best horses were picketed, and the whole circumference was glowing with the dusky light of the fires, displaying the forms of the women and children who were crowded around them.  This patriarchal scene was curious and striking enough; but we made our escape from the place with all possible dispatch, being tormented by the intrusive curiosity of the men who crowded around us.  Yankee curiosity was nothing to theirs.  They demanded our names, where we came from, where we were going, and what was our business.  The last query was particularly embarrassing; since traveling in that country, or indeed anywhere, from any other motive than gain, was an idea of which they took no cognizance.  Yet they were fine-looking fellows, with an air of frankness, generosity, and even courtesy, having come from one of the least barbarous of the frontier counties.

We passed about a mile beyond them, and encamped.  Being too few in number to stand guard without excessive fatigue, we extinguished our fire, lest it should attract the notice of wandering Indians; and picketing our horses close around us, slept undisturbed till morning.  For three days we traveled without interruption, and on the evening of the third encamped by the well-known spring on Scott’s Bluff.

Henry Chatillon and I rode out in the morning, and descending the western side of the Bluff, were crossing the plain beyond.  Something that seemed to me a file of buffalo came into view, descending the hills several miles before us.  But Henry reined in his horse, and keenly peering across the prairie with a better and more practiced eye, soon discovered its real nature.  “Indians!” he said.  “Old Smoke’s lodges, I b’lieve.  Come! let us go!  Wah! get up, now, Five Hundred Dollar!” And laying on the lash with good will, he galloped forward, and I rode by his side.  Not long after, a black speck became visible on the prairie, full two miles off.  It grew larger and larger; it assumed the form of a man and horse; and soon we could discern a naked Indian, careering at full gallop toward us.  When within a furlong he wheeled his horse in a wide circle, and made him describe various mystic figures upon the prairie; and Henry immediately compelled Five Hundred Dollar to execute similar evolutions.  “It is Old Smoke’s village,” said he, interpreting these signals; “didn’t I say so?”

As the Indian approached we stopped to wait for him, when suddenly he vanished, sinking, as it were, into the earth.  He had come upon one of the deep ravines that everywhere intersect these prairies.  In an instant the rough head of his horse stretched upward from the edge and the rider and steed came scrambling out, and hounded up to us; a sudden jerk of the rein brought the wild panting horse to a full stop.  Then followed the needful formality of shaking hands.  I forget our visitor’s name.  He was a young fellow, of no note in his nation; yet in his person and equipments he was a good specimen of a Dakota