“I’m sorry old Bridger has come to grief,” said Brent to me, as we rode over the plain toward the fort. “He was a rough, but worth all the Latter-Day Saints this side of Armageddon. Biddulph and I stayed a week with him last summer, when we came from the mountains about Luggernel Alley.”
“How far is Luggernel Alley from this spot?”
“Fifty miles or so to the south and east. I almost fancy I recognize it in that slight notch in the line of the blue sierra on the horizon. I wonder if I shall ever see it again! If it were not so late, I should insist upon taking you there now. There is no such gorge in the world. And the springs, bold, liberal fountains, gushing out on a glittering greensward! There are several of them, some boiling, some cold as ice; and one, the Champagne Spring, wastes in the wilderness the most delicate, sparkling, exhilarating tipple that ever reddened a lip or freshened a brain.”
“Wait half a century; then you and I will go there by rail, with our grandchildren, for draughts of the Fountain of Youth.”
“I should like to spend a honeymoon there, if I could find a wife plucky enough to cross the plains.”
How well I remembered all this conversation afterwards, and not long afterwards!
We rode up to the fort. A dozen or so of somewhat rubbishy soldiers, the garrison, were lounging about.
“Will they expect a countersign,” asked I,—“some slogan of their vulgarized Islamism?”
“Hardly!” replied Brent. “Only one man in the world can care about assailing this dismal den. They need not be as ceremonious with strangers as the Dutchmen are at Ehrenbreitstein and Verona.”
Jake and the main party stopped at the fort. We rode on a quarter of a mile farther, and camped near a stream, where the grass was plenteous.