Frontier.

ON the sixth of August the travellers bade farewell to the friendly band
of Cheyennes, and resumed their journey. As they had obtained thirty-six
additional horses by their recent traffic, Mr. Hunt made a new
arrangement. The baggage was made up in smaller loads. A horse was
allotted to each of the six prime hunters, and others were distributed
among the voyageurs, a horse for every two, so that they could ride and
walk alternately. Mr. Crooks being still too feeble to mount the saddle,
was carried on a litter.

Their march this day lay among singular hills and knolls of an indurated
red earth, resembling brick, about the bases of which were scattered
pumice stones and cinders, the whole bearing traces of the action of
fire. In the evening they encamped on a branch of Big River.

They were now out of the tract of country infested by the Sioux, and had
advanced such a distance into the interior that Mr. Hunt no longer felt
apprehensive of the desertion of any of his men. He was doomed, however,
to experience new cause of anxiety. As he was seated in his tent after
nightfall, one of the men came to him privately, and informed him that
there was mischief brewing in the camp. Edward Rose, the interpreter,
whose sinister looks we have already mentioned, was denounced by this
secret informer as a designing, treacherous scoundrel, who was tampering
with the fidelity of certain of the men, and instigating them to a
flagrant piece of treason. In the course of a few days they would arrive
at the mountainous district infested by the Upsarokas or Crows, the
tribe among which Rose was to officiate as interpreter. His plan was
that several of the men should join with him, when in that neighborhood,
in carrying off a number of the horses with their packages of goods, and
deserting to those savages. He assured them of good treatment among the
Crows, the principal chiefs and warriors of whom he knew; they would
soon become great men among them, and have the finest women, and the
daughters of the chiefs for wives; and the horses and goods they carried
off would make them rich for life.

The intelligence of this treachery on the part of Rose gave much
disquiet to Mr. Hunt, for he knew not how far it might be effective
among his men. He had already had proofs that several of them were
disaffected to the enterprise, and loath to cross the mountains. He
knew also that savage life had charms for many of them, especially the