If I should not please Mr. Dallas and get turned off with only my gun and pony I should be in a pretty bad shape, but I decided to keep right on and take the chances on the savages, who would get only my hair and my gun as my contribution to them if they should be hostile.  I must confess, however, that the trail ahead did not look either straight or bright to me, but hoped it might be better than I thought.  So I yoked my oxen and cows to the wagon and drove on.  All the other teams had two drivers each, who took turns, and thus had every other day off for hunting if they chose, but I had to carry the whip every day and leave my gun in the wagon.

When we crossed Salt Creek the banks were high and we had to tie a strong rope to the wagons and with a few turns around a post, lower them down easily, while we had to double the teams to get them up the other side.

Night came on before half the wagons were over, and though it did not rain the water rose before morning so it was ten feet deep.  We made a boat of one of the wagon beds, and had a regular ferry, and when they pulled the wagons over they sank below the surface but came out all right.  We came to Pawnee Village, on the Platte, a collection of mud huts, oval in shape, and an entrance low down to crawl in at.  A ground owl and some prairie dogs were in one of them, and we suspected they might be winter quarters for the Indians.

Dallas and his family rode in the two-horse wagon.  Dick Field was cook, and the rest of us drove the oxen.  We put out a small guard at night to watch for Indians and keep the stock together so there might be no delay in searching for them.  When several miles from Ft.  Kearney I think on July 3rd, we camped near the river where there was a slough and much cottonwood and willow.  Just after sundown a horse came galloping from the west and went in with our horses that were feeding a little farther down.  In the morning two soldiers came from the fort, inquiring after the stray horse, but Dallas said he had seen none, and they did not hunt around among the willows for the lost animal.  Probably it would be the easiest way to report back to the fort—­“Indians got him.”  When we hitched up in the morning he put the horse on the off side of his own, and when near the fort, he went ahead on foot and entertained the officers while the men drove by, and the horse was not discovered.  I did not like this much, for if we were discovered, we might be roughly handled, and perhaps the property of the innocent even confiscated.  Really my New England ideas of honesty were somewhat shocked.