“I ain’t saying a word,” Tom answered. “Not after Doc Kent. Wait and see.”

The fifth horse was now packed, and the expedition started.

But instead of turning up any of the trails toward the range, Mills led the way straight down the automobile road, toward the prairie. It seemed funny to Joe to be setting off on a trip in this direction, right away from the high places, but the horses liked it. They liked the comparatively smooth going, gently down-hill, and swung along at an easy trot.

Down the road they went, mile after mile, until they emerged from the lower end of the Swift Current Valley, out into the rolling prairies, with the whole range behind them. Then, as the road swung up over a knoll, Mills paused and pointed north.

“There’s old Chief,” he said.

Everybody looked. About twelve miles to the northwest, thrust out eastward far from the Divide and with the wall which rose out of the prairie growing steeper and steeper till the last two thousand feet were sheer precipice, stood a magnificent tower of a mountain, shining whitish in the sun as if it were composed of limestone. At the back, it seemed connected by a spine with the range behind, but to the prairie it presented an unbroken front, like some great Gibraltar of a tower, with the prairie grass and forest beating like surf at its feet. All alone it seemed to stand, like a sentinel of the range behind, a lone outpost.

“Is that what we’ve got to climb?” the three men exclaimed, in one breath.

“Well, we won’t take you up the east wall,” Mills laughed.

“Oh, couldn’t we get up it?” Tom cried.

Mills looked at him, and grinned again. “About to-night you won’t feel like climbing anything,” he said. “Remember, you’re not saddle-broke, the way Joe is.”