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Maybe we fill out our map on the drainages to the south. Whatta you say, Captain?”
    Smith watched through the spyglass again. Despite the fact that he carried a Bible, which would have been considered a signof weakness in another man, he was thought to be the bravest and most reliable captain in all the west. We waited for his verdict.
    Smith collapsed the glass, unpicketed his horse, and said, “Guns on the pommel. We see anything we don’t like, we make a dash for the hills.” Then turning to Pegleg: “And if you meet any squaws they don’t come back to camp.”
    “Of course,” he grinned. “Won’t take long for Old Peggy.”
    In that region the higher elevations were tree-covered but the flatlands were scrubby and arid, and as we moved down the slopes we emerged out of the tree cover and onto barren hills. The natives did not change their bearing or speed when we showed ourselves. We rode on down to the flats and a brigade of French trappers, riding down the same slopes, veered when they saw us and joined our party. We all went on together, fifteen of us now, and eighteen horses. We rode across a salt pan and onto alkali flats where there were many white-rimmed pools of clear water with black pollywogs and translucent water bugs wriggling inside. We reached the small ridge that had blocked our view of the gathering and when we crested we saw, spread out beneath us, at least two hundred white-skinned lodges with fires in front and smoke racks set up, and Ferris, who could tell the natives from their accoutrements, scanned the gathering, and said, “Crow, Mandan, Hidatsa. Even a few Gros Ventre, I think.”
    On the north side we saw what we thought were white trappers around two large fires, entirely unmolested by the natives.
    “Ain’t no war party,” Pegleg said. “Got the whole Indian nation here.”
    We picketed our horses, and for the next three hours Ferris and I wandered through the encampment, Ferris sketching arrowheads and moccasins and shields and dresses. We met or at least saw many of the famous native chieftains from that time—Raven’s Beak, who was carried around like a pharaoh on a wicker chair, and Long Hair of the Mountain Crow, whose hair, when it was unwound, reached eleven feet and was like a bridal veil. We saw Red Elk for the first time, a Blackfoot leader who was traveling with the Gros Ventre. Ferris thought there must be some temporary truce if Red Elk was in that encampment surrounded by his enemies, and I made a point of studying the man, as he was known in the mountains as being the most clever and savage of the native chieftains.
    Red Elk was five foot eight and stocky rather than lithe, with no native artistic flourishes on his body. He carried a wooden cudgel and a Northwest trade gun and was accompanied by eight or ten arrogant men, who paraded and bragged and jostled their way through the other natives, but I noticed Red Elk was reserved in manner, and rarely spoke unless he was spoken to. He struck me as a cautious, stern man, not given to sociability or jesting, and mostly avoided by the other natives.
    By mid-afternoon we’d left the encampment, and all the men, native and trappers alike, had spread out in an enormous ring around some white, clayey hills. Ferris, Pegleg, Bridger, and I were waiting with a mulatto named Moses Branch, who had wintered with the Crow and had casually agreed to sign on with our brigade as a translator, trapper, and scout.
    Branch was six foot three and all sinew and muscle, a marvelous physical specimen. He dressed like a native with feathers dangling from his beaded hair, but he spoke in a half-cultured St. Louis accent, and could read and write better than most of the men.
    As we waited, Branch twirled and caught his Sheffield knife and threatened to roast a weasel that Bridger was trying to temptfrom its den. I sat back on an elbow and recorded my observations. Ferris sketched.
    After an hour idling, there was a high keening from the