8 ON THE FRONTIER 



buffaloes were to be found. Our route to Fort Riley lay 

 through the land of the Pottowattomies, a partly-civilised 

 tribe, and then across a portion of the country claimed by 

 the Pawnees. These latter were " wild," and, though 

 "treaty Indians," had a well-deserved reputation of being 

 the most expert horse-thieves of the Plains. Then after 

 leaving Biley we should be in a region roamed over by 

 bands of Sioux, Cheyennes, and Kiowas Indians nominally 

 at peace with the whites, but known to be disaffected ; three 

 tribes of evil repute, and no respecters of treaties when 

 fortune gives them a temporary advantage. As I sit here 

 writing, and look back calmly and dispassionately to that 

 trip, with my since-acquired knowledge on the subject, and 

 therefore able to form a correct estimate of the dangers we 

 then ran, it seems to me impossible we could ever have 

 been such hare-brained enthusiasts as to have started out, 

 five young and inexperienced men, into what was then an 

 unsettled wilderness, infested with wandering bands of re- 

 morseless savages ; and still more impossible that we should 

 have returned therefrom unharmed and unmolested. 



Though a long time ago, I vividly recollect our start. 

 It was on a lovely August day, the sky was without a cloud, 

 blue, clear, and brilliant as a sapphire. 



Around us was_a rolling prairie, with an horizon like the 

 ocean's, and a balmy, invigorating, almost intoxicating air 

 blew over it into our faces, coming untainted and unpoisoned 

 by the breaths, smells, and smoke of cities, from the Rocky 

 Mountains, seven hundred miles off. An undulating, ever- 

 moving sea of waving grass and flowers, the ground seemed 

 a mosaic of many hues, a boundless expanse of brilliant 



