"A very extraordinary proceeding, upon my word!" he remarked. Then he
began to enlarge upon the enormity of the design. The most prominent
impression in his mind evidently was that we were acting a base and
treacherous part in deserting his party, in what he considered a very
dangerous stage of the journey. To palliate the atrocity of our conduct,
we ventured to suggest that we were only four in number while his party
still included sixteen men; and as, moreover, we were to go forward
and they were to follow, at least a full proportion of the perils he
apprehended would fall upon us. But the austerity of the captain's
features would not relax. "A very extraordinary proceeding, gentlemen!"
and repeating this, he rode off to confer with his principal.

By good luck, we found a meadow of fresh grass, and a large pool of
rain-water in the midst of it. We encamped here at sunset. Plenty of
buffalo skulls were lying around, bleaching in the sun; and sprinkled
thickly among the grass was a great variety of strange flowers. I had
nothing else to do, and so gathering a handful, I sat down on a buffalo
skull to study them. Although the offspring of a wilderness, their
texture was frail and delicate, and their colors extremely rich; pure
white, dark blue, and a transparent crimson. One traveling in this
country seldom has leisure to think of anything but the stern features
of the scenery and its accompaniments, or the practical details of each
day's journey. Like them, he and his thoughts grow hard and rough. But
now these flowers suddenly awakened a train of associations as alien to
the rude scene around me as they were themselves; and for the moment my
thoughts went back to New England. A throng of fair and well-remembered
faces rose, vividly as life, before me. "There are good things," thought
I, "in the savage life, but what can it offer to replace those powerful
and ennobling influences that can reach unimpaired over more than three
thousand miles of mountains, forests and deserts?"