A number of white animals, resembling a flock of sheep, passed near me. They were wolves hanging upon the skirts of the herd.
I pushed on, keeping to the southward. At length I heard voices; and, in the clear moonlight, could see several horsemen galloping in circles over the plain. I shouted “Hollo!” A voice answered mine, and one of the horsemen came galloping up; it was Saint Vrain.
“Why, bless me, Haller!” cried he, reining up, and bending from his saddle to get a better view of me, “is it you or your ghost? As I sit here, it’s the man himself, and alive!”
“Never in better condition,” I replied.
“But where did you come from? the clouds? the sky? where?” And his questions were echoed by the others, who at this moment were shaking me by the hand, as if they had not seen me for a twelvemonth.
Gode seemed to be the most perplexed man of the party.
“Mon Dieu! run over; tramp by von million buffles, et ne pas mort! ’Cr–r–ré matin!”
“We were hunting for your body, or rather, the fragments of it,” said Saint Vrain. “We had searched every foot of the prairie for a mile round, and had almost come to the conclusion that the fierce brutes had eaten you up.”
“Eat monsieur up! No! tre million buffles no him eat. Mon Dieu! Ha, Sleep-head!”
This exclamation of the Canadian was addressed to Hibbets, who had failed to warn my comrades of where I lay, and thus placed me in such a dangerous predicament.