and descending the ma.s.s of carca.s.ses, we at last succeeded in reaching a few acres of clear ground. It was elevated a few feet above the water of the torrent, which ran through the ravine, and offered to our broken-down horses a magnificent pasture of sweet blue gra.s.s. But the poor things were too terrified and exhausted, and they stretched themselves down upon the ground, a painful spectacle of utter helplessness.
We perceived that the crowds of flying animals had succeeded in finding, some way further down, an ascent to the opposite prairie; and as the earth and rocks still trembled, we knew that the "estampede" had not ceased, and that the millions of fugitives had resumed their mad career.
Indeed there was still danger, for the wind was high, and carried before it large sheets of flames to the opposite side, where the dried gra.s.s and bushes soon became ignited, and the destructive element thus pa.s.sed the chasm and continued its pursuit.
We congratulated ourselves upon having thus found security, and returned thanks to Heaven for our wonderful escape; and as we were now safe from immediate danger, we lighted a fire, feasted upon a young buffalo-calf, every bone of which we found had been broken into splinters. [See note 2.]
Note 1. River bottom is a s.p.a.ce, sometimes of many many miles in width, on the side of the river, running parallel with it. It is always very valuable and productive land, but unhealthy, and dangerous to cross, from its boggy nature.
Note 2. I have said, at a venture, that we descended more than a hundred feet into the chasm before we fairly landed on the bodies of the animals. The chasm itself could not have been less than two hundred and fifty to three hundred feet deep at the part that we plunged down. This will give the reader some idea of the vast quant.i.ty of bodies of animals, chiefly buffaloes, which were there piled up. I consider that this pile must have been formed wholly from the foremost of the ma.s.s, and that when formed, it broke the fall of the others, who followed them, as it did our own; indeed, the summit of the heap was pounded into a sort of jelly.
CHAPTER TWENTY NINE.
Two days did we remain in our shelter, to regain our strength and to rest our horses. Thus deeply buried in the bosom of the earth, we were safe from the devastating elements. On the second day we heard tremendous claps of thunder; we knew that a storm was raging which would quench the fire, but we cared little about what was going on above.
We had plenty to eat and to drink, our steeds were recovering fast, and, in spite of the horrors we had just undergone, we were not a little amused by the lamentations of the parson, who, recollecting the destruction of his shirts, forgot his professional duty, and swore against Texas and the Texians, against the prairies, the buffaloes, and the fire: the last event had produced so deep an impression upon his mind, that he preferred shivering all night by the banks of the torrent to sleeping near our comfortable fire; and as to eating of the delicate food before him, it was out of the question; he would suck it, but not masticate nor swallow it; his stomach and his teeth refused to accomplish their functions upon the abhorred meat; and he solemnly declared that never again would he taste beef--cow or calf--tame or wild--even if he were starving.
One of the lawyers, too, was loud in his complaints, for although born in the States, he had in his veins no few drops of Irish blood, and could not forget the sacrifice Gabriel had made of the whisky. "Such stuff!" he would exclaim, "the best that ever came into this land of abomination, to be thrown in the face of dirty buffaloes! the devil take them! Eh! Monsheer Owato Wanisha,--queer outlandish name, by the bye,--please to pa.s.s me another slice of the varmint (meaning the buffalo-calf). Bless my soul, if I did not think, at one time, it was after the liquor the brutes were running!"
Upon the morning of the third day, we resumed our journey, following the stream down for a few miles, over thousands of dead animals, which the now foaming torrent could not wash away. We struck the winding path which the "estampedados" had taken; and as it had been worked by the millions of fugitives into a gentle ascent, we found ourselves, long before noon, once more upon the level of the prairie. What a spectacle of gloom and death! As far as the eye could reach, the earth was naked and blackened. Not a stem of gra.s.s, not a bush, had escaped the awful conflagration; and thousands of half-burnt bodies of deer, buffaloes, and mustangs covered the prairie in every direction.
The horizon before us was concealed by a high and rugged ridge of the rolling prairie, towards which we proceeded but slowly, so completely was the track made by the buffaloes choked by burnt bodies of all descriptions of animals. At last we reached the summit of the swell, and perceived that we were upon one of the head branches of the Trinity River, forming a kind of oblong lake, a mile broad, but exceedingly shallow; the bottom was of a hard white sandy formation, and as we crossed this beautiful sheet of clear water, the bottom appeared to be studded with grains of gold and crystals.
