Page:Thirty-One Years on the Plains and in the Mountains.djvu/582

452 white stripe on his face and branded C on the left shoulder. I made the Lieutenant a present of this horse, and he afterwards prove'd to be a very fast animal, as the Lieutenant told me several years after, that during the winter months he kept the soldiers nearly all broke with that horse. He told me that he proved to be the fastest half mile horse he ever saw.

The emigrants now begun to come along and we were kept busy night and day looking after the small bands of Indians that were continually making murderous forays in spite of all we could do to prevent.

With only three hundred soldiers and twelve scouts, and a country over one hundred miles in extent to guard, the service was exacting, and our lot was not altogether a happy one.

One day in July, in company with George Jones and John Riley, I started out in the direction of Black can-