ted and they
landed to test the hospitality of its proprietor, who proved to be a
squaw man, the name applied to white men who marry Indian women. The
travelers were cautiously received and finally invited to remain over
night, on condition that they furnished their own provisions.
Several comely half breed children sat around the room while supper was
being prepared by a good-looking Indian squaw. Noting the inquiring
looks of Boyton and his companion, the rancher said:

"Yes, them's my children and that's my wife. She cost me a tidy bit,
too. I gave up a durned good horse fur that squaw."

"How long have you been married to her?" inquired Paul.

"Wall, I ain't been married very long to this 'un. I had another
almighty good lookin' one, that I lived with some years; but she got
tired workin' an' run away to the tribe. This un's a good cook an a hard
worker."

Supper was announced by the woman, who spoke to her husband in the
Indian tongue, as she had not acquired English. The travelers and the
master of the ranch sat at a small table, while the woman and the
children retreated to a dark corner near the fire, where they ate.

"Will not your wife eat with us?" politely inquired Boyton.

"Eat with us!" exclaimed the rancher in breathless astonishment, "I shud
say not. Do you think I'd eat with a durned Indian?"

After breakfast next morning, the travelers again took to the river, the
squaw man extending an invitation to drop in on him again if they ever
chanced up that way. As they passed below the mouth of Grand river, the
scenery began to change. Instead of grassy buttes, the prairies were
crowned with clay hills, riven as though by volcanic action and the
river flowed under huge cliffs of a peculiar slate color. Wild vines
twined their tendrils over shores ancient and fossilized, that were trod
by tribes whose camp fires had burned out before Columbus ever dreamed
of the new world. About four miles below Grand river, on a bluish cliff
that shot out in the water almost at right angles, they landed and found
many beautiful specimens of petrifaction--fish retaining their prismatic
beauty of exterior. The mother of pear-like shells of the extinct
anomite lay about as though the place had once been the bed of a mighty
ocean. The shore was covered with agates and looked gray and instead
of mud sucks, there were pebbly beaches for some distance. Sometimes a
bank that had been eaten away by