"What, boys," he said, "will you be simple enough to camp here, alongside these springs? Nothing good ever came of sleeping here, I tell you, and the worst kind of devils are in those dancing waters."
"Why, old hos," cried La Bonté, "what brings you hyar then, and camp at that?"
"This niggur," answered Rube solemnly, "has been down'd upon a sight too often to be skeared by what can come out from them waters; and thar arn't a devil as hisses thar, as can 'shine' with this child, I tell you. I've tried him onest, an' fout him to clawin' away to Eustis,[3] and if I draws my knife agin on such varmint, I'll raise his hair, as sure as shootin'."
[3] A small lake near the head waters of the Yellow Stone, near which are some curious thermal springs of ink-black water.
Spite of the reputed dangers of the locality, the trappers camped on the spot, and many a draught of the delicious sparkling water they quaffed in honour of the "medicine" of the fount. Rube, however, sat sulky and silent, his huge form bending over his legs, which were crossed, Indian fashion, under him, and his long bony fingers spread over the fire, which had been made handy to the spring. At last they elicited from him that he had sought this spot for the purpose of "_making medicine_," having been persecuted by extraordinary ill luck, even at this early period of his hunt,--the Indians having stolen two out of his three animals, and three of his half-dozen traps. He had, therefore, sought the springs for the purpose of invoking the fountain spirits, which, a perfect Indian in his simple heart, he implicitly believed to inhabit their mysterious waters. When the others had, as he thought, fallen asleep, La Bonté observed the ill-starred trapper take from his pouch a curiously carved red stone pipe, which he carefully charged with tobacco and kinnik-kinnik. Then approaching the spring, he walked three times round it, and gravely sat himself down. Striking fire with his flint and steel, he lit his pipe, and, bending the stem three several times towards the water, he inhaled a vast quantity of smoke, and, bending back his neck and looking upwards, puffed it into the air. He then blew another puff towards the four points of the compass, and emptying the pipe into his hand, cast the consecrated contents into the spring, saying a few Indian "medicine" words of cabalistic import. Having performed the ceremony to his satisfaction, he returned to the fire, smoked a pipe on his own hook, and turned into his buffalo robe, conscious of having done a most important duty.