Could they conveniently pass the grave of a comrade who had shared the joys and tribulations of the wilderness, they would have taken some additional hazard for the privilege.

What old cowman of this country has not yisited "Boot's Graveyard," at Sidney, where sleep many of the comrades of the days of Creighton, Snodgrass, Coad, Sheedy and Robinson-- cowboys who died with their boots on, and were buried booted and spurred ready for the long ride to the "Home Ranch?"

Trappers began to take the southside route through Mitchell Pass by the Scottsbluff spring, that they might do homage to the memory of Scott. Before buffalo and Arapahoes reached the river in the annual movement to the north, the route was comparatively free from danger.

It was but a few years after the death of Scott that Captain Gant won the friendship of the Arapahoes, and their hostility to the whites for the time ceased. About the same time the hostile spirit of the Indians on the Missouri river in Dakota began to percolate through the tribes to the north. The Ogallalas and Tetons became suspicious of white people when they discovered them on friendly terms with the Arapahoes, and the result was predatory raids upon the Overland.

In April, 1831, seventy men under Zenas Leonard for Gant & Blackwell, left St. Louis, and on the first of August, arrived at the forks of the Platte. The next month was spent in the North river country between the forks and the Laramie river. The slow progress was made because of side trips hunting and trapping, on Gonneville creek, and over on Blue Water, and to L'Eau qui court, and in the chalk mountains from the present Court House Rock to Signal Buttes.