INDIAN GAMBLERS. 317 



closed, your adversary having to say in which of them the 

 shell is, losing a peg if he is wrong. A row of pegs stands in 

 front of each man, who either takes one from or gives one to 

 his opponent according to his loss or gain. These pegs 

 represent so much, and everything an Indian possesses is 

 valued at so many pegs a wife so many, a horse so many, and 

 so on. An Indian will frequently lose all he has in one evening 

 wife, children, horses, and lodge and will leave with nothing 

 but what he stands up in, when his friends will lend him a gun 

 and some ammunition, with which he will in time get skins 

 enough to fit himself out again. Many of those present lost 

 heavily on this occasion, hut they all took it very quietly, and 

 you could not tell from their faces whether they were winning 

 or losing. I was told that when a man lost his wife and 

 children they generally went to the lodge of the winner 

 without showing any feeling at all. 



In the morning the chief got up some horse-racing, of 

 which all Indians are passionately fond, and many white men 

 make a small fortune by going among them with a fast horse, 

 winning any number of ponies, buffalo-robes, deer-skins, &c. 

 The Indians, however, are very good judges of a race pony, 

 and will refuse to run any which they think too fast for 

 theirs. 



We only remained two days in the camp, and then set out to 

 return, getting as far as the foot of the Judiths by nightfall, 

 and as we travelled fast we reached our last camp by the 

 middle of the next day, and by following the waggon-trail we 

 found the fresh camp pitched at the head of Great Spring Creek, 

 the largest stream in the Basin, which rises in the Snowies. 

 We found the Colonel just on the point of moving again, as 



