ion.

Ike and Redwood both declared that they afterwards had their revenge
upon the Utahs, for the scurvy treatment they had suffered, but what was
the precise character of that revenge they declined stating. Both
loudly swore that the Pawnees had better look out for the future, for
they were not the men to be "set afoot on the parairy for nuthin."

After listening to the relations of our guides, a night-guard was
appointed, and the rest of us, huddling around the camp-fire, were soon
as sound asleep as though we were reposing under damask curtains, on
beds of down.

CHAPTER THIRTY EIGHT.

A GRAND BATTUE.

The spot we had chosen for our camp was near the edge of a small rivulet
with low banks. In fact, the surface of the water was nearly on a level
with that of the prairie. There was no wood, with the exception of a
few straggling cotton-woods, and some of the long-leafed willows
peculiar to the prairie streams.

Out of the cotton-woods we had made our camp-fire, and this was some
twenty or thirty paces back from the water, not in a conspicuous
position, but in the bottom of a bowl-shaped depression in the prairie;
a curious formation, for which none of us could account. It looked as
if fashioned by art, as its form was circular, and its sides sloped
regularly downward to the centre, like the crater of a volcano. But for
its size, we might have taken it for a buffalo wallow, but it was of
vastly larger diameter than one of these, and altogether deeper and more
funnel-shaped.

We had noticed several other basins of the same sort near the place, and
had our circumstances been different, we should have been interested in
endeavouring to account for their existence. As it was, we did not
trouble ourselves much about the geology of the neighbourhood we were
in. We were only too anxious to get out of it; but seeing that this
singular hole would be a safe place for our camp-fire--for our thoughts
still dwelt upon the rascally Pawnees--we had kindled it there.
Reclined against the sloping sides of the basin, with our feet resting
upon its bottom, our party disposed themselves, and in this position
went to sleep.

One was to be awake all night as guard; though, of course, all took
turns, each awaking the sentinel whose watch was to follow his.

To the doctor was assigned the first two hours, and as we went to sleep,
we could perceive his plump rounded form seated upon the outer rim of
the circular bank abo