“We left the fort late in August. Each of us had a saddle horse and two pack horses. Our outfit was simple; a couple of skillets and pots, a little bedding, an Indian lodge for shelter, a couple of axes, three dozen traps, and plenty of ammunition and tobacco. Having crossed the Missouri just below the mouth of the Yellowstone, we struck out over the rolling prairie, keeping far enough back from the latter stream to head its long coulees and breaks. None of us had ever been up the Yellowstone, but we had obtained a general idea of the country from the Indians who visited the fort. On every side there were buffalo and antelopes in countless thousands, from which we could have selected a fat one for our breakfast, but there was no water, and we were as thirsty as we were hungry; so we kept wearily on towards some wooded breaks a long ways ahead, where water as well as game was sure to be found. When we got within a mile of our destination, a dozen or more horsemen suddenly rose up out of the valley and came straight at us. Our hearts sunk; it seemed as if we had jumped out of the frying pan into the fire. Our horses were played out; we could not retreat, and were preparing to dismount and fight the best we knew how when we discovered that the strangers were white men. We had never expected to meet anything but Indians in that wild country. On they came, a big, strong, broad shouldered, flaxened-haired, and blue-eyed man in the lead, riding as fine a saddle animal as I ever saw. They were now quite close; they came within a few paces and stopped.
“‘How?’ exclaimed the big man.
“‘How, how,’ we exclaimed, shaking hands with him in turn.
“‘Who are you?’ he asked, ‘free trappers?’
“‘No,’ I replied, ‘we belong to the Company. And you?’
“‘My name is Bridger,’ he said, ‘Jim Bridger. Maybe you’ve heard of me.’
“We had. There wasn’t a man west of the Mississippi river who did not know him or know of him, for he was the greatest hunter, trapper, and Indian fighter of us all. As we rode along with him and his men to their camp, we told of Indians we had seen the day before, and advised Bridger to move at once, as there was a big camp in the vicinity. He laughed, and just then we came to the edge of the valley, and, with a sweep of his hand, he said: ‘Does that look much like running?’
“It didn’t; around a number of small fires his band of white men—eighty in all, as we afterwards learned—were whiling away the time, smoking, cooking, cleaning guns, and mending clothes.
