the unsuspecting savages were camped.  Howard Maupin was armed with a Henry rifle, a present to the old hero from General George Crook.  Silently the men made their way up the rough and rugged ravine until they lay concealed seventy yards away.  Taking deadly aim the five men fired, killing four Indians.  The Indians fled to the protection of a rugged cliff of rocks, but Maupin’s rifle kept following them with deadly effect.  One Indian was picked out as the chief and fell at the crack of the rifle.  He raised on his hands and halloed to the others until they reached the shelter of the rocks.  It required two more shots to finish him, and thus died Polina, or Penina, the leader of the Snakes and scourge of the white man.  The shot from Howard Maupin’s repeating rifle closed the Snake, or Shoshone war, and peace reigned until their great uprising under Chief Egan in 1877.

For a year or more, or until the spring of 1868, I followed the hum-drum life of a printer.  A call of duty compelled me to lay all else aside to care for an invalid brother, Judge J. M. Thompson.  He was dying of chronic dyspepsia.  Physicians had given him up.  He was a mere shadow, and while we had little hope of recovery, we determined to take him into the mountains.  As soon, therefore, as spring opened we made our preparations.  Our provisions consisted of unbolted flour and salt.  Nothing else was taken—­no tea, coffee, or indeed anything else save our bedding, guns and ammunition.  We journeyed up the McKinzie fork of the Willamette.  Game was everywhere abundant and this and bread baked from our flour constituted our only food.  It was going back to nature.

A week or so after we arrived at our camp, my younger brother killed a very large bear that had just come out of his hibernating quarters and was as fat as a corn fed Ohio porker.  An old hunter endeavored to persuade my brother to eat some of the fat bear meat, assuring him it would not make him sick.  Now, grease was his special aversion, and to grease the oven with any kind of fat caused him to spit up his food.  Finally, to please the old hunter, he ate a small piece of fat bear meat.  Very much to his surprise, it did not make him sick.  The next meal he ate more, and after that all he wanted.  He gained flesh and strength rapidly, and it was but a short time until he could walk a hundred yards without assistance.  After that his recovery was rapid and sure.

Now, high up on the McKinzie we were told of a hot spring, and that vast herds of elk and deer came there daily to lick the salt that was precipitated on the rocks by the hot water.  We determined to move there.  But when we arrived we found a rushing, roaring, turbulent river, 75 yards wide, between us and the hot spring.  The deer and elk were there all right, the great antlered monarchs tossing their heads in play, but safe as if miles away.  In vain we sought a narrow place where we could fell a tree.  We found, however, a spot where the water