CROW HORSE-.THIEVES.



to camp, accompanied only by a Frenchman named C-abe-
neau; thus proving himself an efficient mountaineer at
twenty years of age.
   1831. As soon as the spring opened, sometime in-
March, the whole company started north again, for the
Blackfoot country. But on the night of the third day out,
they fell unawares into the neighborhood of a party of
Crow Indians, whose spies discovered the company's
horses feeding on the dry grass of a little bottom,I and
succeeded in driving off about three hundred head. Here
was a dilemma to be in, in the heart of an enemy's coun-
try! To send the remaining horses after these, might be
"sending the axe after the helve ;" besides most of them
belonged to the free trappers, and could not be pressed
into the service.
  The only course remaining was to select the best men
and dispatch them on foot, to overtake and retake the
stolen horses. Accordingly one hundred trappers-were
ordered on this expedition, among whom were Meek,
Newell, and Antoine Godin, a half-breed and brave fellow,
who was to lead the party.   Following the trail of
the Crows for two hundred miles, traveling day and night,
on the third day they came up with them on a branch of
the Bighorn river, The trappers advanced cautiously,
and being on the opposite side of the stream, on a wooded
bluff, were enabled to approach close enough to look into
their fort, and count the unsuspecting thieves. There
were sixty of them, fine young'braves, who believed that
now they had made a start in life. Alas, for the vanity
of human, and especially of Crow expectations! Even
then, while they were grouped around their fires, congratu-
lating themselves on the sudden wealth which had descend-
ed upon them, as it were from the skies, an envious fate,
in the shape of several roguish white trappers, was laugh-



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