and water our
horses at a stream that crosses the trail, and then we can ride on till
dark. In doing this way we will avoid the Indians and will not have to
guard against them in the night, for the Indians invariably camp near
the water."

We made a long ride that day and picked a nice place to camp that night.
As soon as we had unsaddled and unpacked our horses, I said, "Jim, I
will stake the horses if you will make a fire." When I came back from
attending to the horses, Jim said, "Look here, Will, see what them girls
gave me, but I guess they meant it for you."

And he showed me the sack which the girls had given him as we were
leaving them that morning. I looked into it and saw two large cakes and
a good-sized piece of roasted Elk calf. The reader may imagine how good
this nice food looked to two hungry men, and we surely did justice to
it. When we were eating, Jim made the remark that it would be many a
long day before we met with such a company again as those we had left
that morning. He said, "In nearly all large companies there are cranks,
either men or women, and sometimes both, but all that outfit were
perfect ladies and gentlemen, and they all seemed to want to do what was
right, and the men were all brave and the women were sensible."

The next morning we pulled out early, and we made good progress for five
days, making dry camps every night. Nothing occurred to disturb us until
we reached the Sink of the Humboldt. Here were Indian signs in every
direction. We knew we would be in the heart of the Ute country for the
next hundred miles, so we decided to do our traveling in the night and
lay over and rest in the daytime.

We picked our camping places off the trail, where we thought the Indians
would not be likely to discover us. The second night after we left the
Sink of the Humboldt, we crossed a little stream called Sand Creek, and
just off to the right of the trail we saw what we thought must have been
five hundred Indians in camp. Most of them were laying around asleep,
but a few were sitting at the fire smoking, and we succeeded in riding
past them without their noticing us. After we had got entirely away from
their camp fires, Jim said, "Will, we are the luckiest chaps that ever
crossed the plains, for if them Indians had seen us, they would have
filled our hides full of arrows just to get our horses, and I think we
had better keep on traveling in the night until we strike Black's Fork,
then we will b