We shall not follow the captain throughout his trapping campaign, which lasted until the beginning of June, nor detail all the manoeuvres of the rival trapping parties and their various schemes to outwit and out-trap each other.  Suffice it to say that, after having visited and camped about various streams with varying success, Captain Bonneville set forward early in June for the appointed rendezvous at the caches.  On the way, he treated his party to a grand buffalo hunt.  The scouts had re ported numerous herds in a plain beyond an intervening height.  There was an immediate halt; the fleetest horses were forthwith mounted and the party advanced to the summit of the hill.  Hence they beheld the great plain below; absolutely swarming with buffalo.  Captain Bonneville now appointed the place where he would encamp; and toward which the hunters were to drive the game.  He cautioned the latter to advance slowly, reserving the strength and speed of the horses until within a moderate distance of the herds.  Twenty-two horsemen descended cautiously into the plain, conformably to these directions.  “It was a beautiful sight,” says the captain, “to see the runners, as they are called, advancing in column, at a slow trot, until within two hundred and fifty yards of the outskirts of the herd, then dashing on at full speed until lost in the immense multitude of buffaloes scouring the plain in every direction.”  All was now tumult and wild confusion.  In the meantime Captain Bonneville and the residue of the party moved on to the appointed camping ground; thither the most expert runners succeeded in driving numbers of buffalo, which were killed hard by the camp, and the flesh transported thither without difficulty.  In a little while the whole camp looked like one great slaughter-house; the carcasses were skilfully cut up, great fires were made, scaffolds erected for drying and jerking beef, and an ample provision was made for future subsistence.  On the 15th of June, the precise day appointed for the rendezvous, Captain Bonneville and his party arrived safely at the caches.

Here he was joined by the other detachments of his main party, all in good health and spirits.  The caches were again opened, supplies of various kinds taken out, and a liberal allowance of aqua vitae distributed throughout the camp, to celebrate with proper conviviality this merry meeting.

18.

Meeting with Hodgkiss—­Misfortunes of the Nez Perces—­ Schemes of Kosato, the renegado—­His foray into the Horse Prairie—­Invasion of Black feet—­Blue John and his forlorn hope—­Their generous enterprise—­Their fate—­Consternation and despair of the village—­Solemn obsequies—­Attempt at Indian trade—­Hudson’s Bay Company’s monopoly—­Arrangements for autumn—­Breaking up of an encampment.

Having now a pretty strong party, well armed and equipped, Captain Bonneville no longer felt the necessity of fortifying himself in the secret places and fastnesses of the mountains; but sallied forth boldly into the Snake River plain, in search of his clerk, Hodgkiss, who had remained with the Nez Perces.  He found him on the 24th of June, and learned from him another chapter of misfortunes which had recently befallen that ill-fated race.