eled half as far as our Circle Dots.

After following the Tongue River several days and coming out on that
immense plain tributary to the Yellowstone, the trail turned to the
northwest, gave us a short day's drive to the Rosebud River, and after
following it a few miles, bore off again on the same quarter. In our
rear hung the mountains with their sentinel peaks, while in our front
stretched the valley tributary to the Yellowstone, in extent, itself,
an inland empire. The month was August, and, with the exception of
cool nights, no complaint could be made, for that rarefied atmosphere
was a tonic to man and beast, and there was pleasure in the primitive
freshness of the country which rolled away on every hand. On leaving
the Rosebud, two days' travel brought us to the east fork of Sweet
Grass, an insignificant stream, with a swift current and rocky
crossings. In the first two hours after reaching it, we must have
crossed it half a dozen times, following the grassy bottoms, which
shifted from one bank to the other. When we were full forty miles
distant from Frenchman's Ford on the Yellowstone, the wagon, in
crossing Sweet Grass, went down a sidling bank into the bottom of the
creek, the left hind wheel collided with a boulder in the water,
dishing it, and every spoke in the wheel snapped off at the shoulder
in the felloe. McCann never noticed it, but poured the whip into the
mules, and when he pulled out on the opposite bank left the felloe of
his wheel in the creek behind. The herd was in the lead at the time,
and when Honeyman overtook us and reported the accident, we threw the
herd off to graze, and over half the outfit returned to the wagon.

When we reached the scene, McCann had recovered the felloe, but every
spoke in the hub was hopelessly ruined. Flood took in the situation at
a glance. He ordered the wagon unloaded and the reach lengthened, took
the axe, and, with The Rebel, went back about a mile to a thicket of
lodge poles which we had passed higher up the creek. While the rest of
us unloaded the wagon, McCann, who was swearing by both note and
rhyme, unearthed his saddle from amongst the other plunder and cinched
it on his nigh wheeler. We had the wagon unloaded and had reloaded
some of the heaviest of the plunder in the front end of the wagon box,
by the time our foreman and Priest returned, dragging from their
pommels a thirty-foot pole as perfect as the mast of a yacht. We
knocked off all the spokes not a