Page:Thirty-One Years on the Plains and in the Mountains.djvu/475

Rh it had been a small hunting party, and seeing that they could not scare me out of my rock pen by their ferocious charges, accompanied by a war-whoop that would make the hair stand on the bravest mountaineer's head, they had abandoned the idea altogether and had no doubt left the ground before I started to crawl away from my rock pen, which had been the means of saving me from falling their victim.

I returned to camp, arriving shortly after dark. We moved north, the men prospecting the country as we went and I scouting, keeping a sharp lookout to prevent a surprise party, but we did not see any more Indians during the entire winter. We struck the Colorado river at the mouth of the Green river.

Mr. Campbell concluded that he would go to southern Nevada; taking a southwesterly course from Green river, I piloted them about one hundred miles and they now being in a country where they were perfectly safe as far as hostile Indians were concerned, I left the party, and the most of them it has never been my pleasure to meet since. I met one of the party by the name of Freeman in Seattle in the year of 1889. At that time he was settled down in his old neighborhood in Illinois and had a wife and five children. I can truthfully say that I never met five better and more agreeable men to travel with in all my career than those men were. While with them I never saw one of them apparently out of humor with his companions or heard one use any kind of language than that of a gentleman. Leaving the party I struck for Salt Lake City. I had no trouble in finding