to this, that all the morning the hot sun beats upon him with sultry, penetrating heat, and that, with provoking regularity, at about four o’clock in the afternoon, a thunderstorm rises and drenches him to the skin.  Such being the charms of this favored region, the reader will easily conceive the extent of our gratification at learning that for a week we had been journeying on the wrong track!  How this agreeable discovery was made I will presently explain.

One day, after a protracted morning’s ride, we stopped to rest at noon upon the open prairie.  No trees were in sight; but close at hand, a little dribbling brook was twisting from side to side through a hollow; now forming holes of stagnant water, and now gliding over the mud in a scarcely perceptible current, among a growth of sickly bushes, and great clumps of tall rank grass.  The day was excessively hot and oppressive.  The horses and mules were rolling on the prairie to refresh themselves, or feeding among the bushes in the hollow.  We had dined; and Delorier, puffing at his pipe, knelt on the grass, scrubbing our service of tin plate.  Shaw lay in the shade, under the cart, to rest for a while, before the word should be given to “catch up.”  Henry Chatillon, before lying down, was looking about for signs of snakes, the only living things that he feared, and uttering various ejaculations of disgust, at finding several suspicious-looking holes close to the cart.  I sat leaning against the wheel in a scanty strip of shade, making a pair of hobbles to replace those which my contumacious steed Pontiac had broken the night before.  The camp of our friends, a rod or two distant, presented the same scene of lazy tranquillity.

“Hallo!” cried Henry, looking up from his inspection of the snake-holes, “here comes the old captain!”

The captain approached, and stood for a moment contemplating us in silence.

“I say, Parkman,” he began, “look at Shaw there, asleep under the cart, with the tar dripping off the hub of the wheel on his shoulder!”

At this Shaw got up, with his eyes half opened, and feeling the part indicated, he found his hand glued fast to his red flannel shirt.

“He’ll look well when he gets among the squaws, won’t he?” observed the captain, with a grin.

He then crawled under the cart, and began to tell stories of which his stock was inexhaustible.  Yet every moment he would glance nervously at the horses.  At last he jumped up in great excitement.  “See that horse!  There—­that fellow just walking over the hill!  By Jove; he’s off.  It’s your big horse, Shaw; no it isn’t, it’s Jack’s!  Jack!  Jack! hallo, Jack!” Jack thus invoked, jumped up and stared vacantly at us.

“Go and catch your horse, if you don’t want to lose him!” roared the captain.

Jack instantly set off at a run through the grass, his broad pantaloons flapping about his feet.  The captain gazed anxiously till he saw that the horse was caught; then he sat down, with a countenance of thoughtfulness and care.