daring to risk waste of our
scanty ammunition at such hard game as antelope. Once I lay at a path
near a water hole in the pocket of a half-dried stream, and killed two
buffalo cows. Here was abundant work for more than two days, cutting,
drying, scraping, feasting. Life began to run keen in our veins, in
spite of all. I heard her sing, that day, saw her smile. Now our worldly
goods were increasing, so I cut down two lodge poles and made a little
travois for the dog. We had hides enough now for a small tent, needing
only sufficient poles.

"Soon," said she to me, "we will be at Laramie."

"Pray God," said I to myself, "that we never may see Laramie!" I have
said that I would set down the truth. And this is the truth; I was
becoming a savage. I truly wanted nothing better. I think this might
happen to many a man, at least of that day.

We forded several streams, one a large one, which I now think must have
been the North Platte; but no river ran as we fancied the Platte must
run. So we kept on, until we came one day to a spot whence we saw
something low and unmoving and purple, far off in the northwest. This we
studied, and so at length saw that it was the mountains. At last our
journeying would change, at least, perhaps terminate ere long. A few
more days would bring us within touch of this distant range, which, as I
suppose now, might possibly have been a spur of what then were still
called the Black Hills, a name which applied to several ranges far to
the west and south of the mountains now so called. Or perhaps these were
peaks of the mountains later called the Laramie Range.

Then came a thing hard for us to bear. Our horse, hobbled as usual for
the night, and, moreover, picketed on a long rope I had made from
buffalo hides, managed some time in the night to break his hobbles and
in some way to pull loose the picket pin. When we saw that he was gone
we looked at each other blankly.

"What shall we do?" she asked me in horror. For the first time I saw her
sit down in despair. "We are lost! What shall we do?" she wailed.

I trailed the missing horse for many miles, but could only tell he was
going steadily, lined out for some distant point. I dared not pursue him
farther and leave her behind. An hour after noon I returned and sullenly
threw myself on the ground beside her at our little bivouac. I could
not bear to think of her being reduced to foot travel over all these
cruel miles. Yet, indeed, it now must com