This Indian was lost—something that has rarely happened. No Indian could use a compass if he had one, and he wouldn't if he could—not the real Indian of the days of General Custer, Buffalo Bill and a few others. Indian instinct beats any mechanical contrivance man has invented for white sailors, hunters, explorers and lumber cruisers.

But the full-blood of this story was lost and was bleating like a sheep away from its flock, and just as timid and gentle. A lost Indian, and a proud, high cheek-boned, breech-clouted, bronzed specimen, too; six feet tall in his moccasins—hungry, unarmed, footsore, tribeless.

He came into the camp of the wagon train at Bedtick Creek not far from the site of the deserted and famous overland stage station run by Jules Slade, whose life was saved by his wife, who rode 200 miles on a horse from Julesburg to a gold camp in Montana just in time to stop the lynching being conducted by the Vigilantes.

And the day the Lost Indian was found was Christmas, a time when every man—plainsman and mountaineer, far from civilization and living in the open, as well as those toasting their shins at comfortable firesides in snug homes in "God's country"—has a sense of something mysteriously elevating in his soul.

Everyone in the frost-bitten bunch of overland freighters knew his program for the day was to have no change so far as the bill of fare of bacon, beans and venison was concerned, and everyone thought it was pretty good; but there was to be no Christmas tree or happy children—no church services or anything else—everyone was contented, nevertheless, and surely full of the spirit of the day, though far out of reach of anything that would give the slightest flavor to a proper celebration, even informally.

The breakfast had been disposed of, the tin dishes washed and plans made for a full day's rest for man and beast, for it was also Sunday, and the wagon boss, old Ethrop, while loaded down with revolvers and bowie knifes, was of a religious turn and was known as "The Parson."

Far away to the south, across a rolling plain, was the blue-white outlines of Laramie Peak. A long way this side, according to the eagle-eye of Farley, driver of the lead team, something was winding a crooked course toward camp. It was a mere dark object reflected against the snow-covered surface, but when viewed through a field glass was plainly discernible—it was a man, all agreed; but with the glass in Farley's hands it was a buck Indian.

So the boys watched and waited for an hour, and finally the Lost Indian was within hailing distance and stopped, circled and began to close in. Farley waved him to come on, and as insurance of friendliness went through the ceremony of placing a rifle in its sling on the side of a prairie schooner. Then the Lost Indian came forward at a trot and landed at the camp-fire.

Between grunts, motions and words on the part of the Lost Indian, and as many from several plainsmen, none of which seemed to be clearer than Hottentot, this was, in simple language, the story told by the Lost Indian at Bedtick Creek:

"Five moons ago, while at White River, where the Great Father has begun to issue rations of beef on the foot to every head of a Sioux tepee. I gave the Mountain Fox seventeen beaver pelts, a bale of buckskins, twelve obsidian arrow points, one lame calico pony, a pipestone peace-pipe, some kinnickinnic and an iron oven, found after the soldiers left a camp at Clear Creek, and eleven bone buttons for the hand of his second oldest daughter. This was all of my fortune, except one saddle pony, a pack pony, one lodge-pole tepee and poles, four buffalo robes, a coil of telegraph wire [stolen from the Overland], several hair-braided halters, a lariat and my private store of scalps, none of which I took myself, but which had been inherited from my father, a sub-chief known as the Hawk, a brave man whose bones are now dry in an elevated grave near the fast-running creek known to the whites as Ten, but which in Sioux is Wickachimminy. This, with my bows and arrows and a Spencer rifle, for which I had no ammunition, with my moccasins, a breech-clout and jerked meat to last one moon, was all I had—not much, but enough—and I was happy with my bride.

"After the sun had risen and set three times Mountain Fox came to my tepee and said I must give him still another horse, two blankets (which I did not have and could not get), and which he said I had promised.

"In our Sioux nation we never kill—that is, we do not kill Sioux. No Sioux has yet killed a Sioux, and few Sioux have ever called another of our tribe a liar. I called him a liar. He made a sign of anger and a loud noise of distress. My bride, on his command, left the tepee with him, telling me that under Sioux law, which I knew to be right, that the contract had not been filled until one moon had elapsed and all members of both families had smoked in celebration. What did I do? I rode away in the night toward the tracks where the Iron Horse runs, twenty days away, going and coming, to get from a white man's corral a horse and perhaps the blankets. This was while the grass was still green.

"I found the horse and the blankets and a gun; also food in cans. But I found in a large bottle what I had heard of, but never tasted before. After the first sun had set I stopped at Dry Canyon, which is never dry, but full of roaring water, and there I drank nearly all from the bottle. What I did then I only remember as a dream, but I saw in my dream my bride and I wept. My pony and the horse I found in the white man's corral at the trail of the Iron Horse, with the blankets and the food in cans, and I—Big Jaw—waded Dry Canyon Creek, which I say was wet, for nearly a day and left no trail. I drank more of the white man's poison and then camped without a fire.

"When the next sun came up I was ill and drank lots of water. Then came six men from the corral at the trail of the Iron Horse, and they bound my hands with small chains, tied me to my pony and took me back to the trail of the Iron Horse, where I was kept in a log house with iron windows until one night it burned, and I was taken out by the white man in charge, who, three moons ago, blindfolded me, put me on a horse and took me to another corral on the trail of the Iron Horse and locked me in a large tepee made of stone, where they fed me well and gave me medicine.

"Then I was, one moon ago, put to work in a forest to chop trees, and I ran away.

"Have you seen my bride—she of the hair as black as a starless night and teeth as white as the wing of a dove?

"Oh, white man, tell me, have you seen her? I am a lost sheep—the trail is covered to my eyes, with which I have wept almost constantly all the moons I have been away. Have you seen her I seek? I am hungry, not in my stomach, but in my breast and in my head; I must feast or die!"

Then he wept like a child.

"Crazy," said Rawhide Robinson.

"As a loon," added Parker, the night herder.

"Give him a pull at the Parson's bottle in the medicine chest," suggested the Kid, as he gave the fire a stir under a pot of bean soup.

"No," said the Parson, as he rode up on a mule and was told the story—"no liquor, boys. Feed him up and well let him trail back with us to Cheyenne and to the asylum. Poor cuss, he loved the squaw and he's clean daffy, but hasn't a bit of Injun left in him."

And so the Lost Indian, with a broken heart, brain tortured, went back to the asylum—a child of the plains who bought his wife, but loved her for all that. For the Sioux, while selling their daughters, never sold them unless there was real evidence of true love.

And while Big Jaw stole to make good his bargain, wasn't his deed an act of old-time knighthood after all?

Moreover, his undoing was not so much because of his own delinquency as it was that of the white man's invention—whisky—that brought about his downfall.

A thief, yes; a red-skinned, uncivilized wild man of the plains and the mountains. But can we classify him with the civilized white man who commits a crime?

If the Lost Indian did not recover and win his bride in civilization's regulation way, perhaps it is just as well; and let us hope he is an angel in the Happy Hunting Ground.