“The Red River, men! Three cheers! We think we’ve found it at last!”
It was the evening of the second day’s march into the southwest. The doctor and the lieutenant had gone out from camp, to survey about, as usual. The first line of mountains had been crossed and already every eye was eager and every heart was keen for the traces of the shifty Red River.
Matters looked promising, too. Noon camp to-day had been made at a little spring, the unfrozen waters of which flowed trickling and formed a small stream wending southeast for the bottom of the valley.
“The beginnings of the Red River—do you reckon it might be the beginnings of the Red River, cap’n?” the men queried.
But the lieutenant smiled and shook his head.
“I wouldn’t dare say so, lads, and disappoint you. We may be a long way yet from the real Red River.”
Still, some of the men did not believe him, until they had left the valley and the spring behind, and in a narrow pass of the next ridge had come upon another spring and another stream, larger. Among so many springs and streams, who might tell which was the source of the Red River?
They followed the stream part way through the pass, and encamped there in a snowstorm. The snow, sifting thickly, shut off the view before; it was glum weather for a hungry camp; the men crouched close, snow-covered, around the fire, or moved hobbling, at their various jobs; the gaunt, sore-backed horses cropped desperately, pawing into the snow, or hunched, coughing and groaning, in the scant shelter of the low cedars and spruces.
The horses of the lieutenant and the doctor, and Stub’s yellow pony, had been turned into pack animals, to lessen the loads of the other animals. Everybody was marching on foot.
“Did you say that the cap’n an’ the doctor thought likely we’d have to go cl’ar back south’ard, fur as the Great White Mountains yonder, so’s to strike the river?” John Sparks asked, of Stub.