The three men rose, drew on their belts, walked hastily along the path formed by the manada through the forest, and soon disappeared under its covert. CHAPTER VI. THE CLAIM. We will now leave our three travellers for a while, and employing our privilege of narrator, transfer the scene of our story a few hundred miles away, to a rich and verdant valley of the Upper Missouri, that majestic river, with its bright and limpid waters, on the banks of which now stand so many flourishing towns and villages, and which magnificent steamboats furrow in every direction, but which, at the period when our story opens, was almost unknown, and only reflected in the mirror of its waters the lofty and thick frondage of the gloomy and mysterious virgin forests that covered its banks. At the extremity of a fork, formed by two rather large affluents of the Missouri, stretches out a vast valley, bordered on one side by abrupt mountains, and on the other by a long line of wooded hills. This valley, almost entirely covered with thick forests, full of game of every description, was a favourite gathering-place of the Pawnee Indians, a numerous tribe of whom, the Snakes, had established their abode in the angle of the fork, in order to be nearer their hunting-grounds. The Indian village was rather large, for it counted nearly three hundred and fifty fires, which is enormous for Redskins, who usually do not like to collect in any considerable number, through fear of suffering from famine. But the position of the village was so well chosen, that in this instance the Indians had gone out of their usual course; in fact, on one side the forest supplied them with more game than they could consume; on the other, the river abounded with deliciously tasted fish of every description; while the surrounding prairies were covered throughout the year with a tall close grass, that supplied excellent pasturage for their horses. For several centuries the Snake Pawnees had been settled in this happy valley, which, owing to its sheltered position on all sides, enjoyed a soft climate, exempt from those great atmospheric perturbations which so frequently disturb the high American latitudes. The Indians lived there quiet and unknown, occupying themselves with hunting and fishing, and sending annually small bodies of their young men to follow the war-trail, under the most renowned chiefs of the nation. All at once this peaceful existence was hopelessly disturbed; murder and arson spread like a sinister winding-sheet over the valley; the village was utterly destroyed, and the inhabitants were pitilessly massacred. The North Americans had at length gained knowledge of this unknown Eden, and, in their usual way announced their presence on this remote nook of earth, and their taking possession of it by theft, rapine, and assassination.