"There is not much to tell about the next five days. The snow kept falling steadily, and each evening after dark the chief went outside for a short time to smoke his pipe, while I sat at the entrance and smoked mine, and was glad enough to get a little fresh air. As soon as he came in again the faggot was drawn back to its place, and we were imprisoned for another twenty-four hours. One gets pretty tired after a time of eating raw bear's flesh and drinking snow-water, and you bet I was pretty glad when the chief, after looking out through a peephole, said that the snow had stopped falling and the sun was shining. About the middle of that day he said suddenly: 'I hear voices.'
"It was some time before I heard anything, but I presently made them out, though the snow muffled them a good deal. They did not seem far off, and a minute or two later they ceased. We lay there two days longer, and then even the chief was of opinion that they would have moved off. My own idea was that they had started the first afternoon after the snow had stopped falling.
"'Leaping Horse will go out to scout as soon as it is dark,' he said. 'Go to mouth of ravine. If Utes are in wood he will see their fires and come back again. Not likely come up here again and find his traces.'
"That is what I had been saying for the last two days, for after some of them had been up, and had satisfied themselves that there was no one in the gully, they would not be likely to come through the snow again. When the chief returned after an hour's absence, he told me that the Utes had all gone. 'Fire cold,' he said; 'gone many hours. Leaping Horse has brought some dry wood up from their hearth. Can light fire now.' You may guess it was not long before we had a fire blazing in front of our den, and I never knew how good bear-steak really was till that evening.
"The next morning the chief took off the splints and rebandaged my leg, this time putting on a long strip of the bear's skin, which he had worked until it was perfectly soft while we had been waiting there. Over this he put on the splints again, and for the first time since that bear had knocked me off the rock I felt at ease. We stayed there another fortnight, by the end of which time the bones seemed to have knit pretty fairly. However, I had made myself a good strong crutch from a straight branch with a fork at the end, that the chief had cut for me, and I had lashed a wad of bear's skin in the fork to make it easy. Then we started, making short journeys at first, but getting longer every day as I became accustomed to the crutch, and at the end of a week I was able to throw it aside.
"We never saw a sign of an Indian trail all the way down to the settlements, and by the time we got there I was ready to start on a journey again. The chief found plenty of game on the way down, and I have never had as much as a twinge in my leg since. So you see this affair ain't a circumstance in comparison. Since then the chief and I have always hunted together, and the word brother ain't only a mode of speaking with us;" and he held out his hand to the Seneca, who gravely placed his own in it.
"That war a tight corner, Harry, and no blamed mistake. Did you ever find out whether they could have got on the top to shoot down on you?"
"Yes, the chief went up the day after the Utes had left. It was level up there, and they could have sat on the edge and fired down upon us, and wiped us out without our having a show."
"And you have never since been to that place you struck the day the Utes came down, Harry?" Jerry asked. "I have heard you talk of a place you knew of, just at the edge of the bad lands, off the Utah hills. Were that it?"
Harry nodded. "I have never been there since. I went with a party into Nevada the next spring, and last year the Utes were all the time upon the war-path. I had meant to go down this fall, but the Utes were too lively, so I struck up here instead; but I mean to go next spring whether they are quiet or not, and to take my chances, and find out whether it is only good on the surface and peters out to nothing when you get in, or whether it is a real strong lode. Ben and Sam, and of course the chief, will go with me, and Tom here, now he has come out, and if you like to come we shall be all glad."