LIFEINTHEFARWEST. 151 



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 characterized their march, and dangers 

 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 jonied 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 could escape, the whites were upon them 

 with loud shouts, and in three minutes the scalps of eleven were 

 dangling from their saddle-horns. 



Struggling up mountains, slipping down precipices, dashing ovfer 

 prairies which resounded with their Indian songs, charging the 

 Indians wherever they met them, and without regard to their 

 numbers ; frightening with their lusty war-whoops the miserable 

 Diggers, who were not unfrequently surprised while gathering 

 roots in the mountain plains, and who, scrambling up the rocks 

 and concealing themselves, like sage rabbits, in holes and corners, 

 peered, chattering with fear, as the wild and noisy troop rode by. 

 Scarce drawing rein, they passed rapidly the heads of Green and 

 Grand Rivers, through a country abounding in game and in 

 excellent pasture ; encountering in the upland valleys, through 

 which meandered the well-timbered creeks on which they made 



