78 LIFE IN THE FAR WEST. 



Still they struggled onwards manfully, and not a murmur 

 was heard until their hunger had entered the second stage 

 upon the road to starvation. They had now been three 

 days without food or water, under which privation nature 

 can hardly sustain herself for a much longer period. On 

 the fourth morning the men looked wolfish, their captives 

 following behind in sullen and perfect indifference, occa- 

 sionally stooping down to catch a beetle if one presented 

 itself, and greedily devouring it. A man named Forey, a 

 Canadian half-breed, was the first to complain. " If this 

 lasted another sundown," he said, " some of them would 

 be 'rubbed out;' that meat had to be 'raised' anyhow; 

 and for his part, he knew where to look for a feed, if no 

 game was seen before they put out of camp on the morrow ; 

 and meat was meat, anyhow they fixed it." 



No answer was made to this, though his companions 

 well understood him : their natures as yet revolted against 

 the last expedient. As for the three squaws, all of them 

 young girls, they followed behind their captors without 

 a word of complaint, and with the stoical indifference to 

 pain and suffering which alike characterises the haughty 

 Delaware of the North and the miserable stunted Digger of 

 the deserts of the Far West. On the morning of the fifth 

 day the party were seated round a small fire of pinon, 

 hardly able to rise and commence their journey, the squaws 

 squatting over another at a little distance, when Forey com- 

 menced again to suggest that, if nothing offered, they must 

 either take the alternative of starving to death for they 

 could not hope to last another day or have recourse to 

 the revolting extremity of sacrificing one of the party to 

 save the lives of all. To this, however, there was a 

 murmur of dissent, and it was finally resolved that all 

 should sally out and hunt, for a deer-track had been dis- 

 covered near the camp, which, although it was not a fresh 

 one, proved that there must be game in the vicinity. 

 Weak and exhausted as they were, they took their rifles 

 and started for the neighbouring uplands, each taking a 

 different direction. 



It was nearlv sunset when La Bonte returned to the 



