nly three or four miles up the little
stream, before each family assumed its relative place in the great
ring of the village, and all around the squaws were actively at work in
preparing the camp. But not a single warrior dismounted from his horse.
All the men that morning were mounted on inferior animals, leading their
best horses by a cord, or confiding them to the care of boys. In small
parties they began to leave the ground and ride rapidly away over the
plains to the westward. I had taken no food that morning, and not being
at all ambitious of further abstinence, I went into my host's lodge,
which his squaws had erected with wonderful celerity, and sat down in
the center, as a gentle hint that I was hungry. A wooden bowl was soon
set before me, filled with the nutritious preparation of dried meat
called pemmican by the northern voyagers and wasna by the Dakota. Taking
a handful to break my fast upon, I left the lodge just in time to see
the last band of hunters disappear over the ridge of the neighboring
hill. I mounted Pauline and galloped in pursuit, riding rather by the
balance than by any muscular strength that remained to me. From the
top of the hill I could overlook a wide extent of desolate and unbroken
prairie, over which, far and near, little parties of naked horsemen were
rapidly passing. I soon came up to the nearest, and we had not ridden
a mile before all were united into one large and compact body. All
was haste and eagerness. Each hunter was whipping on his horse, as if
anxious to be the first to reach the game. In such movements among the
Indians this is always more or less the case; but it was especially
so in the present instance, because the head chief of the village was
absent, and there were but few "soldiers," a sort of Indian police, who
among their other functions usually assumed the direction of a buffalo
hunt. No man turned to the right hand or to the left. We rode at a swift
canter straight forward, uphill and downhill, and through the stiff,
obstinate growth of the endless wild-sage bushes. For an hour and a half
the same red shoulders, the same long black hair rose and fell with
the motion of the horses before me. Very little was said, though once I
observed an old man severely reproving Raymond for having left his rifle
behind him, when there was some probability of encountering an enemy
before the day was over. As we galloped across a plain thickly set with
sagebushes, the foremost ride