For a moment the amazement of the two men at again beholding the lad whom they were fully persuaded was dead would neither allow them to speak nor move. Then "Billy" Brackett walked softly over to where Glen was standing, and gave one of his legs a sharp pinch.
The startled boy, who had not noticed his approach, leaped to the floor with a cry of mingled pain and surprise.
"I only wanted to be sure you were real, old man, and not a ghost," said "Billy" Brackett, trying to speak in his usual careless tone; but the tears that stood in the honest fellow's eyes, as he wrung the boy's hand, showed how deeply he was affected, and how truly he had mourned the loss of his young friend.
Nor was Mr. Hobart less moved, and, as he grasped Glen's hand, he said, "My dear boy, I honestly believe this is the happiest moment of my life."
They did not stop to ask for his story then but insisted on taking him at once out to the camp that was being pitched just beyond the fort, that the rest of the party might share their joy as speedily as possible.
The boys were so busily engaged with their evening duties that the little party was not noticed until they were close at hand. Then somebody, gazing sharply at the middle figure of the three who approached, cried out, "If that isn't Glen Matherson, it's his twin brother!"
Everybody paused in what he was doing, and every eye was turned in the same direction. For a moment there was a profound silence. Then came a great shout of joyful amazement. Everything was dropped; and, with one accord, the entire party made a rush for the boy whom they all loved, and whom they had never expected to see again.
How they yelled, and cheered, and failed to find expressions for their extravagant delight! As for Binney Gibbs, he fairly sobbed as he held Glen's hand, and gazed into the face of this comrade for whom he had mourned, and whom he once thought he hated.
Although, at first sight, it seems almost incredible that so many adventures should happen to one boy on a single trip, it must be remembered that, with the exception of Binney, Glen was the youngest of the party, and consequently more likely to be reckless and careless than any of the others. He was also one of those persons who, while everybody around them is moving along quietly and soberly, are always getting into scrapes, and coming out of each one bright, smiling, and ready for another. Then, too, he was a stout, fearless fellow, with perfect confidence in himself that led him into, and out of, situations from which such boys as Binney Gibbs would steer clear.
An amusing feature of Glen's adventures was, that while his companions were ready to sympathize with him on account of his sufferings and hardships, it never seemed to occur to him that he had had anything but a good time, and one to be remembered with pleasure. Thus, in the present instance, according to his own account, his slide down the mountain-side had been the jolliest coast he ever took. His swim in the lake had been cold, but then it had not lasted long, and he had enjoyed the fire and the warmth of the cave all the more for it. As for his subsequent experiences, he related them in such a way that, before he finished, his listeners began to regard him as one of the most fortunate and to-be-envied fellows of their acquaintance. They seemed to be crossing the Plains and mountains in the most prosaic manner, without doing anything in particular except work, while, to this boy, the trip was full of adventures and delightful experiences. Would these incidents seem so pleasant to him if he were as old as they? Perhaps not.
They were all to enjoy one novel experience that very evening, though; for Glen brought an invitation from Colonel Carson for them to attend the wedding, and of course they promptly accepted it. As it was to be an early affair, they hurried to the fort as soon as supper was over, and found the guests already assembling in a large room, from which every article of furniture had been removed. It was a motley gathering, in which were seen the gay uniforms of soldiers, the buckskin of trappers, the gaudy serapes of Mexican Cabelleros, the flannel shirts and big boots of the engineers, and the blanketed forms of stolid-faced Ute Indians, for whom Kit Carson was acting as agent at that time.
The company was ranged about three sides of the room, close against the walls; and, when they were thus disposed, a door on the vacant side opened, and a Mexican woman, bearing a large basket of candles, entered. Giving a candle to each guest, and lighting it for him, she indicated by signs that he was to hold it above his head. So the guests became living candlesticks, and, when all their candles were lighted, the illumination was quite brilliant enough even for a wedding.
Everything being ready, the door through which the candles had been brought again opened, and the bridal party entered. First came the priest, then Kit Carson and his wife, who was a Mexican woman from Taos. Behind them walked the couple who were to be married. The bride was a slender, olive-complexioned girl, dressed very simply in white, while the groom wore the handsome uniform of a lieutenant of cavalry. The rear of the procession was brought up by a bevy of black-haired and black-eyed señoritas, sisters and cousins of the bride.
The priest read the wedding service in Latin, and the bride made her responses in Spanish, so that the few English words spoken by the groom were all that most of the spectators understood. As "Billy" Brackett afterwards remarked, it was evidently necessary to be liberally educated to get married in that country.
At the conclusion of the ceremony the entire wedding-party, with the exception of the bride's father, disappeared, and were seen no more; while Colonel Carson led his guests into a neighboring room, where the wedding supper was served. Here the famous scout, surrounded by the tried comrades of many a wild campaign, entertained the company by calling on these for one anecdote after another of the adventures that had been crowded so thickly into their lives. This was a rare treat to the new-comers, especially to Glen Eddy and Binney Gibbs, to whom the thrilling tales, told by the boy trappers, scouts, hunters, and soldiers who had participated in them, were so real and vivid that, before this delightful evening was over, it seemed as though they too must have taken part in the scenes described.
In spite of the late hours kept by most of the engineers that night, their camp was broken by daylight, and at sunrise they were off on the line as usual, for September was now well advanced, and there were mountain ranges yet to be crossed that would be impassable after winter had once fairly set in. So, leaving the pleasant army post and their hospitable entertainers in it, they picked up their line, and, running it out over the broad San Luis Valley to the Rio Grande, began to follow that river into the very heart of New Mexico.
Glen was more than glad to find himself once more on Nettle's back, and again bearing the front flag in advance of the party. He was also surprised to find what a barren place the valley that had looked so beautiful and desirable from the mountains really was. Its sandy soil only supported a thick growth of sage brush, that yielded a strong aromatic fragrance when bruised or broken, and which rendered the running of the line peculiarly toilsome. It was a relief to reach the great river of New Mexico, and find themselves in the more fertile country immediately bordering on it. Here, too, they found numbers of quaint Mexican towns, of which they passed one or more nearly every day.
These were full of interest to the young explorers. While looking at their low flat-roofed houses, built of adobe, or great sun-dried bricks of mud and straw, it was hard to realize that they were still in America and traversing one of the territories of the United States. All their surroundings were those of the far East, and the descriptions in the Bible of life and scenes in Palestine applied perfectly to the valley of the Rio Grande as they saw it. The people were dark-skinned, with straight, black hair; and while the young children ran about nearly naked, their elders wore loose, flowing garments, and, if not barefooted, were shod with sandals of raw hide or plaited straw.
