not travel on foot over the dismal prairies to the villages of
the dead. Food, too, was provided, and household implements, for her use
upon this last journey.

Henry left her to the care of her relatives, and came immediately with
Shaw to the camp. It was some time before he entirely recovered from his
dejection.

CHAPTER XI

SCENES AT THE CAMP

Reynal heard guns fired one day, at the distance of a mile or two from
the camp. He grew nervous instantly. Visions of Crow war parties began
to haunt his imagination; and when we returned (for we were all absent),
he renewed his complaints about being left alone with the Canadians
and the squaw. The day after, the cause of the alarm appeared. Four
trappers, one called Moran, another Saraphin, and the others nicknamed
"Rouleau" and "Jean Gras," came to our camp and joined us. They it was
who fired the guns and disturbed the dreams of our confederate Reynal.
They soon encamped by our side. Their rifles, dingy and battered with
hard service, rested with ours against the old tree; their strong rude
saddles, their buffalo robes, their traps, and the few rough and simple
articles of their traveling equipment, were piled near our tent. Their
mountain horses were turned to graze in the meadow among our own; and
the men themselves, no less rough and hardy, used to lie half the day in
the shade of our tree lolling on the grass, lazily smoking, and telling
stories of their adventures; and I defy the annals of chivalry to
furnish the record of a life more wild and perilous than that of a Rocky
Mountain trapper.

With this efficient re-enforcement the agitation of Reynal's nerves
subsided. He began to conceive a sort of attachment to our old camping
ground; yet it was time to change our quarters, since remaining too long
on one spot must lead to certain unpleasant results not to be borne
with unless in a case of dire necessity. The grass no longer presented a
smooth surface of turf; it was trampled into mud and clay. So we removed
to another old tree, larger yet, that grew by the river side at a
furlong's distance. Its trunk was full six feet in diameter; on one
side it was marked by a party of Indians with various inexplicable
hieroglyphics, commemorating some warlike enterprise, and aloft among
the branches were the remains of a scaffolding, where dead bodies had
once been deposited, after the Indian manner.

"There comes Bull-Bear," said Henry Chatillon, as we sat on the gr