He did not relish being put in the background as a pack-horse, and accordingly, whenever we approached a stream, where the file broke up to permit each horseman to choose his own place of fording, it was, invariably the case that just as I was reining Jerry into the water, Brunet would come rushing past and throw himself into our very footsteps.

Plunging, snorting, and splashing me with water, and sometimes even starting Jerry into a leap aside, he more than once brought me into imminent danger of being tossed into the stream.

It was in vain that, after one or two such adventures, I learned to hold back and give the vexatious little animal the precedence.

His passion seemed to be to go into the water precisely at the moment Jerry did; and I was obliged at last to make a bargain with young Roy to dismount and hold him at every stream until I had got safely across.
"Kellogg's"[16] was a comfortable mansion, just within the verge of a pleasant "grove of timber," as a small forest is called by Western travellers.

We found Mrs.Kellogg a very respectable-looking matron, who soon informed us she was from the city of New York.