Revulsion—Home again—New plans—We depart for the mountains—The Hand hills—The great range—Home memories—A murderous volley—Donogh sees “the land beyond the grave”—Vain regrets—We enter the mountains—The island—A lonely grave—The Indian’s home.

We rode hard for a couple of hours. I led the way towards the place where, on the previous evening, I had left my three horses. Long ere we reached it, the Sircies had abandoned their pursuit, and turned back towards their camp. Now we had time to talk over the past. For many hours that morning, and all the previous night, I had been moving as though in a dream. During the past two hours I seemed to have lived an age; there had been moments of agony so acute, that my brain reeled when I thought over them. But now all was past; the long night of doubt and captivity was over, and the fair morning of hope and freedom shone full upon us.

My heart soon answered the helm of such thoughts, and my spirits rose in unison with them. Not so with the Sioux. The abstraction of the flight seemed to be still upon him; for a long time he rode on, looking vacantly before him. Once or twice I spoke to him, but he did not seem to hear what I said. At length he roused himself and spoke.

“If you had ever said to me that one day I should have had that man within my grasp, and that I would have failed to take his life, I would have told you that it was impossible. And yet,” he went on, “it is better that he should still live. Had he fallen at the hands of another, my father’s spirit would have remained unavenged.”

“Live?” I answered. “He fell, when I struck him with my gun, as though life had left him.”

“For all that he is not dead. Men like him do not die so easily. He was stunned by the blow; he will be laid up for a week, and then he will be as well as ever.”

I confess to feeling glad at this. Although I had struck the trader to save my friend’s life, I cared not to have on my hands his blood. It is true that had my gun been loaded at the moment when he held the Sioux tightly locked in his embrace, I would not have hesitated shooting him dead to set free my friend, but I would always have regretted being compelled to do so.

It was better as it was; the Sioux was safe. McDermott still lived.

We then spoke of the earlier events of the morning. I heard how Red Cloud had always counted upon his enemy forming part of the pursuing force. It was that belief which had induced him first of all to accept the chance of flight[281] offered by the Blackfoot chief. I asked him how he had hoped to resist the trader successfully, seeing that he was without arms of any kind.

“The spirit of his dead father would watch over him,” he said. And when I told him of my fears and anxieties on the previous day, and how I had determined to turn back to the rock hill, with a vague purpose of helping him in his need, he again remarked,—

“It was the spirit of my father that led you.”

Of the loss of his favourite horse he thought much.

“Had I done my work as well as he did his,” he said, “my enemy would not have escaped me.”

“But you have gained even a better animal,” I said, “than the one lost.”

“No, not better to me,” he replied. “For three years, through every change of land and season, through danger and difficulty, through fight and chase, that poor beast bore me—and all only to fall at last by the bullet of my enemy. Well, it adds another name to the list. It will perhaps be longer before it is closed.”

We now reached the place where I had left the horses. They were feeding together almost on the same ground; and without any delay longer than was necessary to get them together, we started for the cache. Although the events of the morning made the time appear an age, the day was yet young. I had dry meat sufficient for both our needs, a lake gave us water; with only a halt of a minute or two we held on until long after nightfall, and when daylight broke next morning the woods were in sight. Bearing away to the east we kept in sight of these woods all day, and at evening drew in towards their shelter, camping once more amid the pleasant leaves of trees, and enjoying a couple of partridges for our supper.

We were at a point considerably below where we had left our party less than three weeks before, but still above the place where the cache was to have been made.

Continuing our course next day, we reached, early in the afternoon, a spot which commanded a long view of the river valley. Far winding between partly wooded banks, it lay for many a mile amid the silent wilderness—the shallows at curves catching the sunlight, the quiet reaches reflecting the clear blue sky.

How calm and tranquil it all looked! The contrast between its peacefulness and the strife I had just witnessed struck me with profound wonder. Here was a bit of the earth as it came from the Creator’s hands, bright with the glow of summer, decked in the dress of leaf and blossom, sweet with the perfume of wild flower, fresh with the breezes of untold distance; and there below the southern horizon, but two days’ riding away, man’s passion, guilt, and greed ruled rampant in the land. According to the directions which the Sioux had given as to the place for the cache to be formed,[283] we must now be near the camp of our comrades.

So indeed it proved. On the edge of the woods we came suddenly upon the Iroquois; he had seen us from a lofty look-out point which he had established on the far side of the river, and had crossed over to meet us and show the way to the camp. It was formed upon an island in the river. There we found Donogh, the scout, and the Cree, all well, and longing for our return. They were amply provided with food; moose were plentiful, they had trapped several young beavers, and smaller game was abundant. We sat late that evening talking over our adventures.

The Indians listened with breathless interest to the story of the capture by the Blackfeet—the pursuit, the fight, and the escape. Donogh was never tired asking questions about my share in the final struggle with the trader. Had he been there to help, he said, McDermott would not have got off so easily.

