The Scalp Hunters

CHAPTER ONE.

THE WILD WEST.

Unroll the world's map, and look upon the great northern continent of
America. Away to the wild west, away toward the setting sun, away
beyond many a far meridian, let your eyes wander. Rest them where
golden rivers rise among peaks that carry the eternal snow. Rest them
there.

You are looking upon a land whose features are un-furrowed by human
hands, still bearing the marks of the Almighty mould, as upon the
morning of creation; a region whose every object wears the impress of
God's image. His ambient spirit lives in the silent grandeur of its
mountains, and speaks in the roar of its mighty rivers: a region
redolent of romance, rich in the reality of adventure.

Follow me, with the eye of your mind, through scenes of wild beauty, of
savage sublimity.

I stand in an open plain. I turn my face to the north, to the south, to
the east, and to the west; and on all sides behold the blue circle of
the heavens girdling around me. Nor rock, nor tree, breaks the ring of
the horizon. What covers the broad expanse between? Wood? water?
grass? No; flowers. As far as my eye can range, it rests only on
flowers, on beautiful flowers!

I am looking as on a tinted map, an enamelled picture brilliant with
every hue of the prism.

Yonder is golden yellow, where the helianthus turns her dial-like face
to the sun. Yonder, scarlet, where the malva erects its red banner.
Here is a parterre of the purple monarda, there the euphorbia sheds its
silver leaf. Yonder the orange predominates in the showy flowers of the
asclepia; and beyond, the eye roams over the pink blossoms of the
cleome.

The breeze stirs them. Millions of corollas are waving their gaudy
standards. The tall stalks of the helianthus bend and rise in long
undulations, like billows on a golden sea.