tumble--Moaning--Stars--Light--A log fire--Tents, and something to
eat--Another stranger, who turns out to be well known--Joe has a
snack--He studies revenge against the black stump--Boone proposes a
bear hunt.


"Do you see any light yet, Joe?"

"Not the least speck that ever was created, except the lightning, and
it's gone before I can turn my head to look at it."

The interrogator, Charles Glenn, reclined musingly in a two-horse
wagon, the canvas covering of which served in some measure to protect
him from the wind and rain. His servant, Joe Beck, was perched upon
one of the horses, his shoulders screwed under the scanty folds of an
oil-cloth cape, and his knees drawn nearly up to the pommel of the
saddle, to avoid the thumping bushes and briers that occasionally
assailed him, as the team plunged along in a stumbling pace. Their
pathway, or rather their direction, for there was no beaten road, lay
along the northern bank of the "Mad Missouri," some two hundred miles
above the St. Louis settlement. It was at a time when there were no
white men in those regions save a few trappers, traders, and
emigrants, and each new sojourner found it convenient to carry with
him a means of shelter, as houses of any description were but few and
far between.

Our travellers had been told in the morning, when setting out from a
temporary village which consisted of a few families of emigrants, with
whom they had sojourned the preceding night, that they could attain
the desired point by making the river their guide, should they be at a