What I could do for him I did; it was but little. Finding his leg burning and his hand cold, I got my brandy--their whiskey was too doubtful--and laid wet rags on the leg, keeping them wet. He accepted my offices and my brandy without a sign; this was like most of them, and did not mean that he was not grateful, but only that he knew no way to say so. Laudanum alone among my few drugs seemed applicable, and he took twenty drops with dumb acquiescence, but it brought him neither sleep nor doze. More I was afraid in my ignorance to give him, and so he bore, unpalliated, what must have become well-nigh agony by midnight, when we lifted him into the wagon. So useless had I been, and his screwed-up eyes, with their valiant sparkle, and his stoic restraint, made me feel so sorry for him, that while they were making his travelling bed as soft as they could I scrawled a message to the army surgeon at the Post. “Do everything you can for him,” I wrote, “and as I doubt if he has five dollars to his name, hold me responsible.” This I gave McDonough without telling him its contents. Off they drove him in the cold, mute night; I could hear the heavy jolts of the wagon a long way. Six rocky fords lay between here and Washakie, and Scipio thus summed up the seventy-five miles the patient had before him: “I don’t expect he’ll improve any on the road.” In new camps among other mountains I now tried my luck through deeper snow, thicker ice, and colder days, coming out at length lean and limber, and ravenous for every good that flesh is heir to, yet reluctant to turn eastward to that city life which would unfailingly tarnish the bright, hard steel of health. Of Still Hunt Spring I spoke no more, but thought often, and with undiscouraged plans to visit it. I mentioned it but once again. Old Washakie, chief of the Shoshone tribe, did me the honor to dine with me at the military post which bore his name. Words cannot describe the face and presence of that old man; ragged clothes abated nothing of his dignity. A past like the world’s beginning looked from his eyes; his jaw and long white hair made you silent as tall mountains make you silent. After we had dined and I had made him presents, he drew pictures in the sand for me with his finger. Not as I expected, almost to my disappointment, this Indian betrayed no mystery concerning the object of my quest. “Hé!” he said (it was like a shrug). “No hard find. You want see him? Water pretty good, yes. Trees heap big. You make ranch maybe?”