“Yes; I understood his signs, and most of his words,” remarked the lieutenant, quietly. “But we’re white men. We’re not afraid.”
The Chinook lad from the mission, who had kept close by the lieutenant, had understood the signs and words even better than had Kit Carson; and now he began to wail aloud.
“I wanted to see the whites,” he lamented, brokenly. “I came away from my own people to see the whites. I would not mind dying among the whites, but to die here—ow-ow-ow-ow,” and shuddering he drew his blanket over his head. From underneath it his wail resumed, muffled and weird.
“You ought to have stayed down below, in the Fitz camp,” reminded Kit, of Oliver. “It’ll be a cold night, hyar, I tell you.”
And it was. The lieutenant said that the thermometer was ten above; but a wind set in, sifting through the tree trunks, blowing aside the heat, and penetrating blankets and buckskins. The trees creaked and sighed; the Chinook wailed; more biting waxed the air; and nobody slept much.
When Oliver turned out early, to do his share in looking after the shrunken horses and mules, the Indian guide was pressing to the fire, to be warmer; under all his unaccustomed clothing of shirt and trousers and red and blue cloth and green blanket he was shivering violently. Chancing to glance back, Oliver saw Lieutenant Frémont throw his own army blanket over the Indian’s shoulders already once blanketed; and when Oliver returned, within fifteen or twenty minutes, from the horses, he found the camp much indignant. The Indian guide had disappeared, blankets and all!
The day was spent in bringing up the animals, and in making snow-shoes and sledges. The next morning the lieutenant, with Thomas Fitzpatrick and Kit and others, snow-shoed ahead, to reconnoitre along the pass which the guide had pointed out before he had deserted. They came back, in the darkness, scarcely able to drag their feet, but they brought good news. They had looked over into a large valley, distant but snowless. Kit had recognized the valley as the Valley of the Sacramento.
“I know it!” he declaimed, still much delighted. “I know it by a little round mountain. Fifteen years ago I marked that little mountain, when I war in the valley; an’ I remember it jest as plain as if it war only yesterday.”
“How far? How far?” demanded all, eagerly.
“Thirty miles, isn’t it, Kit?” answered the lieutenant.