After tramping round the foot of the mountain for a while, Towzer, who was ahead of the rest, called out, 'And there's Warwolf's bird, by Jupiter! our old friend the balloon!'
Even Frank managed to 'boil up' a trot when they heard this, to find Towzer staring up to the highest peak, six or seven thousand feet above where they then stood, over the very topmost stone of which a great balloon seemed to hover.
No wonder that that great mass of white silk, rising and falling as if all a-tremble with life, now darting out a few yards from its eyrie, now settling slowly back again, had filled the simple Indians with fear and awe. Even to the whites, who understood it, it was a marvel. What was it doing there? Who brought it, and why did he anchor his sky-ship in such a harbour? Where, too, was he, its master mariner?
These, and a dozen questions such as these, passed through their minds as they gazed. Reading his companions' unspoken thoughts and answering them, Snap said at last:
'I reckon we had better go and see.'
'Yes!' said Dick, 'we should be pretty snug up there alongside Okeeheedee as they call this bird of theirs; but it is a mighty stiff climb, and I don't know how we shall get ourselves up, let alone Frank here.'
'Leave me here, Dick,' said Frank; 'the Crows won't dare to come as near the peak as this, and in a day or two I shall be strong enough to come to you, if they are not sick of waiting for us by that time.'
'We'll see you sugared first, old fellow, and then we won't,' replied Towzer. 'Come along out of that,' and, taking one arm, whilst Snap took the other, he helped his brother along until they reached the level of the graveyard.
Here the road grew worse, and it soon became a question of rock-climbing, pure and simple. Then it was that the forethought which becomes habitual with the North-western hunter showed itself. From his waist Old Dick unwound a long lariat, and at the first seemingly impossible place got the party out of their difficulties easily enough by throwing the loop over a projecting point a great many feet above them and climbing up by the ladder thus extemporised to the little point itself. The boys followed him one after another, and then Snap and Dick, having instructed Frank to make the rope fast under his arms, hauled him up alongside of them. From here, by using the dizzy little gallery along which the wild goats had gone, the party managed to get to that shoulder over which they had seen the goats disappear.
By this time the balloon was comparatively close to them. They could see its car, and that it was anchored by a rope to the rocks over which it hung. They could have seen a man, had one been there, but they saw none. Hoping that if they could attract his attention he would show them the road to his eyrie, the boys whistled again and again. But no answer came, except the echo of their own whistles and the shrill scream of a hawk which they had disturbed from its look-out.