Many even of our Western-bred officers would have considered themselves in lying about camp for at least a day after such a trip. Not so Pike. Toward noon of the next day, which was the last of November, our entire party marched on up the main stream, in the thick of a heavy snowstorm.
We had at last come to the real hardships of our voyage. Within the week two or three of the men suffered frosted feet. The temperature fell to nearly twenty degrees below zero, so that even I felt the cold keenly through my hunting clothes, while the and the others, clad only in their cotton wear, suffered still more from the stinging frost.
Yet, despite all the troubles and hardships of ourselves and our half-starved horses, we held to our explorations, day after day, an occasional or deer, and gradually working our way into the midst of the mountains, and behind the Grand Peak, along what we thought to be the Spanish trace. At last we came to a large stream, which, to our , ran to the northeast. Though against all our previous theories, we were forced to believe that this must be the river La Platte. the stream in a northwesterly direction, all alike suffering greatly from the cold of these high valleys, we passed signs of an immense encampment of Indians. But we saw no more of the Spanish trace, or rather of the Indian trace which we had followed into the mountains, thinking it to be the Spanish.
Turning back upon our own trace some little distance, we crossed over a pass in the mountains to the southwest, and a small stream, came upon what we thought to be the upper waters of the Red River. Here, while our wretched, beasts were recruiting themselves upon a favorable bit of pasture land, the Lieutenant marched with a small party to explore upstream. At the same time Baroney and I marched down the river, our mission being to kill game for the others, who were to follow us in a day or two.
It was not, however, until three days later, on Christmas Eve, that our party found itself reunited in one camp. After two days of unsuccessful hunting, Baroney and I had at last killed four , and young Sparks had shot four more. In view of the fact that we had all been for two days without food, the meeting brought us great happiness.
Yet I cannot say that Christmas Day, which we spent in camp, smoking and drying our meat, was as merry as it might have been. The contrast with all our previous experiences of that holiday was far too sombre. Some of the men even drew unfavorable comparisons between this and the past year, when they were at the head of the Mississippi. Though then in a still colder climate and among the fierce Chippewas, they had at least enjoyed far better food and shelter. As for our present food, though now for the first time in weeks we had an abundant supply, it was limited to the one item of meat, which we must eat without so much as a pinch of salt. Our summery clothes were rent and ; many of our blankets torn up for stockings; our outer footwear reduced to clumsy moccasins of raw buffalo hide.
To these physical privations was added the consciousness of the grim fact that between us and the nearest of our far-distant frontier settlements lay all the mountain we had traversed, and more than seven hundred miles of desert plains. Yet, taken all in all, we managed to spend the day in fairly good cheer, despite the snow which came whirling down upon us.
On the afternoon of the next day we marched down to where the mountains closed in on the river valley. From here on, each succeeding day until the fifth of January found our way rougher and more difficult. The valley became ever deeper and narrower, so that we had to cross and recross the river repeatedly, our horses frequently falling upon the ice. Even harder upon them were their no less frequent slips among the rocks of the banks.
Much to my relief, I was not required to witness the sufferings of the poor beasts coming down through the worst of that terrible . On New Year's Day Brown and I were sent ahead to hunt. Within the first few hours we had the good fortune to bring down a huge-horned mountain . Leaving this in our path for the others to skin and dress, we struggled on down the ever-narrowing valley all that day and the next without sighting any other game.
On the third of January we found ourselves fighting our way along in the gloomy depths of a that wound and twisted through the very of the mountains. The bottom of this tremendous was almost filled with the , roaring of the river, while on either side the cliffs towered skyward in sheer, precipitous , thousands of feet high. Never before had I seen or heard of such a terrific , and may I never again be caught in its like!
Leaping and slipping over the icy rocks beside the furious rapids and falls, and creeping along the narrow of ice that here and there the less torrential stretches of the stream, we at last gained a spot where a little ravine ran up through the face of the . We saw that it was impossible for us to that gloomy gorge even a few yards farther. The icy waters of the roaring swept the bed of the chasm from wall to wall.
Yet to the side cleft seemed no less beyond our power. The water, running down from above earlier in the season, had coated the rocky surface from top to bottom with an unbroken slide of ice. It seemed madness to attempt that dizzy . However, a man never knows what he can do until he has tried. We set to, I with my tomahawk and Brown with his , and by cutting footholds, turn about, in the ice of the ravine's bottom, we slowly worked our way up the giddy rise. Again and again we came near to slipping and so headlong down that glassy slide. After the first hundred feet, we dared no longer look back below, for fear of being overcome with dizziness. Yet at last we came to easier climbing, and, scaling the side of the ravine, found ourselves safe on the mountain , far above the river and its cavernous gorge.
