Page:Thirty-One Years on the Plains and in the Mountains.djvu/434

322 Springs that night, which was about four miles further on, as I thought that the best place to be in camp in case we were attacked by the Indians. In this he agreed with me.

By this time my men were all on the battle-field, and most of the men from the train, also a number of the women who had come out to see the dead Indians. I asked one of the boys to go with me to scalp the Indians, after which I would go to the train as I wanted to change horses, but none of them knew how to scalp an Indian, so Jim and I had to teach them how.

One old man, who was looking on, said: "I would not mind shooting an Indian, but I would not like to scalp one of them."

After scalping the nine Indians we rode to the train and showed the scalps to the women. One young lady said to me:

"I always took you to be a gentleman until now."

I said: "Miss, I claim to be only a plain plains gentleman, but that at any and all times."

She said: "I don't think a gentleman could be so barbarous as you are."

"My dear lady," I replied, "the taking of these scalps may be the means of saving the train," and then I explained why we always scalped the Indians when we killed them. I told her that the Indians did not fear death, but hated the idea of being scalped.

About this time Jim Bridger came up and gave a more through explanation of the scalping business, and I did not hear anything more of it at that time. But Jim often teased the young lady spoken of, who had a lovely head