The square houses, with thick walls, broken only by occasional narrow unglazed windows, were exactly like those of the Biblical pictures. Inside, the floors were of hard-beaten clay, and there were neither tables nor chairs, only earthen benches covered with sheep-skins or gay striped blankets. Some of the finer houses enclosed open courts or plazas, in which were trees and shrubs. The cooking was done in the open air, or in round-topped earthen ovens, built outside the houses.
The women washed clothing on flat rocks at the edge of the streams, and young girls carried all the water used for domestic purposes in tall earthen jars borne gracefully on their heads. The beasts of burden were donkeys, or "burros," as the Mexicans call them. Grain was threshed by being laid on smooth earthen threshing-floors, in the open air, and having horses, donkeys, cattle, and sheep driven over it for hours. Wine was kept in skins or great earthen jars. The mountains and hills of the country were covered with pines and cedars, its cultivated valleys with vineyards and fruit orchards; while the raising of flocks and herds was the leading industry of its inhabitants.
At this season of the year, though the sun shone from an unclouded sky of the most brilliant blue, the air was dry and bracing in the daytime, and crisp with the promises of frost at night. It was glorious weather; and, under its influence, the second division ran a line of a hundred miles down the river in ten days. As the entire party had looked forward with eager anticipations to visiting Santa Fé, which is not on the Rio Grande, but some distance to the east of it, they were greatly disappointed to be met by a messenger from General Lyle, with orders for Mr. Hobart to come into that place, while his party continued their line south to Albuquerque, eighty miles beyond where they were.
Glen was intensely disappointed at this, for Santa Fé was one of the places he had been most anxious to visit. His disappointment was doubled when Mr. Hobart said that he must take somebody with him as private secretary, and intimated that his choice would have fallen on the young front flagman if he had only learned to talk Spanish. As it was, Binney Gibbs was chosen for the envied position; for, though he, like the rest, had only been for a short time among Mexicans, he was already able to speak their language with comparative ease.
"I don't see how you learned it so quickly," said Glen, one day, when, after he had striven in vain to make a native understand that he wished to purchase some fruit, Binney had stepped up and explained matters with a few words of Spanish.
"Why, it is easy enough," replied Binney, "to anybody who understands Latin."
Then Glen wished that he, too, understood Latin, as he might easily have done as well as his comrade. He wished it ten times more though, when, on account of it, Binney rode gayly off to Santa Fé with Mr. Hobart, while he went out to work on the line.
Near the close of a mellow autumn day Glen and "Billy" Brackett sat on a fragment of broken wall and gazed with interest on the scene about them. On one side, crowning a low bluff that overlooked the Rio Grande twelve miles below Albuquerque, was the Indian pueblo of Isletta, a picturesque collection of adobe buildings and stockaded corrals, containing some eight hundred inhabitants. On the other side were extensive vineyards; beyond them were vast plains, from which flocks of bleating sheep were being driven in for the night by Indian boys; and still beyond rose the blue range of the Sierra Madre. The air was so clear and still that through it the sounds of children's voices, the barking of dogs, the bleating of sheep, the lowing of cattle, and the cracked tones of the bell in the quaint old mission church came to the ears of Glen and his companion with wonderful distinctness. The Indian women were preparing their evening meals, and the fragrance of burning cedar drifted down from the village. Never afterwards could Glen smell the odor of cedar without having the scene of that evening vividly recalled to his mind.
Mingled with this fragrance was another, equally distinct and suggestive. It was that of crushed grapes; and the two explorers were watching curiously the process of New Mexican wine-making, going on but a short distance from them. Clumsy ox-carts, constructed without the use of iron, and having great wooden wheels that screeched as they turned on their ungreased wooden axles, brought in loads of purple grapes from the vineyards. On top of the loads, as though the grapes were so much hay, rode Indian men or boys, armed with wooden pitchforks. With these they flung the grapes into a great vat of green ox-hides, supported, about ten feet from the ground, by four heavy posts. The sides of this vat were drawn to a point at the bottom, where there was a small outlet left, through which the grape-juice might flow into a second vat, placed directly beneath the other. It was similar in all respects to the first, except that it offered no opening for the escape of its contents.
When a load of grapes had been pitched into the upper vat, two naked Indians clambered up, and, springing on top of them, began to tread them with their feet. For hours they continued this performance, while a steady stream of blood-red juice flowed from the upper vat into the lower. From there it was dipped into huge earthen jars, and set away to ferment.
"Well," said 'Billy' Brackett, at length, as he rose and started towards camp, "I've seen all the native wine-making I want to. If those beggars had only washed themselves first it wouldn't be so bad, but I honestly believe they only take a bath once a year, and that is in grape-juice."
"It is pretty bad," laughed Glen, "though I don't know as it is any worse than their milking." This was a sore point with him, for he was very fond of fresh milk; but, after once witnessing a New Mexican milking, and seeing cows, mares, asses, sheep, and goats all milked into the same vessel, he preferred to go without it.
It was surprising to see what a tall, broad-shouldered fellow Glen was getting to be; and a single glance was sufficient to show what crossing the Plains had done for him. His eyes had the clear look of perfect health; his face, neck, and hands were as brown as sun and wind could make them, while his hair had entirely recovered from its Kansas City shearing, and was now plainly visible beneath the broad sombrero that replaced the hat lost on the Spanish Peak. A heavy blue flannel shirt, a pair of army trousers tucked into the tops of cowhide boots, a leather belt supporting a revolver and a sheath-knife, and a silk handkerchief loosely knotted about his neck, completed his costume.
"Billy" Brackett was dressed in a similar fashion, except that he still clung fondly to the shiny cutaway coat in which he was introduced to the reader, and to which he was deeply attached.
As they walked towards camp, he and Glen discussed the topic now uppermost in their minds, namely, that of their future movements. Since going to Santa Fé, Mr. Hobart had not rejoined them, though a note received from him at Albuquerque promised that he would do so at Isletta, to which place he ordered the line to be run. Now they had been for two days at the Pueblo, but where they were to go next, or whether they were to go any farther, they did not know, and were anxious to find out. They had heard vague rumors that General Lyle was to return to the States, and that all the plans of the expedition might be changed. Thus, when Mr. Hobart galloped into camp just after supper that evening, he was heartily welcomed.
