it is
simply impossible to tell which hand the bone is in. In a moment he
suddenly flings each closed hand on either side of him down into the
outreaching hand of the player next to him.

The game commences at this point. The whole line of players passes, or
pretends to pass, this bone on from one to another, until at last every
hand is waving. All this time the eyes along the opposite line of
gamblers are eagerly watching each shift and movement of the hands, in
hopes of discovering the white flash of the bone. At last some one
descries the hand that holds the bone, or thinks so. He points out and
calls out for his side. The hand must instantly be thrown up. If it is
right, the watching side scores a point and takes the bone. The sides
change off in this way until the game is won. The full score is
twenty-one points. The excitement produced by this game is at times
simply indescribable.

The Utes play with two bones in each hand, one of which is wrapped about
with a string. The game is to guess the hand that holds the wrapped
bone. The plum-stone game is played by the plains Indians. It is only
another name for dice throwing. The plum-stones are graved with
hieroglyphics, and counts are curiously made in a way that often defies
computation by white men. The women gamble quite as much as the men,
when they dare, and grow even more excited over the game than their
lords. Their game, as witnessed among the Cheyennes, is played with
beads, little loops and long horn sticks made of deer foot.

The children look on and learn to gamble from their earliest childhood,
and soon learn to cheat and impose on their juniors. Their little
juvenile gambling operations are done principally with arrows. Winter
breeds sloth, and sloth begets gambling, and gambling, drink. There is
no conviviality in Indian drinking bouts. The Indian gets drunk, and
dead drunk, as soon as he possibly can, and finds his highest enjoyment
in sleeping it off. His nature reacts viciously under drink, however, in
many cases, and he is then a dangerous customer.

The women of many tribes are a most pitiable lot of hard working, ragged
and dirty humanity. Upon them falls all the drudgery of the camp; they
are "hewers of wood and drawers of water," and bend under immense
burdens piled upon their backs, while thousands of ponies browse,
undisturbed, in every direction. As the troops are withdrawn, the squaws
swoop down upon the deserted camps, and rapidly gle