236 AN UNCIVIL INDIAN. 



better than a swamp, when towards evening we reached a good- 

 sized ranche, and we determined to stay there instead of putting 

 up our tent in the water. On riding up to it we found an 

 Indian sitting in the verandah, so we asked him whether we 

 could remain the night if we paid for all we had. He answered 

 very roughly that we could not do so, and nothing more could 

 we get out of him. It was such awful weather that we made 

 up our minds we would stop, and told him so, on which he got 

 up and went away. We drove the waggon up close to the 

 verandah and got out our food and cooking-things, no one 

 coming near us. We then went into the house, where we 

 found two women who would not speak to us, so we made up a 

 fire in the stove and boiled some coffee and cooked some meat, 

 retiring then to the verandah and sat down and ate it. Later 

 in the evening our host returned bringing some other Indians 

 with him ; but he seemed to have calmed down and talked to 

 us about where we had come from and our object in travelling 

 till bed-time, being especially interested in our fight with the 

 Comanches, and he became quite friendly when he heard that 

 we had killed and scalped one of them. In the morning the 

 women of the house did our cooking for us, and our bill on 

 leaving, including corn and fodder for our horses, was 

 reasonable. 



The road was now very heavy, and as we intended to sell our 

 animals at Fort Smith, and did not, therefore, wish them to 

 arrive looking thin, we hired a span of oxen to take our 

 waggon there, coming down from three or four miles an hour 

 to barely two. I know of nothing more tedious than having 

 to keep with a waggon and being obliged to check your horse 

 continually, for his slowest walk is much too fast for them. 



