AFRAID OF INDIANS. 51 



fore -feet of one of them was shod a good sign. Still, 

 they might have lately been stolen from distant white set- 

 tlements ; so all my previous alarm and caution were again 

 reverted to. 



Half an hour afterward, I heard the report of a rifle ; 

 but, as there was a roll in th'e prairie between me and the 

 direction the sound came from, I could not see who had 

 fired the shot. In ignorance of what was to be seen be- 

 yond, it would have been madness to have ridden to the 

 top of the bluff ; so, turning off to the right into irregular, 

 broken ground, the effect of the previous year's heat, I 

 hobbled my animals, and started cautiously to stalk my 

 way to some elevated ground, from whence I might obtain 

 a view of the surrounding country, taking, at the same time, 

 care to keep myself between the suspicious direction and 

 my beasts. I had not traversed over one hundred and fifty 

 yards, and was halting, the better to notice the most avail- 

 able cover for future progress, when first the head and 

 shoulders, then the entire figure of a man, loomed over the 

 top of the swell. Comanche or Arrapaho I knew at once 

 he was not perhaps Osage or Pottawatomie ; but what 

 the deuce would bring them so many hundred miles from 

 their own hunting-lands? However, as every thing in the 

 shape of redskins is to be dealt cautiously with, I changed 

 my caps and got into most convenient and unconspicuous 

 shooting attitude, determined not to throw away a shot, or, 

 much less, give my supposed foe a chance of returning the 

 compliment. That he was alone, being dismounted, I knew 

 could not be the case ; and as he was coming in the very 

 direction of my fresh trail, which, if he was permitted to 

 cross, he could not fail to discover, and, with the discovery, 

 bring his whole party in pursuit of me, there was but one 

 alternative to adopt. Last year, in this very locality, the 

 Indians had been unusually active ; scarcely a gang of emi- 



