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Show 118 THE CALIFORNIA AND OREGON TRAIL. stimulus, the rider kept both feet in constant motion, playing alternately against his ribs. The old man was not a chief; he never had ambition enough to become one ; he was not a warrior nor a hunter, for he was too fat and lazy ; but he was the richest man in the whole village. Riches among the Dab. cotahs consist in horses, and of these ' The Hog' had accumu. lated more than thirty. f-Ie had already ten times as many as he wanted, yet still his appetite for horses was insatiable. Trotting up to me, he shook rne by the hand, and gave me to understand that he was a very devoted friend ; and then he began a series of most earnest signs and gesticulations, his oily countenance radiant with smiles, and his little eyes peeping out with a cunning twinkle from between the 1nasses of flesh that almost obscured them. Knowing nothing at that time of the sign-language of the Indians, I could only guess at his meamng. So I called on Henry to explain it. 'The Hog,' it seems, was anxious to conclude a matrimonial bargain. He said he had a very pretty daughter in his lodge, whom he would give me, if I would give him my horse. These flattering overtures I chose to reject; at which 'The Hog,' still laughing with undiminished good humor, gathered his robe about his shoulders, and rode away. Where we encamped that night, an arm of the Platte ran between high bluffs; it was turbid and swift as heretofore, but trees were gro wm· g on I· ts crumbling banks, and there was a nook of grass between the water and the hill. Just before entering. th,i s .p lace ' we saw th e emi· grants encamp.m g at two or three miles distance on the right; while the whole Indian rabble were pourin()' down th · hb · . . o e ne1g ormg h1ll In hope of the same sort of entertainment wh1' c h th ey 11 ad expen·e nced from us. In TAKING FRENCH J ... EAVE. 119 the savage landscape before our camp, nothing but the rushing of the Platte broke the silence. Through the ragged boughs of the trees, dilapidated and half dead, we saw the sun setting in crimson behind the peaks of the Black Hills ; the restless bosom of the river was suffused with red ; our w bite tent was tinged with it, and the sterile bl uff.s, up to the rocks that crowned them, partook of the same fiery hue. It soon passed away; no light remained, but that from our fire, blazing high among the dusky trees and bushes. We lay around it wrapped in our blankets, smoking and con versing until a late hour, and then withdrew to our tent. We crossed a sun-scorched plain on the next morning; the line of old cotton-wood trees that fringed the bank of the Platte forming its extreme verge . N estled apparently close beneath them, we could discern in the distance something like a building. As we came nearer, it assumed form and dimensions, and proved to be a rough structure of logs. It was a little trading fort, belonging to two private traders; and originally intended, like all the forts of the country, to form a hollow square, with rooms for lodging and storage opening upon the area within. Only two sides of it had been completed ; the place was now as ill-fitted for the purposes of defence as any of those little log-houses, which upon our constantly-shifting frontier have been so often successfully maintained against overwhelming odds of Indians. Two lodges were pitched close to the fort; the sun beat scorching upon the logs ; no living thing was stir. ring except one old squaw, who thrust her round head from the opening of the nearest lodge, and three or four stout young pups, who were peeping with looks of eager inquiry from under the covering. In a moment a door opened, and a little, swarthy, |
