and the sound is deadened! Ay, there they go on
the hard earth! And now they come up the swell, dead upon us; they will
be here afore you can find a cover!"

"Come, Ellen," cried the youth, seizing his companion by the hand, "let
us make a trial for the encampment."

"Too late! too late!" exclaimed the trapper, "for the creatur's are
in open view; and a bloody band of accursed Siouxes they are, by their
thieving look, and the random fashion in which they ride!"

"Siouxes or devils, they shall find us men!" said the bee-hunter, with
a mien as fierce as if he led a party of superior strength, and of a
courage equal to his own.--"You have a piece, old man, and will pull a
trigger in behalf of a helpless, Christian girl!"

"Down, down into the grass--down with ye both," whispered the trapper,
intimating to them to turn aside to the tall weeds, which grew, in a
denser body than common, near the place where they stood. "You've not
the time to fly, nor the numbers to fight, foolish boy. Down into the
grass, if you prize the young woman, or value the gift of life!"

His remonstrance, seconded, as it was, by a prompt and energetic action,
did not fail to produce the submission to his order, which the occasion
seemed, indeed, imperiously to require. The moon had fallen behind a
sheet of thin, fleecy, clouds, which skirted the horizon, leaving just
enough of its faint and fluctuating light, to render objects visible,
dimly revealing their forms and proportions. The trapper, by exercising
that species of influence, over his companions, which experience
and decision usually assert, in cases of emergency, had effectually
succeeded in concealing them in the grass, and by the aid of the feeble
rays of the luminary, he was enabled to scan the disorderly party which
was riding, like so many madmen, directly upon them.

A band of beings, who resembled demons rather than men, sporting in
their nightly revels across the bleak plain, was in truth approaching,
at a fearful rate, and in a direction to leave little hope that some one
among them, at least, would not pass over the spot where the trapper
and his companions lay. At intervals, the clattering of hoofs was borne
along by the night wind, quite audibly in their front, and then, again,
their progress through the fog of the autumnal grass, was swift and
silent; adding to the unearthly appearance of the spectacle. The
trapper, who had called in his hound, and bidden him crouch at his