An hour later they cleared the divide, dipped down past the Bald Buttes through a sharp elbow-canyon, and took the steep open slope that dropped into Porcupine Creek. Shorty, in the lead, stopped abruptly, and Smoke whoaed the dogs. Beneath them, coming up, was a procession of humans, scattered and draggled, a quarter of a mile long.
“They move like it was a funeral,” Shorty noted.
“They've no dogs,” said Smoke.
“Yep; there's a couple of men pullin' on a sled.”
“See that fellow fall down? There's something the matter, Shorty, and there must be two hundred of them.”
“Look at 'em stagger as if they was soused. There goes another.”
“It's a whole tribe. There are children there.”
“Smoke, I win,” Shorty proclaimed. “A hunch is a hunch, an' you can't beat it. There she comes. Look at her!—surgin' up like a lot of corpses.”
The mass of Indians, at sight of the two men, had raised a weird cry of joy and accelerated its pace.
“They're sure tolerable woozy,” commented Shorty. “See 'em fallin' down in lumps and bunches.”