caravans. So on we started. The sheep didn't have to be driven; they
drove us. By daylight those sheep were always ready to go on toward
their goal. They would pick and run ahead seldom ever stopping until
about the middle of the day. It was our rule to stop and eat or rest
when the sheep started. Truth is stranger than fiction, and it is the
truth that we would often make thirty-five or forty miles a day with
those sheep. The herdsman would follow the goat and the sheep followed
the goat. When the sheep were a little too industrious, the herdsman
made the goat lay down, then the sheep would lay down all around him.
Sometimes they would lay down about five or six o'clock, then we would
eat. But if they got up and started on we went, and they seldom ever
stopped to rest until eight or nine o'clock. The four drives averaged
from seven to ten miles a drive. In making this trip from Maxwell's
ranch in New Mexico to Virginia City, Montana, I crossed seventeen
rivers with those sheep and arrived in Virginia City with less than 100
sheep short. I sold a few to the Snake Indians for from $5 to $8 each.
Of course, this was in trade, but it pleased them equally as well as if
it had been a gift.

The next band of Indians we came into after leaving the Sioux, were the
Snake Indians. They were situated on the Snake River one hundred miles
from Virginia City. Snake River is one of the most important tributaries
of the Columbia. Instead of making a treaty with these Indians, I traded
them sheep and a caddy of tobacco for buffalo robes and deer skins, and
they seemed as well satisfied as if I had given them the sheep and
tobacco gratis.

About one hundred miles from where we met the Snake Indians, we came to
a toll bridge. Here I met my worthy partner for the first time since I
had sent him on his "way rejoicing." Mr. Dillon had told the keeper of