At length he arose, and animated by a sudden thought sought out his tepee once more.  Dang Yore Eyes greeted him with shy smiles of pride.

“Heap shoot, Jeem!” said she.  “No kill-um.  Why?”

She was decked now in her finest, ready to use all her blandishments on her lord and master.  Her cheeks were painted red, her wrists were heavy with copper.  On a thong at her neck hung a piece of yellow stone which she had bored through with an awl, or rather with three or four awls, after much labor, that very day.

Bridger picked up the ornament between thumb and finger.  He said no word, but his fingers spoke.

“Other pieces.  Where?”

“White man.  Gone—­out there.”  She answered in the same fashion.

“How, cola!” she spoke aloud.  “Him say, ‘How, cola,’ me.”  She smiled with much pride over her conquest, and showed two silver dollars.  “Swap!”

In silence Bridger went into the tepee and pulled the door flaps.

CHAPTER XXXV

GEE—­WHOA—­HAW!

Midsummer in the desert.  The road now, but for the shifting of the sands, would have been marked by the bodies of dead cattle, in death scarcely more bone and parchment than for days they had been while alive.  The horned toad, the cactus, the rattlesnake long since had replaced the prairie dogs of the grassy floor of the eastern Plains.  A scourge of great black crickets appeared, crackling loathsomely under the wheels.  Sagebrush and sand took the place of trees and grass as they left the river valley and crossed a succession of ridges or plateaus.  At last they reached vast black basaltic masses and lava fields, proof of former subterranean fires which seemingly had forever dried out the life of the earth’s surface.  The very vastness of the views might have had charm but for the tempering feeling of awe, of doubt, of fear.

They had followed the trail over the immemorial tribal crossings over heights of land lying between the heads of streams.  From the Green River, which finds the great canons of the Colorado, they came into the vast horseshoe valley of the Bear, almost circumventing the Great Salt Lake, but unable to forsake it at last.  West and south now rose bold mountains around whose northern extremity the river had felt its way, and back of these lay fold on fold of lofty ridges, now softened by the distances.  Of all the splendid landscapes of the Oregon Trail, this one had few rivals.  But they must leave this and cross to yet another though less inviting vast river valley of the series which led them across the continent.

Out of the many wagons which Jesse Wingate originally had captained, now not one hundred remained in his detachment when it took the sagebrush plateaus below the great Snake River.  They still were back of the Missouri train, no doubt several days, but no message left on a cleft stick at camp cheered them or enlightened them.  And now still another defection had cut down the train.