Thus matters had stood for some days when one evening, as Mrs. Noble and Miss Gardner were preparing for the night’s rest, Roaring Cloud, a son of Inkpaduta, entered. The captives suspected that trouble was at hand and anxiously waited to see what form it might take. Roaring Cloud had no sooner entered than he ordered Mrs. Noble out of the tent. She refused to comply. Enraged, he grasped her by one arm and with his other hand seized a stick of wood which happened to be close by. Dragging her out of the tepee, he struck her three or four heavy blows on the head, thus ending her life. On the following morning, as the squaws were breaking camp, the warriors gathered about the dead body and amused themselves by shooting arrows into it. That the Indians with their remaining captive now journeyed well into the range of the buffalo is evidenced by the testimony of Mrs. Sharp who said that they “crossed one prairie so vast and so perfectly devoid of timber, that for days not even a hazel-brush, or a sprout large enough for a riding-whip could be found.” As they “attained the more elevated points the scene was really sublime. Look in any direction, and the grassy plain was bounded only by the horizon.... The only things to be seen, except grass, were wild fowls, birds, buffalo, and antelope. The supply of buffalo seemed almost as limitless as the grass. This was their own realm, and they showed no inclination to surrender it, not even to the Sioux.”[307] Within two days after the killing of Mrs. Noble the Indians crossed the James somewhere near the mouth of Snake Creek and encamped a short distance to the south of the site of the present town of Ashton. Not far removed was a permanent camp of about one hundred and ninety lodges of Yankton Sioux. The arrival of the white captive created a stir in the Yankton camp. Their great curiosity was probably due to the fact that she was the first white person that many of them had ever seen. Her hair and skin were examined with intense admiration. “No sooner was one company out of the _teepe_ (sic) than others came; and so they kept it up from morning until night, day after day”.[308] The excitement over the white captive had scarcely died away when it was renewed by the arrival of the three Indian emissaries from the Yellow Medicine, who came garbed in civilized attire, “coats and white shirts, with starched bosoms.”[309] They had taken up Inkpaduta’s trail at Lake Madison and had closely followed it all the way without overtaking the band.