fact that the average
Indian is not a master hand with a gun except at short range was my
salvation. If they'd been white men I would probably have been curled in
a neat heap within two hundred yards. As it was, they shot altogether
too close for comfort, and the series of yells they turned loose in that
peaceful atmosphere made me feel that I was due to be forcibly separated
from the natural covering of my cranium if I lost any time in getting
out of their sphere of influence.

The persistent beggars chased me a good ten miles before they drew up,
concluding, I suppose, that I was too well mounted for them to overhaul.
But it might have been a lot worse; I still had my scalp intact; the
chase and its natural excitement had brought a comfortable warmth to my
chilled body; and I had made good time in the direction I wished to go.
On the whole, I felt that the red brother had done me rather a good
turn. But I kept on high ground, thereafter, where I could see a mile or
two, for I was very much alive to the fact that if another of those
surprise-parties jumped me now that my horse was tired they would have a
good deal of fun at my expense; and an Indian's idea of fun doesn't
coincide with mine--not by a long shot!

I made some pointed remarks to my horse about Mr. Goodell and his
companions, as I rode along. If Pend d' Oreille hadn't been the nearest
place, I'd have turned back to Walsh and made that bunch of exhumers
come back after me, if it were absolutely necessary that I should pilot
them to the graves. Personally, I thought those two old plainsmen
wouldn't thank Major Lessard or any one else for disturbing their last,
long sleep; the wide, unpeopled prairies had always been their choice in
life, and I felt that they would rather be laid away in some quiet
coulee, than in any conventional "city of the dead" with prim headstones
and iron fences to shut them in. A Western man likes lots of room; dead
or alive, it irks him to be crowded.

I fully expected to find the four waiting for me at Pend d' Oreille, and
I was prepared to hear a good deal of chaffing about getting lost. What
of my waiting on the ridge that afternoon, and bearing more or less away
from the proper direction at night, I did not reach the post till noon;
and I was a bit puzzled to find only the men who were on duty there. I
was digesting this along with the remains of the troopers' dinner, when
Goodell and his satellites popped over the hill that lo