"If we go in there we shall need more meat," said Tawannears.
And he quickly strung his bow, notched an arrow and loosed. The animal dropped a scant fifty yards away, and I ran to pick it up. But Corlaer was close on my heels, and he hoisted the carcass on his broad shoulders.
"Oof," he squeaked. "Der is still light. We don't wait to cut up der sheep. We go on, eh? Ja, we go on."
I nodded, and Tawannears was equally willing. We made no attempt to persuade the Dutchman to let us carry the dead sheep, for neither of us could have handled it and our equipment at the same time, especially on the tricky footing of the snow-covered rocks, with snowshoes to manage. But it was no effort at all to Peter. He strode along after us as easily as though he had been carrying a rabbit.
The entrance of the gulley was perhaps twenty feet wide. It threaded back into the hills, widening gradually, until it turned an elbow of rock and became a respectable defile. The bed was strewn with bowlders of all sizes, and with the melting snow and a trickle of water that in time would become a fair-sized stream it was anything but a pleasant place for walking. The one satisfaction we had was that the side-walls were so steep as to assure us some protection from the eternal avalanches, our most dangerous foes.
The ascent was easy, and toward evening we rounded another elbow and found ourselves in the throat of a lovely rock-bound valley, locked away in the heart of the hills. Above it lifted peaks that pierced the clouds, their lower flanks garbed in jade-green pine forests. Its floor was similarly tree-covered, but at intervals the forest yielded to open parks, where herds of mountain goat and sheep and antelope rooted for food beneath the snow. In the center was a little lake, its frozen surface glinting like a scarlet eye under the sunset glow.
Not a sound marred the magic stillness. It was like a picture painted on a screen, a highland solitude, which, so far as we could determine, had never before been visited by men. Certes, the wild creatures were tamer than the stags and hinds I remember to have chased as a new-breeched younker in the deer-park of Foxcroft in Dorset, where first I saw the light. The blows of our axes felling trees for a hut and the crackling of the campfire were bait to lure them closer.
The valley was miles in length, and we reached the opposite exit too late to pass through the next day; but the second morning we dived into a replica of the defile by which we had passed the eastern barrier range. And that night we shivered around a scanty fire in a small area we cleared of snow amongst the rocks, fearful lest the constricted crevice become an impasse like those that had baffled us for months. But fortune stood our friend, and we emerged at high noon of the fourth day of our wanderings upon a land of rambling foothills. Behind us reared the snowy peaks of the Sky Mountains, seemingly more impassable than ever.
We had done what no man I have ever met could fairly claim to have done. I know there are those who pretend to have traversed the Western Wilderness, and would prate of marvels done and seen; but show me the man who can make good his boast. There are Jesuit missioners and couriers du bois who have beheld the Sky Mountains afar, but I have the word of Charles Le Moyne, himself, that none hath come to him or his people with such a tale as we can tell.
But again I wander from my story. Patience, prithee!