attled as loudly on the baked
ground as if it were a plank floor. The reflection of the fire in the
distance still threw a lurid glare over the extended heath. As the
smoke gradually ascended, objects could be discerned at a great
distance, and occasionally a half-roasted deer or elk, was seen
plunging about, driven to madness by its tortures. And frequently they
found the dead bodies of smaller animals that could find no safety in
flight.

"What's that?" cried Joe, reining up his pony, and gazing at a huge
dark object ahead.

"A prize, to which we are justly entitled!" exclaimed Glenn, riding
forward, on discovering it to be the buffalo (now dead) that they had
fired upon early in the evening, and which circumstance he was
relating to Boone at the moment of the discovery by Joe.

"You have not only been lucky as hunters," said Boone, as they
dismounted to inspect the animal, (which was an enormous bull,) "but,
what is extraordinary indeed, when you find your fallen game, it is
already cooked!"

"Huzza for us!" cried Joe, momentarily forgetting the Indians, in his
extravagant joy of having aided in killing the animal, and at the same
time leaping astride of it.

"The wolves have been here before us," observed Boone, seeing a large
quantity of the buffalo's viscera on the ground, which he supposed had
been torn out by those ravenous animals.

"Oh! oh! oh! oh!" exclaimed Joe, leaping up, and running a few steps,
and then tumbling down and continuing his cries.

"What has hurt the fellow so badly?" inquired Glenn, walking round
from the back of the animal to the front. The words were scarcely
uttered before he likewise sprang away, hastily, as he beheld a
pronged instrument thrust from the orifice in the body whence the
bowels had been extracted!

"Dod! I wonder if it's wolves or Injins!" exclaimed a voice within the
cavity of the huge body.

"I've heard that voice before--it must be Sneak's," said Boone,
laughing heartily.

Now the buffalo was observed to quiver slightly, and after some
exertion to extricate himself, the long snake-like form of the
redoubtable "Hatchet-face" came forth and stood erect before the
gaping mouth and staring eyes of Joe.

"If I didn't hear a white man speak, I wish I may be singed!"
exclaimed Sneak, wiping the moisture from his face, and rolling his
eyes round.

"What did you stick that sharp thing in the calf of my leg for?"
demanded Joe, shaking his head threateningly and c