"No more fear of famine!" exulted Pike. "We're safe at last!"
"But how as to savages?" I rejoined. "I see no smoke; yet in a country so abounding in game—"
"Say rather, the Spaniards, John."
"What! You surely do not think—Yet that main stream runs southward. All the accounts tell how the Rio Grande del Norte flows from the north down through the Province of Nuevo Mexico. Montgomery! can it be—"
He checked me with a gesture. But the twinkle in his eyes belied the soberness of his answer: "We have crossed the mountains in search of the Red River. Who among us can swear that yonder stream is not the Red?"
"Yet I, for one, am ready to wager it is the Rio Grande!" I cried. "The Rio Grande! Only think what that means to us—to me! I have only to descend its banks to the Spanish settlements—"
"To land in a Spanish gaol!" he rejoined. "No, John; it is for the Red River we have been seeking, and the Red River it shall be, at the least until we have built a stockade and brought up all the members of our party."
"You would defy the Spaniards!" I exclaimed.
"We will at least put ourselves into a position of defence before seeking to communicate with them."
"But a stockade on Spanish territory?"