“The white man is ahead of the red-man in every respect,” replied Glyndon, sententiously. “He can out-run him, out-hunt him, and out-fight him! It’s the intellect does it. The Injun’s brain-pan wasn’t calculated for any thing but a savage—but you can’t make the Peace Commissioners believe it. Why don’t they pick up all the lazy, good-for-nothing white men in the country, put ’em on a reservation, and feed and clothe them? Waugh! Come, boys, let’s see if the ‘noble red-man’ isn’t after our ha’r.”
With this contemptuous reflection, Gummery Glyndon threw his long rifle into the hollow of his arm, and walked toward the mouth of the ravine with long strides, followed by the two boys, who kept up with him with some difficulty; but their young hearts bounded with a pleasant excitement.
CHAPTER VI.
FINDING THE TRAIL.
The rapid strides of the old guide carried him half-way across the little valley between the cliffs: then he paused suddenly, and resting the butt of his long rifle upon the ground, and leaning his hands upon its muzzle, took a critical survey of the cliff, where the apparitions had appeared upon the previous night.
“There isn’t any way to get up there on this side,” he said; “but there may be on the other.”
“There’s something up there that looks like a hole—a kind of crack in the rock,” rejoined Cute. “There may be a cave up there.”
“It is a fissure in the cliff, and may extend through to the other side,” remarked Percy Vere.
“More’n likely,” answered the old hunter. “There’s a heap of snow lies on these hills in the winter-time, and the spring thaw sends torrents down to the river, and the water bores its way through the rocks just like a gimlet. These cliffs are a spur of the Cascade Range, and when we get upon the brow of one of them, I think we can see the white peak of Mount Rainier, looking like a big icicle turned the wrong way upwards.”
“Is it very high?”
“Thirteen thousand feet, they say. It’s the highest peak of the Cascade Mountains.”