Days and weeks passed before Adele and her brother, in safe-keeping at the fort, heard from the wanderers. Then, alone, with his arm in a sling, and a deep arrow wound in his back, came Howell. He brought good intelligence, though. The rest of the party were safe, and in good spirits—more, they were successful.
Having brought this intelligence, and having remained a week or so to recruit from the effects of his wounds and the fatigues of a long journey, Howell again mounted his horse, slung on his rifle, looked well to his canteen and provision bag, and turned westward again, leaving Hugh and his sister to watch and hope.
Summer faded away, autumn came, and November’s winds were fiercely humming over the plain, when the next intelligence of the absentees was received. One evening, as the sun was dropping behind the far-off mountains, a single horseman was seen approaching, along the westerly trail, to the fort. Hugh and Adele, by chance looking out, saw him coming, and both, at the same time, recognized him. A few moments later and he was clasping their hands, responding to their eager enquiries concerning the remainder of the party.
Successful beyond their highest anticipations, they might be expected on the following day.
The morrow came, and with it Major Robison and his hardy, sun-browned, toil-worn band of attaches; and here, the family reunited, and all the characters safe, we might take leave of the reader, with the assurance that all the greater difficulties which had clung around the pathway of the Major had been surmounted. He had found the secret, and was, even now, a comparatively rich man. In fact, was there nothing more to relate than that they journeyed eastward to spend the winter, and transact some, to him, necessary business, returning again in the spring, to toil through many ensuing months; then perhaps our chronicles would here end. As it is, we shall not linger long before writing the inevitable “finis.”
The connection between Robison and Waving Plume had been essentially a financial one. Robison, at one time wealthy, had been involved in ruinous losses by a financial crisis, being left, not only broken in fortune, but heavily in debt. Impelled by various reasons, he sought the western confines of civilization, bringing with him his children, and a few thousands which, being settled on them, he did not feel himself called upon to deliver up to his creditors. Engaging in the fur trade to some extent, having intercourse with trappers, hunters, voyageurs, and Indians, he heard much of wandering life and wandering manners. From an old trapper, who, in a not over sober moment, became loquacious, he gathered a few points which determined him to drop his business and search for gold. This was, perhaps, as much on account of his health as anything else—his spirits, and consequently his constitution, being much broken by the tempestuous life-storms through which he had lately passed. Starting out with Ned Hawkins and another, a man well versed in all western mysteries, he had roamed far and wide, hunting and trapping, yet all the time prosecuting his search and his inquiries. Returning to the region of the trading-posts, he there found Charles Archer, a young man of twenty-one or two, with plenty of means, a go-ahead disposition, and who had sought the great west for the sake of life and adventure. Unfolding to him his plans and hopes, the Major had induced him to enter into the formation of a small, but selected company, and to penetrate into the regions lying along the Rocky Mountains. It was this company whom the reader has found introduced in these pages, and for the past three years they had clung well together, traversing all the region thereabouts, and even scouring the Oregon territory, and the streams that flow into the Columbia. These three years of life had made of Archer a perfect adventurer, while they had endeared him to all with whom he had come in contact.
One evening Adele and Archer stood together, looking through the dim twilight, out over the far-stretching plains. There was a smile on her face, both bright and joyous, for Waving Plume held her hand in his, and whispered into her ear, both low and softly:
“Yes, Adele, I have seen much of the ruder elements of life; I have drained the cup of danger, and lived in an atmosphere of hardship; but shall I not have my reward?”