On the fourth day they marched twenty-eight miles—and a bad day it proved to be. The Great White Mountains had been getting nearer, at this end—their upper end. They formed a tremendous snowy chain stretching northwest and southeast. The stream came down from them, and they were about to bar the trail. Upon the east there were lesser mountains. But no Red River flowed in this broad trough between the two ranges; its streams fed the Arkansaw River; therefore the Red River must lie upon the farther, or western side, of the Great White range.[H]
[H] These Great White Mountains of Lieutenant Pike are the Sangre de Cristo Range of Southern Colorado. They extend from the Arkansas River above the Grand Canyon clear into New Mexico, and are a noble snowy range indeed. The early Spanish explorers from the south named them Sangre de Cristo, or Blood of Christ, because when first sighted they were bathed red in the reflection from a New Mexico sunset. And this frequently is their sunset coloring today. From the block-house beyond present Cañon City north of the Arkansas River the Pike men had marched south across the river, and probably had followed up Grape Creek, which descends from the east slope of the Sangre de Cristo—the Great White Mountains.
The mountains seemed to rise from a bare prairie which grew no wood. The lieutenant had left the stream, so as to aim more directly for a low place in the range; but he was not to cross, to-day. The range was farther than it looked to be. The sun set—and here they were, in the cold open, without wood or water either, or a bite to eat.
“There’s timber at the base of those first slopes,” he said. “We’ll have to push on, men, until we reach it. The night will be too cold for existing with no fires.”
Suddenly they were barred by the creek, and needs must ford it through ice that broke under their moccasins. It was long after dark, and was stinging cold, when they arrived at the trees. The men stumbled wearily; Stub could not feel his feet at all. Nobody had complained, though—but when the fires had been built and they all started to thaw themselves out, the doctor found that nine pairs of feet had been frozen, among the men, with Stub’s pair to be included.
He, and the lieutenant, Sergeant Meek and Terry Miller were the only ones to have escaped! John Sparks and young Tom Dougherty were the worst off. Their feet were solid white to their ankles. Hugh Menaugh and Jake Carter were badly off, too. The doctor did his best—everybody rubbed hard with snow, and several groaned from the pain; but there was nothing to eat and the thermometer dropped to more than eighteen degrees below zero or freezing.
With cold, hunger and aching feet it was a hard night. The lieutenant sent Sergeant Meek and Terry out early in the morning, to hunt in one direction; he and the doctor made ready to hunt in another.
“Do the best you can, lads,” they encouraged, as they set forth. “We’ve all been in tight places before, and have come out safely. Wait now in patience, and you shall have the first meat that’s killed.”
It was another long day: a cold, bleak day for this open camp on the edge of the snow-laden pines and cedars, with the Great White Mountains overlooking, on the one hand, as far as eye might see, and the wide prairie bottoms stretching lone and lifeless on the other hand.