As they drew near, the boys saw that he was right. The figures were monuments of wood, carved like men sometimes, at others like quaintly devised demons. The pennons floated from what were but dead men's headstones, and in the white tents with open doorways lay chieftains sleeping the last long sleep and waiting 'till the flush of morning, the morning of another world, should break along their battlefield.'
Suddenly an exclamation from Towzer drew all eyes to a point a few hundred feet above this camp of the dead. The boy's eyes were wide open, and his jaw dropped in horror. His flesh crept as he looked.
Above the graveyard the rock rose sheer and steep, a wall of rock like the side of a house, and yet as the boys looked in the misty light they saw one after another a long train of white figures slowly passing across it. One by one they paced along, sedate and slow, their snowy whiteness coming out in strong contrast to the gloom of their surroundings.
'What is it?' asked Snap in an awed under-tone.
'Bust me if I knows,' said Dick with savage earnestness, 'but, ghosts or no, I am a-goin' to hide up there. I guess ghosts don't hurt as much as Crows, anyway.'
Meanwhile Snap had brought his glass to bear on the rock.
'All right, Dick,' he laughed, 'you were pretty near. If they aren't ghosts they are goats, which sounds something like it, though I never heard of goats like 'em before.'
'Rocky Mountain goats! are they, by thunder?' ejaculated Wharton; 'wal, I've often heerd tell of 'em, but never seed any till to-day. You're sure they are goats, Snap?'
'Yes, quite sure; but look for yourself,' and he handed the glasses to Wharton.
'Well, they're rum-looking critters,' remarked Dick after a long stare at the white procession now disappearing over a shoulder of the rock; 'they're goats right enough, though they do look more like little buffalo-bulls with that hump on their shoulders. But, all the same, they're Warwolf's ghosts as well,' he added with a laugh.