and on both sides; not that there was any danger,
but an Indian is an inscrutable mystery, a wolf on two legs, and it is
not easy to know what he may do.

The valley grew wider and spread into a great bare plain, still
bordered with pine-sprinkled bluffs, through which the river dodged
about without any apparent reason, and wherever it went the trees
followed. Before we came in sight of the agency we were met by several
officers and traders, glad of a little change of society. They
conducted us to our camp on a pleasant rising ground about a mile from
the agency, overlooking the cavalry and infantry camps in front and
rear. It is a wild, lonely, fascinating place, this White River
Valley, shut out from the world by its castled bluffs, though should
we climb them we should only find another desert. We dined under a
bower of pine boughs beside our tents, that served for a parlor. In
the evening everybody called to see us, including the only two ladies
in the place, wives of the traders, who looked too delicate to bear
the hardships of the wilderness. Perhaps the hardships are not great,
but the loneliness must be terrible in the long, long winters.

The next day we drove over to the agency, eager to see the Indian dance
that had been promised us. The place consists of several government and
private buildings surrounded by a stockade. When we arrived a large
number of Indians were already there, mostly squaws and children,
mounted on ponies and dressed in their gayest blankets and
embroideries. Their ponies are very pretty, small, gracefully-formed
horses, not clumsy as we had expected. The mantles of the squaws were
of deer-skin, but covered entirely with beads, the groundwork of deep
sky-blue ones, with gay stiff figures in brilliant colors. They were
gracefully cut, somewhat like a "dolman," and had a rich, gorgeous
effect in the crowd. Most of them wore necklaces of "thaqua"--the
quill-like white shell which is brought from the Pacific, and serves
them for small change--and heavy earrings of the same shells, a quarter
of a yard long. Their ears were slit from top to bottom to hold these
great earrings: sometimes they wore two pairs, with heavy
mother-of-pearl shells at the end of each. The necklaces covered the
whole chest, like a bib or a breastplate. The parting of their long
black hair was painted red, and their cheeks daubed with red, yellow
and blue. Most of them had flat faces and flat noses: very few were in