They expected, moreover, to reach Saint Vrain’s Fort, by the evening of the next day; where, safe from Indian attack, and relieved from camp watching, they could once more rest and recruit themselves.
But in that hour of relaxation, while they were looking at Long’s Peak, its snowy crown still gilded by the rays of the setting sun, there was a cloud coming from that same quarter that threatened to overwhelm them.
It was not the darkening of the night, nor mist from the mountain-sides; but a dusky shadow more to be feared than either.
They had no fear of it. They neither saw, nor knew of its existence; and, as they gathered around their camp-fire to make their evening repast, they were as gay as such men might be expected to be, under similar circumstances.
To many of them it was the last meal they were ever destined to eat; as was that night the last of their lives. Before another sun had shone upon Long’s Peak, one-half their number was sleeping the sleep of death—their corralled wagons enclosing a space afterward to become their cemetery.
Note 1. The Spanish word for inclosure, adopted at an early period by the prairie-traders, and now become part of our language.