two charming girls that we know of--and who shall say how
many more?--was enjoying as much happiness as ever fell to any man in
the capacity of ardent sportsman. He had joined the duke and his party
at St. Louis, and from there they had gone "well away from anywhere," as
he said in describing his adventures to Mr. Heathcote. He had at last
reached the ideal spot of all his wildest imaginations and most
cherished hopes,--"the wild part,"--really the great prairies, about two
hundred miles west of the Mississippi and east of the Rockies. The dream
of his life was being fulfilled. He related, in a style not conspicuous
for literary merit, but very well suited to the simple annals of the
rich, how, having first procured guides, tents, ambulances,
camp-equipage, they had pushed on briskly to a military fort, where,
having made friends with "a pleasant, gentlemanly set of fellows," the
commanding officer, "a friendly old buffer," had courteously given them
an escort to protect them from "those dirty, treacherous brutes, the
Indians." Not a joy was wanting in this crowning bliss. The guide was "a
wonderful chap named Big-Foot Williams, so called by the Indians, good
all around from knocking over a rabbit to tackling a grizzly," with an
amazing knowledge of woodcraft, "a nose like a bloodhound, an eye as
cool as a toad's." No special mention was made of his ear; but the first
time he got off his horse and applied it to the earth, listening for
the tramp of distant hoofs in a hushed silence, one bosom could hardly
hold all the rapture that filled Mr. Ramsay's figurative cup up to the
brim. And the tales he told of savageness long drawn out were as dew to
the parched herb, greedily absorbed at every pore. A portrait of "Black
Eagle," a noted chief, was given when they got among the Indians,--"a
great hulking slugger of a savage, awfully interesting, long, reaching
step, magnificent muscles, snake eye, could thrash us all in turn if he
liked. The best of the lot."

Even the noble red man was not insensible to the charms of this
graceful, handsome young athlete who smiled at them perpetually and
said, "_Amigo! amigo_!" at short intervals,--a phrase suggested by the
redoubtable Williams and varied occasionally by a prefix of his own,
"_Muchee amigo_!" The way in which he tested the elasticity of their
bows, inspected their guns, the game they had killed, the other natural
objects about them, aroused a certain sympathy, perhaps. At an