CHAPTER V.
WINNEBAGO LAKE--MISS FOUR-LEGS.
Our encampment this night was the most charming that can be imagined.
Owing to the heavy service the men had gone through in the earlier part of the day, we took but a short stage for the afternoon, and, having pulled some seven or eight miles to a spot a short distance below the "little Butte," we drew in at a beautiful opening among the trees.
The soldiers now made a regular business of encamping, by cutting down a large tree for their fire and applying themselves to the preparing of a sufficient quantity of food for their next day's journey, a long stretch, namely, of twenty-one miles across Winnebago Lake.

Our Frenchmen did the same.

The fire caught in the light dry grass by which we were surrounded, and soon all was blaze and crackle.
Fortunately the wind was sufficient to take the flames all in one direction, and, besides, there was not enough fuel to have made them a subject of any alarm.

We hopped upon the fallen logs, and dignified the little circumscribed affair with the name of "a prairie on fire." The most serious inconvenience was its having consumed all the dry grass, some armfuls of which, spread under the bear-skin in my tent, I had found, the night before, a great improvement to my place of repose.
Our supper was truly delightful, at the pleasant sunset hour, under the tall trees beside the waters that ran murmuring by; and when the bright, broad moon arose, and shed her flood of light over the scene, so wild yet so beautiful in its vast solitude, I felt that I might well be an object of envy to the friends I had left behind.
But all things have an end, and so must at last my enthusiasm for the beauties around me, and, albeit unwillingly, I closed my tent and took my place within, so near the fall of canvas that I could raise it occasionally and peep forth upon the night.
In time all was quiet.

The men had become silent, and appeared to have retired to rest, and we were just sinking to our slumbers, when a heavy tread and presently a bluff voice were heard outside.
"Mr.Kinzie! Mr.Kinzie!" "Who is there?
What is it ?" "I'm Krissman; didn't you mean, sir, that the men should have any liquor to-night ?" "Of course I did.