Some of the young men motioned for me to come out and shoot at a mark with them, and as I saw it would please them I did so and took good care to beat them every time too.  Then they wanted to swap (narawaup) guns with me which I declined doing.  After this the Chief came to me and wanted me to go and hunt buffalo with them.  I told him I had no horse, and then he went and had a nice gray one brought up and told me I could ride him if I would go.  He took his bow and arrow and showed me how he could shoot an arrow straight through a buffalo just back of his short ribs and that the arrow would go clear through and come out on the other side without touching a bone.  Those fellows were in fine spirit, on a big hunt, and when Walker pointed out his route to me he swung his hand around to Salt Lake.

They all spoke the word buffalo quite plainly.  I took his strong bow and found I could hardly pull it half way out, but I have no doubt he could do as he said he could.  I hardly knew how to refuse going with him.  I asked him how long it would be before he would get around his long circuit and get to Salt Lake, to which he replied by pulverizing some leaves in his hands and scattering them in the air to represent snow, which would fall by the time he got to “Mormonee”.  I shivered as he said this and by his actions I saw that I understood him right.

I told him I could not go with him for the other boys would depend on me to get them something to eat, and I put my finger into my open mouth to tell him this.  I think if I had been alone I should have accepted his offer and should have had a good time.  I gave them to understand that we would swap (narawaup) with them for some horses so he brought up a pair of nice two year-old colts for us.  I offered him some money for them, he did not want that, but would take clothing of almost any kind.  We let them have some that we could get along without, and some one let Walker have a coat.  He put it on, and being more warmly dressed than ever before, the sweat ran down his face in streams.  We let them have some needles and thread and some odd notions we had to spare.  We saw that Walker had some three or four head of cattle with him which he could kill if they did not secure game at the time they expected.

McMahon and Field still persisted they would not go with us and so we divided our little stock of flour and dried meat with them as fairly as possible and decided we would try the trail.  When our plans were settled we felt in pretty good spirits again, and one of the boys got up a sort of corn-stalk fiddle which made a squeaking noise and in a little while there was a sort of mixed American and Indian dance going on in which the squaws joined in and we had a pretty jolly time till quite late at night.  We were well pleased that these wild folks had proved themselves to be true friends to us.

The morning we were to start I told the boys a dream I had in which I had seen that the course we had decided on was the correct one, but McMahon and Field thought we were foolish and said they had rather take the chances of going with the Indians, or going on down the river.  He seemed to place great stress on the fact that he could not understand the Indians.