These terrible dramas were constantly reacted in these vast western
solitudes, and the fate of the unfortunate traders would be unknown,
until some day, perchance, a living skeleton, a famished being, covered
with blood, dust, and mire, would arrive at one of the military posts on
the borders, and relate an awful and bloody tragedy, from which he alone
had escaped.
In 1831, Mr. Sublette and his company crossed the prairies with
twenty-five waggons. He and his company were old pioneers among the
Rocky Mountains, whom the thirst of gold had transformed into merchants.
They went without guides, and no one among them had ever performed the
trip. All that they knew was that they were going from such to such a
degree of longitude. They reached the Arkansas river, but from thence to
the Cimaron there is no road, except the numerous paths of the
buffaloes, which, intersecting the prairie, very often deceive the
travellers.
When the caravan entered this desert the earth was entirely dry, and the
pioneers mistaking their road, wandered during several days exposed to
all the horrors of a febrile thirst under a burning sun. Often they were
seduced by the deceitful appearance of a buffalo-path, and in this
perilous situation Captain Smith, one of the owners of the caravan,
resolved to follow one of these paths, which he considered would
indubitably lead him to some spring of water or to a marsh.
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