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Show 254 THE CALIFORNIA AND OREGON TRAIL. The delinquents took down their lodges and loaded their packhorses ; and when the sun rose, the last of the men, women 1 and children had left the deserted camp. This movement was made merely for the purpose of finding a better and safer position. So we advanced only three or four miles up the little stream, before each . family assumed its relative place in the great ring of the village, and all around the squaws were actively at work in· preparing the camp. But not a single warrior dismounted from his horse. All the men that morning were mounted on inferior animals, leading their best horses by a cord, or confiding them to the care of boys. In small parties they began to leave the ground and ride rapidly away over the plains to the westward. I had taken no food that morning, and not being at all ambitious of farther abstinence, I went into my host's lodge, which his squaws had erected with wonderful celerity, and sat down in the centre, as a gentle hint that I was hungry. A wooden bowl was soon set before me, filled with the nutritious preparation of dried meat, called pemmican by the northern voyagers, and wasna by the Dahcotah. Taking a handful to break my fast upon, I left the lodge just in time to see the last band of hunters disappear over the ridge of the neighboring hill. I mounted Pauline and galloped in puTsuit, riding rather by the balance than by any muscular strength that remained to me. From the top of the hill I could overlook a wide extent of desolate and unbroken prairie, over which, far and near, little parties of naked horsemen were rapidly passing. I soon came up to the nearest, and we had not ridden a mile before all were united into one large and compact body. All was haste and eagerness. Each hunter was whip· ping on his horse, as if anxious to be the first to reach the game. THE HUNTING CAMP. 255 In such movements among the Indians this is always more or less the case; but it was especially so in the present instance, because the head chief of the village was absent~ and there were but few 'soldiers,' a sort of Indian police, who among their other functions usually assume the direction of a buffalo hunt. No man turned to the right hand or to the left. We rode at a swift canter straight forward, up hill and down hill, and through the stiff, obstinate growth of the endless wild sage bushes. For an hour and a half the same red shoulders, the same long black hair rose and fell with the motion of the h~rses before me. Very little was said, though once I observed an old man severely reproving Raymond for having left his rifle behind him, when there was some probability of encountering an enemy before the day was over. As we galloped across a plain thickly set with sage bushes, the foremost riders vanished suddenly from sight, as if diving into the earth. The arid soil was cracked into a deep ravine. Down we all went in succession and galloped in a line along the bottom, until we fl d . oun a pomt where, one by one, the horses could scramble out. Soon after, we came upon a wide shallow stream, and as we rode swiftly over the hard sand-beds and through the thin sheets of rippling water, many of the savage horsemen threw themselves to the ground, knelt on the sand, snatched a hasty · dra~ght, and leaping back again to their seats, galloped on agam as before. Me anw hI' l e scouts kept in advance of the party; and now We began to see them on the ridge of the hills, waving their robes in token that buffalo were visible. These however proved to .be nothing more than old straggling bulls, feeding upon the ~~b . . . ormg plams, who would stare for a n10ment at the hostile |