The first care of the three women was to dress the numerous wounds of the lieutenant. All night long three pairs of tender hands worked over him, and when the sun arose it lighted the interior of the mountain, and reflected on the tepee where the young soldier was sleeping quietly.
To make other incidents of this narrative clear, it is necessary to give some little description of this home in the interior of a mountain which any one might imagine, but few be fortunate enough to see.
To begin with, the mountain, which appeared to be a solid, square-sided, flat-topped rock from the plain, was hollow. The great interior cavity sank to a level with the river two miles away, and the water in a clear pool along the edge of the south wall arose and fell with that in the river. The whole bottom seemed made up of rich loam and where not cultivated in vegetables, corn, herbs, and flowers, was clothed with green and luxuriant grass.
Down here, walled in by walls many rods thick, impenetrable alike to heat and cold, the temperature was pleasingly equable. It was never hot, yet vegetation thrived, mostly on reflection of the sun’s rays. It was never very cold, for the falling snow melted before it touched the soil. There were no high winds, and blizzards and cyclones were never felt.
On the north side of the interior was a massive pile of rocks of all sizes, as if they had been poured there from some gigantic measure. On these it was possible to ascend to the very top of the mountain.
The entrance was by way of what apparently had been in some other age the bed of a river, and the small outer opening led into a crevasse where the girl’s first disappearance had so puzzled the Indians. The moving aside of a small rock revealed the opening, which was nearly filled with loose stones of all sizes. Once on the inside and the key rock in place, others could be piled upon it until it was safe from attacks.
The girl, while a prisoner, had accidentally discovered the opening and had explored it alone without telling even her friend, the white woman prisoner. Later, when they had the opportunity, the woman was told and they laid plans to escape.
Stores of provision and seed were hidden there by the child on secret trips. Then she had conceived the plan of playing upon the superstitions of the red people. Her ruse was successful, due almost wholly to her sweet voice, and the fact that she had remarkable artistic talent.
For ten years the couple had lived there, neither caring greatly to find their way back to civilization. The woman’s entire family had been murdered when she was made prisoner; the girl had been so young when captured that she knew nothing of her people or their fate.
Thus they had lived on together very happily.