One of these springs threw up its muddy jets at regular intervals, with a whistling sound which ended like the shriek of a madman.
Naturally, these things only tended to make the Indian trailers think they were being plunged now into some inferno presided over by demons. If it had seemed safe to run away incontinently, they would have done so.
Beyond the valley holding the petrified trees and the mud springs was another mountain notch.
The trail pointed straight into it. Buffalo Bill followed the trail. He kept his horse at a canter much of the time, so that the Piute boy and his Apaches were forced into a run. His object was twofold—to get over the ground as fast as possible, and to hurry the Indians along so quickly they would not be given time to consider too much the apparent perils they were running into.
The notch they entered now was narrower than the others, with steeper walls, of a cañonlike character, and high cliffs naked and sun-seared. In addition, many of the cliffs were banded and streaked with ocher and vermilion, and with various combinations of these, mixed in with duller colors. Sometimes it was as if the cliff walls had been laid up regularly with lines of stones of these colors. The tops were a fiery red. And as the narrow avenue before the party was of that same reddish hue, the general appearance was what one might imagine to be that of a gateway to the infernal regions.
The Indians, instead of hanging back, now kept close to the heels of the horses, with frightened glances cast now and then behind.
Old Nomad was as silent as the Indians themselves.
Even Buffalo Bill and Wild Bill did not talk much; the rainbowed avenue, pinching in about them, had a depressing effect.
“Waugh!” said Nomad, when daylight was seen shining like a white star ahead. “I’m glad ter git outer this hyar, anyhow. I’ll sing praises an’ shout halleluyers, when I hears water runnin’ ag’in and sees grass growin’.”
But there was no water and no grass, apparently, in the region beyond this red notch. A flat basin lay there, like the dried-up bottom of some old lake; except that near the middle of it the bottom seemed to have dropped out, and showed a ragged rent or hole, with precipice edges on the nearer side and sheer cliff walls, rainbowed, on the farther.