There were no trees on either side of the river, but this portion was walled in by bluffs, ising from three or four to fully twenty feet in height. The current was sluggish and not a breath f air wrinkled the surface on this mild summer night. It was in the wildest part of the Indian country, and Tom Hardynge, the hunter, runner and bearer of all dispatches between the frontier posts in the extreme southwest, knew very well that for three days past it had been his proverbial good fortune, or rather a special Providence, that had kept his scalp from ornamenting the lodge of some marauding Comanche or Apache.
