139 AT THE PAINTED WOODS. 
The wounded eagle was taken to the stockade and 
penned up. After a few days of morose captivity she 
effected her escape. She was seen to raise slowly in 
widening circles as though half doubting her own power 
for aerial flight. Then after apparently assuring herself 
that all was well, made an air line for the painted trees. 
Here she circled around and around the fallen monarch 
of this famous group of giant trees, for full an hour or 
more,—as loath to believe her own eyes as to its de- 
struction, and that of her young. She then arose to the 
clouds and disappeared—neither she nor her kind ever 
again to nest in that that section of country. 
Point Preparation was first noted by the steamboat- 
men and others as having a thicker growth of’ large cot- 
tonwoods than were usually found on the upper Missouri 
and was in the early days frequently spoken of as the 
‘finest body of timber between Sioux City and Fort 
Benton.’’ Of the original campers or first woodyard men 
at the Point—the usual story is told that followed the 
fortunes of the woodyard men everywhere along the Up- 
per Missouri. Ryan & Wilson was the name of the first 
firm and both had Indian women for wives. Ryan was 
found murdered many years after in an obscure cabin 
about Dauphin’s Rapids. Hewas killed by a youngster 
who expected to find the cabin floor paved with hidden 
gold. While perhaps a miser he had no miser’s store. 
His partner Wilson drifted down to Sioux City, became 
a gambler of some note and as a matter of course 
‘skilled his man,’’ before he had followed the business 
many years. ‘The two choppers that they had with them 
at this point were afterwards killed by Indians. The 
