Harry, as a matter of course, declared that he did, and the trapper added:
“Wal, we’ll work up toward the fort, for you’ll have to see the old gentleman, so that if you’re gone a month or two, he’ll know where you ar’, and won’t blame me for keepin’ away so long.”
This was all prudent, and the lad had no wish to make any objection to the arrangement. They shouldered their rifles, and turning their faces toward the Cascade Range, started on what was destined to prove the most memorable venture of their lives.
The old hunter having announced his theory of Little Rifle’s disappearance, it behooved them both to maintain as sharp a scrutiny as possible upon the different parties of Blackfeet that were in the neighborhood.
“I can tell you,” he muttered, with a compressing of the lips that attested his earnestness, “if the varmints have got the gal, they’ve got to keep a mighty close watch on her or she’ll give ’em the slip. Let her have a few hundred yards the start, and old Maquesa himself couldn’t catch her. She can run like an antelope, and knows how to dodge and double on herself and hide her own trail, so that a bloodhound would give up the hunt in disgust, and go to watchin’ sheep for the rest of his life.”
“But in this case, it seems to me she would have taken every pains to make her footprints visible, knowing that we would be on the hunt for her.”
“How could she know that?” asked the old man, in return; “it ain’t likely that she got into trouble till she war a good ways off from camp, and it wouldn’t be till then that she would think of such a thing. Yonder is a purty high hill, and we’ll climb up to the top of that, and take a look around.”
The elevation alluded to was considerably out of their way, lying more to the southward; but, as there was a prospect that it might be of some use to them, they made all haste toward it.
It was very much of the nature of the ridge where Little Rifle and Harry had made their morning meal on the previous day, except that it was higher, and consequently the view was much more extensive.
When at last they reached the top, the boy was charmed with the scenery spread out before him. It was indeed one of the finest views with which he had been favored since coming to the North-west.