The Indians were plentiful and visited us frequently, but they were all friendly that year with the whites throughout the border. A war party of the Cheyenne Indians visited us on their way to fight their enemy, the Pawnees. They were, physically, the finest body of men I ever saw. We treated them hospitably and they would have given up their fight and gone with us on a grand buffalo hunt, had we consented. The chief would hardly take no for an answer.
One of the great comforts of the plains traveling in those days, was order and system. Each man knew his duty each day and each night. One day a man would drive; another he would cook; another he would ride on horseback. When we reached the more dangerous Indian country, our camp was arranged for defense in case of an attack, but we always left our mules picketed out to grass all night, and never left them without a guard.
About the most trying labor of that journey was picket duty over the mules at night, especially when the grass was a long distance from the camp, as it sometimes was. After a long day's travel it was a lonesome, tiresome task to keep up all night, or even half of it. The animals were tethered with a rope eighteen feet long buckled to the fore leg, and the other end attached to an iron pin twelve to eighteen inches long, securely driven into the ground. As the