"Where is Binney Gibbs?" was the first question asked.
"Promoted to be private secretary to General Elting, the new chief," was the reply.
"Where is General Elting?"
"He is still in Santa Fé, but is going across with the other two divisions by the Gila route."
"And where are we going?"
"Going to run a one-thousand-mile line from here to the Pacific Ocean, in just the shortest time we can accomplish it."
"Good enough! Hurrah for the Pacific! Hurrah for California!" shouted every member of the party but one. He was the leveller; and when Mr. Hobart, after explaining the dangers and hardships of the trip before them, said that anybody who did not care to encounter them would be furnished with free transportation from that point back to the States, this man decided to accept the offer.
Little, did Glen Eddy imagine, as he bade him good-bye the next day, what an effect upon his future the decision thus suddenly reached by the leveller was to have. In the stage from Santa Fé the latter met a gentleman and his wife who were greatly interested in his description of the explorations in which he had just taken part. Among other things, he described Glen Eddy Matherson's remarkable adventures; and the lady, who seemed struck by the boy's name, asked many questions concerning him. Fortunately, the leveller was able to answer most of them, and thus she learned, what Glen had never attempted to conceal, that he was an adopted son of Luke Matherson, of Brimfield, Pennsylvania, who had saved him from a railroad wreck in Glen Eddy creek when he was a baby. She did not explain why she asked these questions, and soon changed the conversation to other topics.
The most immediate effect upon Glen of the leveller's departure was to promote him and increase his pay. As it was impossible, in that country, to engage men of experience to fill places in an engineer corps, Mr. Brackett was obliged to take the level, while Mr. Hobart himself took charge of the transit; and, when the former was asked who he would like as rodman in place of Binney Gibbs, he promptly answered, "Glen Matherson."
In speaking to Glen of this change of position, the division engineer asked the boy if he was sure he wanted to go through to the Pacific.
"Of course I do, sir!" answered Glen, in surprise at the question.
"It is going to be a trip full of danger and all sorts of hardships, possibly including starvation and freezing. I don't know but what you really ought to go back."
"Oh, sir, please don't send me back!" pleaded Glen, earnestly. "I should feel awfully to have to go home with the trip only half finished."
"Then you are willing to face all the hardships?"
"Yes, sir, I'm willing to face anything, rather than going back."
"All right!" laughed Mr. Hobart; "I suppose I shall have to take you along. I proposed to the general to take Binney Gibbs with him, or else send him back to the States, because I did not consider him strong enough to endure what is ahead of us; but I don't see how I could urge that in your case, for I actually believe you are one of the toughest among us."
How Glen rejoiced in his strength as he heard this! Perhaps it was going to prove as valuable to him as a scholarship, after all.
"Mr. Brackett is going to run the level, and wants you for his rodman," continued Mr. Hobart. "The pay will be double what you are now receiving, and you can soon fit yourself for the position by a little hard study; for Mr. Brackett is a capital instructor. I have told him that he may take you on trial, and see what he can do with you. I also told him of your aversion to study, and gave him to understand what a difficult job he had undertaken."
Glen flushed at this, and gazed at the ground for a moment. Finally he said, "Studying seems very different when you can look right ahead and see what good it is going to do."
"Yes," replied Mr. Hobart, "I know it does. Still, in most cases we have to trust the word of those who can look ahead when we can't. I've no doubt but what you were told at school that a knowledge of Latin would aid you in learning many other languages; but you were not willing to believe it until you saw for yourself how it helped Binney Gibbs pick up Spanish."
Glen did not make any promises aloud in regard to fitting himself for his new position, for he believed in actions rather than words; but he made one to himself, and determined to keep it.
They remained in camp at Isletta one day longer, to prepare for their arduous undertaking, and to engage several new axemen to fill the places of those who had been promoted; but on the second morning the transit was set up over the last stake they had driven, and its telescope was pointed due west.
At first Glen missed the excitement of riding in advance of the party with the front flag. On a preliminary survey, the level can hardly keep up with the transit; and it was not so pleasant to be always behind, striving to catch up, as it had been to be in the lead.
To "Billy" Brackett the change of positions came even harder than to Glen, because in taking the level he had gone back a step rather than forward; but he never showed it. Indeed, by his steady cheerfulness and unceasing flow of good spirits the new leveller soon banished even a shadow of regret from the mind of his young rodman, and taught him to feel a real interest in his new work.
So they slowly climbed the western slope of the Rio Grande Valley, crossed the barren plateau of the divide between it and the Rio Puerco, followed that stream and its tributary, the San José, on the banks of which they saw the ancient pueblos of Laguna and Acoma, into another region of rugged mountains, and, in about two weeks, found themselves at the forlorn frontier post of Fort Wingate, where they were to obtain their final supplies for the winter.
At Fort Wingate the real hardships of the trip began in an unexpected manner. Instead of being plentifully supplied with provisions, as had been reported, the post was found to be very poorly provided, and all that could be spared to the engineers were condemned quartermaster's stores. The party must take these or nothing; and when Mr. Hobart left it to his men whether they should accept the damaged stores and push on, or go back to the Rio Grande, they unanimously said, "Go on!" So, for the next two months, they made the best of half-spoiled hams and bacon, hard-tack filled with white worms, and sugar abounding in little black bugs, that fortunately floated on top of the coffee and could be skimmed off.
The men provided themselves with a number of little luxuries at the sutler's—the last store they would see for months—and "Billy" Brackett bought a cheese. This was considered a very queer purchase; but Glen's was queerer still, for it was a small quantity of strychnine. He only procured this after giving assurances that he did not propose to commit suicide and making many promises to be very careful in its use. What he proposed to do with the poison he did not confide to anybody except his friend "Billy" Brackett, who agreed with him that it was a capital plan.
A run of twelve miles from Fort Wingate brought the party to a camp, in a forest of the most stately yellow-pines they had ever seen, beside a great spring of ice-cold water—known as the Agua Fria (cold water). Here, as soon as supper was over, Glen proceeded to put his great plan into execution. The nights were now very cold, and the boy generally woke before morning to find himself shivering beneath his insufficient covering of blankets. Every night, too, since entering the mountains the party had been annoyed by the sneaking visits and unearthly howlings of wolves that hung on the outskirts of the camp from dark to daylight, every now and then making a quick dash through it, if the guard was not watching sharply, and snatching at bits of food or at anything made of leather that lay in their path. So Glen thought he would teach the wolves a lesson, which should at the same time add some of their skins to his bed-clothing; and it was for this purpose he had procured the strychnine.
