38 PKAIBIE AND FOREST. 



reminiscence will illustrate how even over caution 

 might prove dangerous to friends. 



For some days I had had a terribly hard time of it. 

 The ground had drunk its full and to spare of 

 snow-water, game was scarce and wild, and the scanty 

 herbage that niy horse and mule were able to obtain 

 since we entered the plains was barely sufficient to 

 keep them alive ; still good seventy miles more had 

 to be traversed before I could reach the friendly 

 shelter of the belt of timber that surrounded the Forks. 

 If it had been autumn, I dare not have chosen this 

 route, for it is a debatable ground of the Camanche 

 and Arrapaho, to whom a solitary white man would 

 be so tempting a morsel that he could not fail to be 

 caught, and we will not say what done to ; the very 

 conjecture is disagreeable. The severity of the late 

 weather, therefore, was my safety ; for redskins, no less 

 than white men, dislike unnecessary exposure. Still, I 

 was convinced some stragglers must have lately visited 

 the neighbourhood, for the occasional head of game I 

 saw was so wary that I concluded hunters had lately dis- 

 turbed them. One thing was very much in my favour 

 I was in the lightest of marching order : no pack of 

 peltries or well-stocked kit had I ; for a few pounds of 

 bullets, a pound of powder, and my buffalo robe were 

 all my beasts had for a load. How independent a fel- 

 low feels when all his worldly goods can be summed 

 up in so few words, unless he be in Bond Street 

 or Broadway. To keep as much in the nags as possi- 

 ble, in case speed might be required, ever on the look- 

 out for anything suspicious, with cautious, slow steps, 

 I pursued my route to the eastward. Nothing occurred 

 to increase my watchfulness ; in truth, I commenced 



