LIFE IN THE FAR WEST 119 



was only on the third day that sundown saw him enter 

 the little valley where his camp was situated. 



Crossing the creek, he was not a little disturbed at 

 seeing fresh Indian sign on the opposite side, which led 

 in the direction of his lodge ; and his worst fears were 

 realised when, on coming within sight of the little 

 plateau where the conical top of his white lodge had 

 always before met his view, he saw nothing but a 

 blackened mass strewing the ground, and the burnt 

 ends of the poles which had once supported it. 



Squaws, animals, and peltry, all were gone an Ara- 

 paho mocassin lying on the ground told him where. 

 He neither fumed nor fretted, but, throwing the meat 

 off his pack animal, and the saddle from his horse, he 

 collected the blackened ends of the lodge poles and 

 made a fire led his beasts to water and hobbled them, 

 threw a piece of buffalo meat upon the coals, squatted 

 down before the fire, and lit his pipe. La Bonte was a 

 true philosopher. Notwithstanding that his house, his 

 squaws, his peltries, were gone " at one fell swoop," the 

 loss scarcely disturbed his equanimity ; and before the 

 tobacco in his pipe was half smoked out, he had ceased 

 to think of his misfortune. Certes, as he turned his 

 apolla of tender loin, he sighed as he thought of 

 the delicate manipulations with which his Shoshone 

 squaw, Sah-qua-manish, was wont to beat to tenderness 

 the toughest bull meat and missed the tending care of 

 Yute Chil-co-the, or the " Keed that bends," in patching 

 the holes worn in his neatly fitting mocassins, the work 

 of her nimble fingers. However, he ate and smoked, 



