"Ha! At the mouth of the Musselshell, where the steamboats will unload the trade goods almost at our doors!" I said to myself. "No! No! I protest! Not there, brothers!" cried Lone Bull, the Gros Ventre chief. "That is too dangerous a country! Last winter, during all its moons, the Assiniboins were encamped in its northern part, the valley of Little River [Milk River on the maps. So named by Lewis and Clark], and the Crows were at the same time camping in the valley of On-the-Other-Side Bear River, where they will doubtless hunt again this coming winter!" "Ha! All the more reason that we should winter there!" cried Big Lake. "We have too long neglected that part of our country. It is our plain duty to go down there and clean it of our enemies and keep it clean of them. If we fail to do so, they will be soon claiming it their very own, the gift of their gods to them." "Right you are, brother," cried Crow Foot, "and wise is Far Thunder! He could not have made a better choosing. What say you all? Is it decided that we winter down there?" "Yes! Yes!" they all answered--all but Lone Bull and his under-chiefs. "You still object to the choice?" said Big Lake to him. "I do, though I shall be there with you. My silence now is my warning to you all that you are making a mistake for which we shall pay dearly with our blood!" he answered. "Ha! Since when were we afraid of our enemies!" Calf Shirt exclaimed. So was that matter settled. White Wolf knocked the ashes from the smoke pipe, and the chiefs filed out of the lodge to go their homeward ways. As the women returned, I said to my chum, "Pitamakan, almost-brother, we are certainly going to see some exciting, perhaps dangerous times down in that On-the-Other-Side Bear River country!" "Excitement, danger, they make life," he answered. Tsistsaki, coming in, heard my remark. She turned to my uncle. "So, man mine, we go to the On-the-Other-Side Bear River country, do we? Yes? Oh, I am glad! Down there grow plenty of plums. I shall gather quantities of them for our winter use!" We went out, mounted our horses, and hurried home and to bed. That is, Tsistsaki and I did; my uncle worked all night, writing out his trade-goods orders. The steamboat men worked all night, too, unloading freight for the fort, and when I awoke in the morning the boat had left with its load of company furs. When we were eating breakfast, my uncle said to us, "Well, woman, well, youngster, we start upon a new trail now, a trail of my own making, and I feel that it is going to be a trail easy and worth blazing. All that I have in the world, about twenty thousand dollars, I am putting into the venture, and on top of that I am asking for more than ten thousand dollars' worth of goods on a year's time. Thomas, we have just got to pay that bill when it comes due, fourteen months from now, or Wesley Fox's name will become a byword in St. Louis." "We shall pay it, sir," I said.