The Lost World
Night on the Plains
The first night they camped in a place called Clagett, on the banks of the Judith River. There was a trading post here, surrounded by a stockade, but it had been recently abandoned.
Hill cooked his first dinner, which they found heavy but otherwise acceptable. Hill used buffalo chips for fuel, thus explaining two of his nicknames: Chippie and Stinky. After dinner, Hill hung their food in a tree.
“What’re you doing that for?” Johnson asked.
“That’s to keep the food away from marauding grizzlies,” Hill said. “Now go get ready to sleep.”
Hill himself stamped the ground with his boots before laying out his bedding.
“What’re you doing that for?” Johnson asked.
“That’s to stop up the snake holes,” Hill said, “so the rattlers don’t climb under the blankets with you at night.”
“You’re jobbing me,” Johnson said.
“I ain’t,” Hill warned. “You ask anyone. Gets cold at night and they like the warm, so they crawl right in with you, coil up against your groin.”
Johnson went to Sternberg, who was also laying out his bedding. “Aren’t you going to stamp the ground?”
“No,” Sternberg said. “This spot isn’t lumpy, looks real comfortable.”
“What about rattlesnakes crawling into the blankets?”
“That hardly ever happens,” Sternberg said.
“It hardly ever happens?” Johnson’s voice rose in alarm.
“I wouldn’t worry over it,” Sternberg said. “In the morning, just wake up slow, and see if you got any visitors. Snakes just run away, come morning.”
Johnson shuddered.
They had seen no sign of human life all day long, but Isaac was convinced they were at risk from Indians. “With Mr. Indian,” he grumbled, “the time you feel safest is the time you aren’t.” Isaac insisted they post guards throughout the night; the others grudgingly went along. Isaac himself would take the last watch, before dawn.
This was Johnson’s first night out under the great domed sky of the prairie, and sleep was impossible. The very thought of a rattlesnake or a grizzly bear would have prevented any sleep, but there were too many other sounds besides—the whisper of the wind in the grass, the hooting of owls in the darkness, the distant howls of coyotes. He stared up at the thousands of stars in the cloudless sky, and listened.
He was awake for each changing of the guard, and saw Isaac take over from Sternberg at four o’clock in the morning. But eventually fatigue overcame him, and he was soundly asleep when a series of explosions jolted him awake. Isaac was shouting, “Halt! Halt, I say, halt!” as he fired his revolver.
They all jumped up. Isaac pointed east across the prairie. “There’s something out there! Can you see it, there’s something out there!”
They looked and saw nothing.
“I tell you, there’s a man, a lone man!”
“Where?”
“There! Out there!”
They stared at the distant horizon of the plains, and saw nothing at all.
Cookie unleashed a stream of epithets. “He’s Injun shy and he’s crazy, too—he’s going to see a red man behind every bush long as we’re out here. We won’t get a lick of sleep.”
Cope quietly said that he would take over the watch, and sent the others back to bed.
It would be many weeks before they realized that Isaac had been right.
If Stinky’s food and Isaac’s guarding left something to be desired, so did Little Wind’s scouting. The Shoshoni brave got them lost for much of the following day.
Two hours after they set out, they came across fresh horse manure on the plains.
“Indians,” Isaac gasped.
Hill snorted in disgust. “Know what that is?” he said. “That’s manure from our horses, that’s what it is.”
“That’s impossible.”
“You think so? See the wagon tracks over there?” He pointed to faint tracks, where the prairie grass had been pressed down. “You want to bet I put the wheels of this wagon in those tracks and they line up exactly? We’re lost, I tell you.”
Cope rode alongside Little Wind. “Are we lost?”
“No,” Little Wind said.
“Well, what do you expect him to say?” Hill grumbled. “You ever heard an Indian admit he was lost?”
“I’ve never heard of an Indian being lost,” Sternberg said.
“Well, we got one here, purchased at great expense,” Hill said. “You mark my words, he’s never been in this part of the country before, no matter what he says. And he’s lost, no matter what he says.”
For Johnson, the conversation filled him with strange dread. All day they had been riding under the great bowl of the sky, across uniformly flat country, a great vista without landmarks except for the occasional isolated tree or line of cottonwoods that marked a creek. It was truly a “sea of grass,” and like the sea it was trackless and vast. He began to understand why everyone in the West talked so familiarly of certain landmarks—Pompey’s Pillar, Twin Peaks, Yellow Cliffs. These few recognizable features were islands in the wide ocean of the prairie, and knowledge of their locations was essential for survival.
Johnson rode alongside Toad. “Can we really be lost?”
Toad shook his head. “Indians are born here. They can read the land in ways we can’t begin to imagine. We’re not lost.”
“Well, we’re going south,” Hill grumbled, staring at the sun. “Why’re we going south, when every man here knows that the Judith lands are east? Can someone tell me that?”
The next two hours were tense, until finally they came upon an old wagon track running east. Little Wind pointed. “This road for wagons to Judith lands.”
“That’s what the problem was,” Toad said. “He’s not used to traveling with a wagon, and he had to find the track for our wagon to use.”
“The problem,” Hill said, “is that he doesn’t know the country.”
“He knows this country,” Sternberg said. “This is the Indian hunting lands we’re in now.”
They rode on in sober silence.
Incidents on the Plains
In the middle of the still hot afternoon, Johnson was riding alongside Cope, talking quite peaceably to him, when his hat suddenly flew away in the air, although there was no wind.
A moment later they heard the snapping report of a long rifle. Then another, and another.
Someone was shooting at them.
“Down!” Cope shouted. “Down!”
They dismounted and ducked for cover, crawling beneath the wagon. In the distance they could see a brown swirling dust cloud.
“Oh God,” Isaac whispered. “Indians.”
The distant cloud grew in size, resolving into many silhouetted horsemen. More bullets whizzed through the air; the fabric of the wagon ripped; bullets spanged off pots and pans. Bessie brayed in alarm.
“We’re done for,” Morton moaned.
“Any minute now we’ll hear those arrows whistling,” Isaac said, “and then, when they get closer, out come the tomahawks—”
“Shut up!” Cope said. He had never taken his eyes off the cloud. “They’re not Indians.”