id="Page_53" class="x-ebookmaker-pageno" title="[Pg 53]"/> unravel and flaunt on the winds as wildly he dashed across the plain. There was a brutally comic side to the character of the western Indian.

A brutal side! Yes, and there was often a comic side to the white man’s fear. Well, indeed, a friend of mine has told it. Twelve young men comprised a company; two wagons and six yoke of oxen made up their outfit. That certainly was taking their risks in those perilous times! Yet they were unmolested. Once, indeed, they thought themselves at the mercy of the Sioux; as truly, in another way they were. Death and the scalping-knife appeared their lot. But it was all a hoax. What had been taken for the painted savage was but a party of whites with blankets over their heads to keep away the rain. Taking into consideration the really dangerous position of the little band, there was a tragic-farcical touch in their list of arms. My friend’s sole means of defense was a butcher-knife some six inches long.

But in a later adventure, so he told me, the farcical part was left out. That was an experience in which, if the tragedy was also wanting, there was a most severe test upon his nerves. He had left the camp, taking a fowling piece with him, and he wandered along a stream. He had just taken sight upon a skein of wild fowl, and was about to fire, when suddenly a band of Indians came from behind a bank, and in another instant the shot would have been among them. But luckily he had not pulled the trigger. However his attitude, the pointed gun made him an object of suspicion. The Indians were upon the war-path, but not with the whites just then. My friend was surrounded, and he must explain to the satisfaction of the savages who he was, and why he was there. He was finally released, however, upon proof that he was from a camp of whites near by. But all the same it was an ordeal to stand surrounded by those painted savages, scalps dangling from their pony saddles. And it was one that the actor therein would not have cared to repeat.