These five travellers came from the interior of the mornes, as the hilly plains are called, and were bound for the plains, which they began to make out a short distance before them, traversed, or rather cut in two, by the extensive stream of the Missouri, the sandy waters of which were half concealed by high grass, willow, and the cottonwood trees that lined its shores.
The five wayfarers of whom we have spoken walked painfully over the flints that paved the gorge, the dried-up bed of a torrent, which itself had suddenly disappeared during one of the cataclysms so common in that region.
Having reached the extremity of the gorge, they stopped, looked around, and gave a sigh of satisfaction.
Their task had been a rude one. For far more than three hours they had been stumbling in the midst of a whirlpool, nothing else, of flint stones, which, at every step they took, slid under their feet like mountain shingle.
Four of these men were whites, wearing the costume of hunters of the prairies; the fifth was an Indian.
They were George Clinton, Oliver, Bright-eye, Keen-hand, and Numank-Charake, the chief.
Now, then, let us ask how it came about that these five men should be there at that early hour in a place so far from their home—a hundred miles, in fact, from the regions they were in the habit of frequenting, and why were George Clinton and Keen-hand members of this singular and perhaps fortuitous group.
Of course we shall as soon as possible satisfy the legitimate curiosity of our friend the reader.
"Oh!" said Keen-hand, "It is my opinion, friends and companions, that the wisest thing to be done is to stop here."
"Why stop here?" cried Bright-eye, in far from a pleasant tone of voice; "Explain yourself."