LIFE IN THE FAR WEST. 129 



Fourteen good rifles in the hands of fourteen mountain- 

 men stout and true, on fourteen strong horses, of true 

 Indian blood and training fourteen cool heads, with four- 

 teen pairs of keen eyes in them, each head crafty as an 

 Indian's, directing a right arm strong as steel, and a heart 

 as brave as grizzly bear's. Before them a thousand miles 

 of dreary desert or wilderness, overrun by hostile savages, 

 thirsting for the white man's blood ; famine and drought, 

 the arrows of wily hordes of Indians and, these dangers 

 past, the invasion of the civilised settlements of whites, 

 the least numerous of which contained ten times their 

 number of armed and bitter enemies the sudden swoop 

 upon their countless herds of mules and horses, the fierce 

 attack and bloody slaughter ; such were the consequences 

 of the expedition these bold mountaineers were now en- 

 gaged in. Fourteen lives of any fourteen enemies who 

 would be rash enough to stay them, were, any day you 

 will, carried in the rifle-barrels of these stout fellows ; 

 who, in all the proud consciousness of their physical 

 qualities, neither thought, nor cared to think, of future 

 perils ; and rode merrily on their way, rejoicing in the 

 dangers they must necessarily meet. Never a more daring 

 band crossed the mountains ; a more than ordinary want 

 of caution characterised their march, and dangers were 

 recklessly and needlessly invited, which even the older 

 and more cold-blooded mountaineers seemed not to care to 

 avoid. They had, each and all, many a debt to pay the 

 marauding Indians. Grudges for many privations, for 

 wounds and loss of 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 suddenly surprised 

 a band of twenty Sioux, scattered on a small prairie, and 

 butchering some buffalo they had just killed. Before they 

 I 



