Two trails passed it, one east and west; the other, north and south. The former, cut deep, honest in its purpose and plainness, here crossed the latter, which was an evanescent, furtive trail, as befits a pathway to theft and bloodshed, and one made by shadowy raiders as they flitted to and from the Kiowa-Comanche country and the Pawnee-Cheyenne; only marked at intervals by the dragging ends of the lodgepoles of peacefully migrating Indian villages, and even then pregnant with danger. Other eyes than those of the prairie tribes had looked upon it, other blood had been spilled there, for distant as it was from the Apaches, and still more distant from the country of the Utes, war parties of both these tribes had accepted the gage of battle there flung down. On the rugged face of the rock itself human conceit had graven human names, and to be precise as to the date of their foolishness, had added day, month, and year. While speaking of days, months, and years it may not be amiss to say that regarding the latter division of time the caravan was fortunate. Troubles between Indians and whites developed slowly during the history of the Trail, from the earlier days of the fur trains and the first of the traders' caravans, when Indian troubles were hardly more than an occasional attempted theft, in many cases successful, but seemingly without that lust for blood on both sides which was to come later. After the wagon period begun there was a slight increase, due to the need which certain white men found for shooting game. If game were scarce, what could be more interesting when secure from retaliation by the number of armed and resolute men in the caravans, than to pot-shoot some curious and friendly savage, or gallantly put to flight a handful of them? The ungrateful savages remembered these pleasantries and were prone to retaliate, which caused the death of quite a few honest and innocent whites who followed later. The natural cupidity of the Indian for horses, his standard of wealth, received a secondary urge, which later became the principal one, in the days when theft was regarded as a material reward for killing. While they may have grudged these periodic crossings of the plains as a trespass, and the wanton slaughter of their main food supply as a constantly-growing calamity, they still were keener to steal quietly and get away without bloodshed, and to barter their dried meat, their dressed hides, their beadwork, and other manufactures of their busy squaws than to engage in pitched battle at sight. Had Captain Woodson led a caravan along that same trail twenty or thirty years later, he would have had good reason to sweat copiously at the sight of so many dashing savages.