From every height we reached we looked out eagerly, hoping to see the fort or a portion of the river which flowed by it. Twice we caught sight of Indian wigwams in the far distance, but we avoided them, not knowing whether the inhabitants might prove friends or foes. In either case they would be sure to deprive us of our buffalo meat and perhaps of our lives.
Could we have been certain that they would prove friendly, it might have been worthwhile to sacrifice our provisions for the sake of being guided to the fort, with the road to which they would be well acquainted. We took care not to encamp till we had got to a good distance from the wigwams we had last seen, as the smoke of our fire might betray us.
“Shure! before the sun sets this day we shall reach the fort,” observed Pat, as we were preparing to start after our breakfast; but the sun did not appear in the sky, or rather the clouds obscured it, and we had no certain means of directing our course.
As I said before, an Indian or an experienced white hunter would have been quite independent of the sun, being able to tell to a certainty the points of the compass by the appearance of the bark on the trees, or moss on rocks, or many other signs of which both Pat and I were ignorant.
I had only lately returned from school in Canada, and Pat, though a capital follower, was not born to be a leader. He did not possess the gift of observation, and like many another Irishman was always making the most curious mistakes. I should never have been surprised when he was loading his gun had he put in the shot first and the powder afterwards; and a story was told of him that, having forgotten to put any powder in the pan of his lock, each time that his gun missed fire he added a fresh charge; and when at length he did prime his piece, and firing, it went off knocking him down, he jumped up exclaiming, “Hurrah! shure, that’s only one charge! There’s five more to come presently.”
Still Pat was a faithful fellow, and did his best; which must be allowed was much in his favour, so that he was a favourite with every one—French voyageurs, English trappers, and half-breeds.
“I do hope we shall reach the fort before to-night,” I answered to his last remark.
“Shure! if we do not, we’ve got mate enough to last us for a week. If our shoes don’t give out, we will have no raison to complain at all at all,” he exclaimed.
I little thought at the time he spoke that a whole week would pass by, and that even then we should be as far as ever, for what we could tell, from the fort. Had the sky been clear we could have proceeded in a straight line, but obscured as it remained, we, I felt sure, made many a circuit, though we did not exactly hit on our former camp-fires.
The snow at this period of the year, just before the early winter set in, rapidly disappeared, so that the marks of our footsteps were obliterated. Sometimes, as we trudged on, I felt as if I was in a troubled dream, aiming at a point and never able to reach it.