In Cowboy Land 287 



last. All the while, from the moment the two 

 doomed braves appeared until they fell, the 

 Cheyennes on the hillside had been steadily 

 singing the death chant. When the young 

 men had both died, and had thus averted the 

 fate which their misdeeds would else have 

 brought upon the tribe, the warriors took their 

 bodies and bore them away for burial honors, 

 the soldiers looking on in silence. Where 

 the slain men were buried the whites never 

 knew; but all that night they listened to the 

 dismal wailing of the dirges with which the 

 tribesmen celebrated their gloomy funeral 

 rites. 



Frontiersman are not, as a rule, apt to be 

 very superstitious. They lead lives too hard 

 and practical, and have too little imagi 

 nation in things spiritual and supernatural. 

 I have heard but few ghost stories while 

 living on the frontier, and these few were 

 of a perfectly commonplace and conventional 

 type. 



But I once listened to a goblin story which 

 rather impressed me. It was told by a grisled, 

 weatherbeaten old mountain hunter, named 

 Bauman, who was born and had passed all his 

 life on the frontier. He must have believed 

 what he said, for he could hardly repress a 



