“They have gone to feed on the young winter-wheat of the settlers on the upland,” the trapper informed them, his eyes kindling with the fire of the pioneer hunter. “If you are willing to climb the high bluffs we may be able to find them.”
Tatanka, like a real Indian, was willing, and the boys, like all real boys, were eager to go.
“Each man take a blanket,” ordered Barker, as he put a day’s rations into his pack-sack, and in addition to his gun he also took an ax.
“What’s that for!” asked Bill, with his usual curiosity.
“To chop their heads off,” Tim spurted. “Bill, you ask lots of fool questions.”
The men laughed aloud. “One string to this crane hunt,” the old trapper told them. “The fellow that asks one of those ’tarnal botheration questions hikes back to the river and watches the boat till the rest of us come back.
“Keep your eyes and ears open, but your mouths shut tight. That’s the rule for a crane-hunt. Now walk slow. Those hills are higher than they look.”
For a little while they traveled up the ravine of one of those small streams which run in large numbers into the west banks of the Mississippi. On the upper river, from St. Paul into Iowa, the hills and bluffs on the west bank are densely wooded, while those of the east bank are covered with a scrubby growth and show many patches covered only with grasses and other prairie plants, which are fitted to endure intense sunlight, great heat and long spells of drought. Some patches of prairie, however, are also found amongst the bluffs on the west bank.
It was on one of those bare patches of hillside that the lads, with great joy, picked their first spring flowers, the wild crocus, or pasque flower, of the Prairie States.
From Illinois to Montana, and northward far into Canada, the wild crocuses spring out of the sear grass or the burnt prairie, while ice and snow still linger in shaded spots. Like millions of living amethysts, scattered broadcast over a continent, but far more beautiful than dead stones, they smile at the sky and the sun before the drought and hot winds of summer can wither their petals, and before rank grasses and weeds can cut off the sunlight.