As soon as he was gone, War–Eagle proposed that the party should quit their present station in search of one where they might be more likely to fall in with deer and bison, as meat was becoming very scarce in the camp; and a scout, sent out on the preceding day, had returned with a report that he had found, at the distance of half a day’s march, a large and fertile valley, watered by a fine stream, and abounding in materials for fuel. This last consideration was of itself highly important, for the Crows had gathered every dry bush and stick from the barren glen in which they were now encamped; and the utmost exertions of the indefatigable Perrot scarcely enabled him to provide a sufficiency for cooking the necessary provisions; while the coldness of the atmosphere, especially at night, rendered the absence of fire a privation more than ordinarily severe.
The counsel of War–Eagle was therefore adopted without delay, it having been agreed that two of the most experienced men, the one a Delaware, and the other a white hunter, should hover around the Crow camp, and communicate to the main body, from time to time, their movements and proceedings.
Having been supplied with an extra blanket, and a few pounds of dried meat and parched corn, these two hardy fellows saw their comrades depart without the least apparent concern, and soon afterwards withdrew to a sheltered and more elevated spot, whence they could, without being perceived, command a distant view of the Crow camp.
Following the steps of the scouts, War–Eagle led his party to a part of the valley where a huge rent or fissure in the side of the mountain rendered the ascent practicable for the horses. It was, however, a wild and rugged scene, and a fitting entrance to the vast pile of mountains that showed their towering peaks far to the westward.
Prairie–bird was mounted upon Nekimi, and Reginald walked by her side, his hand ever ready to aid and guide him amongst the huge stones, which in some places obstructed the path.
Never had velvet lawn, or flower–embroidered vale, seemed to our hero half so smooth and pleasant as did that rocky pass. At every turn some new feature of grandeur arrested the attention of Prairie–bird, who expressed her admiration in language which was a strange mixture of natural eloquence and poetry, and which sounded to his ears more musical than “Apollo’s lute.”
What struck him as most remarkable was, that, whether in speaking of the magnificent scenery around, or of the more minute objects which fell under her observation, her spirit was so imbued with Scripture, that she constantly clothed her ideas in its phraseology, without being conscious of so doing.
Thus, when in crossing the valley they passed by some anthills, and, in ascending the opposite height, saw here and there a mountain–rabbit nibbling the short moss that overspread the bed of rock, Reginald directed her attention to them, saying, “See, Prairie–bird, even in this desolate wilderness these insect–millions have built them a city, and the rabbit skips and feasts as merrily as in more fertile regions.”
“True, dear Reginald,” she replied, “therefore did the wise man say in days of old, ‘The ants are a people not strong, yet they prepare their meat in the summer: the conies are but a feeble folk, yet make they their houses in the rocks.’”
A little further onward, the pass was overhung by an enormous cliff, from the top of which a bighorn looked down upon the party below, the long beard of the mountain–goat streaming in the wind. One of the hunters fired at it, but the harmless bullet glanced from the face of the cliff, while amid the echoes repeated and prolonged by the surrounding heights, the bighorn sprang from rock to rock across the yawning chasms by which they were divided, as lightly as the forest squirrel leaps from a branch of the spreading oak to that of the neighbouring elm.