It is hardly worth while to say that the Irishman’s command was unheeded. The red-skin whisked away, like a flitting phantom, and almost instantly vanished. Teddy pursued him for a short distance, but he was not much of a runner, and his pursuit could not result in any thing but a complete failure. He was not given time to aim and fire his gun. His “short and decisive campaign” against the Blackfeet was a defeat! “Bad luck to that rut!” he muttered, as he made his way back to it; “it was all through that!” He groped around until he discovered the scene of his mishap, when he revenged himself by tearing and ripping the mute offender to pieces. “It was yees that saved a coward’s life!” he exclaimed, as he finished his self-imposed task, “and yees shall niver do the likes ag’in.” It may be said that it takes a hungry man to appreciate the same gnawing want in another, and so Teddy almost forgot that he had a couple of friends, something over half a mile distant, who were looking longingly for his coming. “They kin wait as well as mesilf,” he concluded, when he recalled the fact. “Thrue, I have a sooper within, and be the same towken, their sooper is without--but, then, what’s the difference?” However, he concluded that, as the night was now quite well advanced, there was no objection to his rejoining the trappers, and so he started forward. There was a moon above the tree-tops, and where the country was open he had quite a clear view for a distance of several rods; and, as he recollected very well the route taken in his hunt, there was no fear of his losing his way. As he moved along, he could see the dark line of the ridge outlined against the sky beyond, and he knew that only a short distance on the other side, his comrades were looking for his coming. Teddy had a pretty correct idea of the gastronomic capacity of his friends, and so he had loaded himself down pretty heavily with the plunder found around the Blackfoot camp-fire. All that he carried was cooked and prepared, ready for eating. He was scarcely half-way to the ridge, when he became sensible that he had a very heavy load upon his back; and, coming across a large, flat rock, he sat down upon it for a few minutes’ rest. “Begorra, if the spalpeens ate all of that, it’ll do till they raich the States ag’in. Hilloa, there!” This exclamation was caused by the sight of a man walking in a direction at right angles to his own, and only a rod or two in advance. He was walking leisurely, like some one who was returning from a wearisome hunt; and, what surprised Teddy, he was certainly a white man, rather young in years. “Hilloa, I say!” called out the Irishman, again. The stranger abruptly paused, and looked inquiringly toward him. “Well, what is it ye want?” “Who the blazes be yees?” “I don’t know as that concerns you,” replied the stranger, resuming his walk, and almost immediately disappearing in the darkness.