“Well, hope we see some Indians, anyway,” chatted Mr. Duff. “But all these soldiers probably’ll scare ’em off. I’d like to be out with one of those surveying parties. Those are the fellows who have the good times.”
“George Stanton—he’s my partner—is out with one. He’s out with Mr. Bates,” Terry announced. “General Dodge said that maybe we’d find them.”
With the toiling wagons, they were several days in passing the many gangs of graders. The low huts, called “railroad forts,” of sod walls and sod or sheet-iron roofs only about four feet above the ground, were strewn for miles and miles in advance of the rails.
The old Overland stage road soon branched to the north, for Fort Laramie, and guided by only the railroad grade, the General Dodge expedition plodded on. The ties ceased, the farthest outpost of the graders’ camps was at last left behind, and presently the final squad of construction engineers engaged in running the line of stakes and levels, had been dropped.
Now only the open country of the high rolling plains lay before. The air was frosty, at night, but warm by day. The curious antelope constantly stared, with heads up, at the march, and skimmed away. They supplied fine meat, when hunted by the soldiers and civilians. General Rawlins appeared to be enjoying himself immensely, but he was not strong.
During the day the cavalry rode before and in the rear, and scouted on the flanks. The General Dodge party cantered in the advance. At night camp was pitched, in military order.
This seemed like home ground, to the general. He had explored through it to find a railroad route away back in 1855; and he had campaigned against the Sioux and Northern Cheyennes, hereabouts and beyond, in 1865. That was the time when the Indians had helped him to discover his pass.
A long line of dusky, frowning mountains was gradually getting higher and plainer in the west. These, said the general and Mr. Van Lennep, were the southern end of the Black Hills—the first barrier by the Rocky Mountains.
“I think that tomorrow we’ll strike Crow Creek,” spoke the general, tonight, to the party around the blazing camp fire. “That’s where we locate the next division point, at the eastern base of the Black Hills. I sent word to General Auger at Fort Laramie to meet us there. He has instructions from General Grant to locate a military post where the railroad locates its division point.”
“Then we climb the mountains, do we, general?” young Mr. Duff asked, eagerly.