He exhorted them, therefore, to keep
upon the alert, and never to remit their vigilance while within the
range of so crafty and cruel a foe. All these counsels were lost upon
his easy and simple-minded hearers. A careless indifference reigned
throughout their encampments, and their horses were permitted to range
the hills at night in perfect freedom. Captain Bonneville had his own
horses brought in at night, and properly picketed and guarded. The
evil he apprehended soon took place. In a single night a swoop was made
through the neighboring pastures by the Blackfeet, and eighty-six of the
finest horses carried off. A whip and a rope were left in a conspicuous
situation by the robbers, as a taunt to the simpletons they had
unhorsed.
Long before sunrise the news of this calamity spread like wildfire
through the different encampments. Captain Bonneville, whose own horses
remained safe at their pickets, watched in momentary expectation of an
outbreak of warriors, Pierced-nose and Flathead, in furious pursuit
of the marauders; but no such thing--they contented themselves with
searching diligently over hill and dale, to glean up such horses as
had escaped the hands of the marauders, and then resigned themselves to
their loss with the most exemplary quiescence.
Some, it is true, who were entirely unhorsed, set out on a begging visit
to their cousins, as they called them, the Lower Nez Perces, who inhabit
the lower country about the Columbia, and possess horses in abundance.
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