new our
strength, and kept at a wary distance from our long rifles.

To me every day brought something new, either in the incidents of the
"voyage" or the features of the landscape.

Gode, who has been by turns a voyageur, a hunter, a trapper, and a
_coureur du bois_, in our private dialogues had given me an insight into
many an item of prairie-craft, thus enabling me to cut quite a
respectable figure among my new comrades. Saint Vrain, too, whose
frank, generous manner had already won my confidence, spared no pains to
make the trip agreeable to me. What with gallops by day and the wilder
tales by the night watch-fires, I became intoxicated with the romance of
my new life. I had caught the "prairie-fever!"

So my companions told me, laughing. I did not understand them then. I
knew what they meant afterwards. The prairie fever! Yes. I was just
then in process of being inoculated by that strange disease. It grew
upon me apace. The dreams of home began to die within me; and with
these the illusory ideas of many a young and foolish ambition.

My strength increased, both physically and intellectually. I
experienced a buoyancy of spirits and a vigour of body I had never known
before. I felt a pleasure in action. My blood seemed to rush warmer
and swifter through my veins, and I fancied that my eyes reached to a
more distant vision. I could look boldly upon the sun without quivering
in my glance.

Had I imbibed a portion of the divine essence that lives, and moves, and
has its being in those vast solitudes? Who can answer this?

CHAPTER FOUR.

A RIDE UPON A BUFFALO BULL.

We had been out about two weeks when we struck the Arkansas "bend,"
about six miles below the Plum Buttes. Here our waggons corralled and
camped. So far we had seen but little of the buffalo; only a stray
bull, or, at most, two or three together, and these shy. It was now the
running season, but none of the great droves, love-maddened, had crossed
us.

"Yonder!" cried Saint Vrain; "fresh hump for supper!"

We looked north-west, as indicated by our friend.

Along the escarpment of a low table, five dark objects broke the line of
the horizon. A glance was enough: they were buffaloes.

As Saint Vrain spoke, we were about slipping off our saddles. Back went
the girth buckles with a sneck, down came the stirrups, up went we, and
off in the "twinkling of a goat's eye."

Half a score or so started; some, like myself, for the s