Year: 1877




think il 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 lookout
for Indians. | believe the Mormons
had only settled at Salt Lake about four
years previous; and to cross the plains
was in those days risky undertaking.
We rode all day and at night one always
stood guard.


There was an awful silence in 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 cayote.


The air was rare and transparent, and
the expanse about as 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 those
queer Indian graves raised on poles
stood out against the horizon, like old
black insects with long legs.


SO we came at last to the head of the
Sweetwater, then nearly thousand
miles from any settlement; and the
skulls lay very thickly there-thick as
powders In a torrent-bed sometimes !;
and there were little mounds all over
the plain, and these mounds were all
graves.


Each grave had a great buffalo or elk
skull-all white and bleached and ghast-
ly-looking-at one end of it. Iremem-
ber 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 scull that
was placed on a mound then had been
written in pencil or scratched in with a
knife, the name of the dead man below,
such as william Kawlins, died 9Th May ;
27 years, Pike county, Missouri


They were nearly all from Pike cOun'
ty, Missouri, and 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 in pencil stating that so-and-so
and so-and-so had passed by on such a
day.


We use to pick up clean skull our
selves, once in while, and write some
thing of this kind on it, so that we
might leave sort of clues 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, suddenly saw great dog
rise from a 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 Eng
lish 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 never
barked-only stared at us with the
same wild look. Then we went to the
grave he had been lying on, and 1t was
nameless-there was no skull except the
long cotfin-shape of the mound.


We 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, II we tried
to approach him. God knows how long
he had been there! We remained a
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. When we left some
crackers and dry meat for him and rode
away west.


AsI went / turned and saw him re-
turn to the grave and lie down OIL it at
full length, as though trying to guard
it. And | watched him, until at last,
when turned in my saddle, could see
nothing except the white skulls all be-
hind me, and few weird Indian graves
on the edge of She horizon where the
night was creeping up.