And the names of Chiefs--Mad Wolf, Spotted Eagle, Two Axe, Rain-in-the-Face--they were as from some unwritten western Iliad. [Illustration: _Nebraska Landscape, with Prairie Fire._] But I return to the sketch-book. Indeed it has made imagination wander. The second sketch in the book is a view near the Missouri River. It is looking westward and shows a Nebraska landscape with a prairie fire. The scene is, indeed, a very different one from what the place would present today. A great prairie fire is sweeping across the plain and the dense whirling mass of smoke, driven before the wind, and the principal feature of the sketch, overshadows with its darkness a far-reaching landscape of low, rolling hills, clumps of trees and a winding stream, in which, however, there is not a sign of human life visible. The stream is a small one, probably the Blue Creek, or it may be the Vermilion, or, perhaps, the Shell. Which one of these I have really forgotten. And the margin, too, is unmarked. Now that region is covered with villages and farms and the smoke is from the chimneys of homes where prosperity and modern comforts are to be found. The sketch shows a wilderness, so great is the change wrought since that day it was made. "The O'Fallen's Bluffs." The third sketch is a hasty one. The sky and the river--the slow-flowing Platte, are responsive to the light of a golden sunset. The brilliant rays come from behind the huge, square, sedimentary cliffs, and which throw a shadow across the foreground. The main interest in the scene, however, is not that given by nature, but in the presence of man. It shows our long train of wagons--how slightly sketched--coming down from the bluffs, and winding toward the radiance along the dusty road. And so--we had made a start! We had unraveled, a few at least, of the mysteries attendant upon the management of cattle; we could yoke and unyoke; we knew the effects of "gee" and "haw," and could then throw four yards of black-snake whip with a skill and force that made its buckskin "cracker" explode with a noise like the report of a pistol. We knew, with tolerable accuracy, the moment when to apply, to let off the brake, the degree of modulation in the voice that would enable the intelligent oxen to understand just how much to swerve to the right or the left. We were fast becoming teamsters, "bull-whackers;" theory had given place to practical knowledge, and, moreover, we were not only becoming experts upon the road, but also in those many bits of untellable knowledge needed to make bearable the discomforts of camp-life.