The brave (for as yet Jean was ignorant of even the name of his companion) professed to be acquainted with the prairie thereabouts, and led them half a mile to an island in a moist hollow, which had not been touched by the conflagration; and here they all supped on the jerked meat which Jean chanced to have with him, all game being effectually frighted away. There is no need of following them on their journey, which was generally in the neighborhood of the Missouri, for the sake of the deer and buffalos which had fled for refuge to the wooded ravines and valleys intersecting the banks, the young squaw and child riding, while the men walked at her side. Not far from the mouth of the Teton river they parted company, Jean to proceed to the station of the American Fur Company, and Ta-his-ka to rejoin his tribe, the former insisting on the horse being retained for the use of the young mother, whose slender frame had begun to waste away under a continuance of fatigue and excitement, for which the peculiar nature of her former life, so different from that of ordinary Indian girls, had rendered her totally unfit. There Jean learned for the first time the name of the chief—one long familiar to his ears—and the events already narrated. He had not been more than a week at the company’s fort, when, with marks of the deepest grief and rage stamped on his countenance, Ta-his-ka presented himself before him; the child lay mutely in his arms, but no squaw—where was she? “Ee-ohk paze!” (dark-dead,) was the laconic answer, but accompanied by a twitching of the mouth-corners, which showed how the fierce spirit was moved. It seemed that the numerous enemies jealousy of his fame and power had created among the Sioux, had taken advantage of the White-buffalo’s prolonged absence, to spread the most injurious and unfounded reports of his deeds, and growing bolder by degrees, asserted openly that Ta-his-ka had abandoned his tribe, delivered up the warriors who followed him to the knives of the Pawnees, and, won over by their gifts and promises, become a Pawnee himself. Thus when the chief re-appeared, he was charged before the council of braves with treachery of the most abhorrent kind, and his Pawnee wife cited as a proof of their accusations; and but for his well-remembered strength and resistless fortune, which no one cared to dispute, even his proud and indignant denial would scarcely have delivered him from his former companions on the war-path.