Buchanan County bulletin. [volume] (Independence, Iowa) 1869-1891, 1877-07-13
Concerning a Dogs
Cincinnati Commercial.

AS we wandered west along Fourtl
street yesterday, on our return from tn,
dog show, we met an old friend in blu,
uniform, who asked concerning the pros
pective success of the exhibition, tn,
character of the attendance, and thu
merits Of the dogs Conversation natu
rally turned upon dogs in general, ant
subsequently upon mastiff dogs in par
ticular. The Man in Blue listened in ;
kind OF dreamy way to our criticisms
and suddenly commenced slowly and
thoughtfully to narrate the following
incident:
Il think it was in 80 or 81 when
was crossing the Plains to reach the
Gold Fields There were only three OF
us; and we were all the time on the look
out for Indians. l believe the Nor
mons had only settled at Salt Lake
about four years previous; and to cross
the Plains in those days was risky un-
dertaking. We rode all day and at
night one always stood guard
There was an awful silence on those
plains; and sometimes the silence weigh
ed down upon us so strangely that we
would ride on for hours without speak
ing; and you never heard even the bark
ing Of a coyote.
''The air was rare and Transparent
and the expanse about us level as vast
sea, with occasional billowy heaves
which one could see at distance of
twenty miles. 1t was nearly always the
same; except where the buffalo skulls
were very thickly strewn, or where the
queer Indian graves raised on poles
stood out against the horizon, like odd
black insects with very long legs.
so we came at last to the head of
the Sweetwater then nearly thous-
and miles from any settlement; and the
skulls lay very thick there thick as
powders in torrent-bed sometimes
and there were little mounds all over
the plain; and those mounds were all
graves.
Each grave had great buffalo OF
elk skull-all white, and bleached, and
CHASTITY lOoking-at one end OF it, | re-
member some of the elk skulls must
have measured five feet between the
tips of the horns; and the bone was
white and dry as salt And on every
skull that was placed on a mound, there
had been written in pencil or scratched
in with knife, the name of the dead
man below, such as William Rawlins
died Sth May; q years; Pike County
Missouri
''They were nearly all from Pike
county, Mo-; we 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
stating that So-and-So and So-and-So
had passed by on such day. We used
to pick up clean skull ourselves, once
in while, and write something Of this
kind on it, so that we might leave sort
of clew as to what had become of us if
we should get killed.
We'll, as we were stumbling over the
graves and reading the inscriptions on
the skulls, | suddenly saw a great dog
from mound at some distance, and
slowly retreat to another mound still
further off, where he turned and stared
at us. He was one of those huge En-
glish mastiffs, 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 pro-
truding 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 new
er 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 on it,
nothing to mark it as grave except the
long coffin shape of the mound.
I'VE tried for 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 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 water 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
return 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 | turned in my
saddle | could see nothing except the
white skulls all behind me, and a few
weird Indian graves on the edge of the
horizon where the MI ght was creeping
m"