AFEAID OF INDIANS. 41 



time care to keep myself between the suspicious direction 

 and my beasts. I had not traversed over 150 yards, and 

 was halting, the better to notice the most available cover 

 for future progress, when first the head and shoulders, then 

 the entire figure of a man, loomed o'er the top of the swell. 

 Camanche or Arrapaho I knew at once he was not 

 perhaps Ossage or Potowatamy; but what the deuce 

 would bring them so many hundred miles from their own 

 hunting-lands? However, as everything in the shape of 

 red-skins is to be dealt cautiously with, I changed my caps 

 and got into most convenient and unconspicuous shooting 

 attitude, determined not to throw away a shot, or, much 

 less, give my supposed foe a chance of returning the 

 compliment. That he was alone, being dismounted, I 

 knew could not be the case ; and>as he was coming in the 

 very direction of my fresh trail, which, if he was permitted 

 to cross, he could not fail to discover, and, with the 

 discovery, bring his whole party in pursuit of me, there 

 was but one alternative to adopt. Last year, in this very 

 locality, the Indians had been unusually active ; scarcely 

 a gang of emigrants or traders who had taken the southern 

 route but had lost members of their party; in several 

 instances neither sex nor age had been spared by these 

 blood-thirsty marauders ; so what could I expect if alone 

 I fell into the hands of a party of braves on the war-path ? 

 True, my scalp for it has long been ignorant of a scalpy 

 lock would scarcely be worth lifting ; but then I did not 

 want to knock under yet ; and, if so, I preferred making 

 a fight for it, as, I think, under the excitement, the process 

 of being wiped out is less painful. 



