“Poor Miantonimo! he is a true friend!” thought Tom. “He will grieve for me, but I cannot stay with him.”
CHAPTER XXXIX.
THE CABIN AT ROCKY GULCH.
THE CURTAIN falls, shutting out our view of Tom, as, day by day, he wends his slow way from the great barren plains west of the Mississippi valley toward the modern Golconda.
He had been fortunate in joining a company of emigrants, who treated him kindly, accepting his company as welcome, for he was the only boy in the party, and to more than one he brought to mind boys of their own left behind in homes far east.
He feared that Wanuka, angry at his desertion, would pursue him, and perchance attack the party to which he had joined himself. But Miantonimo prevented that. Indian boy as he was, he was a true and unselfish friend, and repressed the sadness and loneliness which he felt for the sake of the white boy whom he had learned to love as David loved Jonathan.
The curtain rises disclosing a different scene.
We see a valley hemmed in on nearly every side by high mountains. Tall pines, straight as a flag-staff, rise here and there. Bowlders, projected above the earth’s surface by some former upheaval, dating back thousands of centuries it may be, dot the slope of the hills and the shelving valley, and this is probably the reason why the place received years since, and still bears, the name of Rocky Gulch.
It is not uninhabited now, for there is a small village. Most of the houses are occupied by miners, for the treasures of the place are not exhausted.
In one of these cabins, rude enough in its construction, live two men whom we have met before.