mpment that afternoon was not far distant from a spur of the
Black Hills, whose ridges, bristling with fir trees, rose from the
plains a mile or two on our right. That they might move more rapidly
toward their proposed hunting-grounds, the Indians determined to leave
at this place their stock of dried meat and other superfluous articles.
Some left even their lodges, and contented themselves with carrying a
few hides to make a shelter from the sun and rain. Half the inhabitants
set out in the afternoon, with loaded pack horses, toward the mountains.
Here they suspended the dried meat upon trees, where the wolves and
grizzly bears could not get at it. All returned at evening. Some of the
young men declared that they had heard the reports of guns among the
mountains to the eastward, and many surmises were thrown out as to the
origin of these sounds. For my part, I was in hopes that Shaw and Henry
Chatillon were coming to join us. I would have welcomed them cordially,
for I had no other companions than two brutish white men and five
hundred savages. I little suspected that at that very moment my unlucky
comrade was lying on a buffalo robe at Fort Laramie, fevered with ivy
poison, and solacing his woes with tobacco and Shakespeare.

As we moved over the plains on the next morning, several young men were
riding about the country as scouts; and at length we began to see them
occasionally on the tops of the hills, shaking their robes as a signal
that they saw buffalo. Soon after, some bulls came in sight. Horsemen
darted away in pursuit, and we could see from the distance that one
or two of the buffalo were killed. Raymond suddenly became inspired.
I looked at him as he rode by my side; his face had actually grown
intelligent!

"This is the country for me!" he said; "if I could only carry the
buffalo that are killed here every month down to St. Louis I'd make
my fortune in one winter. I'd grow as rich as old Papin, or Mackenzie
either. I call this the poor man's market. When I'm hungry I have only
got to take my rifle and go out and get better meat than the rich folks
down below can get with all their money. You won't catch me living in
St. Louis another winter."

"No," said Reynal, "you had better say that after you and your Spanish
woman almost starved to death there. What a fool you were ever to take
her to the settlements."

"Your Spanish woman?" said I; "I never heard of her before. Are you
married to her?"

"No," an