us. After having covered a considerable piece of ground I realized, without looking behind us, that they were missing. I told the Bow chief that I no longer saw my Frenchmen and he replied: "I will stop everyone who is in our band." I wheeled about at full speed and I discovered them at the tip of an island allowing their horses to feed. After joining them I perceived fifteen men approaching from the woods, covering themselves with their arrow quivers. There was one who was far ahead of the others, and we let them approach within half range of a rifle shot. Seeing that they were preparing to attack us, I though it well to fire several shots at them, and this obliged them to retreat hastily, this weapon being much respected by all those tribes which do not have the use of it and whose arrow quivers cannot save them from the bullets. We remained there until night, when we started out, following our instincts as to direction, in the hope of finding traces of our Indians. The prairie through which we passed is dry and barren, and the hoof prints of the horses cannot be detected. We continued our journey at random, not knowing whether or not we were on the right track. We were among the first to reach the village of the Bow tribe, arriving finally on February 9th, the second day of our return journey.
The Bow chief had hastened off to try to stop the band which had been marching with us, but they were too frightened to linger in a region so near the enemy. He was very uneasy all that night; the next day he had us circled to stop us from going further. He continued to have his people search, but they were without success. Finally he reached the village, five days after us, more dead than alive from grief at not knowing what had become of us. The first bit of news that he had received was that we had fortunately arrived the evening before the bad weather had set in, two feet of snow having
