By this time two of the Indians had cut the carcass up, while the others had built a hot fire. Several steaks were cut off and roasted before the flames under the guide’s direction for the boys’ breakfast, and they found the meat juicy and palatable. Then the Indians turned to and had their “feast.” They partially roasted the flesh in great chunks, and for an hour gorged themselves like starving men just escaped from the desert.
“T-t-hey won’t be able to walk,” commented Pepper, after gazing at the gastronomic feat that put any of his previous efforts in the shade.
“Let ’em alone fer that,” said the guide, “I never in my life see anything that could carry a bigger cargo of grub, and do a day’s work than a Siwash. I s’pose it’s because starvation’s got ter be a regeler perfession with ’em. They can lay in food like a camel does water, and then go fer days without it.”
The Indians, having packed some of the meat for the next day, cut the rest into thin strips, and with the caribou’s head, hung them to the branches of trees out of reach of bears, to be called for on their return. The riding horses were also turned loose, in a broad meadow to stay until the return, and nothing but the pack animals taken.
Their morning journey carried them higher and higher into the foothills of the Kenai range, and the trail became more rugged. About nine o’clock the Indians began to show some eagerness and excitement, and the chief told the guide that they would soon sight the peaks. Finally, the Siwashes ran ahead to the top of a sharp rise and excitedly beckoned. The boys joined them, and as they reached the summit of the ridge a peculiar scene met their gaze.
The other side of the ridge sloped sharply for nearly two hundred feet to a valley nearly half a mile wide, paved with gravel and boulders, and as bald of vegetation as a desert. The rocks on the slope of the ridge and along the sides of this wide shallow ravine were cut as sharply and worn as smooth as if the stone cutter’s chisel had shaped their surfaces.
A quarter of a mile distant, and almost in the middle of the valley stood an immense obelisk of rock some three hundred feet high, dividing, some distance from the top into three sharp pinnacles. On the surface of the middle spire could be seen a small black dot. The Indians were dancing with excitement, and the boys themselves felt a thrill as they realized that they were nearing the climax of a great mystery.
“That looks like a great river bed, in which the water had dried up,” remarked Rand, “I never saw anything like it before.”
“Bed of an old glacier,” said the guide, who had come up. “Lots of ’em in this country.”
“That explains it, then,” said Jack, excitedly.