cold snap" which froze the vegetables in the wagon and made sleeping
out very uncomfortable. The woman did the cooking and the men collected
the fuel. The other two men had guns and supplied us with small game. We
saw a few dozen buffalo, but they were too far off to shoot. One day the
two men went off on an all-day hunt among the distant hills, the
arrangement being to meet us in camp at evening. I drove the team, and
in the afternoon we came in sight of a camp of Indians with their lodges
set up near our trail. The only thing to do was to drive boldly ahead.
The woman sat on a seat well back in the wagon, and I sat forward with
my feet out on a front step. I hung up a blanket close behind me across
the wagon, so that the Indians could not see how many persons were in
it. As we approached the camp about a dozen of them came out on the
trail in front of us, motioning to me to stop and calling out, "Swap,
swap, swap," meaning for us to stop and trade with them, but intending
doubtless to find out how many were in the wagon, and rob us if they
dared. Suddenly, when within a few yards of them, I whipped the horses
with all my might, and drove furiously past and away from the camp. When
our party met at night, all agreed that the day's experience savored too
much of danger to allow the hunters to go out of sight of the wagon
again.

We passed two or three camps of Sioux Indians along the Platte, but they
gave us no trouble. When driving through the trees and bushes in a
lonely spot about a day's journey below Fort Kearney, we suddenly met a
band of mounted Pawnee warriors, who stopped us and in broken English
asked where we were going, where we came from, if we saw any Sioux
Indians, how big the bands were, if they had many ponies and how many
days' journey they were away. We answered their inquiries, and they told
us to go ahead. They rode westward, doubtless to make a raid on their
enemies, the Sioux.

The weather was now getting cold; we approached the settlements and
enjoyed the haystacks. One night, while camping near an Indian
settlement on the Platte, I crawled well into the middle of a small rick
of hay. The Indians were tramping around it and over it and howling and
yelling all night, but I kept my berth till morning. We reached Omaha in
twenty days from Denver. There I said good-by to my traveling companions
and took stage for Iowa City, whence I could go by rail to Chicago. The
stage trip was two days and nights