e to be seriously entertained, and I
said: "I am destitute of funds, and how can a lawyer subsist where there
are no people? How can I get a living?" This dilemma, which seemed to me
to be insuperable, was easily answered by my new found friend. "Why," he
said, "That is the easiest part of it. We can hunt a living, and I have
a shack and a bed." The proposition was catching, having a spice of
adventure in it, and I promised to consider it.

After making my report, in which I recommended Rock Bend as a promising
place for a great city, I told the parties who proposed to purchase
Captain Dodd's claim that I would confirm my faith in the success of the
enterprise by returning and living at the point. I did so, and found
myself farther west than any lawyer in the United States east of the
Rocky Mountains, unless he was in the panhandle of Texas. And now comes
the singular way in which I made my first fee, if I may call it by that
name. It was my first financial raise, no matter what you call it.

Garvie and I had gotten quietly settled in our shanty on the prairie,
when one excessively cold night an Indian boy, about thirteen years of
age, saw our light, and came to the door, giving us to understand that
his people were encamped about four or five miles up the river, and that
he was afraid to go any further lest he should freeze to death. He was
mounted on a pony, had a pack of furs with him, and asked us to take him
in for the night. We of course did so, and made him as comfortable as we
could by giving him a buffalo robe on the floor. But we had no shelter
for his pony, and all we could do was to hitch him on the lee side of
the shanty, and strap a blanket on him. When morning came he was frozen
to death. We got the poor little boy safely off on the way to his
people's camp, and decided to utilize the carcass of the pony for a wolf
bait.

In order to present an intelligent idea of the situation, I will say
that the river made an immense detour in front of the future town,
having a large extent of bottom land, covered with a dense chaparral,
which was the home of thousands of wolves, and as soon as night came
they would start out in droves in search of prey.

We hauled the dead pony out to the back of the shanty, and left it about
two rods distant from the window. The moment night set in the wolves in
packs would attack the carcass. At first we would step outside and fire
into them with buck shot from double-barrelled s