Colonel Kearny would not permit his train to halt where we were encamped, but he remained with us a full half hour, taking his due share of the newly made butter, and eating heartily of our poor store. It was a most pleasing break in the journey, and to me it was indeed something to be remembered, for never before had I seen or heard of such a number of soldiers so far away from the frontier. When we set off again all our teamsters pressed forward eagerly, hoping to overtake the dragoons, who had already no less than two hours' start of us. Perhaps I ought to have checked them, knowing they were forcing our stock at too rapid a pace; but yet I did not, and when next we halted thirty-two miles had been traversed since morning. This, though the way was smooth and the crossings easy, I allowed was a good day's work. It was on the twenty-sixth day of May, after we had traveled ten miles, that we came to the bank of Little Sandy River, where was already encamped a company of emigrants bound for the Oregon country. They had thirty-two wagons, and, in addition to the other stock, ninety cows, having started from Independence with a hundred. Susan Mitchell laughed with glee when we arrived at this camp and, when I asked the reason for her high spirits, told me our people could spend the evening visiting these strangers even as they visited their neighbors at home. Indeed, I saw that all the members of the company were prinking and pluming like a party of savages making ready for a war dance. Men whose clothing had been well-nigh in rags suddenly appeared decked out in finery, and as for the women and the girls, a garden of flowers could hardly have compared with them for variety of colors. DISAGREEABLE VISITORS However, our company did not spend the evening visiting the strangers; on the contrary, they were forced to entertain others, for before supper had been cooked and eaten about three hundred Kansas Indians, men, women, and children, some walking, some riding, came into camp. The emigrants whom our people had intended to visit were overrun even as we were, and during two hours or more the beggars remained watching for an opportunity to steal something, or striving to trade their skeleton-like ponies for our horses and mules. Some of the visitors were clad in buckskin, others had leggings of elk hide, with buffalo skins over their shoulders, while many wore only greasy, ragged blankets and leggings so besmeared with blood and dirt that one could not tell what the material might be. Many of the men had long hair, while the heads of others were shaved close to the skin, save for a tuft extending from the forehead over the crown and down to the neck, much like the comb of a rooster. [Illustration]