“Soon,” said she to me, “we will be at Laramie.”

“Pray God,” said I to myself, “that we never may see Laramie!” I have said that I would set down the truth.  And this is the truth; I was becoming a savage.  I truly wanted nothing better.  I think this might happen to many a man, at least of that day.

We forded several streams, one a large one, which I now think must have been the North Platte; but no river ran as we fancied the Platte must run.  So we kept on, until we came one day to a spot whence we saw something low and unmoving and purple, far off in the northwest.  This we studied, and so at length saw that it was the mountains.  At last our journeying would change, at least, perhaps terminate ere long.  A few more days would bring us within touch of this distant range, which, as I suppose now, might possibly have been a spur of what then were still called the Black Hills, a name which applied to several ranges far to the west and south of the mountains now so called.  Or perhaps these were peaks of the mountains later called the Laramie Range.

Then came a thing hard for us to bear.  Our horse, hobbled as usual for the night, and, moreover, picketed on a long rope I had made from buffalo hides, managed some time in the night to break his hobbles and in some way to pull loose the picket pin.  When we saw that he was gone we looked at each other blankly.

“What shall we do?” she asked me in horror.  For the first time I saw her sit down in despair.  “We are lost!  What shall we do?” she wailed.

I trailed the missing horse for many miles, but could only tell he was going steadily, lined out for some distant point.  I dared not pursue him farther and leave her behind.  An hour after noon I returned and sullenly threw myself on the ground beside her at our little bivouac.  I could not bear to think of her being reduced to foot travel over all these cruel miles.  Yet, indeed, it now must come to that.

“We have the dog,” said I at length.  “We can carry a robe and a little meat, and walk slowly.  I can carry a hundred pound pack if need be, and the dog can take twenty-five—­”

“And I can carry something,” she said, rising with her old courage.  “It is my part.”  I made her a pack of ten pounds, and soon seeing that it was too heavy, I took it from her and threw it on my own.

“At least I shall carry the belt,” she said.  And so she took my belt, with its flask and bullet pouch, the latter now all too scantily filled.

Thus, sore at heart, and somewhat weary, we struggled on through that afternoon, and sank down beside a little water hole.  And that night, when I reached to her for my belt that we might again make our fire, she went pale and cried aloud that she had lost it, and that now indeed we must die!

I could hardly comfort her by telling her that on the morrow I would certainly find it.  I knew that in case I did not our plight indeed was serious.  She wept that night, wept like a child, starting and moaning often in her sleep.  That night, for the first time, I took her in my arms and tried to comfort her.  I, being now a savage, prayed to the Great Spirit, the Mystery, that my own blood might not be as water, that my heart might be strong—­the old savage prayers of primitive man brought face to face with nature.