Deer sprang from
the tall, reedy grass of the river bottoms; buffalo tramped by in ponderous
columns, or dotted the swells of the distant prairie with their grazing
thousands; antelope approached, with the curiosity of their species, to
gaze at the passing horsemen, then fled like the wind; and as they neared
the broken uplands towards the Yellowstone, they saw troops of elk and
flocks of mountain-sheep. Sometimes, for miles together, the dry plain was
studded thick with the earthen mounds that marked the burrows of the
curious marmots, called prairie-dogs, from their squeaking bark. Wolves,
white and gray, howled about the camp at night, and their cousin, the
coyote, seated in the dusk of evening upright on the grass, with nose
turned to the sky, saluted them with a complication of yelpings, as if a
score of petulant voices were pouring together from the throat of one small
beast.
On the 11th of August, after a march of about three weeks, the brothers
reached a hill, or group of hills, apparently west of the Little Missouri,
and perhaps a part of the Powder River Range. It was here that they hoped
to find the Horse Indians, but nobody was to be seen.
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