A week now passed quietly away; the horses wanted rest after their arduous travel; plans had to be made for future movements. It was not likely that we should be left long unmolested in this neighbourhood. If the Sioux was right in the belief that a week or ten days would suffice to cure the injuries which the trader had suffered, then the Blackfeet, the Sircies, or Bloods, would soon beat up our quiet camp. Besides, the life of the wilderness must ever be a life of wandering. The bird seeks the sunlit atmosphere to try his wings; the horseman on the prairie roams because he cannot sit down and call a patch of the earth his home. His home is sky-bound; and when he can no longer wander, his grave is not far off.

Farther to the west there yet lay a vast region, into which we had not entered. At its western extremity rose the pine-clad sides and icy peaks of the Rocky Mountains, whose deep-rent valleys and vast glaciers fed this stream upon which we were now camped, as well as countless other streams and rivers, whose waters eventually seek the far separated seas of Hudson’s Bay and the Gulf of Mexico. To this region of prairie bordering upon mountain we would direct our course, and remain until the autumn must again make us think of winter-quarters.

We had four full months of summer before us; we had horses, arms, and goods; our guns would give us food.

So we were once more on the move. We divided our stores and goods evenly among the five horses, and being one horse deficient, Donogh, the Iroquois, and the scout took it in turn to walk. As the weather was now very fine and warm, we cached the leather tent, and some other items for which there was no use. We travelled quietly, but by starting early and camping late managed to make good distances each day. Our course lay along the line of mixed wooded and prairie country which bordered the Red Deer river. We kept a sharp look out for hostile Indians,[285] and took precautions at night to secure the horses from attack.

As thus we journeyed towards the west, we entered upon a very beautiful land; grassy hills spread away beyond each other in a constant succession, long winding lakes came in view as we gained the summits of ridges, and the valleys and lake shores held groves of mixed cottonwood and pine-trees, which gave camping grounds of fairy-like beauty amid the vast stillness of the wilderness. One evening, it was about the end of June, we gained a range of hills which during two days had bounded our horizon on the west.

Long ere we reached them, Red Cloud had promised me a view from their ridges surpassing anything I had yet looked at in the great prairie.

Slowly up the east side of the hill we held our way, while every now and again a long-eared hare sprang from the grass before us, and vanished into brake or coppice. At last the top was gained. The sun yet shone on the bare ridge, but the prairie beneath on either side was in shadow, and already the blue line of shade was creeping up the hill to where we stood. Fifty miles away to the west the vast plain came to an end. A huge rampart mountain rose up into the sunset skies, poising for a moment the great orb of the sun on its loftiest pinnacles of snow. Far away to north and south this rampart range was laid along the horizon, until the edges of mountain tops were only faintly visible above the plain on[286] the verge of vision to south-west and north-west.

“The Rocky Mountains at last,” I said, half musing, to myself, as thus I beheld this grand range lying in all the glory of the summer sunset.

“That is the name the first fur-traders gave them,” said Red Cloud; “but the Indian has better titles for them; ‘The Mountains of the Setting Sun,’ ‘The Ridge of the World.’ He who would scale the icy peaks, they say, would see the land beyond the grave.”

As now I looked across the great intervening plain, slowly fading into twilight, and saw the glittering edge of the long line of mountain top, clear cut against the lustrous after-glow, the red man’s thought which would make this giant range the line of separation between life and death seemed to be no far-fetched fancy. Here ended the great prairie. There was the shore of that vast wilderness, over which my steps had wandered through so many varied scenes of toil, tumult, and adventure. Beyond, all was unknown. And then came back to me a vision of those well-remembered hill-tops of my early days; the heather-covered slopes of Seefin, the wild crags of Cooma-sa-harn, the flat rock that marked the giant’s grave on Coolrue.

The sound of a footstep approaching from behind roused me from my reverie of home. I turned; Donogh stood beside me; there was a strange wistful look in his eyes.
 
“Ah, master!” he said, “it makes me think of the old home again, to look at those mountains, and the sun going down behind them as he used to do in Glencar.”

The tone of his voice was sad. I asked him if he felt home-sick?

“No, not home-sick,” he replied; “but I have been dreaming for nights past of all the old places—the eagle’s nest over Cooma-sa-harn, the rocks that hung over Lough Cluen, the island in the south end of the lake. I saw them just as they were in the old times. It was only last night that I dreamt we were climbing the face of the cliff to the eagle’s nest, and I thought the old bird came suddenly swooping down, and that I fell into the lough below.”

“Would you like to be back again in the old glen?” I asked him.

“Not unless you were to come too,” he answered. “This is a lonesome country sure enough, but I don’t mind it so long as you are near.”

We made our camp that night in a hollow, lower down on the west slope of the hill. We had killed some hares during the day, and had boiled them into a thick kind of soup, which, flavoured with wild sage, gave us an excellent supper. The meal over, we were sitting around the fire chatting and smoking, when suddenly a volley of musketry rang forth close at hand, an............