In the shimmering mirage of the west they saw the silhouettes of mountains -- the wigwam, and far away the dim trembling outline of Scottsbluff.

And glad to see the beginning of their native element -- the mountains -- they sent reverberating up to the silent sky, the shrill and plaintive cry of the coast tribe Indians. They broke into a run -- down into and out past the shadows of the grove, and on, until their bronzed figures danced and shivered and shimmered in the glare of the setting sun.

A few days later Reuleau, a trapper, saw one of them at the mouth of the Laramie, and saw him depart onward into the west. What happened to the other no one knows, and no white man knows if this one ever reached his people.

FORTS AT THE LARAMIE

We should remark more fully of Jebediah Smith, the great, great uncle of Airs. C. P. Calhoun, as he passed through the Scotts Bluff country in 1823, with General Ashley, in that he and his party of wilderness men were the first white men over the link of the Overland Trail from Salt Lake valley to California. This was accomplished in 1826.

While on the Santa Fe Trail in 1831, he was killed by Comanches, and the firm of Smith Jackson & Sublette was dissolved. It was then that William Sublette and Robert Campbell became partners in transportaion and fur enterprise.

In 1834. Mr. Campbell accompanied Sublette to the mountains. The route taken was the cut off from Fort Osage to "Great Island," which had become considerable in use in the two years previous.