in the ribs had been poisoned good, I'd smear that over the meat on the outside. Generally I'd try to kill my buffalo close to where I was goin' to camp, and after I had put out my baits I went to camp and slept until near day. Then, before I could see, I'd get up, cook my breakfast, hitch up, if I had a team, and go round to all my baits. Likely, around each one I'd find my half dozen to fifteen wolves, and sometimes it would take me two or three days to skin them. Likely enough, if the weather turned right cold, I got a good many more wolves than I could skin, and had to stack them up, and wait till I got time. It was mighty hard work now, and don't you forget it. Then, too, there was always a chance that Indians might come along and make trouble for me. You take a man out on the prairie, ten years ago, and even the friendly Indians were likely to scare him a whole lot, or take his hides, even if they didn't take away his gun and his horses. As for the hostiles, if they got too close to a man it was all up with him. But I never had no trouble with them, except once, and then I was camped in the dug-out, with plenty of provisions, and there was only three of the Indians. I saw them comin', and suspected who they were, and managed to get my horses into the dug-out with me and stood 'em off. They scared me bad though.

"I should think so," said Jack.

The man stopped talking to fill his pipe and after he had lighted it puffed thoughtfully. Then he continued: "There's another way I've wolfed it, and that is by draggin' a bait over quite a scope of country, and droppin' pieces of poisoned meat along the trail. I used to do that when I couldn't find animals to kill for bait. This worked pretty well for awhile but it's no good any more down in that country."

"I've seen coyotes killed by putting poisoned tallow in auger holes, bored in chunks of wood," said Jack.

"Yes," said the man, "that's good sometimes, and they stay there lickin' and lickin' up the bait until they die right there. You don't have to look over much country to find your wolves."

"What kind of meat did you use when you were dragging the bait?" asked Jack.

"Most any kind would do," replied the wolfer; "sometimes it would be a piece of buffalo meat, sometimes a shoulder of a deer, but the best bait of all is a beaver carcass; there's lots of grease and lots of smell to that, and the wolves and coyotes are sure to follow it. This draggin' a trail is good too, because the wolves, when they go along and snap up the poisoned bait, don't go off, but keep right on followin' the trail, and you find them there, maybe quite a long way from where they pick the bait.

"Where are you goin', young fellow; you and that old man I see you talking with?"

"We're going up to Benton," said Jack, "and I don't know where we're going from there. I expect we'll meet a friend there, with our horses, and then we're going to make a trip, off maybe on the prairies, and maybe into the mountains; we can't tell yet."

"Sho," said the man, "you're sure goin' to have a good time. I've got to get a job when I get to Benton; somethin' that'll keep me until it comes time for fur to get good."

The next morning when Jack and Hugh left their stateroom a heavy fog hung low over the river and the boat was not moving, but was tied up to the bank, for it was so thick that there was danger of running aground on the frequent sand-bars, and as the river was now falling, the captain was unwilling to take the chance of such delay. On the lower deck was a dug-out canoe, the property of a temporary passenger, who was going only to Fort Berthold, and, after breakfast, Jack suggested to Hugh that they should borrow this canoe and go off a little way up the river, taking their guns, and seeing whether they could kill anything. Hugh said this could not be done, explaining that it would be easy enough to get lost, which would be bad for them, and very irritating to the captain, who might feel it necessary to wait for them; and besides this, the fog might lift at any moment, when the boat would move onward much faster than they could paddle. As it happened, the fog lifted almost immediately, and the boat set forward; and a little before noon the village of the Rees, Gros Ventres and Mandans, high up on the bluff above the river, was seen; and soon after the boat tied up, and all hands went ashore.

The bluff rose steeply from the river, and up and down its face were steep trails, worn by the feet of women passing up and down as they carried water and the driftwood which they gathered, up to the village. On the top of the bluff stood the bee-hive shaped gray houses, which Hugh told Jack were much like those occupied by the Pawnees.

They began to climb the bluff toward the village, and Jack asked Hugh about the Indians who lived here.

"In old times," said Hugh, "these Indians were scattered out up and down the river. The Gros Ventres lived furthest up, between here and Buford, and the Rees and Mandans lived further down the stream. A long time ago,—back maybe more than a hundred years,—the Rees and the Mandans all lived together, away down below here; but then they had some sort of a quarrel among themselves, and the Mandans moved on up the stream, and for a long time camped near the mouth of the Knife River. For a while after that there was some fighting between the Rees and Mandans, but after a time they made peace, and gradually the tribes came together again; and now for a long time they've all lived together in this village of Berthold. In old times each of these villages was a big one, but since the white men came among them, and brought smallpox, and liquor, and all the other things that the white men bring, they are dying off fast, and I don't believe that now there is more than eight or nine hundred of these Indians all together. You know these Rees here are kind of kin to the Pawnees; they speak near the same language, so that I can talk with 'em, and they call the Pawnees their relations. I think they used to be a part of the Skidi band. Nobody knows just when they separated from the Pawnees, but it must have been a good while ago."

Hugh paused, and Jack asked: "Does any one know how they came to separate, Hugh? Is there any tradition about it?"

"Yes," said Hugh, "there is. The old story is that all the Pawnees were out hunting, and the Sioux got around some of 'em, and cut 'em off from the rest and kept fighting 'em, and driving 'em, and fighting and driving, until they got 'em away up on the Missouri River, so far from their friends that they had to winter there. Then, along back, maybe about 1830, soon after the beginning of the fur trade on the upper river, the Rees fought the white folks, and were generally hostile. After that they went back and joined the Pawnees, but they couldn't get along well with the Pawnees, and quarreled with them, and finally the Pawnees drove 'em off. So they came on back up the river. It was after that that they joined the Mandans, and they've lived together ever since."

By this time they had reached the top of the bluff, and were now close to the houses, on whose curious domed roofs many people were sitting,—women busy with their work, young men wrapped in their robes, and looking off into the distance, and little girls playing with their dolls or their puppies. The ground in the village all about the houses was worn bare by the passage of many feet; Indians were going to and fro, women carrying water and wood, men naked, or wrapped in their summer sheets, little boys chasing each other, or, with their ropes trying to snare the dogs, which were usually too cunning for them.

Jack was greatly interested in the houses, and wished to look into one, and to this Hugh said there would be no