Longer grew the shadows, and more gloomy the ravines between the elevations, as the prairie ranger galloped slowly along the foot of the range.
Night at length closed around him; the peaks were dimly outlined against the sky in which the stars began to appear.
In the west the infant moon looked like a silver bond of promise to the good welfare of man, and smiled upon the earth as if in pity at its forlorn and unlighted condition.
All of these things Bolly noticed with the air of a man whose mind is preoccupied, and whose thoughts have no range beyond a certain point.
Now that quite a distance separated him from the huge Sioux village, the usual sounds that accompany a night upon the plains came to his ears, and it really seemed as though the wolves howled and the coyotes barked louder than ever on this particular occasion.
Perhaps with their more than human instinct, these beasts of carrion knew of the feast for their hungry maws, that the setting sun had shone upon, and which was not yet ready for them because of the many moving figures in that terrible ravine of death.
A whippoorwill sending forth his plaintive cry near by, and the shrill scream of a night hawk from a neighboring tree, aroused Bolly from the stupor as it might almost be called, into which he had unconsciously fallen.
For the first time he noticed that Black Bess had carried him into the midst of a forest that lay at the foot of the hills.
As he made this discovery, the distant murmur of running water came to his ears, which could not be made by a creek.
Undoubtedly it was the river that he was nearing, and as this was just what he desired, Bolly let his sable steed continue her own course.