This brought round the characteristic elasticity of temper belonging to the Americans, and caused the doctor to give way to his mental speculations:--He would not go to Edinburgh; it was nonsense; here was a fortune made. He would form a company in New York, capital one million of dollars--the Gold, Emerald, Topaz, Sapphire, and Amethyst a.s.sociation, in ten thousand shares, one hundred dollars a-piece. In five years he would be the richest man in the world; he would build ten cities on the Mississippi, and would give powder and lead to the Comanches for nothing, so that they could at once clear the world of Texians and buffaloes. He had scarcely finished, when we reached the other side of the lake; there we had to pa.s.s over a narrow ridge, covered with green bushes, but now torn and trampled down; the herds had pa.s.sed over there, and the fire had been extinguished by the waters of this "fairy lake," for so we had baptised it. Half an hour more brought us clear out from the cover, and a most strange and unusual sight was presented to our eyes.
On a rich and beautiful prairie, green and red, the wild clover and the roses, and occasionally a plum-tree, varying the hues, were lying prostrate, as far as the eye could reach, hundreds of thousands of animals of all species, some quietly licking their tired limbs, and others extending their necks, without rising, to graze upon the soft gra.s.s around them. The sight was beautiful above all description, and recalled to mind the engravings of the creation affixed to the old Bibles. Wolves and panthers were lying but a few paces from a small flock of antelopes; buffaloes, bears, and horses were mixed together, every one of them incapable of moving from the spot on which they had dropped from exhaustion and fatigue.
We pa.s.sed a large jaguar, glaring fiercely at a calf ten feet from him; on seeing us, he attempted to rise, but, utterly helpless, he bent his body so as to form a circle, concealing his head upon his breast under his huge paws, and uttered a low growl, half menacing, half plaintive.
Had we had powder to waste, we would certainly have rid the gramnivorous from many of their carnivorous neighbours, but we were now entering a tract of country celebrated for the depredations of the Texians and Buggles free bands, and every charge of powder thrown away was a chance the less, in case of a fight.
As by this time our horses were in want of rest, we took off their saddles, and the poor things feasted better than they had done for a long while. As for us, we had fortunately still a good supply of the cold calf, for we felt a repugnance to cut the throats of any of the poor broken-down creatures before us. Close to us there was a fine n.o.ble stag, for which I immediately took a fancy. He was so worn out that he could not even move a few inches to get at the gra.s.s, and his dried, parched tongue shewed plainly how much he suffered from the want of water. I pulled up two or three handfuls of clover, which I presented to him, but though he tried to swallow it, he could not.
As there was a water-hole some twenty yards off, I took the doctor"s fur cap, and filling it with water, returned to the stag. What an expressive glance! What beautiful eyes! I sprinkled at first some drops upon his tongue, and then, putting the water under his nose, he soon drained it up. My companions became so much interested with the sufferings of the poor animals, that they took as many of the young fawns as they could, carrying them to the edge of the water-hole, that they might regain their strength and fly away before the wolves could attack them.
Upon my presenting a second capful of water to the stag, the grateful animal licked my hands, and, after having drunk, tried to rise to follow me, but its strength failing, its glances followed me as I was walking to and fro; they spoke volumes; I could understand their meaning. I hate to hear of the superiority of man! Man is ungrateful as a viper, while a horse, a dog, and many others of the "soulless brutes," will never forget a kindness.
I wondered what had become of our three lawyers, who had wandered away without their rifles, and had been more than two hours absent. I was about to propose a search after them when they arrived, with their knives and tomahawks, and their clothes all smeared with blood. They had gone upon a cruise against the wolves, and had killed the brutes until they were tired and had no more strength to use their arms.
The reader, comfortably seated in his elbow-chair, cannot comprehend the hatred which a prairie traveller nourishes against the wolves. As soon as we found out what these three champions of the wilderness had been about, we resolved to encamp there for the night, that we might destroy as many as we could of these prairie sharks. Broken-down as they were, there was no danger attending the expedition, and, tightening on our belts, and securing our pistols, in case of an attack from a recovering panther, we started upon our butchering expedition. On our way we met with some fierce-looking jaguars, which we did not think prudent to attack, so we let them alone, and soon found occupation enough for our knives and tomahawks among a close-packed herd of wolves.