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We turned toward the north with our men, the four trappers following us, with the Indian family of Moran. We traveled until night. I suffered not a little from pain and weakness. We encamped among some trees by the side of a little brook, and here during the whole of the next day we lay waiting for Bisonette, but no Bisonette appeared.
I lay under the tree reflecting on what course to pursue, watching the shadows which seemed never to move, and the sun which remained fixed in the sky, and hoping every moment to see the men and horses of Bisonette emerging from the woods. Shaw and Henry had ridden out on a scouting expedition, and did not return until the sun was setting.
Descending to Horse Creek we forded it, and on the opposite bank a solitary Indian sat on horseback under a tree. He said nothing, but turned and led the way toward the camp. Bisonette had made choice of an admirable position.
Shaw had not returned, but this gave no uneasiness, for we presumed that he had fallen in with Bisonette, and was spending the night with him. For a day or two past I had gained in strength and health, but about midnight an attack of pain awoke me, and for some hours I felt no inclination to sleep.
The stream, with its thick growth of trees, inclosed on three sides a wide green meadow, where about forty Dakota lodges were pitched in a circle, and beyond them half a dozen lodges of the friendly Cheyenne. Bisonette himself lived in the Indian manner. Riding up to his lodge, we found him seated at the head of it, surrounded by various appliances of comfort not common on the prairie.
We inquired what was the matter, when it appeared that Bisonette had sent him from this place to Fort Laramie with the sole object of bringing back a supply of tobacco. Our rattle-brain friend, from the time of his reaching the Fort up to the present moment, had entirely forgotten the object of his journey, and had ridden a dangerous hundred miles for nothing.
He was just arrived from Fort Laramie, where he had been on a visit, and said he had a message for us. A trader named Bisonette, one of Henry's friends, was lately come from the settlements, and intended to go with a party of men to La Bonte's Camp, where, as Jean Gras assured us, ten or twelve villages of Indians would certainly assemble.
I hoped that Bisonette would appear in the course of the following day, and bring us some information by which to direct our course, and enable me to accomplish my purpose by means less objectionable. The rifle of Henry Chatillon was necessary for the subsistence of the party in my absence; so I called Raymond, and ordered him to prepare to set out with me.
"Come, Delorier; stir up the fire, and get me something to eat." "Where's Bisonette?" asked I. "The Lord knows; there's nobody at Horseshoe Creek." Shaw had gone back to the spot where we had encamped two days before, and finding nothing there but the ashes of our fires, he had tied his horse to the tree while he bathed in the stream.
Many other warriors would leap into the ring, and with faces upturned toward the starless sky, they would all stamp, and whoop, and brandish their weapons like so many frantic devils. Until the next afternoon we were still remaining with Bisonette.
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