Now, with "Billy" Brackett's help, he dragged out from one of the wagons a gunny-sack, containing some kidneys, lungs, and other refuse animal matter, obtained from the Fort Wingate butcher, and these he smeared with the deadly powder. Then they prepared several torches of pine slivers, and, amid the unanswered questionings of their companions, left camp, carrying the sack of meat between them. Beginning at a point a few rods from the tents, they strewed the poisoned bait for half a mile along the banks of the little stream flowing from the spring. It was an exciting task, for they seemed to hear suspicious sniffs, and the soft pattering of feet on both sides of them; while Glen felt certain that his torchlight was reflected from gleaming eyeballs more than once. So greatly did these things work upon their imaginations that when, as they started back towards camp, their last torch suddenly went out, leaving them in blackest darkness, they both took to their heels, and raced breathlessly for the distant light of the friendly camp-fire. When they reached it, in perfect safety, they burst out laughing in one another's faces, and wondered what they had run from.
Glen was disappointed, as he lay shivering in his blankets that night, not to hear so many wolves as usual, while the few howls that did reach his ears seemed to come from a distance. Still, he comforted himself with the reflection that dead wolves couldn't howl, and doubtless all those that had ventured near the camp had eaten the poisoned meat, and had their howlings effectually silenced.
It seemed to him that he had hardly dropped asleep when he was rudely awakened by being pulled, feet foremost, out of his blankets, under the side of the tent, and into the open air. At the same moment "Billy" Brackett's laughing voice cried, "Come, Glen, here it is broad daylight, and high time we were gathering in our wolves."
Whew! how cold it was! and in what a hurry Glen sprang from the frozen ground, to rush back into the tent for his boots and army overcoat. He had everything else on, for there was very little undressing at night in that party. As for being sleepy, the biting air had awakened him as effectually as a dash of ice-water.
As they left camp, "Billy" Brackett shouted back to one of the Mexican axemen to follow after them, and the man answered that he would be along in a minute. It was light enough, when they reached the place where they had left the first of the poisoned meat, for them to see it if it had been there; but it was not. Neither was there any dead wolf to be found in the vicinity. It was the same along the whole line, where they had scattered their bait. They could neither discover meat nor wolves.
"Hello!" exclaimed "Billy" Brackett softly, as they were about to turn back, "I believe the wolves are cooking their meat;" and with that he pointed to a thin column of blue smoke rising through the trees at some distance farther down the stream.
"Perhaps they are Indians," suggested Glen.
"Perhaps they are. Let's go and find out. We can take a look at them without being seen. Besides, the Indians hereabout are peaceful now."
So they crept cautiously towards the smoke, until at length they were lying flat on the ground, on the edge of a low bank, with their heads hidden in tufts of grass, peering into a small encampment of Indians just below them. They had hardly gained this position when Glen, uttering a cry of horror, sprang down the bank, rushed in among the Indians, and, snatching a piece of meat from the hands of one of them, who was raising it to his mouth, flung it so far away that it was snapped up and swallowed by a lean, wolfish-looking cur, that had not dared venture near the fire.
At Glen's sudden appearance the Indian women and children ran screaming into the bushes, while the men, springing to their feet, surrounded him with angry exclamations and significant handlings of their knives. They received a second surprise, and fell back a little as "Billy" Brackett, who had not at first understood Glen's precipitate action, came rushing down the bank after him, shouting, "Stand back, you villains! If you lay a hand on him, I'll blow the tops of all your heads off!"
At the same time Glen was making all the faces expressive of extreme disgust that he could think of, and saying, as he pointed to a pile of meat lying in a gunny-sack beside the fire:
"Carne no bueno! Muy mal! No bueno por hombre!" which was the best Spanish he knew for, "The meat is not good. It is very bad, and not at all good for a man to eat."
But the Indians could not understand. The meat might not be good enough for white men, who were so very particular, but it was good enough for them. The white men had thrown it away and they had found it. They meant to eat it, too, for they were very hungry. Now, if these uninvited guests to their camp would not clear out and let them eat their breakfast in peace, they must suffer the consequences.
This is what they said; but neither Glen nor "Billy" Brackett understood a word of it. They were preparing to defend themselves, as well as they could, from the scowling Indians, who were again advancing upon them with drawn knives.
Both Glen and his companion had their rifles, and now, as they stepped slowly backward, they held them ready for instant use.
"We won't fire," said "Billy" Brackett, "unless they point a gun or an arrow at us; for the first shot will be the signal for a rush, and if they make that we haven't got a living show."
All this time the Indians, to the number of a dozen or so, advanced steadily, taking step for step with the whites, as they fell back, and watching for a chance to get past or around the black muzzles of those rifles.
To Glen Eddy and "Billy" Brackett the situation looked serious, and almost desperate, as they confronted that crowd of angry savages who advanced towards them so steadily, and with such unmistakable meaning.
"It's a tough outlook for us," muttered the latter.
"Yes," answered Glen, "it is, but—" Here the boy clinched his teeth, and clutched his rifle more firmly.
"Look out!" cried the other, noticing that the Indians were gathering themselves for a rush. "They're coming!" and he raised his rifle.
In another instant he would have fired, and their fate would have been sealed. But their time had not yet come; for, at that same moment, another figure bounded down the low bank, and stood beside them facing the Indians, and speaking angrily to them in Spanish. They evidently understood him, and hesitated. He was the Mexican axeman.
"What is the trouble, Mr. Brackett?" he asked hurriedly, in English.
With a few words they made the situation clear to him, and he, in turn, quickly explained to the Indians that these white men had merely tried to save their lives by preventing them from eating poisoned meat.
"Tell them to look at the dog!" cried Glen, pointing to the poor animal that had swallowed the very bit of meat he had snatched from the Indian, and which was evidently dying.
The sight was a powerful argument, worth more than all the words that could have been spoken.
The Indians sullenly returned to their fire and sat down, while our friends, casting many watchful glances over their shoulders as they went, made good their retreat in the direction of their own camp.
"What kind of Indians were they?" asked Glen, of the Mexican, when they had lost sight of their unpleasant acquaintances.
"Navajos," was the answer.
