Squaws, animals, and peltry, all were gone--an Arapaho moccasin lying on the ground told him where. He neither fumed nor fretted, but, throwing the meat off his pack animal, and the saddle from his horse, he collected the blackened ends of the lodge poles and made a fire--led his beasts to water and hobbled them, threw a piece of buffalo-meat upon the coals, squatted down before the fire, and lit his pipe. La Bonté was a true philosopher. Notwithstanding that his house, his squaws, his peltries, were gone at one fell swoop, the loss scarcely disturbed his equanimity; and before the tobacco in his pipe was half smoked out, he had ceased to think of his misfortune. Certes, as he turned his apolla of tenderloin, he sighed as he thought of the delicate manipulations with which his Shoshone squaw, Sah-qua-manish, was wont to beat to tenderness the toughest bull meat--and missed the tending care of Yute Chil-co-thë, or the "Reed that Bends," in patching the holes worn in his neatly-fitting moccasins, the work of her nimble fingers. However, he ate and smoked, and smoked and ate, and slept none the worse for his mishap; thought, before he closed his eyes, a little of his lost wives, and more perhaps of the "Bending Reed" than of Sah-qua-manish, or "She Who Runs with the Stream"--drew his blanket tightly round him, felt his rifle handy to his grasp, and was speedily asleep. Whilst the tired mountaineer breathes heavily in his dream, careless and unconscious that a living soul is near, his mule on a sudden pricks her ears and stares into the gloom, whence a figure soon emerges, and with noiseless steps draws near the sleeping hunter. Taking one look at the slumbering form, the same figure approaches the fire and adds a log to the pile; which done, it quietly seats itself at the feet of the sleeper, and remains motionless as a statue. Towards morning the hunter awoke, and, rubbing his eyes, was astonished to feel the glowing warmth of the fire striking on his naked feet, which, in Indian fashion, were stretched towards it; as by this time, he knew, the fire he left burning must long since have expired. Lazily raising himself on his elbow, he saw a figure sitting near it with the back turned to him, which, although his exclamatory _wagh_ was loud, enough in all conscience, remained perfectly motionless, until the trapper, rising, placed his hand upon the shoulder: then, turning up its face, the features displayed to his wondering eye were those of Chil-co-thë, his Yuta wife. Yes, indeed, the "Bending Reed" had escaped from her Arapaho captors, and made her way back to her white husband, fasting and alone.