"I went up with a trading party to a place somewhere near this Omaha; we
had three boats, with six voyageurs in each. I was about five-and-twenty
then, and was steersman of one of them. There were four traders; they
were in my boat, and they played cards and drank all the way up. One of
the boats was a flat--not a flat like this, but just a big flat-bottomed
boat,--for they were going, as I understood, to get some good horses
from the Indians and take them down to St. Louis. We had pretty hard
work getting her along, and a weak crew would never have got her against
the stream, though of course we chose a time when the river was low and
there wasn't much stream on. Sometimes we rowed, sometimes we poled,
keeping along the shallows and back waters; and, though the pay was
good, I wasn't sorry when we got to the place appointed; not only
because the work was hard, but because I didn't like the ways of them
traders, with their gambling, and drinking, and quarrelling. However,
they gave up drink the last day, and were sober enough when they landed.

"I don't know why, but I didn't think things were going to turn out
well. I had heard the traders say as they didn't mean to come up that
part of the country agin, and I knew their goods warn't of no account,
and that they were going to trade off bad stuff on the Indians. The
first two days things went on all right; every evening large lots of
goods were brought down to the boats, but except when I went up with the
others to the traders' tent to bring the things down I didn't go about
much. It was a large camp, with two or three hundred braves, as they
calls 'em. I told the men in my boat what I thought of it; but they
didn't think much of what I said, and traded a little on their own
account, for it was part of the agreement that each man should be
allowed to take up fifty dollars-worth of goods, and have room for what
he could get for them. I traded mine away the first day for some buffalo
robes, and so hadn't anything to take me away from the boat.

"The third day the trading was done; there was to be a grand feast that
night, and the boats were to start the next morning. Most of the men
went up to see the fun, but I persuaded two of my mates in my boat to
stop quiet with me. Presently I heard a yell from the camp, which was
about three hundred yards away. 'That's mischief,' says I. I had scarce
spoken when there was a yelling fit to make your har stand on end, and I
heard pi