They were indeed a wretched band of the once wealthy and powerful tribe who claimed that whole country as a pasture-land for their countless flocks and herds. For many years they had been hunted and killed, their flocks driven off and their growing crops destroyed wherever found, until now the main body of the tribe was being slowly starved out of existence on a small reservation in Eastern New Mexico. It was so small that no more Indians could be crowded into it, and the miserable remnant, who still lurked in the fastnesses of their own country, despoiled of all means of procuring a livelihood, prowled about like so many hungry dogs, gleaning the offal from white men's camps, and hunted like wild beasts by all whom they were unfortunate enough to meet.
This band had probably followed Mr. Hobart's party for the sake of what might be picked up in their abandoned camps, and had evidently regarded the poisoned meat, discovered that very morning, as a perfect godsend.
"I reckon we'll have to manage somehow to get along without any wolves," said "Billy" Brackett.
"Yes," replied Glen, regretfully, "I suppose we shall."
Ten miles of line were run that day, through the solemn pine forest, and darkness overtook the party on the very summit of the great Continental Divide. They were crossing the Sierra Madre Mountains, through Zuñi Pass. As Glen subtracted the last reading of his rod for the day from the last height of instrument, and found that it gave an elevation of 7925 feet, he uttered a shout. For weeks the elevations above sea-level had been steadily mounting upward. This one was a foot lower than the last.
"Hurrah!" he cried, "we are on the Pacific Slope."
It was hard to realize that water, on one side of where they stood, would find its way into the Rio Grande, and so on into the Atlantic, while that but a few feet away would flow through the Colorado into the Pacific. The country did not look any different, but it seemed so. They actually seemed to be breathing the air of the mighty sunset ocean, and this one day's run seemed to place the States, and everything eastern, farther behind them than all the rest of their journey. About the camp-fires that evening the conversation was wholly of California and the golden West, and they sprang to their work the next day with an added zeal.
Fifty miles west of this point they came to Zuñi, one of the most picturesque and by far the most interesting of American towns. First, though, a few miles east of Zuñi, they halted beside the magnificent pile of El Moro, or Inscription Rock, that lifted its frowning battlements, like those of some vast Moorish castle, four hundred feet above the plain. Its base is covered, on all sides, with Indian hieroglyphics, Spanish inscriptions, and English names. Curiously, and almost reverently, our explorers bent down the brushwood near its left-hand corner, and searched until they found the most ancient inscription of all:
"Don Joseph de Basconzeles 1526."
"Don Joseph de Basconzeles 1526."
There is nothing more, and this is the sole existing record of Don Joseph's having lived and explored this country while Cortez was still occupying the city of Mexico. Where he came from, who he was, what companions he had, and whither he went will never be known; but through all the centuries that have passed since he carved his name on El Moro's base, the great rock has faithfully preserved the record of his presence.
The next inscription was made nearly one hundred years later, and is a Spanish legend that is translated into, "Passed by this place with despatches, April 16, 1606." There is no name signed, and who passed by on that day can never be told. Then follows innumerable names of Spanish dons, captains, bishops, soldiers, and priests, with varying dates that come down as late as the beginning of the present century.
The first English inscription is, "O. R., March 19, 1836." Then came Whipple, in 1853, followed by many other American soldiers and gold-seekers. Now Glen Eddy and "Billy" Brackett added their names beneath those of the others of Mr. Hobart's party. Then they, too, passed on, leaving a new page of history to be preserved by El Moro for the eyes of future generations.
For some hours before reaching Zuñi they could see it crowning the hill that uplifts it conspicuously above the level of the surrounding plain. It was the "Cibola" of the earliest Spanish explorers, the chief of the seven "golden cities" that they believed to exist in that region, and whose alleged riches led them to undertake the conquest of the country. They called it "Cibola" until they reached it. Then they adopted the native name of Zuñi (pronouncedZoon-ya), by which it has been known ever since.
The town, or city, contained some twelve hundred inhabitants, and the hill on which it is built slopes gently up from the plain on one side, but falls away in a precipitous bluff to the narrow waters of the Zuñi River on the other.
"Billy" Brackett had read up on this ancient city of Cibola, and had imparted so much of his information to Glen as to arouse a curiosity in the boy's mind regarding the place fully equal to his own. So, as soon as they reached camp, which was on the plain at the foot of the hill, they hurried off to "do" the town.
As the leveller and his rodman ascended the slope on which Zuñi is built, they saw that the town reached entirely across it, and seemingly presented a blank wall of irregular heights, containing only two or three low arched openings. A ladder, here and there, reached from the ground to a flat terrace on top of the wall; but evidently the means of entering the place were few, and could readily be made less. Outside of the wall were long ranges of corrals, fenced with poles, set close together, and fixed firmly in the ground. These poles, which were of all lengths, and the tops of ladders projecting everywhere above the roofs of the town, gave the place a peculiarly ragged and novel appearance. Glen wondered at the height of the buildings, most of which were of five or six stories, and what the ladders were for.
Seeing no other way of gaining an entrance, they followed an Indian, who led a burro bearing an immense load of fagots on his back, into one of the dark arched passages through the wall. It was just wide enough to admit the laden donkey, and so low that, as they followed him, they were obliged to stoop to avoid striking their heads against its roof. It was so long that it evidently led beneath an entire block of houses.
Finally they emerged from its darkness into one of the most novel plazas, or squares, of the world. It was surrounded by buildings of several stories in height, but very few of them had any doors, while the tiny windows of the lower stories were placed high up, beyond a man's reach. On the flat roof of the lower house, or first story, a second house was built; but it was so much narrower than the first as to leave a broad walk on the roof in front of it. Above this second house rose a third, fourth, fifth, and often a sixth, each one narrower than the one beneath it, so that the whole looked like a gigantic flight of steps.
These houses were built either of adobe or of stone, plastered over with adobe mud; and nearly all those on the ground floor were entered, as Robinson Crusoe entered his castle, by climbing a ladder to the roof, and descending another that led down through a skylight. Thus, if an enemy should succeed in forcing his way through the narrow tunnel into the plaza, the people would merely retire to their house-tops, draw up their ladders, and he would find it as hard to get at them as ever.
The upper tiers of houses had doors opening on the roofs of those below them; but ladders were necessary to climb up from one terrace to another, so that they were everywhere the most prominent feature of the place.
There were but few of the inhabitants in the plaza, or in the narrow lanes leading from it to other open squares; but they swarmed on the flat house-tops, and gazed down on our friends as eagerly as the latter gazed up at them. Americans were curiosities to the people of Zuñi in those days.
