Lies-on-Red-Hill, though rather fat, scrambled quickly out of the boat and began tumbling her bundles out upon the sand. The other women of our party now came down, and we helped my friend carry her bundles up to the camp.
As we sat by the fire, wringing and drying her moccasins, Lies-on-Red-Hill told us her story: “My husband, Short Bull, and I were hunting buffaloes. We dried much meat, which I loaded in my two boats, to freight down the river. While I paddled, Short Bull was to go along the shore with our horses. ‘We will meet at Beaver Wood,’ he said, ‘and camp.’ But I did not find him at Beaver Wood. Then ice came. I was afraid to camp alone, and tried to paddle down stream, keeping near the shore, where was no ice. More ice came, and I feared I should be upset and drown.”
It was not until afterwards, when we reached our village, that we learned why Short Bull did not meet his wife. He got to Beaver Wood ahead of her. Not finding her, and thinking she had passed him, he went on to the place where they had agreed to make their second camping. When again she did not come, he became alarmed, and returned up the river looking for her. In the morning he saw the river was full of ice. “She is drowned,” he thought. And he went on to Like-a-Fishhook village.
Lies-on-Red-Hill’s father was an old man named Dried Squash. He was fond of his daughter, and, when he heard she was drowned, he put her squash basket on his back and went through the village weeping and crying out, “Lies-on-Red-Hill, dear daughter, I shall never see you again.” He wanted to leap into the river and die, but his friends held him.
Lies-on-Red-Hill rested in our camp two days. The third morning the river was running free again, and she loaded her boats and paddled off down stream. The rest of us stayed one more day, to finish drying and packing our meat. Then we, too, loaded our boats and started down the river.
We floated with the current, and the second day sighted Stands-Alone Point, or Independence, as white men now call it. Here a party of Mandans were just quitting camp. They pushed their boats into the current and caught up with us. “We knew you were coming,” they said. “Lies-on-Red-Hill told us. She passed us yesterday.”
Our united party floated safely down until we were two miles below what is now Elbowoods. Here, to our astonishment, we found that the current was hardly running, and the water was backing up and flooding the shores. We rounded a point of land, and saw what was the matter. Ice, brought down on the current, had jammed, bridging the river and partly damming it.
Fearing to go farther, we were bringing our boats to land, when we heard the sound of a gun and voices calling to us. On the opposite shore stood two white men, waving handkerchiefs.
We paddled across and landed. The white men, we found, were traders, who had married Indian women. They had a flat boat, loaded with buffalo skins and furs. With them was Lies-on-Red-Hill. One of the traders we Indians had named Spots, because he had big freckles on his face.