scamp! Get up! Go to the river and wash yourself, and then come back to work!" said my uncle disgustedly.

"Where is his rifle?" some one asked.

"Dropped right where he fired it," I hazarded; and there it was found.

"Wal, now, me, I call Louis's hittin' that hoss a plumb miracle!" exclaimed an American engagé, Illinois Joe, so called because he was always talking about the glories of that State. "To my certain knowledge that there is the fust time Louis ever come nigh hittin' what he aimed to kill!"

The men resumed their work, and my uncle went to the camp with us. We unloaded the boss ribs and picketed our horses, Pitamakan rubbing some marrow grease into the wound of his animal. I then told my uncle that I thought that we could not possibly guard the men from sudden surprise by the enemy.

"You will do the best you can, and that is all I ask from you," he answered. "From now on, one of the engagés shall stand guard while the others work, and I will take a turn at it myself. You have meat up there? Take a team and wagon and bring it in."

We had the meat in camp by two o'clock; then my uncle advised us to ride out upon discovery. As Pitamakan's runner would be of no service for some time to come, I borrowed Is-spai-u and let him have my fast horse. We could, of course, have ridden the scrub horses of the engagés, but did not care to trust our lives to their slow running in case we should be surprised by a war party.

Is-spai-u was a horse with a history. Four summers before, in the spring of 1861, a war party of seven of the Pikuni, led by One Horn, a noted warrior and medicine man, had gone south on a raid with the avowed intention never to turn back until they had penetrated far into the always-summer land and taken fine horses from the Spanish settlers of that country. That meant a journey southward on foot of all of fifteen hundred miles and an absence from us of at least a year. They chose to go on foot because they could thus most surely pass through that long stretch of hostile country without being discovered by the enemy.

Fifty—yes, a hundred—warriors begged One Horn to be allowed to join his party, but he had had a dream in which the Seven Persons, as the constellation of the Great Bear was called, had appeared and advised him what to do, and he would take only six men. Each one of the six was a man of proved valor and intelligence.

The summer passed and the winter. One Horn and his party were to return in the Moon of Full-Grown Leaves, but they came not. With the appearance of the Berries-Ripe Moon they were long overdue, and some said that without doubt their bones were whitening on the sands of the grassless plains far to the south. Still, hoping against hope, the old medicine man prayed on for them at setting of the sun, and all the people prayed with him.

It was in the Moon of Falling Leaves—October—that we in Fort Benton noticed a lone horseman fording the river and wondered who he could be. Then we saw that it was One Horn. He approached the gate, mournfully calling over and over the names of his six companions; and we knew that they were dead, and the women set up a great wailing for them. When he rode slowly into the court we thought that we had never seen so thin and careworn a man; he was just bones covered with wrinkled skin, and across his breast was a tightly drawn bandage of what had evidently been his buffalo-leather leggings.

We were so painfully struck with his forlorn appearance that we did not at first notice the horse he rode; but when he slipped from it and staggered into the outstretched arms of the crying women, Antoine, the stableman, stepped up to it to lead it away, and he cried out, "See, my frien's, dis horse so beautiful!" We almost cried out with him. The animal was shining black and in good flesh, clean-limbed, of powerful build, gentle and proud.

"A thoroughbred, if ever there was one!" said my uncle, who was standing beside me. "Unquestionably of Andalusian stock!"

Tsistsaki had One Horn carried into our quarters and a robe couch made up for him. A woman brought in some soup hot from her hearth, but he would take only a few sups of it. My uncle cut away the bandage round his breast and disclosed a jagged wound several inches long, partly healed, but badly discolored and suppurating at the lower end.

"It was all healed over, then it got bad again," One Horn whispered.

My uncle shook his head. "Mortification has set in; I fear there is no hope for him," he said in English to Tsistsaki and me.

Then he carefully washed the wound, medicated it, and put a clean, soft bandage upon it.

When the wounded man awoke that evening, my uncle asked him to tell us his adventures on the long south trail.

We thought that he was never going to answer, so long did he stare straight up at the roof; but finally he said, so low that it was with straining ears that we heard him: "Far Thunder, Tsistsaki! My words shall be few. We went far into the country of the Spanish white men and came upon a camp of plains people and in their herds of good horses saw the horse that I rode here to-day. We raided that camp and took many horses, among them the black, Is-spai-u, as I have named him. We got safe away from that camp. But then—oh, my friends! through my fault my companions died. I was in great hurry to get back here. I would not heed the warnings of my dreams. I took chances. Through a rough country I led my men in the daytime when I should have traveled at night. We were seen by the enemy, but saw them not. They made ready for our coming and suddenly rode out at us. My companions fought bravely, killed many and were themselves killed. I was wounded, but because I was upon this black horse I escaped. So swift was he that none of the enemy could overtake me. At first my wound was very bad; then it got better, and I took courage. I said to myself that I would return to this south country with all the warriors of the Pikuni and avenge the death of my companions. Then my wound got steadily worse. Far Thunder, my wound is killing me. No, don't deny it; you know it as well as I do. From the time you and I first met we have been friends. You have been good to me. Now we part. This night I am going upon the long trail to the Sand Hills. I give you the black horse. You must promise me always to keep him. You promise? That is good! North and south, east and west, he is the swiftest, the most tireless horse on all the plains. I know that you will be good to him. I can talk no more."

Nor did he ever speak again. He soon became unconscious and died before midnight.

Now, my Uncle Wesley was a great sportsman and loved more than anything else the excitement of a buffalo run with a good horse under him, a bow in his hand, and a quiver full of arrows at his back. "You can have your rifle and your six-shooters for the chase," he would often say, "but the bow for me. While you are fooling away time reloading your weapons, I shall be slipping arrows into good, fat cows!"

Several months after the death of One Horn, a herd of buffaloes drifted into the upper end of the bottom and gave him a chance to try Is-spai-u. Word spread that my uncle was going to run the buffaloes, and when he rode out from the fort all the men followed him who had horses or could borrow them. I shall not go into the details of that run, but will simply say that when it ended twenty-seven buffaloes lay strung along the plain with my uncle's arrows in them! It was the best run ever made in the whole Northwest, so far as was known, and the success of it was owing more to the swiftness and endurance of Is-spai-u than to the skill of my uncle with the bow. The reputation of the black horse was established. Through visiting Kootenay Indians it spread to all the west-side tribes, the Kalispels, Nez Percés, and Snakes. When bands from the Blackfoot tribes came into the fort at different times in order to trade, the first request of the chiefs and warriors was for a sight of the wonderful animal.

In time our