For two days we camped among the Paint Rocks, studying them, but could find nothing that indicated battle or fighting. Neither did we find any dead, nor graves, nor even bones. If, like the Crows, they buried in the trees, the last trace was gone. There were no mounds of earth, or indications of earth burials. The rocks were mostly covered with likenesses of nude men, women, and children, and with emblems. In places the artist evidently stood on some elevation of wood or stone, for the carving was higher than the average man could reach. Along a crest of sandstone I saw some very odd formations; they looked like huge inverted cones, that some giant sculptor had carved there. Perhaps they were formed by the erosion of centuries, or it may have been the wear caused by the rubbing of the buffaloes, for we found many of their bones there, and I have often seen telegraph poles rubbed to the breaking point. When the buffalo is annoyed by buffalo gnats and his great coat is filled with mud and sand, he soon wears away a pretty strong pole. This was a strange place, and in our search we found geodes, petrified snakes, and short sections of fish. We also found several petrified jaw-bones, of what looked to be wolves, still containing the teeth, and fossils of many kinds. Some looked like vegetables, some were hexagonal, and some looked as though made of floor tiling. We found many water and moss agates of various sizes. The ground was covered with some meteoric rock full of iron. Here we passed the day hunting for some graves, but it was no use. Tree burial seems to have been their method of disposing of the dead. In this method of burial the body is taken to some low bushy tree, rolled in fine robes and blankets, and with green strips of elk hide, wrapped to two or more limbs. This secures it very firmly, and as the sun and wind dry out the skin the thongs tighten, until only years of sun and rain, mice and bugs, eat away the thongs, and the blankets, bones, and skins are carried away by the wind. In this method of burial the body lasts about twenty years or less. We were tired and hungry when we returned to camp, but we soon had a blazing fire with all the odors of good things on the breeze. Just as we sat down to eat, I heard a horse's footfall, and turned to see who it was. A young brave rode into the trail, and I caught up my gun. His hands went up like a flash giving me the sign of a Crow. As all the hunters and trappers in the west, north and south of the Yellowstone River, know the Crows to be peaceful, I put up my gun and gave him the sign that I understood what he said. Young braves are always the very hardest members of the tribe to engage in conversation, except a young girl of marriageable age. Both do all their courting by making eyes at each other. I knew him. He was a chief's son. Years before I had got some papers to Washington for his father. Also I knew he could talk some broken English and Crow, and was a superb sign talker.