Page:The Overland Monthly Volume 5 Issue 3.djvu/80

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EWISTON, built of boards and canvas, looking sickly and discouraged, stood shivering in the wind of October, 1862, and wincing under volleys of pebbles that struck the sounding houses with such force you might have thought an unseen army was bombarding them. The town looked as if it had started down from the mines in the mountains above, ragged and discouraged, and, getting to where it then was, had sat down in the forks of the river to wait for the ferry. The town looked as if it ought to go on—as if it wanted to go on—as if it really would go on, if the wind kept blowing and the unseen army kept up the cannonade.

On your left, as you looked down the course of the Columbia, sixty miles away, the Snake River came tumbling down, as if glad to get away from the clouds of dust, sage-brush, and savages. On the other hand, the Clear Water came on peacefully from the woody region of Pen d'Oreille, and joined company for the Columbia. Up this stream a little way stood the old adode wintering quarters of Lewis and Clarke, exploring here under President Jefferson, in 1803; and a few rods beyond, the broad camp of the Nez Perces Indians flapped and fluttered in the wind—while the sombre lock of a Blackfoot warrior streamed from the war-chief's tent.

There is something insufferably mean in a windy day in the northern Territories. The whole country is a cloud of alkali dust—you are half-suffocated and wholly blinded—you shut your eyes and compress your lips—you hold your hat with both hands, lean resolutely against the wind, and bravely wait for it to go by. But it will not go by; it increases in fierceness; it fills your hair and your nostrils with dust; it discharges volleys of little pebbles, flints, and quartz into your face till it smarts and bleeds, and then, all suddenly, goes down with the setting sun.

The mines thus far found in the north had proved of but little account; and the miners were pouring back, as from a Waterloo. I had run a fierce opposition to Wells, Fargo & Co.; and as a result, sat alone in my office, trying to think, calmly as I could, how many of the best years of my life it would take to settle the costs, when the most ragged and wretched - looking individual I ever beheld, looking back stealthily over his shoulder, entered, and took a seat silently in the farther corner. He had around, heavy head, covered with a shaggy coat of half-gray hair, which an Indian the least expert could have lifted without the trouble of removing his patched apology for a hat. He had an enormous chin, that looked like a deformity. He seemed to sit behind it and look at me there, as you would sit behind a redoubt in a rifle-pit, watching an enemy. His right hand stuck stubbornly to his pocket, while his left clutched the bowl of his pipe, which he smoked furiously, driving the smoke fiercely through his nostrils like steam through twin-valves. I think his tattered duck-pants were stuck in the tops of his boots; but after the lapse of nearly eight years I do not remember distinctly. However, this is not so important. He looked up at me, pulled busily at his pipe, then dropped his head and deliberately fired a double-barreled volley of smoke at his toes, that looked up wistfully from the gable-ends of his boots. Then he arose, glanced at the