"Hello!" exclaimed Glen, as they stood in the middle of the plaza, wondering which way they should go. "Here come some white fellows dressed up like Indians. I wonder who they can be?"
Sure enough, two young men, having white skins, blue eyes, and yellow hair, but wearing the leggings and striped blankets of Indians, entered the square as Glen spoke. He shouted to them, both in English and Mexican, but they only glanced at him in a startled manner, and then, hurriedly climbing the nearest ladder, they joined a group who were curiously inspecting Glen and his companion from a roof.
"Well! that is queer," said the former. "Who do you suppose those chaps are?"
"I shouldn't be a bit surprised if they were two of the white Indians I have read of," answered "Billy" Brackett; "and, if so, they are the greatest curiosities we'll see in this town."
"I never heard of them," said Glen. "Where did they come from?"
"That's more than I can tell, or anybody else. All we know is that the earliest Spaniards found a race of white people living among the Pueblo Indians, whom they describe as being exactly like these chaps grinning at us from that roof. In one respect they are a distinct race, as they have never been allowed to marry with the dark-skinned Indians; but in every other respect they are thorough Puebloes, and there is no tradition going back far enough to show that they were ever anything else. I believe that the race is nearly extinct, and that they are now so few in number as to be rarely seen."
In this "Billy" Brackett was correct; for at that time there were but three of those white Indians in Zuñi, two men and a woman.
Before leaving this remarkable town of curious people, Glen discovered that they kept eagles for pets, and were also very fond of snakes, especially rattlesnakes, which they did not hesitate to handle freely and even to hold in their mouths. He saw the entire population turn out on the flat roofs of their houses at daybreak, and, facing the east, patiently await the coming of Montezuma, whom they firmly believed would appear some morning in the place of the sun. He heard of, but was not allowed to see, the perpetual fire, lighted by Montezuma, that has been kept burning for ages by a family of priests, set apart and supported by the people for that particular purpose. He saw women grinding corn into fine white meal between two stones, and baking it into delicious thin cakes on another. He saw them weaving blankets, of sheep's wool, so fine that they will hold water for a whole day, and so strong that they will last a long lifetime. He ate some of the white dried peaches and other fruits that these Indians raise in such abundance and prepare with such skill. And what pleased him more than anything else was that, in exchange for two flour-sacks and a small piece of bacon, one of the Indians made him a fine buckskin shirt, very much adorned with fringes, that he wore all the rest of the winter.
It certainly was a most interesting place, and the whole party would gladly have lingered there longer than the three days that could be spared to it. But it was now November, and they must be beyond the San Francisco Mountains before the passes were blocked with heavy snows. So they bade good-bye to Zuñi and New Mexico, and, taking their way past Jacob's Well, where a fine spring bubbles up at the bottom of a funnel-shaped pit, six hundred feet across at the top, and a hundred and fifty feet deep, they entered the little-known region of Northern Arizona.
For three months they toiled through that wild country, as lost to the view and knowledge of white civilization as though they were running their line through Central Africa. Then they emerged on the bank of the mighty Colorado, and, looking across its turbid flood, saw the barren wastes of the Great Colorado Desert; but they gave a shout of joy at the sight, for, with all its dreariness of aspect, that was California, and beyond it lay the Pacific, the goal of their hopes.
The last three months had been filled with toil, hardships, and adventure. Although in that time they saw no white men, nor men of any kind beyond catching occasional glimpses of the stealthy Apaches, who hung on their trail for weeks, and with whom they exchanged more than one rifle-shot, they were never without evidences that this whole vast country had once been occupied by a mighty people. Hardly a day passed that Glen did not hold his rod on the ruined foundation-wall of some huge structure of long ago, or stumble over heaps of broken pottery graceful in form and design, or gaze wonderingly at the stone houses of ancient cliff-dwellers perched on ledges now inaccessible, or walk in the dry beds of crumbling aqueducts, or select choice specimens from piles of warlike implements fashioned from shining crystal or milk-white quartz, or, in some way, have his attention called to the fact that he was traversing a country in which had dwelt millions of his kind, who had long since passed away and been forgotten. He had puzzled over miles of hieroglyphic inscriptions and rude pictures, drawn on the smooth black walls of rugged cañons, and learned from them fragmentary tales of ancient battles or of encounters with savage beasts.
Then, too, he had known hunger and thirst and bitter cold. His Christmas dinner, eaten during a short pause from work on the line, had been a bit of spoiled bacon and a couple of wormy hard-tack, with which, in honor of the day, he had his full share of "Billy" Brackett's treasured cheese, brought out at last to grace this feast. Not only were their provisions nearly exhausted at that time, but it was the fifth day on which they had been unable to wash, for want of water. Two weeks before, a wagon had been sent to the mining-camp of Prescott, nearly a hundred miles away, and they had nearly given up all hopes of its safe return. That night it came into camp, and that night, too, they found a number of rock cisterns full of water. In the darkness of that same evening, while hastening from the pool in which he had been bathing, to get his share of the Christmas supper, poor Glen had run plump into a gigantic cactus, and filled his body with its tiny, barbed thorns. Altogether it was a memorable Christmas, and one he will never forget.
On the last night of December they built a gigantic bonfire of whole trees, and welcomed in the new year by the light of its leaping flames.
They had passed through vast tracts of wonderful fertility and beauty, unknown to white men, and through regions abounding in game that they had no time to hunt. From the summit of the Aztec Pass they had gazed, with dismay, over the boundless expanse of the Black Forest, and then had plunged into its dark depths. They had threaded their way through labyrinths of precipitous cañons, the walls of which rose thousands of feet above their heads, and had known of others still more tremendous.
They had waded through the snows of the San Francisco Mountains, and revelled in the warmth and beauty of the superb Val de Chino, where snow and ice are unknown. They had dodged the crashing boulders hurled down on them in Union Pass by the Hualapi Indians, posted on the inaccessible heights far above them. Here they had lost a wagon, crushed to splinters by one of these masses of rock; but no lives had been sacrificed, and their number was still the same as when they left the Rio Grande. Now they were on the bank of the Colorado, with only one desert and one range of mountains yet to cross. These seemed so little, after all they had gone through; and yet that desert alone was two hundred and fifty miles wide. Two hundred and fifty miles of sand, sage-brush, and alkali; the most barren region of country within the limits of the United States. If they could have looked ahead and seen what the crossing of that desert meant, they would have entered upon the undertaking with heavy hearts and but faint hopes of accomplishing it. How fortunate it is that we cannot look ahead and see the trials that await us. We would never dare face them if they should all appear to us at once; while, by meeting them singly, and attacking them one by one, they are overcome with comparative ease.
