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

A separate, distant range of mountains might be sighted, through the gap made by the blazed trail; and below, nearer, there was glimpse of the low country, bordered on this side by bare sandy foothills of these Great White Mountains themselves.

At sunset they were down and into the open, between the timbered slopes and the rolling sand-hills. On the west, beyond the sand-hills there appeared to be a wide valley; and beyond the valley that other range of mountains.

Camp had to be made soon, here at the base of the Great White Mountains. The lieutenant went out alone, to climb the sand-hills, for a view. They could see him, a small figure, toiling up and standing, to peer through his spy-glass. He came back in the dusk, but his face was aglow.

“I have good news,” he announced. “We have won success. With the glass I can see from those sand-hills a larger river coursing from northwest to southeast through the valley beyond. There can be no doubt that it is the Red River.”

They cheered and cheered, and ate with fine appetites. It was a happy night. As Sergeant Meek said:

“Once there—and ’twon’t be long—we can send back for Menaugh, and poor Sparks and Dougherty, and Baroney and Smith and the hosses; and we’ll all be together again, ready for the march home.”

The sand-hills were five miles wide, and looked to be about fifteen miles long. The river came down obliquely through the valley—which was indeed a broad bottom of prairie-land; so they cut across at an angle, and not until the second evening, after a day’s march of twenty-four miles, did they reach the bank of the river itself, January 30.

It certainly was the Red River, issuing from the western mountains, and here turning more southwardly, in the middle of the valley.

The valley was a wonderland. It lay flat, with little snow, full fifty miles wide and in length almost farther than eye might say. The mountains in the west were bald, snowy and grim. The Great White Mountains on the east appeared to end opposite in a huge, dazzling peak with three crests, but a lower range veered in, narrowing the valley in the south. Afar in the north, the valley was closed completely.