ozen lives would be sacrificed, if required, to save that of a guest.
In sacrificing himself for Roche, the Comanche considered that he was
doing a mere act of duty.

CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT.

We had now entered a track of land similar to that which we had
travelled over when on our route from the Wakoes to the Comanches. The
prairie was often intersected by chasms, the bottoms of which were
perfectly dry, so that we could procure water but once every twenty-four
hours, and that, too, often so hot and so muddy, that even our poor
horses would not drink it freely. They had, however, the advantage over
us in point of feeding, for the grass was sweet and tender, and
moistened during night by the heavy dews; as for ourselves, we were
beginning to starve in earnest.

We had anticipated regaling ourselves with the juicy humps of the
buffaloes which we should kill, but although we had entered the very
heart of their great pasture-land, we had not met with one, nor even
with a ground-hog, a snake, or a frog. One evening, the pangs of hunger
became so sharp, that we were obliged to chew tobacco and pieces of
leather to allay our cravings; and we determined that if, the next day
at sunset, we had no better fortune, we would draw lots to kill one of
our horses. That evening we could not sleep, and as murmuring was of no
avail, the divine entertained us with a Texian story, just, as he said,
to pump the superfluous air out of his body. I shall give it in his own
terms:--

"Well, I was coming down the Wabash River (Indiana), when, as it,
happens nine times out of ten, the steam-boat got aground, and that so
firmly, that there was no hope of her floating again till the next
flood; so I took my wallet, waded for two hundred yards, with the water
to my knees, till I got safe on shore, upon a thick-timbered bank, full
of rattle-snakes, thorns of the locust-tree, and spiders' webs, so
strong, that I was obliged to cut them with my nose, to clear the way
before me. I soon got so entangled by the vines and the briars, that I
thought I had better turn my back to the stream till I should get to the
upland, which I could now and then perceive through the clearings opened
between the trees by recent thunder-storms. Unhappily, between the
upland and the little ridge on which I stood there was a wide river
bottom [see note 1.], into which I had scarcely advanced fifty yards,
when I got bogged. Well, it took me a long while to get ou