During his winter sojourn among the Pawnees La Barge applied himself assiduously to learning their language. The interpreter would give him words and sentences in Pawnee and he would write them down and learn them. He practically mastered the language in the course of the winter, to the great astonishment of the natives and even of the whites. To the Indians the process of writing was a great curiosity, a “big medicine,” and when they saw young La Barge write down something and then read it off, they would put their hands to their mouths in their characteristic manner of expressing wonder. [Sidenote: THE CROW PRISONER.] There were numerous Indian scares during the winter, and Captain La Barge fully expected to see something of Indian warfare before he left the villages, but nothing of the sort actually occurred. In the spring of 1833, before he left for the Missouri, Major John Dougherty, Indian agent residing at Bellevue, about ten miles below the modern city of Omaha, arrived at the villages for the purpose of ransoming a female prisoner of the Crow nation, who had been sentenced to be burned at the stake. He prevailed, through Big Axe, chief of the Pawnee Loups, upon having her given up on payment of the ransom. He then started back with her to Bellevue, accompanied by an escort, until at a safe distance from the villages. When about ten miles on their way they were overtaken by a Pawnee chief, Spotted Horse, who came riding up at a gallop, and when opposite the woman, shot an arrow through her heart. When the high water of spring arrived the furs were loaded into bullboats and shipped down to the mouth of the Platte. La Barge returned to Cabanné’s, and after a short time started for St. Louis with a fleet of mackinaw boats loaded with furs. He reached St. Louis in the latter part of May, 1833. CHAPTER IV. CHOLERA ON THE “YELLOWSTONE.” Before La Barge arrived in St. Louis the company had dispatched two boats to the upper river--the _Yellowstone_ and the _Assiniboine_. The voyage of 1833 is particularly noteworthy as the one on which Prince Maximilian of Wied made his celebrated visit to the upper Missouri--a visit which has done more than any other one thing to preserve a true picture of those early times. The _Yellowstone_ went only as far as Fort Pierre, whence she returned immediately, and as soon as another cargo could be shipped, started on a trip to Council Bluffs. [Sidenote: CHOLERA ON THE “YELLOWSTONE.”]