Page:Thirty-One Years on the Plains and in the Mountains.djvu/256

190 of its kind I have ever seen. But it was so different from the dress of the others that it made me decidedly conspicuous. When on the floor and straightened up I felt as if I were about nine feet high, and that my feet were about twenty inches long and weighed near fifty pounds each.

The prompter called out, "Balance all!" and I forgot to dance until all the others were most through balancing, then I turned loose on the double-shuffle, this being, the only step I knew, and I hadn't practiced that very much. About the time I would get started in on this step the prompter would call something else, and thus being caught between two hurries I would have to run to catch up with the other dancers. However, with the assistance of Mrs. Elliott, the other good ladies, the prompter, and anybody else in reach, I managed to get through, but I had never gone into an Indian fight with half the dread that I went into that dance, and never escaped from one with more thankfulness.

The following morning, after bidding Col. Elliott, his wife and all the other of my new-found friends good-bye, I started on my return to Beckwith's ranche, perfectly willing to resign my high- life surroundings to go back to the open and congenial fields of nature and an indescribable freedom.

I found Beckwith suffering severely from an old arrow wound that he had received in a fight with the Utes near Fort Hall in 1848.