[When Wilderness Was King by Randall Parrish]@TWC D-Link book
When Wilderness Was King

CHAPTER X
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A LANE OF PERIL We passed a group of young cottonwoods, the only trees I had noted along the shore; and a few hundred feet ahead of us, the ridge of sand, which had obscured our westward view so long, gradually fell away, permitting the eye to sweep across the wide expanse of level plain until halted by a distant row of stunted trees that seemed to line a stream of some importance.

As Captain Wells spoke, my glance, which had been fixed upon these natural objects, was instantly attracted by a strange scene of human activity that unfolded to the north and west.
The land before us lay flat and low, with the golden sun of the early afternoon resting hot upon it, revealing each detail in an animated panorama wherein barbarism and civilization each bore a conspicuous part.

The Fort was fully a mile and a half distant, and I could distinguish little of its outward appearance, save that it seemed low and solidly built, like a stockade of logs set upon end in the ground.
It appeared gloomy, grim, inhospitable, with its gates tightly closed, and no sign of life anywhere along its dull walls; yet my heart was thrilled at catching the bright colors of the garrison flag as the western breeze rippled its folds against the blue background of the sky.
But it was outside those log barriers that our eyes encountered scenes of the greatest interest,--a mingling of tawdry decoration and wild savagery, where fierce denizens of forest and plain made their barbaric show.
No finer stage for such a spectacle could well be conceived.

Upon one side stretched the great waste of waters; on the other, level plains, composed of yellow sand quickly merging into the green and brown of the prairie, while, scattered over its surface, from the near lake-shore to the distant river, were figures constantly moving, decked in gay feathers and daubed with war-paint.

Westward from the Fort, toward the point where a branch of the main river appeared to emerge from the southward, stood a large village of tepees, the sun shining yellow and white on their deerskin coverings and making an odd glow in the smoke that curled above the lodge-poles.


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