But neither Glen nor his companions were thinking of the trials ahead of them as they came in sight of the Colorado River. They were only thinking of those left behind, and what a glorious thing it was to have got thus far along in their tremendous journey. The transit-party had run their line to the river's bank and gone to camp a mile or so below, when the levellers came up, and Glen held his rod, for a final reading, at the water's edge.
He had just noted the figures in his book, and waved an "All right" to "Billy" Brackett, when he was startled by a rush of hoofs and a joyous shout. The next instant a horse was reined sharply up beside him, while its rider was wringing his hand and uttering almost incoherent words of extravagant joy at once more seeing him.
It was Binney Gibbs who had come up the river from Fort Yuma several days before, with General Elting, to meet the second division, and guide them to "The Needles," the point at which the line was to cross the Colorado. The other divisions, which had followed the Gila route, and crossed the Colorado at Fort Yuma, where the desert was narrower, had reached the Pacific ere this, and gone on to San Francisco. The hardest task of all, that of running a line over the desert where it was two hundred and fifty miles wide, had been reserved for Mr. Hobart's men, who had proved themselves so capable of enduring and overcoming hardships.
Binney had waited impatiently in camp until the transit-party reached it, expecting to see Glen ride in at its head with the front flag. Then he had borrowed a horse, and set forth to find the boy whom he had once considered his rival, but whom he now regarded as one of his best friends.
After the first exchange of greetings, they stood and looked at each other curiously. Glen's hair hung on his shoulders, and the braid that bound the brim of his sombrero was worn to a picturesque fringe, matching that of his buckskin shirt. He was broader and browner than ever; and though his face was still smooth and boyish, these last three months had stamped it with a look of resolute energy that Binney noticed at once.
He, too, was brown, though not nearly so tanned as Glen, in spite of the burning suns of the Gila Valley; for his work had kept him under cover as much as Glen's had kept him in the open air. As General Elting's secretary, Binney had spent most of his time in the ambulance, that, fitted up with writing-desk and table, was the chief-engineer's field-office, or in temporary offices established in tents or houses wherever they had halted for more than a day at a time. He had evidently met with barbers along the comparatively well-travelled Gila; while, as compared with Glen's picturesquely ragged costume, his was that of respectable civilization. Although he, too, was the picture of health, his frame lacked the breadth and fulness of Glen's, and it was evident at a glance that, in the matter of physical strength, he was even more greatly the other's inferior than when they left Brimfield.
Glen could not help noting this with a feeling of secret satisfaction; but, as they rode towards camp together, and Binney described his winter's experiences, Glen began to regard him with vastly increased respect. He thought he had studied hard, and done well to master the mysteries of adjusting and running a level, perfecting himself as a rodman, and learning to plot profile; but his knowledge appeared insignificant as compared with that which Binney had picked up and stored away. Not only had he learned to speak Spanish fluently, but he had become enough of a geologist to talk understandingly of coal-seams and ore-beds. He had the whole history of the country through which he had passed, from the date of its Spanish discovery, at his tongue's end. He spoke familiarly of the notable men to whom, at General Elting's dictation, he had written letters, and altogether he appeared to be a self-possessed, well-informed young man of the world.
Poor Glen was beginning to feel very boyish and quite abashed in the presence of so much wisdom, and to wonder if he had not been wasting his opportunities on this trip as he had those of school. His thoughts were inclining towards a decidedly unpleasant turn, when they were suddenly set right again by Binney, who exclaimed, "But, I say, old man, what a fine thing you fellows have done this winter! The general declares that you have made one of the most notable surveys on record; and it's a thing every one of you ought to be proud of. You should have heard him congratulate Mr. Hobart. He asked at once about you, too, and wants to see you as soon as you get in. He seems to take a great interest in you, and has spoken of you several times. I expect, if you choose to keep on in this business, you can always be sure of a job through him. He seems to think it queer that you should be a year older than I am; but I told him it was certainly so, because I knew just when your birthday came."
Glen was on the point of saying that, if Binney knew that, it was more than he did, but something thing kept him silent. He hated to acknowledge that he knew nothing of his real birthday, nor how old he really was, but he wondered if he could truly be a year older than this wise young secretary.
At this point the conversation was interrupted by their arrival at camp, and by General Elting stepping from his tent to give Glen a hearty handshake as he exclaimed,
"My dear boy, I am delighted and thankful to see you again. I tried to persuade our friend Mr. Hobart, when I last saw him at Santa Fé, that, in spite of your performance on that railroad ride you and I took together last summer, you were too young to make the trip I had laid out for him. He said he didn't know anything about your age, but that you were certainly strong and plucky enough for the trip. I made him promise, though, to try and induce you to go back from Isletta; but he doesn't seem to have succeeded."
"No, sir," laughed Glen, "and I'm awfully glad he didn't, for it's been the most glorious kind of a trip, and I have enjoyed every minute of it."
"I am glad, too, now that it is all over; but I must tell you that, if I had not been assured that you were a whole year older than my young secretary here, I should have insisted on your going back, for I considered it too hard and dangerous a trip for a boy so young as I had supposed you to be until then."
Here was another good reason why Glen was glad he had remained silent on the subject of his birthday.
"Now what do you think of running a line across the desert ahead of us?" continued the chief-engineer; "are you as anxious to undertake that as you were to cross Arizona?"
"Yes, indeed, I am, sir," replied Glen, earnestly. "I am anxious to go wherever the second division goes; and if anybody can get a line across that desert, I know we can."
"I believe you can," said the chief, smiling at the boy's enthusiasm, "and I am going along to see how you do it."
The Colorado was so broad, deep, and swift that Glen wondered how they were going to measure across it, and had a vague idea that it could be done by stretching a long rope from bank to bank. He asked "Billy" Brackett; and when the leveller answered, "By triangulation, of course," Glen showed, by his puzzled expression, that he was as much in the dark as ever.
"You have studied geometry and trigonometry, haven't you?" asked the leveller.
Glen was obliged to confess that, as he had not been able to see the use of those studies, he had not paid much attention to them.
"Well, then, perhaps you'll have a better opinion of old Euclid when you see the practical use we'll put him to to-morrow," laughed "Billy" Brackett.
