LIFE IN THE FAR WEST 179 



comrades, rankled in their breasts ; and not one but 

 had suffered more or less in property and person at 

 the hands of the savages, within a few short months. 

 Threats of vengeance on every Redskin they met were 

 loud and deep ; and the wild war-songs round their 

 nightly camp-fires, and grotesque scalp-dances, borrowed 

 from the Indians, proved to the initiated that they 

 were, one and all, "half-froze for hair." Soon after 

 Killbuck and La Bonte joined them, they one day sud- 

 denly surprised a band of twenty Sioux, scattered on a 

 small prairie and butchering some buffalo they had 

 just killed. Before they could escape, the whites were 

 upon them with loud shouts, and in three minutes the 

 scalps of eleven were dangling from their saddle-horns. 

 Struggling up mountains, slipping down precipices, 

 dashing over prairies which resounded with their Indian 

 songs, charging the Indians wherever they met them, 

 and without regard to their numbers ; frightening with 

 their lusty war-whoops the miserable Diggers, who 

 were not unfrequently surprised while gathering roots 

 in the mountain plains, and who, scrambling up the 

 rocks and concealing themselves, like sage rabbits, in 

 holes and corners, peered, chattering with fear, as the 

 wild and noisy troop rode by : scarce drawing rein, 

 they passed rapidly the heads of Green and Grand 

 Rivers, through a country abounding in game and in 

 excellent pasture ; encountering in the upland valleys, 

 through which meandered the well-timbered creeks on 

 which they made their daily camps, many a band of 

 Yutas, through whom they dashed at random, caring 



