HOW BOWLES GOT HIS WIFE. 321 



trumpery common beads and knives, brass wire, sham jewelry, 

 packets of vermilion and blue paint in powder, and pots and 

 pans, everything being of the commonest kind. 



The men in the outer room were all asleep when I went in 

 there, so I adjourned to the well, and was getting a fair 

 substitute for a bath in a stable-bucket, when I found that 

 Bowles's squaw was watching me, and I had to bolt, much to 

 her amusement. This woman had come to the ranche with 

 her husband, a Blackfoot warrior, who had three fine horses 

 with him which he had stolen in the settlements. Bowles 

 tried to buy them of him, and failing in this got up a quarrel 

 and shot him over the counter of the trading-store, taking his- 

 horses and his squaw, the latter being very well pleased with 

 her change of masters. Reed told me this story, and took me 

 outside to show me the Indian's grave, seeming to think 

 nothing of it, no one in that country looking on an Indian as a 

 human being, but as something little better than a wolf. 



The food at the ranche was very badly cooked and very 

 dirty, so I broiled myself some buffalo-steaks for dinner and 

 supper, which helped to pass the time. I had to pass two 

 more days there, as the Government courier was delayed and 

 the mail nearly a week later than usual ; and we found when 

 he arrived that this was because his horses had been stolen 

 when one day's journey from Martinsdale, so that he had to 

 walk into that place, carrying the mails on his back, to get more 

 horses to continue his journey. 



