trouble and alarm, Brown at once mounted another pony and started back to Fort Sisseton, hoping to reach it before the messenger left for Abercrombie in the morning. When he had crossed the James River and was galloping rapidly across the broad, flat bottom, he was overtaken by one of those severe spring storms which sometimes sweep over Dakota, a genuine furious, blinding winter blizzard. It came from the northwest and he believed he could make his way before it. In fact, on the bare, unprotected prairie there was nothing else to do; so he forced his way along, doing his best to keep in the direct course to Fort Sisseton.
When daylight came, however, he found that he had drifted far out of his way, and was down in the vicinity of the Waubay Lakes, twenty-five miles south of the fort. He turned his little pony in the face of the storm, which was increasing in severity, and fought his way to Sisseton, where he arrived before nine o'clock in the morning,—having since sundown the previous evening traveled a distance of more than one hundred and fifty miles. He fell from his pony exhausted and paralyzed, but he had accomplished his purpose in the line of his duty.
Mr. Brown, in 1905, was still living, a respected citizen of the town which bears his name, Brown Valley, Minnesota, between Lakes Traverse and Big Stone. He never recovered from the evil effects of his awful exertion, and was never able to take a natural step from that day. Mr. Brown was born in South Dakota, but a few miles from his present home. His ride merits a place in history beside those famous ones which have been preserved in the songs and stories of the people.
