The Grange advance. [volume] (Red Wing, Minn.) 1873-1877, 1877-07-18
The Dogs Nobility.
From the Cincinnati Connercial.

From the Cincinnati Commercial.
think 1t was in 80 or 81, when I was
crossing the plains to reach the gold-tields
There was only three. of u.s.. and, we were
all the time on the lookout for Indians. 7
believe the Mormons~had only settled at
Salt Lake about foury years previous; and
to cross the plains was in, those days a
risky undertaking. We rode all day, and
at night one always stood guard.
There was an awful silence. in those
plains, and sometimes the silenccweighed
down upon us SO strangely that we would
ride on tor hours without speaking, and
YOU never heard even the barking of
coyote.
The air was rare and transparent, and
the expanse above lis level as a vast sea,
with occasional billowy heaves which
one could see at a. distance Of wenty
| miles. 1t was nearly always the same,
except where the buffalo skulls. we're verv
thickly strewn, or where those queer In
dian graves raised on poles stood out
against the horizon. like odd black in
sects with very long. legs.
SO we came at last to the head of the
Sweetwatcr- them nearly thousand
miles from any settlement; and the skulls
lay very thick there-thick as bcwlders in
torrent-bed sometimes; and there were
little mounds all over the plain and these
mounds were all graves.
Each grave had great buffalo or elk
skull-all white and bleached and ghast-
ly-l looking one end of it. remem-
Der some of the elk skulls FAUST have
measured five feet between the tips of the
horns, and the bcacs was white and drv
as salt. And on every skull that was
placed on mouad there had been writ
ten in pencil or scratched in with knife,
the name of the dead man below, such as
I" William Rawlins, died 9Th MAY: %
years, Pike County, Missouri
They were nearly all from Pike county,
Missouri, and VIC got tired of reading SO
many of them There were other skulls
lying along the road here and there with
little sentences written on them lin
pencil, stating that so-and-so and so-and-
so had passed by on such a day. We
used to pick up clean skull ourselves,
oEce in a while, and write something of
this kind on, so that we might have
sort of clue as to what had become of us,
if we should get killed.
Well, as we were stumbling over the
graves and reading the inscriptions on
the skulls, l suddenly saw a great
dog rise from a mound at some
distance and slowly retreat to an
other mound still further off, where he
turned and stared at us. He was one of
those huge English mastifs, and must
have belonged to one of the dead men,
You could see through him; no starving
wolf could have been gaunter, and his
great protruding eyes had the widest
look you ever saw He seemed to have
lost his voice and his flesh together, and
looked like the very phantom of dog.
We called and whistled to him, but he
never barked-only stared at us with the
same wild look. Then we went to the
grave he had been lying on, and it was
nameless-there was no skull except the
the long cotfin-shape of the mound.
"We tried tor ever so long to coax the
dog even to come and eat something. but
he would not come near us, and would
run off in a weak, shy way if we tried to
approach him. God knows how long he
had been there! We remained whole
afternoon, just to dig little hole for wa
ter for the dog; you could strike water
there at four or five feet, right among the
graves. Then we left some crackers and
dry food for him and rode away west
AS we went turned and saw him re-
turn to the grave and lie down on it at
full length, as though trying to guard it.
And watched him, and watched him.
until at last, when I turned in my saddle
I could see nothing except the white
skulls all behind me, and a few weird In
dian graves on the edge of the horizon
where the night was creeping up.