The region through which they passed was bare and bleak and terrible. On either side, beyond the heaped-up piles of ice, rose the scarred buttes, weather-worn into fantastic shapes and strangely blotched with spots of brown and yellow, purple and red. Here and there the black coal-veins that ran through them were aflame, gleaming weirdly through the dusk as the three men made their camp that night.
The weather was cold and an icy wind blew in their faces.
"We're like to have it in our faces all day," remarked Will Dow cheerfully, paddling at the bow.
"We can't, unless it's the crookedest wind in Dakota," answered Sewall, who was steering.
They followed the river's course hither and thither in and out among the crags, east and west, north and south.
"It is the crookedest wind in Dakota," muttered Sewall to himself.
The thermometer dropped to zero, but there was firewood in plenty, and they found prairie fowl and deer for their evening meals. Late the third day, rounding a bend, they saw their boat moored against the bank. Out of the bushes, a little way back, the smoke of a camp-fire curled up through the frosty air.
"There's your boat!" cried Sewall, who had, in his own phrase, been "looking sharp." "Get your guns ready. I'll handle the boat."
They flung off their heavy coats. Sewall was in the stern, steering the boat toward shore. Dow was at Roosevelt's side in the bow. Roosevelt saw the grim, eager look in their eyes, and his own eyes gleamed.
He was the first ashore, leaping out of the boat as it touched the shore ice and running up behind a clump of bushes, so as to cover the landing of the others. Dow was beside him in an instant. Sewall was fastening the boat.