from the injured men, we again suffered a famine, this time of
three days' duration. It was then, for the first and only time during
all our privations, that one of the men murmured openly. So evident was
it that his outcry had been wrung from him by anguish and despair that
the Lieutenant, instead of shooting him down in his tracks in accordance
with the usual rigor of military discipline, chose to pretend that he
had not heard the mutinous words. A few hours later we were the second
time saved from starvation by a fortunate kill of buffalo, and it was
then, after we had feasted to repletion around a roaring camp-fire, that
Pike called the mutineer before him and reproved the repentant man for
his conduct.

At this camp we left the greater part of the meat of the four buffaloes
killed, in the charge of Hugh Menaugh, one of the two men who, aside
from Sparks and Dougherty, had suffered the worst from the frost. This
time, however, meat being so abundant, we did not fail to take with us
on our onward march enough of provisions to last us for several days.

Though recuperated by two days of feasting,--for we had lingered that
length of time with Menaugh,--our first march out of his camp proved one
of the very hardest we had yet made. We were by now near the top of a
high plateau, where the travelling was even more difficult than in the
lower valley; yet we could discover no break in the white barrier,
which, despite our high altitude, still towered up many hundred feet
above us.

It was almost nightfall, and Pike and I--as usual in the lead breaking a
way through the drifts for the others--were beginning to look about for
a favorable camp-site, when, topping a knoll, we found ourselves staring
down upon a little stream whose course ran to the westward.

"Look!" I shouted. "A pass! That brook flows to the mountains--into the
mountains!"

"It may twist about again to south and east. We have reached the top of
a divide," cautioned Pike.

"No, no! it cannot be!" I cried, wild with delight. "I see a cleft in
the mountain side! The sun dazzles our eyes, but look beneath, in the
shadow."

"Thank God!" he sighed. "It is a cleft! It must be that the stream flows
through the mountains. If only we can find a way down its bed!"

"We can--we must!" I wheeled about to the weary men. "Hurrah, lads!
Stiffen your knees! We've found our pass! Another day will see us beyond
the mountains!"

The brave fellows answered with a ring