rth of us,
and they discovered us at the same time we saw them. As soon as the
Sighewashes saw the Utes they stopped, and two of the Sighewashes rode
back to us and said in Spanish, "We go see Utes," and they rode over to
the Ute camp. Probably they were gone a half hour or more, when they
returned, and we surely watched every move the Utes made till the
Sighewashes came back to us. When they came back they were laughing and
said to us, "Utes heap good." Then I was satisfied that we were in no
danger.
We traveled on some five or six miles when we came to a nice little
stream of water where there was fine grass. I said to the boys, "We'll
camp here. Now you boys unpack the animals and take them out to grass,
and I will go and kill some meat for supper."
I picked up my gun and started; I didn't go over a quarter of a mile
till I saw four Bison cows, and they all had calves with them. I crawled
up in shooting distance and killed one of the calves. At the crack of my
gun the cows ran away. I commenced dressing the calf and here came four
of my Sighewash Indians running to me, and when they saw what I had
killed, I believe they were the happiest mortals that I ever saw.
As soon as I got the insides out I told them to pick up the calf and we
would go to camp. Some of them picked up the carcass and others picked
up the entrails. I told them we did not want the entrails. One of the
Indians spoke up and said, "Heap good, all same good meat". I finally
persuaded them to leave the insides alone.
When we got back to camp, the boys had a good fire, and it was not long
before we had plenty of meat around the fire, and I never saw Indians
eat as they did that night. After they had been eating about an hour,
Jonnie West said to me, "Will, you will have to go and kill more meat,
or we won't have any for breakfast."
We soon turned in for the night and left the Indians still cooking. In
the morning we were surprised to see the amount of meat they had got
away with. What they ate that night would have been plenty for the same
number of white men three or four days. The nature of the Indian is to
eat when he has the chance and when he hasn't he goes without and never
complains.
For the next three days we traveled through a country well supplied
with game, especially Elk, Deer, and black bear. It was now late in the
summer and all game was in a fine condition, it was no unusual thing to
see from twenty five to a hundred Elk in a
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