But in a later adventure, so he told me, the farcical part was left out. That was an experience in which, if the tragedy was also wanting, there was a most severe test upon his nerves. He had left the camp, taking a fowling piece with him, and he wandered along a stream. He had just taken sight upon a skein of wild fowl, and was about to fire, when suddenly a band of Indians came from behind a bank, and in another instant the shot would have been among them. But luckily he had not pulled the trigger. However his attitude, the pointed gun made him an object of suspicion. The Indians were upon the war-path, but not with the whites just then. My friend was surrounded, and he must explain to the satisfaction of the savages who he was, and why he was there. He was finally released, however, upon proof that he was from a camp of whites near by. But all the same it was an ordeal to stand surrounded by those painted savages, scalps dangling from their pony saddles. And it was one that the actor therein would not have cared to repeat. [Illustration: _Laramie Peak from the Black Hills._] It did produce upon one a disturbing sensation; that knowledge, I mean, of how often the eyes of ambushed Indians might be fixed upon one. And the wild animals, too! From the distance they watched. Herds of buffalo, perhaps, or of deer, looked upon our moving train from the plateau tops. Beyond the flaming yellow sun-flowers, amid the bright red of the rocky hills, the Sioux was often concealed. His face was painted of the same gaudy colors, and he looked with blood lust upon us. We knew not when this might be; yet that it was always possible gave a sort of aspect of menace to the bluffs and hills along the way.