own craft and endurance, as well as the wonderful strength and size of his steed, they resolved to refrain from farther pursuit, but to send after the fugitives an enemy, which, with the high southern wind then blowing, must overtake them before the sun went down—a terrible messenger on the prairies, indeed—_fire_. It was already past mid-day and Ta-his-ka had repeatedly turned his face to speak encouraging words to the young wife, while with covert uneasiness he watched the volumes of pale smoke rolling up from the line of horizon far behind, and now that they had entered one of those vast luxuriant bottoms so dreaded, even by the Indians, in autumn, although nothing but the sky overhead could be perceived, through the parted tops of the tall grass and reeds, it was no longer to be hidden even from the terrified Ka-Morse, that a dimness had spread above not occasioned by clouds, and that the scent of fire grew every moment less faint and uncertain. The bottom lands to which I have referred as so pregnant with danger during conflagrations on the prairies, can scarcely be called such, as they extend for leagues, and are not to the eye sensibly lower than the greater portion of the surrounding plain; yet that there is some depression may be deduced from the frequent humidity of the soil, and the wild luxuriance of the grass, rising to the height of eight or ten feet, and matted together about the stalks with innumerable pea-vines, from which causes a horseman can pursue no other route than the trails made by the files of buffaloes, and as these are often tortuous and winding in the last degree, it sometimes occurs that Indians or traders have found themselves enclosed between these combustible hedges, turning in every direction, when the whirlwind of fire behind would leave them little prospect of escape in a straight line and on the open prairie. And in this imminent risk must we leave the fugitives, and allow Jean, now that he comes into the simple narrative as an actor, to continue the story in his own words as nearly as I can recall them. “Voilà!” cried Jean, standing up in his stirrups and reaching as high as he could with the hand, from which he had let fall his rein, “de grass was tall _comme ça_, oh, vere tall, and I could see not’ing mais smoke, smoke, and hear de rattlin’ _terrible_ ven de fire leap into de canebrake like de—what you call?—volley ob de ten thousands mousquets. Den de little deer and de big deer, and de bears, and de painters, was all runnin’ deir best to save deir hide from scorchin; and de prairie-hens drop down and rise up and drop down agen—and it was all like one big oven! _Mais—hola! j’ai oublié_ de buffalo, which was more worse dan all—he bellow and tear along on dis hand and on dat—_je la confesse_, I was vere much afraid dat a big bull would choose de trail I was in, and punce mon cheval in de hind part wid his horn!