Near and nearer drew the dreaded figure, and the stallion, if capable of such an emotion, must have felt the chill of despair creeping through his frame. But it was useless to fight against fate, and he put forth no further effort, even when the pursuer drew up alongside, and, repeating his remarkable bound, once more dropped astride the perspiring body. Deerfoot now changed his treatment of the exhausted stallion. Instead of speaking sharply and beating his heels against his sides, he patted his neck, rubbed a palm gently down its side and uttered soothing expressions. It was hardly to be expected that the brute would understand this, for it was all new and strange to him, but the fiercest wild animal instinctively knows the difference between brutality and kindness. Something within the horse responded to these advances, and by and by he dropped to a walk and made no effort to unseat or harm his rider. Deerfoot’s wish was to return to his friends, for they must have been left many miles to the rear, and, though they were quite likely to follow him, they must still be separated from him by a long distance. He therefore tried to turn the stallion the other way. This proved harder than he anticipated. He first drew the nose around, but the animal kept going straight on as before, even with his head awry. Then the youth slipped to the ground, placed himself in front of his charge, and flung up his arms. The stallion stopped, made a motion as if to bite him, and then, frightened by his own temerity, paused. Still he refused to change his course. The Shawanoe was working patiently when the horse turned to one side, pricked up his ears and started off at a trot. The youth suspected the meaning of this action: the brute had scented water, of which he must have felt the need, and was hurrying to it. Instead of remounting Deerfoot ran ahead of the animal, and glancing over his shoulder to make sure he was followed, broke into a lope which he accommodated to the speed of his pursuer. The youth was right in his supposition. Not far in advance, in a slight depression of the prairie, he caught the gleam of water, marking where a small tributary of the North Fork flowed from the mountainous regions on the west. Increasing his speed, the Shawanoe reached the water first, and, stooping down, drank his fill of the clear current, which still retained much of the coolness of the elevated regions whence it came. The stallion broke into a faster gait as he drew near, and pushed his nose into the stream beside the youth and drank his fill. It was odd, when he had finished, to see him raise his head, with the current dripping from his frothy mouth, and look earnestly at the youth. Had he been gifted with the power of speech he probably would have said: