n their posts, while a few were still
sitting up, bending over their fires, as they smoked their pipes and
talked over the events of the day.

"Well, Dick, since you wish it, I'll begin," said Obed. "You remember
the worthy Delaware who came to our tent and persuaded me to accompany
him? He proved himself a trusty guide and companion. The rest and food
he got with us restored his strength, and we set off at good speed. We
were fortunate in killing several turkeys and prairie-hens, so that we
were able to husband our dried pemmican, at the same time that we fed
sumptuously. Very often I thought about you when we were making good
way, and I wished that you were with us. We were anxious, of course, to
push on before the cold weather set in, for we knew then that we should
have difficulties enough to contend with. We had to be on our guard
also against enemies of all sorts--red-skin Dacotahs and Pawnees,
grizzly bears, rattlesnakes, and wolves; still my companion, from his
long experience of their habits, was well able to take precautions
against them. I, all the time, was anxiously looking out for traces of
my family, but we had from the first got out of their track, and we met
no one from whom we could make any inquiries. We always rose with the
sun, and travelled on all day as long as our strength held out; but from
weariness, or from the fear of not finding fit camping-ground, we
sometimes had to stop an hour or two before sunset. We had done so on
one occasion near a stream, whose steep banks sloped away down below us.
While I lighted a fire, put up a wigwam, and prepared food, work to
which the Delaware had an especial dislike, as it is always performed by
women among the Indians, he, taking his rifle, went out along the bank
of the stream to try and kill a wild turkey or two to supply the place
of one I was about to cook. He was making his way onward, pushing aside
the boughs with the barrel of his weapon, when up started, not five
yards from him, an old grey she-bear, accompanied by three or four
half-grown cubs. He started back to be able to make use of his rifle,
but before he could bring it to his shoulder, the old bear sprang upon
him, and with a blow of her paw knocked his rifle out of his hand. Had
that blow struck his back he would instantly have been killed, and I
should have been left alone in the desert. I saw my friend's danger,
but could do nothing to help him, for if I fired I was as likely