ng him a while, Jim
said, "What are you going to do with him, Will?"

I answered that I did intend to eat him, but I thought now I had better
turn him loose.

Jim said, "That won't do, Will, for he would kill someone before he
cleared himself of the crowd. Tie him up to a tree, and we can kill him
and take the meat with us when we leave here."

I tied him up as Jim thought best, although I pitied the little fellow
and had rather have let him loose and seen him scamper away over the
hills to join his friends in freedom.

The men set to work skinning and getting the meat ready to cook for
supper. We now had fresh meat enough to last the entire outfit nearly a
week.

After we had finished supper Jim told the women to get ready to dance,
"for," he said, "we will have more music tonight than we have had for a
long time."

One of the old ladies asked him, how he could tell when the wolves would
howl more one night than another, and she said, "every time that you
have said they would howl, they have made such a noise that none of us
could sleep." Jim answered, "this will be the worst night for them to
howl you have ever heard, and I will tell you why. You see, all those
Buffalos have been dressed here at the camp, and the Coyotes will smell
the blood for miles away from here, and they will follow the scent until
they get to us, and as they cannot get to the meat they will vent their
disappointment in howling. So you see why I say the ladies will have a
plenty of music to dance to." And sure enough, as soon as it commenced
growing dark the din commenced, and there was no sleep for anyone in
that camp until nearly daylight the next morning. A number of times
that night I went out perhaps fifty yards from the wagons and saw them
running in every direction. I could have silenced them by firing once
among them, but this I did not dare to do, for I did not know how many
Indians might be in hearing of the report of my gun, and I thought it
the better policy to hear the howling of the wolves than to have a fight
with the Indians.

The next morning I called the scouts together and divided them into four
squads, and we started out to examine the country in all four directions
for Indians or the signs of them, our calculation being to investigate
the country for five miles in every direction.

I told the men that if we saw no Indians or the signs of them that day
that we would have a chance to sleep that night for I would fire