in June, '97, my brother, on his vacation, met me again at West
Salem, I outlined a tour which should begin with a study of the Sioux at
Standing Rock and end with Seattle and the Pacific Ocean. "I must know
the North-west," I said to him.

In order to report properly to any army post, I had in my pocket a
letter from General Miles which commended me to all agents and officers,
and with this as passport I was in the middle of getting my equipment in
order when Ernest Thompson Seton and his wife surprised me by dropping
off the train one morning late in the month. They too, were on their way
to the Rockies, and in radiant holiday humor.

My first meeting with Seton had been in New York at a luncheon given for
James Barrie only a few months before, but we had formed one of those
instantaneous friendships which spring from the possession of many
identical interests. His skill as an illustrator and his knowledge of
wild animals had gained my admiration but I now learned that he knew
certain phases of the West better than I, for though of English birth he
had lived in Manitoba for several years. We were of the same age also,
and this was another bond of sympathy.

He asked me to accompany him on his tour of the Yellowstone but as I had
already arranged for a study of the Sioux, and as his own plans were
equally definite, we reluctantly gave up all idea of camping together,
but agreed to meet in New York City in October to compare notes.

The following week, on the first day of July, my brother and I were in
Bismark, North Dakota, on our way to the Standing Rock Reservation to
witness the "White Men's Big Sunday," as the red people were accustomed
to call the Fourth of July.

It chanced to be a cool, sweet, jocund morning, and as we drove away, in
an open buggy, over the treeless prairie swells toward the agency some
sixty miles to the south, I experienced a sense of elation, a joy of
life, a thrill of expectancy, which promised well for fiction. I knew
the signs.

There was little settlement of any kind for twenty miles, but after we
crossed the Cannonball River we entered upon the unviolated, primeval
sod of the red hunter. Conical lodges were grouped along the streams.
Horsemen with floating feathers and beaded buck-skin shirts over-took us
riding like scouts, and when on the second morning we topped the final
hill and saw the agency out-spread below us on the river bank, with
hundreds of canvas tepees set in a wide