MOMENTS OF SUSPENSE. 163 



Should the Indians consider it an attempt to trap 

 them, our bones might have an opportunity to rest in 

 some neighboring ravine until the ready spades of 

 some future geological expedition should disturb them, 

 and we be at once reconstructed into some rare species 

 of ancient ape or specimens of extinct salamanders. 

 Or, if happily resurrected at a somewhat earlier 

 period, might not some enterprising Barnum of the 

 twentieth century place on our bones the seal of cen- 

 turies, and lay them with the mummies in his show- 

 cases ? Our expedition was partly intended for diving 

 into the past, but not quite so deep or so permanent a 

 dive as that. What wonder that incipient ague-chills 

 played up and down and all about our spinal column, 

 as we reflected how completely we were dependent on 

 the caprice of those Native Americans sitting out 

 there, in half-naked dignity, on their tough ponies ? 

 Or that we gazed anxiously at the huge chief as he 

 sat, silent and motionless, awaiting the approach of 

 our guide ? 



Our ideas of the savage had been so thoroughly 

 Cooperised during boyhood, that when our guide ap- 

 proached the Wolf, and, with a gesture to the south, 

 invited him back to Hays, I was prepared to see the 

 tall form straighten in the saddle, and pictured to my 

 imagination some such specimen of untutored elo- 

 quence as this : 



" Pale-face, the blood of the Cheyenne burns quick. 

 He meets you trailing like a serpent across his war- 

 path, seeking to steal treasures from the red man's 

 land. He asks food, and you tell him to come into 



