One day, after I had ridden till I was tired, I brought the pony back to the Indian who had first come, and he asked me if I did not want to keep it.
“I would rather have that pony,” I replied, “than anything else I ever saw.”
“You may have it,” he said, “if you will go away with us.”
I told him I was afraid to go. He said he would take good care of me and would give me bows and arrows and all the buckskin clothes I needed. I asked him what they had to eat. He said they had all kinds of meat, and berries, and fish, sage chickens, ducks, geese, and rabbits. This sounded good to me. It surely beat living on “lumpy dick”[2] and greens, our usual pioneer fare.
[2] Made by cooking moistened flour in milk.
“Our papooses do not have to work,” he went on, “they have heap fun all the time, catching fish and hunting and riding ponies.”
That looked better to me than herding a bunch of sheep alone in the sagebrush. I told him I would think it over. That night I talked with old Tosenamp. The Indians had tried to get him to help them induce me to go with them. He refused; but he did tell me that they would not hurt me and would treat me all right. The next day I told them I would go.
My parents knew nothing about it. They would never have consented to my going. And it did look like a foolish, risky thing to do; but I was lonely and tired and hungry for excitement, and I yielded to the temptation. In five days the Indians were to start north to join the rest of their tribe. This Indian was to hide for two days after the rest had gone and then meet me at a bunch of willows about a mile above my father’s house after dark with the little pinto pony. The plan was carried out, as you will see. I went with them, and for two years I did not see a white man. This was in August, 1854. I was just about twelve years old at the time.
Shoshone squaws on “pinto” and “buckskin” ponies.