The reader may be able to conceive a faint idea of my situation.  I was now twenty-three years old, and this was the first time I had been in civilization since I had left St. Louis, a boy of fifteen.  Here I was, among those swell people, gorgeous in “purple and fine linen,” so to speak; ladies in silks, ruffles and quirlymacues, gentlemen in broadcloth, gold lace and importance, and I in only buckskin from head to foot.  I would have freely given everything I possessed to have been out of that, but my excuses failed utterly, and finally I went into it as I would an Indian fight, put on a bold front and worked for dear life.

I found it quite different to what I had expected Instead of making light of me, as I feared they would, each lady in the set tried to assist me all she could.

When on the floor it seemed to me that every man, woman and child were looking at me, as indeed they were, or rather at my suit of buckskin, that, worked full of beads and porcupine quills, was the most beautiful suit of its kind I have ever seen.  But it was so different from the dress of the others that it made me decidedly conspicuous.  When on the floor and straightened up I felt as if I were about nine feet high, and that my feet were about twenty inches long and weighed near fifty pounds each.

The prompter called out, “Balance all!” and I forgot to dance until all the others were most through balancing, then I turned loose on the double-shuffle, this being, the only step I knew, and I hadn’t practiced that very much.  About the time I would get started in on this step the prompter would call something else, and thus being caught between two hurries I would have to run to catch up with the other dancers.  However, with the assistance of Mrs. Elliott, the other good ladies, the prompter, and anybody else in reach, I managed to get through, but I had never gone into an Indian fight with half the dread that I went into that dance, and never escaped from one with more thankfulness.

The following morning, after bidding Col.  Elliott, his wife and all the other of my new-found friends good-bye, I started on my return to Beckwith’s ranche, perfectly willing to resign my high-life surroundings to go back to the open and congenial fields of nature and an indescribable freedom.

I found Beckwith suffering severely from an old arrow wound that he had received in a fight with the Utes near Fort Hall in 1848.

CHAPTER XIV.

Drilling the detailed scouts.—­We get among the Utes.—­Four scouts have not reported yet.—­Another lively fight.—­Beckwith makes A raise.

It was late spring when the snow began to melt, but it went away very fast when it once started.  About the first of June I wrote to Col.  Elliott that by the tenth of the month he could cross the mountains.  He did not arrive until the 20th of June, then I joined him and we started across the mountains.