^22 IN THE OLD WEST 



South Pass, intending to visit the Great Salt Lake, 

 or Timponogos, of the West. The former were 

 bound for the North Fork of the Platte, with the 

 intention of joining one of the numerous trapping 

 parties which rendezvous at the American Fur 

 Company's post on that branch of the river. On 

 a fork of Sweetwater, however, not two days 

 after the meeting with the Scotchman's wagons, 

 they encountered a band of a dozen mountaineers, 

 mounted on fine horses, and well armed and 

 equipped, traveling along without the usual ac- 

 companiment of a mulada of pack-animals, two or 

 three mules alone being packed with meat and 

 spare ammunition. The band was proceeding at 

 a smart rate, the horses moving with the gait pe- 

 culiar to American animals, known as pacing or 

 racking, in Indian file — each of the mountain- 

 eers with a long heavy rifle resting across the 

 horn of his saddle. Amongst them our two 

 friends recognized Markhead, who had been of the 

 party dispersed months before by the Blackfeet 

 on one of the head-streams of the Yellow Stone, 

 which event had been the origin of the dire suffer- 

 ings of Killbuck and La Bonte. Markhead, after 

 running the gauntlet of numerous Indians, through 

 the midst of whose country he passed with his 

 usual temerity and utter disregard to danger, suf- 

 fering hunger, thirst, and cold — those everyday 

 experiences of mountain life — riddled with balls, 

 but with three scalps hanging from his belt, made 



