As he came up he took my hand with a strong, hearty grasp, and inquired what was wanted. His uncle explained matters, adding that I was well acquainted with some of his Indian friends who had visited him a short time before, and was going back to the same people. After some deliberation he said that the whites had lied about him and he did not like to talk to them; some of the Indians had disobeyed his instructions and trouble had come of it, but as I was sent by Washington and was a friend of his friends, he would talk with me. He was hunting now, but if we would come to his camp that night he would tell us about his mission. With another hand-shake he left us, and we drove on to the nearest ranch, arriving about dark. After supper we got ready and started across country through the sagebrush for the Paiute camp, some miles away, guided by our Indian. It was already night, with nothing to be seen but the clumps of snow-covered sagebrush stretching away in every direction, and after traveling an hour or more without reaching the camp, our guide had to confess that he had lost the trail. It was two years since he had been there, his sight was failing, and, with the snow and the darkness, he was utterly at a loss to know his whereabouts. To be lost on a sage plain on a freezing night in January is not a pleasant experience. There was no road, and no house but the one we had left some miles behind, and it would be almost impossible to find our way back to that through the darkness. Excepting for a lantern there was no light but what came from the glare of the snow and a few stars in the frosty sky overhead. To add to our difficulty, the snow was cut in every direction by cattle trails, which seemed to be Indian trails, and kept us doubling and circling to no purpose, while in the uncertain gloom every large clump of sagebrush took on the appearance of a wikiup, only to disappoint us on a nearer approach. With it all, the night was bitterly cold and we were half frozen. After vainly following a dozen false trails and shouting repeatedly in hope of hearing an answering cry, we hit on the expedient of leaving the Indian with the wagon, he being the oldest man of the party, while the rest of us each took a different direction from the central point, following the cattle tracks in the snow and calling to each other at short intervals, in order that we might not become lost from one another. After going far enough to know that none of us had yet struck the right trail, the wagon was moved up a short distance and the same performance was repeated. At last a shout from our driver brought us all together. He declared that he had heard sounds in front, and after listening a few minutes in painful suspense we saw a shower of sparks go up into the darkness and knew that we had struck the camp. Going back to the wagon, we got in and drove straight across to the spot, where we found three or four little wikiups, in one of which we were told the messiah was