Here we soon killed a deer, and leaving the greater part of the carcass for our companions, pushed on another day across the mountains. We had at last sighted the prairies from our lofty heights, when, pressed by hunger, I was so ill advised as to eat some of the berries we found hanging to the bushes. As a result I suffered such that I was compelled to lie quiet in camp. But Brown put in the time very well by killing no less than six deer.
Early in the forenoon of the sixth, as we hastened down out of the mountains, we again came within earshot of the torrential river of the gorge. by the sound, we around the point of an out-jutting ridge, and found ourselves on the river bank where it flowed from the gorge. It was not the first time I had stood on that selfsame spot.
"Good God!" I . "After all our , and only this!"
"You may well say it, John," echoed a voice from beneath the cliff upstream.
"Montgomery!" I cried. "You here?"
He appeared from around a big rock, sad and dejected; but at sight of my companion, instantly assumed a look of unbending resolve.
"We scattered," he explained, as I grasped his hand. "The others took the horses up out of the gorge by the least difficult of the side ravines. I followed your trace down into the midst of that cleft and up the icy ascent. But I lost the trace on the mountain top, and so came on down here—"
"To find that, after all our toil and privation, it is not the Red River!" I cried.
"Ah, well, it is something to have rounded the headwaters of the Arkansas," he replied. He turned to Brown: "You will find two of your fellows downstream at the old camp. Join them, and see what the three of you can do toward killing meat against the coming of the others."
"Aye, sir!" responded Brown, with ready .
He was striding off when I interrupted: "Wait! Montgomery, he has six deer already hung."
"Good! The more the better! Fetch the other lads, Brown, and bring in your game. If you see more deer, do what you can to bring them in too."
Brown the second time, and started off at a dogtrot.
I looked inquiringly into the Lieutenant's darkening face and thought I read his purpose. "If any of the horses come through alive, they will nevertheless be too outworn for farther travel within many weeks. You propose to go into winter quarters?"
"No!" he answered almost angrily.
"Yet the horses?" I argued.
"Poor beasts!" he sighed. "Would that I might put them out of their misery—such of their number as the men may bring alive out of that rocky waste! Yet we cannot spare them, and the fewer the , the greater our need to cherish them. We will build a , and leave the beasts here in the charge of two or three of the men."
"Leave them! And what of ourselves?"
"We will go on in search of the Red River."
"Afoot? In midwinter?"
"Southward. There must be passes over the mountains to the southwest,—passes leading over into the warmer valleys. All reports agree that the Spanish settlements enjoy a mild climate."
"The Spanish settlements!" I cried. "You would head for the Spanish settlements! Give the word, Montgomery; the sooner the better. Ho, for Nuevo Mexico and my lady!"
He shook his head soberly. "It is well you are not in command, John, else I fear you would have even less chance than now of winning your way to your lady. It is a desperate move we are about to undertake."
I smiled. "Can anything be more desperate than our present situation?"
"We must leave the horses to recuperate," he replied. "With the horses we must leave a guard. Two men will be as many as we can spare. They must have a stockade for defence should they be attacked by Indians or Spaniards."
"Come!" I exclaimed. "Only show me the place, an axe, and a of pines. I will have your stockade well under way by nightfall."
He took me at my word, and at once led the way downstream to the site of our last camp on the river before we struck off into the mountains behind the Grand Peak. On the way we met Brown and his two companions, going to fetch his deer. We borrowed from them two of their axes, and, arriving at the camp, at once set about felling pines.
Before nightfall we were rejoined by Brown's party and two others, the latter bringing in four sadly disabled horses. The least wearied of the men were at once sent back in search of the remaining parties, carrying a supply of deer meat to supply those who might be famished. To make a long story short, the ninth of January saw the last member of the expedition in camp, safe and sound, with a loss all told of only four horses.
To hunt down a sufficient store of game and complete the blockhouse for Baroney and Smith, the two men to stay in charge of the and half-famished beasts, occupied the party a full five days. But between times in and directing the others, Pike and I managed to take several observations to determine the and of the camp. I also spent much time copying the records of all our courses and distances up to the time of our entry into the mountains, ............