I got nearer to them--but that is a way they have, and they never grow smaller merely by being looked at; so I laid my plans for rapid movement. There was no horse or conveyance of any kind to be had from Abercrombie; but I discovered in the course of questions that the captain of the "International" steamboat on the Red River had gone to St. Paul a week before, and was expected to return to Abercrombie by the next stage, two days from this time; he had left a horse and Red River cart at Abercrombie, and it was his intention to start with this horse and cart for his steamboat immediately upon his arrival by stage from St. Paul. Now the boat "International" was lying at a part of the Red River known as Frog Point, distant by land 100 miles north from Abercrombie, and as I had no means of getting over this 100 miles, except through the agency of this horse and cart of the captain's, it became a question of the very greatest importance to secure a place in it, for, be it understood, that a Red River cart is a very limited conveyance, and a Red River horse, as we shall hereafter know, an animal capable of wonders, but not of impossibilities. To pen a brief letter to the captain asking for conveyance in his cart to Frog Point, and to despatch it-by the stage back towards St. Cloud, was the work of the following morning, and as two days had to elapse before the return stage could bring the captain, I set out to pass that time in a solitary house in the centre of the Breckenridge Prairie, ten miles back on the stage-road towards St. Cloud. This move withdrew me from the society of Fort Abercrombie, which for many reasons was a matter for congratulation, and put me in a position to intercept the captain on his way to Abercrombie. So-on the 13th of July I left Nolan's hotel, and, with dog and gun, arrived at the solitary house which was situated not very far from the junction of the Ottertail and Bois-des-Sioux River on the Minnesota shore, a small, rough settler's log-hut which stood out upon the level sea of grass and was visible miles and miles before one reached it. Here had rested one of those unquiet birds whose flight is ever westward, building himself a rude nest of such material as the oak-wooded "bays" of the Red River afforded, and multiplying--in spite of much opposition to the contrary. His eldest had been struck dead in his house only a few months before by the thunderbolt, which so frequently hurls destruction upon the valley of the Red River. The settler had seen many lands since his old home in Cavan had been left behind, and but for his name it would have been difficult to tell his Irish nationality. He had wandered up to Red River Settlement and wandered back again, had squatted in Iowa, and finally, like some bird which long wheels in circles ere it settles upon the earth, had pitched his tent on the Red River.