LO'S ESPECIAL FORTE. 423 



co^'ered sufficiently to crawl to the tree, and there 

 make a faint etfort to leave some record of his name 

 and fate. The straggling gashes indicated that he 

 had continued the task even while death was blind- 

 ing his eyes. A few more drops of blood, and per- 

 haps the mystery of years, now shrouding the 

 history of some family hearth-stone, would have 

 been cleared away. 



We had no opportunity of verifying this story of 

 red beard's, but as no occasion existed for telling a 

 lie, and the neighbors of the narrator there present 

 seemed much interested in the account, we accepted 

 it as truth. It was apparently no attempt to impose 

 upon the strangers. But I would here state, as a 

 specimen feature of the frontier experience of all trav- 

 elers, that whenever, at any of our camps, surrounding 

 ranchemen or hunters discovered any member of our 

 party taking notes, there were straightway spun out 

 the toughest yarns which ever hung a tale and 

 throttled truth. 



Of one fact our journey thoroughly convinced us. 

 Lo's forte has no connection with the fort of the 

 pale-faces. An unguarded hunter, or a defenseless 

 emigrant wagon, or unarmed railroad laborer, grati- 

 fies sufficiently his most warlike ambition. The 

 savages of the plains, in their attacks upon the 

 whites, have been like bees, stinging whenever op- 

 portunity offers, and immediately disappearing in 

 space. Their excuses for the murders they commit 

 have been as various as their moods. At one time 

 it is a broken treaty, at another the killing of their 

 buffalo, and trespassing upon the hunting-grounds, 



