Page:How Marcus Whitman Saved Oregon.djvu/317

 them back, and stepping into the tepee, caught hold of the moccasins I had bought, but by a quick motion he snatched them from me.

I then caught hold of the suspenders and 285 bounded out of the door. When fifty feet away I looked back and he had just emerged from his tepee and began loading his rifle. I had emptied both barrels of my shotgun at a plover just before reaching the village and my gun was fortunately unloaded. It gave us equal chances: I stopped still, threw my gun from the strap and began loading. In those days I was something of an expert and before the Indian withdrew his ramrod, I was putting caps on both barrels and he bounded inside his wigwam, and I lost no time in putting a tepee between us, and finding my friends, when we hastily took leave.

Our company took great comfort and pride in our big American mules, trained in civilized Ohio. A pair of the largest, the wheelers in the six-mule team, were as good as setter dogs at night. They neither liked Indians, wolves nor grizzlies; and their scent was so keen they could smell their enemies two hundred yards away, unless the wind was too strong.

When on guard, and in a lonesome, dangerous place, we generally kept close to our long-eared friends, and when they stopped eating and raised their heads and pointed those ponderous ears in any direction, we would drop in the grass