Page:Thirty-One Years on the Plains and in the Mountains.djvu/451

Rh That night after supper while we were sitting around the camp fire, smoking and cracking jokes--for an Indian enjoys a joke as well as any one--I got up and told them that we would, after leaving their country, have to travel over a small portion of the Ute country, and they being hostile towards the white people, we did not feel safe to try to cross their country alone, I told them we were very poor, having no beads nor blankets to spare, but if four of their men would accompany us for three days, I would give them a good horse.

The young Indian said: "You have been a good friend to me, and me and my friend will go with you across the Ute country. We don't want your horse, but when you come back you can bring us some beads."

This we agreed to do, and the next morning we started early, accompanied by four young Pima Indians.

During the first two days' travel from the Pima camp we saw not less than two hundred Indians of the Ute tribe, camping the second night within a quarter of a mile of a large village of them, but having those Pimas with us they did not offer to molest us.

When we were approaching a village two of the Pimas would ride ahead and tell the Utes that we were their friends. They traveled with us four days, when we concluded we were safe and they returned to their crowd of hunters, and we proceeded on our journey, crossing the main divide of the Rocky Mountains at the head of the Blue river, striking the head of the Arkansas river as soon as we were across the main divide.

The day we crossed the divide we went into camp as soon as we were out of the snow on the east side. That