We reached Plum Creek, where Edwin Phelps is stationed, about dark, and
after two long days' ride I was glad when bed time came. Ellen Kitto and
Elizabeth Winyan had come up from the Cheyenne, and I felt sure that
Elizabeth had given up her bed for me. The next morning I asked Ellen if
we could go out to some of the houses, but she said the people were all
on the other side of the river, that there was a dance there. This was a
disappointment to me, as I wanted to see the homes of the people, but
after dinner Edwin offered to take Elizabeth, Ellen and me across the
river to Cherry Creek, so that I gained rather than lost.

THE DANCE.

As we drew near the dance-house I could hear the monotonous yet rythmic
beat of the drum, and get glimpses through the door-way of the feathered
heads moving in time to the music. Outside there was a crowd of women,
girls, and young men, the young men wrapped in white sheets under which
they carry off, and make love to, the dusky maidens. This is the way a
Titon "makes love." As a recent writer describes this dance, bringing
before one only its poetry, and that which may be perhaps really
beautiful, it does not seem shocking or revolting in the least; but the
reality is simply dreadful. Not so much in itself, perhaps, though that
is bad enough, as in its influence, its consequences, all that it means
and all that it leads to.

THE CONTRAST.

Just beyond the dance house is the mission station where Clarence Ward
and his wife are; a civilized Christian family in the midst of this
heathenism.