How many of these detested brutes we killed I cannot say, but we did not leave off until our hands had become powerless from exhaustion, and our tomahawks were so blunted as to be rendered of no use.  When we left the scene of massacre, we had to pass over a pool of blood ankle-deep, and such was the howling of those who were not quite dead, that the deer and elk were in every direction struggling to rise and fly[26].  We had been employed more than four hours in our work of destruction, when we returned to the camp, tired and hungry.  Roche had picked up a bear-cub, which the doctor skinned and cooked for us while we were taking our round to see how our proteges were going on.  All those that had been brought up to the water-hole were so far recovered that they were grazing about, and bounded away as soon as we attempted to near them.  My stag was grazing also, but he allowed me to caress him, just as if we had been old friends, and he never left the place until the next morning, when we ourselves started.

[Footnote 26:  The prairie wolf is a very different animal from the common wolf and will be understood by the reader when I give a description of the animals found in California and Texas.]

The doctor called us for our evening meal, to which we did honour, for, in addition to his wonderful culinary talents, he knew some plants, common in the prairies, which can impart even to a bear’s chop a most savoury and aromatic flavour.  He was in high glee, as we praised his skill, and so excited did he become, that he gave up his proposal of the “Gold, Emerald, Topaz, Sapphire, and Amethyst Association, in ten thousand shares,” and vowed he would cast away his lancet and turn cook in the service of some bon vivant, or go to feed the padres of a Mexican convent.  He boasted that he could cook the toughest old woman, so as to make the flesh appear as white, soft, and sweet as that of a spring chicken; but upon my proposing to send him, as a cordon bleu, to the Cayugas, in West Texas, or among the Club Indians, of the Colorado of the West, he changed his mind again, and formed new plans for the regeneration of the natives of America.

After our supper, we rode our horses to the lake, to water and bathe them, which duty being performed, we sought that repose which we were doomed not to enjoy; for we had scarcely shut our eyes when a tremendous shower fell upon us, and in a few minutes we were drenched to the skin.  The reader may recollect that, excepting Gabriel, we had all of us left our blankets on the spot where we had at first descried the prairie was in flames, so that we were now shivering with cold, and, what was worse, the violence of the rain was such, that we could not keep our fire alive.  It was an ugly night, to be sure; but the cool shower saved the panting and thirsty animals, for whose sufferings we had felt so much.  All night we heard the deer and antelopes trotting and scampering towards the