shly-arrived Yankee!

Then there were those east who said, "You will soon tire of the West."
They, also, were mistaken. An invalid, with shadowy form and trembling
limbs, when I left New England, I awakened to a new life in Minnesota.
"Take a gun on your shoulders, kill and eat the wild game of the
prairies," said my medical friends. I anticipated vicissitude and
deprivation in following such counsel; but these toughened my weak
frame, and added zest to frontier labors and pleasures; for I was soon
able to do a man's share of the former, and in threading forest and
prairie I was brought into delightful nearness to nature in its
beauty, freshness, and magnitude, and in visiting the lodge of the
Indian and the cabins of the settlers I met with plenty of adventure.

In writing this work, I have, with peculiar interest, lived over the
scenes and incidents of my varied frontier experience; have travelled
once more amid the waving grasses and beckoning flowers; heard again
the bark of the wolf, and the voices of birds; felt on my brow the
kiss of the health-giving breeze; worshipped anew in the log-cabin
sanctuary. Yes, East and West are both dear to me. One fittingly
supplements the other. Each holds the ashes of kindred. By a singular
providence, since this tale was completed, a much-loved relative, one
of the gentlest and most self-sacrificing whose presence ever
glorified the earth, has found a resting-place in the bosom of the
very prairie I had in mind while penning these pages. Sent west by
physicians to save her life, she reached that spot in time to die,
thus attaching my heart to that soil by another and sorrowful tie.

That East and West may be bound together by love, as well as by
national and commercial relations, and that this story may tend in its
humble way to so happy a result, is the earnest wish of

THE AUTHOR.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE
I. The Pioneer Family.--A Spirited Chase. 9
II. Shooting Double.--A Frontier Doctor. 23
III. Where Can He Be?--A Heart Revelation. 35
IV. A Brush With Indians.--A Black Heart. 47
V. Brother Smith and Quarter Stakes. 65
VI. Mrs. Jones's Story.--The Gray Wolf. 79
VII. A Sabbath on the