Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 2.djvu/230

214 dawn showed us the rope cut within six feet of where we lay in the brush, and the horse gone. We accordingly, carrying the saddle and Clark's blanket, took the horse's trail, and found the horse quietly feeding about three quarters of a mile from where he left us, with about seven feet of the rope attached to his neck. The wolves had taken twenty-five to thirty feet of rope for their supper. There seemed no other kind of wild life but wolves.

Soon after Clark got his horse saddled and we were on the road toward the fort again, we were overtaken by a native gentleman—defining that word as one who voluntarily assists another without hope of reward: on the Christian principle of doing to a stranger as he would wish the stranger to treat himself.

We were beginning to feel the sun's heat, when we were overtaken by a single Indian, well mounted, with a loose horse following him. He looked at Clark's excellent mount, and then at me laboriously walking among the brush to avoid the loose, sandy road; then asked, by signs, if I would ride, and was answered affirmatively. He unloosed his hair rope from his saddle and dashed at the loose animal, catching him at the first throw; made a bridle of the rope by two half hitches on the. lower jaw, took the saddle blanket from under his saddle for me to ride on, and signed to Clark he was in haste and would leave me at the fort. Then we set off in a gallop. I had a heavy buffalo gun carrying, and he soon perceived that riding at such speed without stirrups would be punishment to me. He therefore stopped again, put his saddle onto my horse and took the substitute himself, and away we dashed again. A mile perhaps from the fort our path led across a small stream. Here he stopped, dismounted and washed, took out a small pocket comb and glass, and thus prepared for company. Half a mile more brought us to the camp I suppose he had come to visit at, and we