sobriquet of La Tulipe, and his real name I never knew. Finding that he
was going to the States only because his company was bound in that
direction, and that he was rather more willing to return with me, I took
him again into my service. We traveled this day but seventeen miles.

At our evening camp, about sunset, three figures were discovered
approaching, which our glasses made out to be Indians. They proved to be
Cheyennes--two men, and a boy of thirteen. About a month since, they had
left their people on the south fork of the river, some three hundred miles
to the westward, and a party of only four in number had been to the Pawnee
villages on a horse-stealing excursion, from which they were returning
unsuccessful. They were miserably mounted on wild horses from the Arkansas
plains, and had no other weapons than bows and long spears; and had they
been discovered by the Pawnees, could not, by any possibility, have
escaped. They were mortified by their ill-success, and said the Pawnees
were cowards, who shut up their horses in their lodges at night. I invited
them to supper with me, and Randolph and the young Cheyenne, who had been
eyeing each other suspiciously and curiously, soon became intimate
friends. After supper we sat down on the grass, and I placed a sheet of
paper between us, on which they traced, rudely, but with a certain degree
of relative truth, the water-courses of the country which lay between us
and their villages, and of which I desired to have some information. Their
companions, they told us, had taken a nearer route over the hills; but
they had mounted one of the summits to spy out the country, whence they
had caught a glimpse of our party, and, confident of good treatment at the
hands of the whites, hastened to join company. Latitude of the camp 40 deg.
39' 51".

We made the next morning sixteen miles. I remarked that the ground was
covered in many places with an efflorescence of salt, and the plants were