'You are right; I don't see how I came to forget that. We could have frightened the Indians more completely, and there would have been some consolation in traveling at such a time.'
'Is it too late yet?'
'Couldn't do it without going back to St. Louis.'
'Thunderation! I didn't mean that. Go ahead.'
'Such a lamp or head-light as the locomotives use would cost several hundred dollars, although I could have made one nearly as good for much less. Such a thing in the center of a man's forehead, and the whistle at the end of his nose, would give him quite an impressive appearance.'
'Yer must do it, too, some day My God!'
The boy instantly checked their progress, as the trapper uttered his exclamation; but quickly as it was done, it was none too soon, for another long step and the steam man would have gone down an embankment, twenty feet high, into a roaring river at the base. As it was, both made rather a hurried leap to the ground, and ran to the front to see whether there was not danger of his going down.
But fortunately he stood firm.
'I declare that was a narrow escape!' exclaimed the boy as he gazed down the cavernous darkness, looking doubly frightful in the gloom of the night.
'Skulp me if that wouldn't have been almost as bad as staying among the red-skins,' replied the trapper. 'How are we goin' to get him out of this?'