of it. Occasionally there is a total failure of the
hunt, and then starvation stares them in the face. Such was the case at
the time of which we write, and the improvident habits of those people
in times of superabundance began to tell.

Many a time in spring had the slaughter of animals been so great that
thousands of their carcasses were left where they fell, nothing but the
tongues having been carried away by the hunters. It was calculated that
nearly two-thirds of the entire spring hunt had been thus left to the
wolves. Nevertheless, the result of that hunt was so great that the
quantity of fresh provisions--fat, pemmican, and dried meat--brought
into Red River, amounted to considerably over one million pounds weight,
or about two hundred pounds weight for each individual, old and young,
in the settlement. A large proportion of this was purchased by the
Hudson's Bay Company, at the rate of twopence per pound, for the supply
of their numerous outposts, and the half-breed hunters pocketed among
them a sum of nearly 1200 pounds. This, however, was their only market,
the sales to settlers being comparatively insignificant. In the same
year the agriculturists did not make nearly so large a sum--but then the
agriculturists were steady, and their gains were saved, while the jovial
half-breed hunters were volatile, and their gains underwent the process
of evaporation. Indeed, it took the most of their gains to pay their
debts. Thus, with renewed supplies on credit, they took the field for
the fall campaign in little more than a month after their return from
the previous hunt.

It is not our purpose to follow the band step by step. It is sufficient
to say that the season was a bad one; that the hunters broke up into
small bands when winter set in, and some of these followed the fortunes
of the Indians, who of course followed the buffalo as their only means
of subsistence.

In one of these scattered groups were Herr Winklemann and Baptiste
Warder--the latter no longer a captain, his commission having lapsed
with the breaking up of the spring hunt. The plains were covered with
the first snows. The party were encamped on a small eminence whence a
wide range of country could be seen.

"There is a small herd on the horizon," said Baptiste, descending from
the highest part of the hillock towards the fire where the German was
seated eating a scrap of dried meat.

"Zat is vell. I vill go after dem."

He raised hi