160 ANOTHEE VISIT TO MAKTIN's. 



My ride from here was an easy one, and I could have 

 followed the road the whole way ; but as it turned north to 

 avoid a rough bit of country I took a straight line, hoping to 

 find game, and as it was more interesting than following a road 

 about sixty feet wide, which the stage road then was. I was 

 three days doing the eighty or ninety miles, and killed two 

 antelope on the way, besides seeing many more, and a good 

 many ducks and grouse. 



On reaching Martin's I found that F had arrived three 



days before, and was enjoying the fare as much as I had done, 

 while the animals were getting all the corn and oats they could 



eat. 



One evening we were sitting out in front of the ranche, 

 when we saw a body of mounted men cross the end of the 

 valley in which the house stood, about two miles away. It was 

 dusk, and it was too far off to see what they were, so young 



Martin and F rode down the valley to examine the tracks, 



and came back before dark to tell us that it was a mixed party 

 of Indians and white men, which was easy to see from some of 

 the tracks being made by shod horses, though most of them 

 were unshod, and some days later we heard the explanation of 



this. 



A small party of Sioux, numbering about twenty, had made 

 a dash at the Pawnee horses near the reservation, and had 

 succeeded in driving off a large band of them. About thirty 

 Pawnees had immediately mounted, and accompanied by three 

 white men who happened to be at the camp, had followed the 

 Sioux. They came up with them not far from where we saw 

 them cross our valley, and managed to creep up to the Sioux 

 camp unperceived. The Sioux evidently did not know that 



