hey sadly
and feelingly exclaimed.

Howe and the chief made daily excursions down the valley, in search of
wild horses, being anxious to secure each member of their party one for
riding and two for pack horses. "For," said Howe, "we will start with
good horses, and as the summer is before us, it will go hard with us,
if we do not find home before cold weather comes again."

"Before the snows again fall," said the chief, "we will not only have
found the son of the great Medicine, but will be back here, never more
to leave again."

They were successful in their hunts, and a finer set of horses never
wore a halter than those wild ones they had secured, and which twice a
day they rode round the forest, in order to tame, and accustom them to
carry burthens. They had quite a store of nuts still on hand, packed in
bags made of skins, which they lashed on one of the horses' backs; and
their jerked and dried meats, together with a quantity of salt that
they collected at the salt spring, were packed on another; as was also,
half a dozen gourd shells, and one of the kettles they had found, which
had, from the many uses to which they applied it, become a necessity.
Three or four skins according to their thickness, that had been cured
with the hair on, were tightly sewed together for a saddle with small
strings, and the whole firmly bound on the horses' back by a broad
band. By means of the leather they had been enabled to make a very good
bridle for Jane and Edward, but Howe and the chief preferred riding
with a single band or string for a halter, and this they rarely held in
their hands, but went dashing through the forest, their hands free, and
their bodies bent almost to their horses' necks.

With something like the feeling of parting with a friend, they bade
adieu to the friendly shelter that had protected them from the wet and
cold so many months; the beautiful valley with its park-like trees,
many now in bloom; and the smooth verdant sward, its ruins, the sole
links of the present with the past, and the only token left that others
had lived, known joy and sorrow, and died on a land, supposed to have
never, before the present race become its masters, known a civilized
people.

They rode gaily forth--Howe with his niece and nephew, the Indian
chieftain, the timid Mahnewe with her child, and the wild man, whom
they had christened Oudin, from a habit he had of repeating a sound
very much like the pronunciation of that word.