AFTER BIG-GAME IN WYOMING 189 



' I thought the Indian troubles were over ?' said I. 



4 They're quiet enough just now/ returned Jack ; 

 4 but I wouldn't trust the varmint a yard. That 

 Cheyenne tribe has been restless for some time past. 

 But we won't borrow trouble, any way. If you want 

 a trip to the Bighorn next summer, 111 take you all 

 right, and chance it.' 



The above conversation took place between one 

 of our hunters, Jack Roberts, and myself, in the 

 autumn of 1877, after our return from my first 

 hunting-trip in the Rockies, the incidents of which 

 I have already described. The result of the con- 

 versation was that August of the following year saw 

 my friend E. M. Miller and myself landed from the 

 Union Pacific west-bound train at the same little 

 western town Fort Steele, on the North Platte 

 River intent on a hunting-trip to the Bighorn 

 Mountains of Wyoming. This district in the early 

 'seventies was practically a terra incognita to all but 

 a few adventurous trappers and prospectors, and to 

 certain Indian tribes, who under their chief, Sitting 

 Bull, were at that time still inclined, naturally enough, 

 to look upon North- Western Wyoming as their rightful 

 hunting-grounds, and to resent the intrusion of the 

 white man. We were the first amateur white 

 hunting-party that had ever entered this particular 

 region. 



A great change has come over the scene since those 

 days, some five-and-twenty years ago, of which I 

 write. Then, for some 300 miles or more north of 

 the Union Pacific Railroad, the territory of Wyoming 

 (now a State), from the North Platte River to the 

 Montana boundary, was a wild western country, 

 uncivilized, to all intents and purposes uninhabited 



