Numerous camp-fires surrounded the wagons, and near them lounged wild-looking mountaineers, easily distinguished from the "greenhorn" teamsters by their dresses of buckskin and their weather-beaten faces. Without an exception, these were under the influence of the rosy god; and one, who sat, the picture of misery, at a fire by himself--staring into the blaze with vacant countenance, his long matted hair hanging in unkempt masses over his face, begrimed with the dirt of a week, and pallid with the effects of ardent drink--was suffering from the usual consequences of having "kept it up" beyond the usual point, paying the penalty in a fit of "horrors"--as _delirium tremens_ is most aptly termed by sailors and the unprofessional. In another part, the merchants of the caravan and the Indian traders superintended the lading of the wagons or mule-packs. They were dressed in civilized attire, and some were even bedizened in St. Louis or eastern city dandyism, to the infinite disgust of the mountain men, who look upon a "bourge-way" (bourgeois) with most undisguised contempt, despising the very simplest forms of civilization. The picturesque appearance of the encampment was not a little heightened by the addition of several Indians from the neighboring Shawnee settlement, who, mounted on their small active horses, on which they reclined rather than sat in negligent attitudes, quietly looked on at the novel scene, indifferent to the chaff in which the thoughtless teamsters indulged at their expense. Numbers of mules and horses were picketed at hand, whilst a large herd of noble oxen were being driven towards the camp--the _wo-ha_ of the teamsters sounding far and near, as they collected the scattered beasts in order to yoke up. As most of the mountain-men were utterly unable to move from camp, Luke and La Bonté, with three or four of the most sober, started in company, intending to wait on Blue, a stream which runs into the Caw or Kanzas River, until the "balance" of the band came up. Mounting their mules, and leading the loose animals, they struck at once into the park-like prairie, and were speedily out of sight of civilization.