“Your eye-sight’s improving, young man,” Sol joked. “You’re spying the main Rockies; and if ’twarn’t for those clouds I reckon you could look another hundred and fifty miles, into Utah.”
Sol had been scouting around, and had found traces of a deserted camp down stream a short distance. The general was quite certain that this had been a camp of the Percy Browne surveyors and escort.
“Camp’s about three weeks old, I judge,” Sol reported.
“Hoo-ee-ee!” sounded the high call, through the dusk.
“White man, that,” Sol uttered. “Yep, and there they are.”
Across the Platte there were two or three horsemen, who had united in the “Hoo-ee-ee.” Now here they came, fording and swimming. General Dodge beckoned them in, and met them as they rode forward, dripping.
He and Colonel Seymour, the consulting engineer, held a short confab with them. They all turned for the camp.
“That’s Frank Appleton, Percy Browne’s assistant,” Superintendent Reed exclaimed. “Wonder if anything’s gone wrong again.”
“Well, men don’t swim cold rivers for nothing,” drawled Sol, who was standing and warming the tails of his army overcoat.
The General Dodge squad arrived at the big camp fire. The general’s face was grave; so was Colonel Seymour’s. Everybody at the fire waited intent—General Rawlins, lying under a blanket to rest, half sat up.