America 1881: Legend of the West

Sean was a little stunned.

The two men ran away again, leaving him alone by the pond.

But for some reason, he sincerely believed that the two people would come back this time. Although the Chinese man was cruel and mean, he always gave people a sense of security.

So he took out the water bag, and after confirming that the water in the pond was not salt-alkaline water, he drank until he was full, filled another bag full, and then lay on a stone on the side and played with his fingers.

Sure enough, it didn't take long before he saw Asuka riding Huey not far away.

"Where's Chen?"

"Riding a black horse toward the west."

"Then we wait for him here?"

"Well, he told us to wait here before."

Wait until the sun sets. The black man played with the grass pulled from the ground boredly, while the bird built a bonfire and wiped his ax by the light of the fire.

"Brothers, I'm back."

A familiar voice appeared. Sean and Feiniao turned around and saw Chen Jianqiu appearing on the other side of the pond, and he was riding the black horse.

"We have to get a saddle tomorrow." Chen Jianqiu had some scratches on his face and his clothes were a little disheveled, but he was in good spirits. In stark contrast to him, the black horse looked downcast and exhausted.

Feiniao took out a piece of oatmeal cake from his saddle bag and handed it to Chen Jianqiu. Huey snorted and seemed a little dissatisfied because someone had robbed him of his rations.

Chen Jianqiu fed the oatmeal cake to the black horse and patted its neck gently with his hand. He used a rope to make a simple halter and put it on the black horse's head. Then he tied the other end of the rope into a knot. , buckled on a stone.

"I observed the terrain when I came back. The general direction is correct. We should be entering the mountains in a short time." Feiniao stood up.

Chen Jianqiu hummed: "I'll be on duty for the first half of the night, and you'll be on duty for the second half of the night."

"What about me?" Sean came up.

"Just lie down."

The black man shrank back.

Chen Jianqiu took out the human skin found in the Sheriff's Office from his pocket and studied it carefully by the light of the campfire.

The human skin is somewhat obscured by time, but the pictures depicted on it are still vaguely discernible.

The painting on the far left is a place similar to an altar. Directly above the altar, there is a unique animal painted, similar to a snake with wings. The whole body is covered with feathers. Even if it is very old, it can still be seen. The ink is gorgeous before it comes out.

This even reminded him of the similar-shaped "singing snake" in the Chinese "Shan Hai Jing".

Is this the god believed by which tribe?

The painting on the right depicts a valley. The edge of the valley is very strange, in the shape of an inverted "mountain".

At the bottom of the entire human skin are several rows of neatly arranged symbols. Rather than words, this symbol is more like a miniature version of a picture, with antlers and the head of an unknown animal... Chen Jianqiu looked at it for a long time but couldn't figure out what it was.

So he put away the human skin and took out the notebook. He didn't throw it away despite the bumpy journey.

The content in the book is actually written in English. Chen Jianqiu's English level before time travel was at least above level 4 or 6, so he would not be able to recognize the letters in the book while he did not.

This is a diary, most likely belonging to an old mine owner.

The diary is written intermittently, not every day, sometimes even every few months. The previous part mainly describes the military history of this former Union colonel, from the Mexican-American War to the Civil War, and then to the Battle of the Little Big Horn River with the Indians.

This old bastard has an astonishingly flexible moral bottom line: he is a Whig, but he supports a fight with the Mexicans because he has long planned to make a fortune there; he is a general of the Northern Army, but he He was passive in fighting the Confederate army because he had his own plantation in Mississippi; he betrayed his old boss Custer in the Battle of Little Big Horn, causing the famous general's entire army to be wiped out; he was trying to induce surrender " Crazy Horse" then stabbed him in the back.

But these were not the focus of Chen Jianqiu's attention. He turned to the back of the diary and finally found what he was looking for.

1880/12/15

Damn blizzard!

If I hadn't killed that damn Indian, federal troops would still be chasing bison on the grasslands of South Dakota, and my stupid commander used that as an excuse to throw me into this hellish place to suppress the bandits.

Suppress bandits? Nothing but coyotes and deer here? Where is anyone alive?

I might as well go mining! Maurice and I arranged to go to Stone Springs, where he was assigned as Sheriff, and there was a coal mine title for sale, which was a good deal.

Today we stopped a caravan selling private goods on the road. They were full of fakes and worthless things, and there was even a painting of human skin.

Wyoming rednecks are poor as hell.

1881/2/20

There was something wrong with the coal mine. Two workers died and the coal output was affected. I went to Denver to hire an engineer and met Lockhart, the famous archaeologist.

He actually said that human skin was a treasure map. There must be something wrong with his brain.

1881/4/12

It really seems like a treasure map.

Chen Jianqiu flipped through the diary again. This was the last page. Although I don’t know what the old mine manager went through in the two months from February to April, he seems to have found enough evidence to prove the nature of human skin.

He pulled out the human skin again and looked at it carefully.

Even if this is really a treasure map, they can't find the exact location based on the information on it. What's more, their most important task now is to escape capture.

He carefully wrapped the human skin and the diary and put them away again.

After a while, Feiniao woke up, picked up his gun and stood up, approaching Chen Jianqiu who was staring at the bonfire in a daze.

"Chen, go to bed."

Chen Jianqiu nodded, closed his eyes and quickly fell asleep.

When he woke up again, it was already dawn, and there were still stars hanging in the sky, and on the horizon in the distance, there was a white fish belly. Some brave animals even started drinking water on the other side of the pond far away from them. .

Asuka was now on the ground with his knees together, his calves touching the ground, and his buttocks touching his heels, a bit like the way people of the Han Dynasty in China sat, facing the northeast and staring into the distance.

The faint morning light bathed his young face from the side. I don’t know what he was thinking at this time.

Chen Jianqiu didn't know whether he should disturb him at this time, but Feiniao noticed him waking up first and spoke:

"My home was originally in that direction, where our ancestors grew up for generations."

Chen Jianqiu said that my home is still on the other side of the ocean, but he just asked: "Then why are we going south now?"

"We Sioux originally lived in the Black Mountains of the Dakotas, which is our sacred mountain. The white people drove us out, and then we had a war."

"Didn't you win the battle?" Chen Jianqiu suddenly thought of the records in Colonel Robert's diary.

"But they started to slaughter the bison on the grassland and blocked our place. Food became increasingly scarce. We ultimately failed." Feiniao was a little depressed.

"My father chose to negotiate with them for the sake of the tribe, but was deceived by Robert and was killed under the flag of truce. The tribe was massacred, and I escaped with the remaining people, migrating all the way south, and finally escaped into Yu Tarin Mountain.”

Chen Jianqiu didn't know how to comfort the young man in front of him. He suddenly remembered the humiliation that the land on the other side of the ocean was suffering at this time and the tragic experiences in the following decades.

But he also thought of his rising motherland more than 100 years later.

He patted Asuka on the shoulder.

"Dignity does not rely on charity, but ultimately depends on blood and fire."