two parts, each of which took wing and
flew away. We stopped our horses and looked round at Henry, whose face
exhibited a curious mixture of mirth and mortification. His hawk's eye
had been so completely deceived by the peculiar atmosphere that he had
mistaken two large crows at the distance of fifty rods for a grizzly
bear a mile off. To the journey's end Henry never heard the last of the
grizzly bear with wings.

In the afternoon we came to the foot of a considerable hill. As we
ascended it Rouville began to ask questions concerning our conditions
and prospects at home, and Shaw was edifying him with a minute account
of an imaginary wife and child, to which he listened with implicit
faith. Reaching the top of the hill we saw the windings of Horse Creek
on the plains below us, and a little on the left we could distinguish
the camp of Bisonette among the trees and copses along the course of
the stream. Rouville's face assumed just then a most ludicrously blank
expression. We inquired what was the matter, when it appeared that
Bisonette had sent him from this place to Fort Laramie with the sole
object of bringing back a supply of tobacco. Our rattle-brain friend,
from the time of his reaching the Fort up to the present moment, had
entirely forgotten the object of his journey, and had ridden a dangerous
hundred miles for nothing. Descending to Horse Creek we forded it, and
on the opposite bank a solitary Indian sat on horseback under a tree. He
said nothing, but turned and led the way toward the camp. Bisonette had
made choice of an admirable position. The stream, with its thick growth
of trees, inclosed on three sides a wide green meadow, where about forty
Dakota lodges were pitched in a circle, and beyond them half a dozen
lodges of the friendly Cheyenne. Bisonette himself lived in the Indian
manner. Riding up to his lodge, we found him seated at the head of it,
surrounded by various appliances of comfort not common on the prairie.
His squaw was near him, and rosy children were scrambling about in
printed-calico gowns; Paul Dorion also, with his leathery face and old
white capote, was seated in the lodge, together with Antoine Le Rouge, a
half-breed Pawnee, Sibille, a trader, and several other white men.

"It will do you no harm," said Bisonette, "to stay here with us for a
day or two, before you start for the Pueblo."

We accepted the invitation, and pitched our tent on a rising ground
above the camp and close to th