William Hepworth Dixon, White Conquest: Volume 1

[180] wealth. She helps to dig his roots, to groom his horse, to bear his tent; and if the hunter is to sell his child, why may he not accept a White man's gold as quickly as a Red man's skins? The White man, he perceives, is strong. Once she is taken to the settler's ranch, his child will be better off than she would be in the biggest Indian wigwam. If he asks the girl, he will be told that she prefers to be a White man's squaw.

A train rolls in, and Red Dog kicks his wives, who shake their rags, and huddle to their feet. The railway company allows the Utes and Shoshoncs in these high wastes to fancy that the road is built for them, and lies under their protecting power. All Utes and Shoshones ride on the trains without payment, on the easy condition that they squat outside the carriage door. A winter night is coming on. At six o'clock the cold is thirty-seven degrees below freezing, and the wind is rising to a gale. These women have to squat all night, clinging in their sleep to rail and chain. Poor little bride! Beyond the cuffs and kisses of her savage purchaser, she will have to bear the vials of a rival being emptied on her head. To-morrow, when she quits the train, 18o