We don't
want your horse, but when you come back you can bring us some
beads."
This we agreed to do, and the next morning we started early,
accompanied by four young Pima Indians.
During the first two days' travel from the Pima camp we saw not
less than two hundred Indians of the Ute tribe, camping the second
night within a quarter of a mile of a large village of them, but
having those Pimas with us they did not offer to molest us.
When we were approaching a village two of the Pimas would ride
ahead and tell the Utes that we were their friends. They traveled
with us four days, when we concluded we were safe and they
returned to their crowd of hunters, and we proceeded on our
journey, crossing the main divide of the Rocky Mountains at the
head of the Blue river, striking the head of the Arkansas river as
soon as we were across the main divide.
The day we crossed the divide we went into camp as soon as we were
out of the snow on the east side. That night when it was dark we
could see down the Arkansas river a great number of camp fires,
and what this all meant was a mystery to us. We knew that we were
then in the Comanche country, but we could not think that they
were up in that region so early in the season. We were both
somewhat restless that night, sleeping but very little, fearing
that these were camp-fires of the Utes, and if so we were sure to
have trouble with them before we could get out of this part of the
country.
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