, up to tb
present time. Born to wealth, blessed with health, kind friends, and a college ed ucation, I might have passed my whole life in "luxurious ease, but for the restless desire of travel and adventure. Not a dis comfort had I ever known ere my depart ure from the paternal roof; and when I remembered, that now I was thousands of miles away, in an Indian camp of the wil derness, wounded nigh nnto death, unable to rise from my pallet, solely dependent upon strangers of a savage race for my existence and the few favors I received, perhaps rendered a cripple or an invalid for life, and reflected on how much I had sacrificed for this my feelings may be better imagined than described.
To what extent I was wounded I knew not for I had neglected to question Prai rie Flower on the subject and I was now too weak to make the examination myself. My head, one of my arms, and both of my lower limbs were bandaged in a rude way, and my weakness had doubtless been caused by excessive hemorrhage. From the manner of Prairie Flower and the old Indian, I was led to infer that the crisis of danger was past; but how long it would take me to recover, I had no means of as certaining, or whether I should be again blessed with C\ie use of my limbs. Per haps I might here be confined for months, and then only regain my wonted strength to find myself a cripple for life.
These thoughts pained and alarmed me, and I looked eagerly for the return of Prairie Flower, to gain the desired information. But she came not; and through sheer exhaustion, I was at last forced to drop the subject, while I strove to resign myself to such fate as He, who had preserved my existence as it were by a miracle, should, in his wise dispensation, see proper to decree.
Then my thoughts turned upon Prairie Flower. What mystery was shrouding this singular and angelic being, that she feared to be questioned regarding her his tory and tribe? Was she of the Indian race? I could not believe it. She seem ed too fair and lovely, and without the lineaments which distinguish this people from those nations entitled to the name of pale-face. Might she not be a missionary, who, blessed with great self-denial and a
desire to render herself useful while on earth, and yet too modest to avow it, had, at a tender age, gone boldly among the savages and labored zealously in her noble calling, to enlighten their dark minds and teach them the sacred truths of Christiani ty? She had admitted that all believed in the doctrines preached by the Saviour; ana though she had not openly acknowledged, she certainly had not denied, my imputa tion regarding the calling of herself and friends. This, then, was the best solution of the mystery I could invent. But even admitting this to be true that she was in reality of the Anglo-American race, and a pious instructor who found her enjoyments in what to others would have been a source of misery still it was a matter for curious research, how one of her age should have become so familiar with the language and habits of all the various tribes of the Far West and why, if she had friends, she had been permitted to venture among them alone and at the risk of her life. View the matter as I would, I found it ever shrouded with a vail of mystery and ro mance, beyond which all my speculations were unable to penetrate.
Thus I lay and pondered for several hours, during which time I saw not a liv ing soul the old Indian excepted who, having finished his pipe, sat doubled up on the ground by his smouldering fire, as mo tionless and apparently as inanimate as so much lead. Once, and only once, he raised his head, peered curiously around him for a moment, and then settled down into the previous position. Fixing my gaze upon him, and wondering what secrets of the past and his own eventful life might per chance be locked in his aged breast, I at last felt my eyes grow heavy, the old man grew less and less distinct, and seemed to nod and swim before my vision, sometimes single and sometimes double, and then all became confused, and I went off into a gentle sleep.
How long I slept I am unable to say; but an acute sense of pain awoke me; when, to my surprise, I found it already dark, and the old man bending^over me, en gaged in dressing my wounds, and applying a kind of whitish liniment of a soothing and healing nature, prepared by himself and kept oil hand for such and similar purpose*.
