t and obscure defiles
through which the Indians intended to make their way. I passed them
afterward, and had much ado to force my distressed horse along the
narrow ravines, and through chasms where daylight could scarcely
penetrate. Our cart might as easily have been conveyed over the summit
of Pike's Peak. Anticipating the difficulties and uncertainties of an
attempt to visit the rendezvous, we recalled the old proverb about "A
bird in the hand," and decided to follow the village.

Both camps, the Indians' and our own, broke up on the morning of the 1st
of July. I was so weak that the aid of a potent auxiliary, a spoonful of
whisky swallowed at short intervals, alone enabled me to sit on my hardy
little mare Pauline through the short journey of that day. For half a
mile before us and half a mile behind, the prairie was covered far
and wide with the moving throng of savages. The barren, broken plain
stretched away to the right and left, and far in front rose the gloomy
precipitous ridge of the Black Hills. We pushed forward to the head of
the scattered column, passing the burdened travaux, the heavily laden
pack horses, the gaunt old women on foot, the gay young squaws on
horseback, the restless children running among the crowd, old men
striding along in their white buffalo robes, and groups of young
warriors mounted on their best horses. Henry Chatillon, looking backward
over the distant prairie, exclaimed suddenly that a horseman was
approaching, and in truth we could just discern a small black speck
slowly moving over the face of a distant swell, like a fly creeping on a
wall. It rapidly grew larger as it approached.

"White man, I b'lieve," said Henry; "look how he ride! Indian never ride
that way. Yes; he got rifle on the saddle before him."

The horseman disappeared in a hollow of the prairie, but we soon saw him
again, and as he came riding at a gallop toward us through the crowd of
Indians, his long hair streaming in the wind behind him, we recognized
the ruddy face and old buckskin frock of Jean Gras the trapper. He was
just arrived from Fort Laramie, where he had been on a visit, and
said he had a message for us. A trader named Bisonette, one of Henry's
friends, was lately come from the settlements, and intended to go with a
party of men to La Bonte's Camp, where, as Jean Gras assured us, ten or
twelve villages of Indians would certainly assemble. Bisonette desired
that we would cross over and meet him there