As Conrad's experiences were such as the other lad might expect, should he finally yield to the old Indian's desire, a brief account of them may be found interesting. Following the night of Conrad's capture the party travelled for two days in a westerly direction. Just at dusk on the second day they came to a small river. Here canoes were brought from hiding and all, save one Indian who swam across with the horse, paddled to the other side in the canoes. Arriving on the other bank several guns were discharged, followed by lusty yells that soon were responded to with like yells from over a wooded ridge near the river. Within a few minutes squaws and papooses came running to meet them. Though Conrad was a stolid lad his pulse quickened, for he had heard many tales of tortures inflicted by the savages. The Indian dogs snapped at his heels; the children and some of the squaws tormented him by pinching, slapping and threatening, to all of which the men paid no heed and the boy tried to appear indifferent. As they came near the village all the spectators formed in two lines, between which he was ordered to run. He was to run the gauntlet! For an instant his heart stopped beating, the next, a sharp blow from a stick set the blood inherited from a brave ancestry tingling through his veins. Lowering his head he charged, as a mad bull charges, warding off what blows he might with his sturdy arms. He was thwacked with clubs, jabbed with sharpened sticks, tripped and pommelled till it seemed that not an inch of his body escaped. One old hag threw a handful of sand in his eyes and he stumbled, but crawled the few feet remaining between where he fell and the wigwam toward which he had run. Once inside, his tormentors left him. He was so sore that he almost wished he could die. After a time he slept and thought his mother came to comfort him, but it was only a young squaw who brought him food. Then one of the men came and the boy complained of the rough treatment. The Indian said that running the gauntlet was the custom, that he had been brave and the Indians would adopt him into the tribe, and Conrad could have cried for joy, only that he was a boy who did not cry. Conrad never forgot the day he was formally adopted into the tribe. First in the ceremony was washing away his white blood and, it seemed to the boy, at least a part of his skin as well. In full view of the assembled tribe, whose ideas of modesty differed much from those of civilized people, he was stripped and led into a pool in the river and there thrust under the water and then stood upon his feet and scoured with sand. This was the most thorough scrubbing Conrad ever was to have. Life with the Vuysens had not been conducive to cleanliness and Indians in those days were not noted for bathing.