flesh that almost obscured them. Knowing nothing
at that time of the sign language of the Indians, I could only guess at
his meaning. So I called on Henry to explain it.

The Hog, it seems, was anxious to conclude a matrimonial bargain. He
said he had a very pretty daughter in his lodge, whom he would give
me, if I would give him my horse. These flattering overtures I chose to
reject; at which The Hog, still laughing with undiminished good humor,
gathered his robe about his shoulders, and rode away.

Where we encamped that night, an arm of the Platte ran between high
bluffs; it was turbid and swift as heretofore, but trees were growing on
its crumbling banks, and there was a nook of grass between the water
and the hill. Just before entering this place, we saw the emigrants
encamping at two or three miles' distance on the right; while the whole
Indian rabble were pouring down the neighboring hill in hope of the same
sort of entertainment which they had experienced from us. In the savage
landscape before our camp, nothing but the rushing of the Platte broke
the silence. Through the ragged boughs of the trees, dilapidated and
half dead, we saw the sun setting in crimson behind the peaks of the
Black Hills; the restless bosom of the river was suffused with red; our
white tent was tinged with it, and the sterile bluffs, up to the rocks
that crowned them, partook of the same fiery hue. It soon passed away;
no light remained, but that from our fire, blazing high among the dusky
trees and bushes. We lay around it wrapped in our blankets, smoking and
conversing until a late hour, and then withdrew to our tent.

We crossed a sun-scorched plain on the next morning; the line of old
cotton-wood trees that fringed the bank of the Platte forming its
extreme verge. Nestled apparently close beneath them, we could discern
in the distance something like a building. As we came nearer, it assumed
form and dimensions, and proved to be a rough structure of logs. It was
a little trading fort, belonging to two private traders; and originally
intended, like all the forts of the country, to form a hollow square,
with rooms for lodging and storage opening upon the area within. Only
two sides of it had been completed; the place was now as ill-fitted for
the purposes of defense as any of those little log-houses, which
upon our constantly shifting frontier have been so often successfully
maintained against overwhelming odds of Indians. Two lodges we