第8章

FORT LEAVENWORTH

On the next morning we rode to Fort Leavenworth.Colonel, now General, Kearny, to whom I had had the honor of an introduction when at St.Louis, was just arrived, and received us at his headquarters with the high-bred courtesy habitual to him.Fort Leavenworth is in fact no fort, being without defensive works, except two block-houses.

No rumors of war had as yet disturbed its tranquillity.In the square grassy area, surrounded by barracks and the quarters of the officers, the men were passing and repassing, or lounging among the trees; although not many weeks afterward it presented a different scene; for here the very off-scourings of the frontier were congregated, to be marshaled for the expedition against Santa Fe.

Passing through the garrison, we rode toward the Kickapoo village, five or six miles beyond.The path, a rather dubious and uncertain one, led us along the ridge of high bluffs that bordered the Missouri; and by looking to the right or to the left, we could enjoy a strange contrast of opposite scenery.On the left stretched the prairie, rising into swells and undulations, thickly sprinkled with groves, or gracefully expanding into wide grassy basins of miles in extent; while its curvatures, swelling against the horizon, were often surmounted by lines of sunny woods; a scene to which the freshness of the season and the peculiar mellowness of the atmosphere gave additional softness.Below us, on the right, was a tract of ragged and broken woods.We could look down on the summits of the trees, some living and some dead; some erect, others leaning at every angle, and others still piled in masses together by the passage of a hurricane.Beyond their extreme verge, the turbid waters of the Missouri were discernible through the boughs, rolling powerfully along at the foot of the woody declivities of its farther bank.

The path soon after led inland; and as we crossed an open meadow we saw a cluster of buildings on a rising ground before us, with a crowd of people surrounding them.They were the storehouse, cottage, and stables of the Kickapoo trader's establishment.Just at that moment, as it chanced, he was beset with half the Indians of the settlement.

They had tied their wretched, neglected little ponies by dozens along the fences and outhouses, and were either lounging about the place, or crowding into the trading house.Here were faces of various colors; red, green, white, and black, curiously intermingled and disposed over the visage in a variety of patterns.Calico shirts, red and blue blankets, brass ear-rings, wampum necklaces, appeared in profusion.The trader was a blue-eyed open-faced man who neither in his manners nor his appearance betrayed any of the roughness of the frontier; though just at present he was obliged to keep a lynx eye on his suspicious customers, who, men and women, were climbing on his counter and seating themselves among his boxes and bales.