Glen did see, the next day, and wondered at the simplicity of the operation. The front flag was sent across the river in a boat, and on the opposite side he drove a stake. While he was thus engaged, a line a quarter of a mile long was measured on the bank where the rest of the party still remained, and a stake was driven at each end of it. The transit was set up over one of these stakes, and its telescope was pointed first at the other and then at the one across the river, by which means the angle where it stood was taken. It was then set over the stake at the other end of the measured line, and that angle was also taken. Then Mr. Hobart drew, on a leaf of his transit-book, a triangle, of which the base represented the line measured between the two stakes on his side of the river, and one side represented the distance across the river that he wished to find. He thus had one side and two angles of a triangle given to find one of the other two sides, and he solved the problem as easily as any boy or girl of the trigonometry-class can whose time in school has not been wasted as Glen Eddy's was.
It was a simple operation, and one easily performed, but it involved a knowledge of the four fundamental rules of arithmetic, of proportion, or the rule of three, of geometry, of trigonometry, and of how to use a surveyor's transit; all of which, except the last, are included in the regular course of studies of every boy and girl in America who receives a common-school education.
Glen had also been sent across the river, where he held his rod so high up on the bank that the cross hair in the telescope of the level cut just one tenth of an inch above its bottom. Then, when "Billy" Brackett came over, and went on beyond Glen, he set the level up so high on the bank that, through it, he could just see the top of the rod, extended to its extreme length. So they climbed slowly up out of the Colorado Valley, and began to traverse the dreary country that lay between it and the Sierra Nevada.
For the first hundred miles or so they got along very well, so far as water was concerned, though the mules and horses speedily began to grow thin and weak for want of food. The patches of grass were very few and far between, and the rations of corn exceedingly small; for in that country corn was worth its weight in gold, and scarce at that.
Matters were bad enough by the time Mr. Hobart's party reached Camp Cady, nearly half way across the desert; but, from there on, they became much worse. The line could no longer follow the winding government trail, but must be run straight for the distant mountains, that were now plainly to be seen.
This experience vividly recalled that of the preceding summer, when they were crossing the Plains towards the Rocky Mountains, and longing so eagerly to reach them. But this was infinitely worse than that. There they generally found water that was sweet and fit to drink, and always had plenty of grass for their stock. Here they rarely found water, and when they did it was nearly always so strongly impregnated with salt, soda, and alkali as to be unfit to drink. Here, too, instead of grass, they found only sand, sage brush, greasewood, and cacti. To be sure the greasewood was a comfort, because it burned just as readily green as dry, and in certain of the cacti, round ones covered with long curved spines, they could nearly always find a mouthful of water, but none of these things afforded any nourishment for the hungry animals. They became so ravenous that they gnawed off one another's manes and tails, chewed up the wagon covers, and every other piece of cloth they could get hold of. Then they began to die so fast from starvation and exhaustion that some dead ones were left behind with every camp, and each day the number was increased.
At nearly every camp, too, a wagon was abandoned, and for miles they could look back and see its white cover, looming above the dreary expanse of sand and sage, like a monument to the faithful animals that had fallen beside it. At length but one wagon and the two ambulances were left. Tents, baggage, clothing, all the bedding except one blanket apiece, and the greater part of their provisions, had been thrown away, or left in the abandoned wagons. Within forty miles of the mountains they gave up work on the line. The men had no longer the strength to drag the chain or carry the instruments. They still noted their course by compass, and the height of various elevations as they crossed them, by the barometer. They were even able to measure the distance from one sad camping-place to another, by means of the odometer, an instrument that, attached to a wagon-wheel, records the number of revolutions made by it. This number, multiplied by the circumference of the wheel, gave them the distance in feet and inches. Everybody was now on foot, even the chief's saddle-horse, Señor, and Glen's Nettle being harnessed to one of the ambulances.
At last, when the mountains appeared tantalizingly near, but when they were still nearly twenty miles away, it seemed as though the end had come. For two days neither men nor animals had tasted a drop of water. At the close of the second day, a slight elevation had disclosed a lake lying at their feet, glowing in the red beams of the setting sun. With feeble strength they had rushed to it, and flung themselves into its tempting waters. They were as salt as brine, and, with this bitter disappointment, came despair. They lighted fires and made coffee with the brackish water that oozed into holes dug in the salt-encrusted sand, but it sickened them, and they could not drink it.
Their lips were cracked, their tongues swollen, their throats like dry leather, and their voices were hardly more than husky whispers.
As the moon rose that evening, and poured its cold light on the outstretched forms grouped about the solitary, white-sheeted wagon, a hand was laid on Glen's shoulder, and the chief's voice bade the boy rise and follow him. Leading the way to the ambulance in which Binney Gibbs slept the sleep of utter exhaustion and despair, and to which the horses Señor and Nettle were fastened, the general said,
"There is but one hope left for us, Matherson. It is certain that some of the party have not strength enough to carry them to the mountains, and equally so that, without water, the teams can never reach there. In the valleys of these mountains are streams, and on these streams are ranches. If we can get word to one of these, the entire party may yet be saved. I am going to try and ride there to-night, and I want you to come with me. Our horses, and yours in particular, are the freshest of all the animals. I have told Mr. Hobart; but there is no need of rousing any of the others to a sense of their misery. Will you make the attempt with me?"
Of course the boy would go; and, for a moment, he almost forgot his sufferings, in a feeling of pride that he should be selected for such an undertaking.
A minute later they rode slowly away, and the desert sands so muffled the sound of their horses' hoofs that their departure was not noted by those whom they left.
With fresh, strong animals, and without that terrible choking thirst, that night ride over the moonlight plain would have been a rare pleasure. Under the circumstances it was like a frightful dream. Neither of the riders cared to talk; the effort was too painful; but both thought of the last ride they had taken together in the cab of a locomotive on a Missouri railroad, and the man looked tenderly at the boy, as he recalled the incidents of that night. For an hour they rode in silence, their panting steeds maintaining a shambling gait through the sand, that was neither a trot nor a lope, but a mixture of the two. Then they dropped into a walk, and, for another hour, were only roused to greater speed by infinite exertions on the part of their riders. At last Señor stumbled heavily, recovered himself, and then fell.
"There is no use trying to get him up again," said the chief. "I'm afraid the poor old horse is done for; but you must ride on, and I will follow on foot. Head for that dark space. It marks a valley. I shall not be far behind you. If you find water, fire your pistol. The sound will give me new strength. Good-bye, and may God prosper you."