The Camp in the Foot-Hills: Oscar on Horseback

“I declare, I almost wish I was going with him!”

It was our old friend Oscar Preston who said this. He was standing on the platform in front of the station at Julesburg, gazing after the stage-coach in which Leon Parker, the disgusted and repentant runaway, whose adventures and mishaps have already been described, had taken passage for Atchison.

Oscar, as we know, had stumbled upon Leon by the merest chance, and fortunately he was in a position to render him the assistance of which he stood so much in need.

By advancing him money out of his own pocket he had put it in Leon’s power to return to the home he had so recklessly deserted, and those who have read “Two Ways of Becoming a Hunter” know how glad the runaway was to accept his proffered aid.

Up to this time Oscar had been all enthusiasm. There was no employment in the world that he could think of that so accorded with his taste as the mission on which he had been sent—that of procuring specimens for the museum that was to be added to the other attractions connected with the university at Yarmouth.

His head was full of plans. So anxious was he to make his expedition successful, and to win the approbation of the committee who employed him, that he had been able to think of nothing else; but when he saw the coach moving away from the station he began to have some faint idea of the agony Leon must have suffered when he found himself alone in that wilderness, with no friend to whom he could go for sympathy or advice.

In short Oscar was very homesick. In a few days, if nothing unforeseen happened, Leon would be in Eaton, surrounded by familiar scenes and familiar faces, while Oscar himself would, in a short time, disappear as completely from the gaze of the civilized world as though he had suddenly ceased to exist.

Even with his inexperienced eye he could see that bad weather was close at hand. Perhaps before he reached the foot-hills the winter’s storms would burst forth in all their fury, blocking the trail with drifts, and effectually shutting him off from all communication with those he had left behind.

He had never been so far away from his mother before, and neither had she ever seemed so dear and so necessary to him as she did now.

And then there was Sam—impulsive, good-natured, kind-hearted Sam Hynes—who had so long been his chosen friend and almost constant companion!

Oscar would have given much if he could have looked into his honest face and felt the cordial grasp of his hand once more.

Some such thoughts as these passed through the mind of the young hunter as he stood there on the platform with his hands in his pockets, gazing after the rapidly receding stage-coach, and for a moment he looked and felt very unlike the happy, ambitious boy who had left Eaton but a short time before with such bright anticipations of the future.

Then he dashed away the mist that seemed to be gathering before his eyes, pushed back his hat, which he had drawn low over his forehead, and took himself to task for his weakness.

“A pretty hunter I shall make if this is the way I am to feel!” was his mental exclamation. “I talked very glibly to Sam Hynes about going on a three or four years’ expedition to Africa to collect specimens, and here I am, homesick already, although I have been away from Eaton scarcely two weeks. This will never do. I must get to work at once.”

Just at that moment the stage-coach reached the top of a high ridge over which the road ran, and Leon turned in his seat to wave his farewell to the boy who had befriended him.

Oscar waved his handkerchief in reply, and, having seen the coach disappear over the brow of the hill, he sprang off the platform and bent his steps toward the fort.

As he passed through the gate, the sentry respectfully brought his musket to a “carry.” He had seen Oscar in familiar conversation with all the high officers belonging to the post, and that made him believe that the visitor, young as he was in years, must be a person of some importance.

He was well enough acquainted with the men who commanded him to know that they did not associate on terms of intimacy with everyone who came to the post on business.

Oscar walked straight to the colonel’s head-quarters, and the orderly who was standing in the hall opened the door for him.

The room in which he now found himself was not just such a room as he had expected to see in that wilderness. The open piano, the expensive pictures, the papered walls, and the richly upholstered easy-chairs that were arranged in order about the table made it look almost too civilized.

And yet there were a good many things in it to remind one of the plains. There was no carpet on the floor, but there were rugs in abundance, although they were not such rugs as we have in our houses. They were made of the skins of the wild animals that had fallen to the colonel’s breech loader.

The commandant was not only a brave soldier, a successful Indian fighter, and a daring horseman, but he was also an enthusiastic sportsman and a crack shot with the rifle.

The walls of his room were adorned with numerous trophies of his skill as a hunter and marksman in the shape of antlers, skins, and deer heads (the latter not quite so well mounted as they ought to be, Oscar thought); and the brace of magnificent Scotch greyhounds, which were lying at their ease on an elk skin in front of the blazing logs that were piled in the huge, old-fashioned fireplace, were fair specimens of the pack the colonel had imported for the purpose of coursing the antelope that were so abundant on the prairie.