Читать книгу The Overland Trail онлайн

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“Catlin,” said Leavenworth, as they came riding back across a thousand miles of heat-scorched plains in August from the Arkansas, “we are getting too old to hunt buffalo—we—” Just then the rise to the crest of a hill showed a herd of the shaggy buffalo moving across the plains in search of water. Leavenworth’s horse was off like an arrow on the chase. Leavenworth wanted a nice young yearling calf whose fur was in good form and meat would be tender. That calf was no dunce. He had a rabbit trick or two. He would let Leavenworth come right up where the rifle hot to the touch could be aimed—then he would double back over his tracks and Leavenworth’s horse would be thrown on its haunches in the sudden stop. Leavenworth laughed. “I’ll have that fellow if I have to break my neck for it,” he yelled. Catlin himself had been tossed astride a small tree. Catlin saw Leavenworth’s horse down and the general on hands and knees over its head. “Hurt?” shouted Catlin running up. “No, but I might have been,” answered the veteran of Indian Wars; and he fainted. He died a few hours afterward while catching up with his troopers. In that summer, more than a third of the troopers on the trail from Fort Leavenworth died.