Lost with Lieutenant Pike / How from the Pawnee Village the boy named Scar Head marched with the young American Chief clear into the Snowy Mountains; how in the dead of winter they searched for the Lost River and thought that they had found it; and how the Spanish Soldiery came upon them and took them down to Santa Fé of New Mexico, where another surprise awaited them

by Edwin L. Sabin

“Anybody dead? Not the cap’n!”

“No. Nothing like that. But this ain’t the river.”

“Ain’t the Red River?”

“Nope.”

The three stared, dazed.

“What river might it be, then?” gasped Freegift.

“The Arkansaw ag’in. An’ camp’s located on that very same spot in the dry valley where we struck north last December, scarce a month ago!”[G]

[G] That was the remarkable and disappointing fact. From the heads of the Platte River they simply had passed southwestward to the head of the Arkansas, had fought their way down through the Grand Canyon of the Arkansas to the Royal Gorge, and crossing around this were completing a big circle to the Cañon City region again.

“It’s certainly hard on the little cap’n,” Bill added. “Yesterday, his worst day of all, when near dead he made out and espied the landmarks, was his birthday, too.”