TEN DAYS IN MONTANA. 159 



cautiously over the surrounding country, but seeing neither 

 Indians or other game and becoming more deeply interested 

 in our work, we became less vigilant. We were working with 

 a will and had almost entirely forgotten our self-imposed 

 duties as sentries when we heard a voice, and looking sud- 

 denly in the direction from which it came, we saw three men 

 emerging from a ravine within thirty yards of us ! They 

 were white men, for which fact we felt devoutly thankful, for 

 had they been redskins they might easily have had our mules, 

 our rifles and our scalps. We felt considerably chagrined at 

 having allowed ourselves to be caught so entirely off our 

 guard, and our visitors appreciated the joke all the more that 

 they had not tried to steal the march on us at all, but had 

 walked briskly along conversing in their usual tones. They 

 proved to be the party of market hunters I had met on the 

 train from Bismarck to Green river. They had come through 

 from the latter place by team and encamped in the vicinity 

 of our camp. They had not yet found any buffaloes, and we 

 treated them to a liberal supply of "hump" from the one we 

 were at work on, for their table. They came just in. time 

 to give us a hand at turning the carcass over, a thing the 

 corporal and I should not have been able to do alone without 

 first cutting it up. They estimated that the animal would 

 weigh fourteen hundred pounds, gross. 



At about six o'clock we finished our task, rolled up the 

 skin and put it on the buckboard, cut out the best of the 

 meat, and started for camp. On the way in Corporal Brown 

 made a very fine shot at an antelope, cutting him down clean 

 at three hundred and fifty yards. 



Fogarty, Van Vleck, and Hill, who had ridden south 

 about fifteen miles, came in late and reported having struck a 

 herd of about two hundred, besides several smaller herds. 

 They only killed two, as they were so far from camp that they 



