Here was, indeed, a cheerful guide for two lone voyagers through the uninhabited wilds!  Saddles and I made up our minds, however, to accept the inevitable gracefully, and at nine o’clock the next morning the boats were lashed into the wagon, and the retired physician, with two of his men on horseback, accompanied by Saddles and myself on foot, slowly left the clearing, and defiled along an almost undefined trail through the forest.  I noticed that the men were well armed, and all on the alert.  Occasionally one of the men would be sent off to the right or left to search for cattle signs, but our guide himself hung close to the wagon, seeming to consider prudence the better part of valor.

Opening the conversation with this quondam physician, I asked his opinion in regard to several well-known remedies, and discovered that he used but three.  The best medicine, he said, was calomel, the next quinine, and what they would not cure, GLAUBER’S salts would.  In fact, he considered salts the specific for all diseases.  Leading gently to the subject, I spoke of his nephew’s death, when he assured me the cruel deed had been done by a settler named Bridekirk, who had squatted upon some land belonging to the young man, and though the intruder never had it conveyed to him by government, he considered it his own.  Anxious to protect his nephew’s interest, the physician took up the claim, and moved his family to the disputed territory.  “Bridekirk,” he said, “swore my nephew should never live on what he called his claim, and a short time afterwards took his revenge.  I had sent the boy for a spur I left at a neighbor’s, and when just outside my fence a man who was concealed in a thicket shot the poor fellow.  I know it was the devil Bridekirk who did it.”

“Did you find his trail?” I asked.

“No,” he answered; “we could not pick it up.  It was all stamped out.  No one could recognize it, but I know Bridekirk was the assassin. lie threatened my life too; but he’s dead now.”

“Dead!” I exclaimed; “when did he die?”

“Oh, about a week ago.  He lived a few miles from here, and one morning somebody shot him in his doorway.”

“Who could have done that?” I inquired.

A savage gleam lit up the physician’s eye, as he said, slowly: 

“My wife’s nephew had some relation in a distant state, and it was reported they would see that Bridekirk got his deserts.”

“They came a long way to take their revenge,” I remarked.

“Yes, a very long way,” he answered; and then added:  “This Bridekirk would have been arrested for stealing my cattle if he had lived a week or two longer.  Me and a neighbor was out looking up our cattle round here, not long ago, and we saw there were a good many fresh burns in the woods, and as we knew that cattle would go to such places to nibble the fresh grass that starts up after a fire, we set out for a big burnt patch.  While we were