"If not for your own sake, John, then for ours! You are the best shot among us. Since Wilkinson left, you have in effect taken his place as second in command. You know how highly the men regard you. Should aught happen to me, you are the only one of our number capable of taking my place and carrying out the various objects of the expedition."
"Meek is a fine soldier," I said.
"A good sergeant and a brave man—so brave that we could count upon him to 'raise a little dust' at the first opportunity. He's brave to rashness, but quite incapable of keeping notes, either of our route or of the many scientific features which we are certain to encounter."
"Yet—to wait, it may be months longer!"
"We need you, John."
"Very well," I replied. I could not do other than give way to that argument.
Such was the quenching of my newly aroused hopes. I should cross the barrier to Alisanda; I vowed I would cross it, or die. But the attempt must now wait until we had penetrated to the headwaters of the Arkansas; until we had rounded the sources of the Red River,—if in truth we were ever to find the unknown upper reaches of that stream; until we had spent weeks, and it might be months, wandering about the snowy wildernesses of these vast Western mountains.
It was a sickening prospect for my eager love to contemplate. Yet I needed only the quiet words of my friend to realize what I already knew in my heart. It was true what he said. I could be of service to my comrades. There was my duty to them, if not my patriotism, to bind me to their company. I could not have left them at the time, even though the way to Santa Fe and on to Chihuahua had been an open highway before my feet, and the season midspring.