LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume XXII, Issue 2029, 25 August 1880, Page 3

LITERATURE.

THE WHITE MAKE. Concluded.) Clustering around me, they asked if I had understood all the talk. • Yes ; I bad.' ' 1 hen why not answer the maiden when she spoke to you t' ' I Game not to talk with squaws, but to trade with men.' No cse; I oould gain nothing by soft talk, and having played my hand, finally resigned myself to my fate. ' I noticed that the girl who had first spoken to me in front of the lodge was watching me. She would quickly glance at me, »nd then drop her eyes on the buckskin ehirfc ehe was embroidering with Crow hair. Several times I noticed this, and once I replied with a smile. The lodge emptied. All were gone except the girl. She came to my side apparently to refold some buffalo robes, and in a whisper said : ' You are to die to-morrow. To night I will have the horse in the camp saddled and standing on the outside of the lodge. You jamp through, mount, and ride for your life. Yon may escape. You will burn if jou stay." * Then with'a smile : '' The mare is mine. She is the fastest animal in the Valley of the Yellowstone. I give her to you.' ' She left me and quickly resumed her work. As she wove the hair of the many Crow scalp-locks into the shirt I sat looking thankfully at her. She never looked at me again. 1 saw a chance for my life; my heart beat so loudly that I,thought it would be heard ; I calmed my face and waited. I ate fairly of supper. I smoked a pipe. All were very kind and attentive to me. ' Night was pasting away, and still the Indians lingered, looking at the man they were to burn on the morrow. I leaned back against the tent to rest myself, when I felt a hand genfcly pushing me forward. Sitting whistling I felt the point of a knife come through and strike my neck. I did not flinch ; I could feel the bload trickle down my back; I could feel the knife carefully drawn until it hit the ground. Stih whistling, I waited, my heart thumping, my blood on fire—waited a minute to give whoever cut the tent time to escape. Then grasping my heart and nerves for an instant, I gathered myself and turned backwards through the opening.. 'lnstantly jumping to my feet I vaulted into the saddle that wis oh the back of a white horse that Btood there, and in the midst of yells, xifla shots, of a pack of howling dogs, we rushed out of the camp. It seemed to me as though a hundred horsemen were in pursuit of me instantly. We galloped up the river to the bend I had seen- Dishing in, we forded it under a fire that made the water boil around ns, and were out of water and on the level land to the north of the river before any of the Sioux were half way across. Striking the trail of L tho Bozeman Pass, I took it, and knowing it. pushed boldly on, and, though hotly pursued, my horse outlasted theirs, and I escaped. I never drew rein until I dismounted to the west of the pass.. 'Tho girl saved me. With any other home I should have been recaptared and bnrned. I have not got tbe girL The love I have for her the mare has instead. I returned to my post, and made no trade £in the Yellowstone that year. ' Again. Last winter the snow was on the ground in January, and for three days I had been hunting or running antelope. The sun was very bright, and my eyes hurt me. I saw specks floating about. Little chains with small links were constantly before me. My eyes burned smartly when I returned to the Agency. Daily, while hunting. I had seen the low black clouds In the north that indicate the formation or marshalling of the winds of the frozen north. Daily the south wind swept them beyond the northern horizon ; but the next morning found them looming portentously in the northern sky. ' On my return to the Agency I found a ranner had just got in from Belly river, in ' British America, with important news for me. It was necessary that Igo at once. I started the next morning. My eyes hurt dreadfully. ' I always go to the Belly Biver, when the snow is on the ground, by way of the Sweet Grass Hills, and there I camp one night. One side of the hills is always bare of snow, and there is a spring of water on the northern aide of the oentre hill.

' A strong south west wind was blowing when I started, but by noon I saw the clouds of the north suddenly rise up. I knew that the marshalling of the north winds was completed, and they were eager for the assault on the soft south wind. On came the black cloud. The south wind still blew fiercely, but it could not stem the assault from the Arctic region. Birds flew out before the storm, antelopes and deer were running for shelter. ' I had reached my camping ground and stood looking far off to the north, seeing the land-marks disappear one by one as the head of the blizzard reached them and shrouded them in its icy breath. A calm. Then with a mighty rush and a loud noist [the head of the blizzard swept past me. The air was filled with particles of ice that cut through almost horizontally, and seemed as thouah they would never fall. ' Colder, even colder, grew the wind, and denser the air as the icy particles thickened I sought shelter in the rocks. Buckling the clothing to the mare I turned her loose, knowing that she would not leave me. Then I lay down on my blanket, and wrapping my blankets round me, I tried to sleep.

* I began thinking and conld not altep. The buffalo had not come south that winter, and the wolves were gaunt and hungry. As they follow a horseman over the plains in Bummer, so they do in winter, only more of them —and those great, gaunt famine breeders, the grey and black ones, go in largely increased numbers. I had a pack of them at my hee's all day, and now they cropped up in my thoughts. ' Finally I slept. When I awoke it was dark. Holding up my hand, I felt the icy sweat; of the blizzard strike sharply against it. The roar of the wind still continued. I could not go to sleep again, and I lay waiting for dawn. I waited, it seemed to me, for hour*, when I suddenly felt my mare paw my breast. I spoke kindly to her, saying she had made a mistake. Soon she pawed me again, and I rose to find that all was dark, that fl could not see the white mare.

'Alarmed, I straok a match under my cloak, and looked down to see the blaze. I saw nothing, but the match burned my fingers. With a desolating despondency 1 realised the fact that the glare of the snow encountered for the past few days had made me snow-blind j that I waa fifty miles from the nearest house, and unable to see ; that a furious storm was raging. •Stuoid, almost wild with horror, I thought I could hear the snuffing of the wolves, and the soft patter of their feet below the wild shriek of the Arctic winds. I was simply benumbed with terror. With my eyesight in full power I should have thought the situation dangerous. As it was, I considered it hopeless. ' The mare recalled me to myself by rubbing her cold muzzle against my face. She saw that something waa wrong with me, but what, she could not comprehend. I resolved to saddle her, to feed her, and after she ate, to mount and let her take her own course. So I fed her with the remaining measure of barley, and waited for her to eat. Then I saddled up, and, without bridling, mounted and, wrapping my cloak around me, sat steadily in the saddle, awaiting the frisky action of the high-strung animal. She stood trembling until I told her to go. Then I felt her turn until the ioe-drops fell obliquely on my right side and back, and sho rapidly walked off.

* Wrapped in my cloak, with hood drawn over my face, warm and encouraged with hope, I patiently sat on the horse. I could now hear the snarling of the wolves, and my only fear was that they, rendered desperate by hunger, might attack the mare. I dismissed the thought, would not think of it. If they did attack us, we were lost; if they did not, I thought we were safe. 'All day the buzzard raged and tore icily around and on us. The mare walked rapidly or cantered slowly on. It seemed to ma that we had been travelling on for days, for weeks even, when the mare stopped and neighed loudly. Reaching forward, I f-lt the rough stockade. Dismounting, I felt the hinges of the gate. Loudly I called. Then I took my rifle from the saddle and rapidly I handled cartridges into it. At last a sleepy voice from the iaEldc called ;

' Who ia there?' * I answered, ' Burr—and I am nunrblind. Come to me.' They came, and Iww saved— saved for the second time by the, white mare. 'Do you wonder that I, not having th© Sioux maiden, love her mare ?' I sat by the bright fire, with my feet high on a stool, and did not answer—pimply safe and smoked, and thought of the girl, of tb* man, of the mare. Leaving me thinking. Burr went to sleep in his chair with a softened. fane.