Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 1.djvu/406

366 a cloud continuous from morning until night. This cloud of sand and dust particles beating against them at a terrific velocity they had to face all day. Soon eyes and lips were sore. To relieve the uncomfortable feeling that the parching air gave the lips they would unwisely be moistened and the soreness thus extended and deepened. Soon everything was obdurately begrimed. Rags then were in evidence. Shoes worn so as to no longer protect the feet. In the dry, scorching air the wagons would develop loose joints and lose their tires.

The monotony was relieved by lying by a day now and then during which the women would wash and mend the clothes and the men repair wagons and hunt buffalo, the meat of which would be jerked to furnish a supply after they had passed beyond the limits of the buffalo country. The buffalo did not commonly range west of the Lower Sweetwater.

The experiences which the buffalo gave them were not limited to the fine sport of hunting him and the delicious feasts his steaks afforded. His presence seemed to kindle into life the old ancestral wildness of the ox and the horse. Without the least warning some sedate member of a team would raise his head and give the old racial snort of freedom. This would kindle the same spark in every animal of the train, and away they would stampede with wagons, inmates and all, and not to be stopped until utterly exhausted. In these stampedes people would be run over, bones would be broken, oxen dehorned, their legs broken, and things demolished generally. The simple-minded pioneer with any tendency to personify could not help but believe that the devil had gotten into his hitherto always tractable animals. I quote a pioneer's account of a stampede, though he does not ascribe it to the presence or influence of the buffalo, as is almost always done: "After passing